This book had no build up. You are just dropped in the middle of it and left to flounder. (pun intended)

It starts out promising with the main character preparing for a storm to hit when she is approached by a guy,and from then on its downhill.

I had the impression her transformation would happen later in the book but she just meets a strange guy and in the next paragraph she is a mermaid.

But she is still 100% snarky and not in a good way.

The main character is annoying and childish,constantly uttering such memorable things as "gross" or "ewww"

Her boyfriend has no qualms about ogling other girls(redheads are totally his type) but its totally ok,because hes loyal to Yara.But he doesnt want to be labeled as her boyfriend.Also hes got an awesome white coat...and a goatee. :/

But the main character assures the reader that Rownan is attractive in a million ways.

The goatee and the fur coat just scream attractive cool-ness. *rolls eyes*

Another character smokes "c-weed" Get it? Sound it out. Also a "seagarette" at first I thought it was a typo.But it wasnt

The characters are paperthin and sometimes the dialogue between is harder to decipher than the Rosetta stone.

If you have made it your goal to read every mermaid book there is then go ahead, but I cant recommend this book. I think the author needs alot more experience in world construction and plotting and credible characters.

And to end it on a positive note. It did have an interesting book cover. ( )

The characters were interesting, the beginning two or three chapters were confusing and poorly written. The middle was fantastic, but the ending was a happily ever after ending, which are never possible, especially when Medusa and Poseidon are included. No Greek tragedy here, which was kind of disappointing to be honest. The book was good, but not super good. ( )

3.5-4 stars

I don’t have much experience with books about mermaids, so I may either be perfect or incapable of reviewing this properly. I have, however, read two other books by Karen Amanda Hooper and I feel more than qualified to review her as a writer. And I really love her! Her books are always entertaining, well-written and so funny and Tangled Tides is no exception. It was fast-paced, funny and I had such a hard time putting it down (seriously, school, workouts and housework should be on hold whenever you’re reading something amazing!).

The story starts out with a storm and takes off pretty fast from there. Yara is only human for like 5 or 6 pages and then her new life begins. It may seem a bit rushed, but I liked it. There was so much to know about the merfolk and Yara’s role in events to come that the beginning being a little rushed was a small price to pay. But frankly, it didn’t stop at that. A few things through the story were a bit rushed and not quite explained to my satisfaction and even if it didn’t ruin the story for me, it annoyed me quite a bit.

I really liked Yara. She was sassy, funny and didn’t put up with anybody. She was a bit whiny at first, but she was just turned in to a mermaid, so I figured I could cut her some slack. I loved her bantering with Treygan and the development between the two of them was so sweet. Rownan was an awesome character and he was so complex! I never guessed any of his secrets and I loved that.
The world building was amazing. Everything was described and explained so well and I loved how it wasn’t ‘just’ about mermaids, but had all sorts of creatures and mythological appearances.

I’ve read a lot of reviews trashing the book because of things like the c-weed and seagarettes that Treygan and Rownan smoke to stay alive, but I didn’t find it insulting. I found it rather hilarious along with a bunch of other stuff re-written to fit the universe below the waves. Yes, drugs and cigarettes are bad, but there had to be some sort of thing keeping them alive THAT THEY WANTED TO GET RID OF by getting back home and the c-weed and seagarettes are the perfect tool for it.
Overall I really liked this book. It isn’t as good as The Kindrily series, but definitely worth a read.
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I'm not going to rate this because I didn't make it very far. Maybe I'll pick it up again some day, it has such great reviews... I just couldn't get into it and wasn't clicking with any of the characters.

2.5/5 stars. I will give the author this, her worldbuilding was pretty solid. She knew all about what the different "monsters" were and did and seemed to have a pretty detailed background for all of them.

I just couldn't connect with this story, mostly, I think, because I couldn't connect with the main character. She seemed to have fewer actual feelings about events and issues than I thought possible. Maybe she's the most mellow person in the world...?

This is another one that really wasn't for me.

(Provided by publisher) ( )