Legend says if you consume the heart of a mermaid, you will know all of a man’s secrets
Ailin doesn’t care if the legend is true or not – she’s stuck in a crate on her way to feature as the main course at a lavish banquet. Her heart to be served while still beating for a cruel noble while the rest of her is sliced into sashimi. Unless she can escape.
Across the ocean, Fenton longs for a different release. Sold as a child by men who labelled him a mistake, a failed experiment. Except he has one valuable skill, he can summon the dreaded kraken. Bought by a pirate, he has only known life at sea, wielded as a tool by the captain.
Two lives collide when the pirates capture the vessel holding Ailin. The kraken holds the key to Ailin’s freedom but in summoning the beast one last time, Fenton must choose between losing his life or his heart… – Goodreads
I really do enjoy Exley’s work (obviously…considering I just put down Ella the Slayer and picked this one up). This one wasn’t a total ‘love’ for me, but it wasn’t bad, either. I’d consider it a vanilla middle-of-the-road-needed-something-easy-to-read-while-life-shakes-me-around-like-a-ragdoll kind of read.
My biggest pet peeve with the entire book were the editing mistakes. It wasn’t just one or two—there were many, and they were noticeable and made the story confusing at times until I sat there and played the Autocorrect game where you try to figure out WTF should have been written. Misspellings, punctuation, grammatical errors, swapped names…things that should have been caught.
The characters were alright. Fenton is the creation of ore-mancers—they experimented on him as a child to make him a useful tool for sailors. And useful he is — he can conjure a kraken on command. He was bought by the pirate captain and commanded on a regular basis to destroy other crews so they could pillage their wares.
Ailin is a mermaid who is captured. See, if you eat a mermaid’s heart, you’ll learn the secrets of all men. That’s a pretty hot commodity.
Fenton meets Ailin and boom, they’re in love. And that’s literally all they can think about. Love, love, romance, kissing, love…oh wait, I can’t be with you, you’re a landwalker. You’re a mermaid. But I luuuuurve you. Oh. I need to set you free.
In short, I would have liked to know their backgrounds more. The only thing you know about Ailin is that she’s single and lives with a group of mermaids. I would have liked to know more about the mermaid’s world. And Fenton’s history, too.
In all, it was a quick, easy read. I rated it a 3/5.
lifebetweenreads.com 