This is a retelling of the classic fairy tale, The Little Mermaid, and due to being fascinated and familiar with both the story and mermaid lore in general, this was a highly anticipated release for me. And, as you can probably guess from my rating, I was left a little disappointed. 
 I felt the story opened strongly. The reader is thrust straight into the heart of the action with no preamble and we oversee the death of the main protagonist's parents and her subsequent rebirth in mermaid form, all within the first few pages. I was immediately hooked! However, the plot, whilst not at all bland, felt drawn out with long periods of little action or forward movement and it led to me feeling a total disconnect with the characters. I was enjoying the story but I wasn't invested in it. 
 The main character, Kahlen, was likable enough but both her and her mermaid sisters seemed to fall into strict stereotypes that felt too rigid to be real. There was an inevitable love interest and an instantaneous attraction between the two that dominated much of the plot and I would have much preferred see the struggles in the family dynamic play out between these siblings of fate. 
 I loved how the Ocean was addressed in the novel. She was personified as a matriarchal governing body that relied on the souls of drowned bodies. It would have been very easy for her to be cast as the villain of the story but her eternal love and nurturing of her daughters made her endearing and her cause a complex one. This also brought into question who the villain exactly was and it was interesting to see the blurring of the good/bad binaries come into play. 
 Whilst not at all a bad book, I found this to be a forgettable one. It didn't gel with me, as a reader. and didn't appeal to any of my personal literary interests. Cass' writing is definitely far superior in her The Selection series than in this stand-alone and, was it not for that, I would be hesitant to read more of her work based solely on this example.