**3.5**

For a book about drowning it’s not lost on me that all I wanted was for it to slow down and have more time to breathe.

“The Dark Tide” sees a city sinking beneath the waves slowed only by a ritual which calls on a local boy to be stolen by the Queen and sacrificed to the sea but this year Lina refuses to lose the boy she loves and bargains her life for his and is desperate to save her city and her life before it’s too late.

This book starts strong it has this great dynamic set up between the siblings and throws you into the middle of this tradition that sees the townsfolk willingly attending a revel and playing with magic despite the risk of being chose by the witch queen and I loved every second. The entire atmosphere was filled with chaos and illusion that threw me into the book so fast I couldn’t stop only to realize that was the set pace for the novel and made myself put it down because I could no longer keep up.

This book tries to do a lot and though it may be mentioned I can’t recall how long Lina was to stay with the queen before the sacrifice and though part of me wants to say a month the way the plot was presented makes it feel like a few days if not hours which made it harder for me to buy into the changes in the dynamic between Eva and Lina. there is so much here from Eva’s history and the tragedy of her sister and the bitter hatred she has for Thomas and ultimately Lina when she takes his place and the pull for Lina to find a way out without betraying her homeland was everything I wanted and I never felt like we had the time to explore it all.

Changes were made quickly and the plot shuffled forward without so much as glance back that I had a hard time keeping track of those in Eva’s circle and their importance to her that when it was time for the climax it didn’t have any sort of emotional weight that I felt it was supposed to to the point that I thought it was going to go in a completely different direction, which arguably it did but without spoilers it’s hard to comment on why that seemed out of place rather than perfectly placed foreshadowing as I expect it was meant to.

This one is kind of a bummer honestly because I feel like it had everything I so desperately wanted to love but instead it knew it had to get from point A to point B without the freedom to explore the journey which would have made their entire relationship and dynamic hit differently.

**special thanks to the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**

We finally have a Beauty and Beast retelling that is f/f!! I. Loved this, both of the characters are great and the cover is so pretty!