This is a soft DNF for me at this point. Meaning I have to shelve it at the moment because it’s very hard to read and not roll my eyes. I’m not very familiar with mermaid stories and they might all be built on the same principles but Im really struggling with the whole concept of “my whole goal in life is to entrance a human man and have sex with him to procreate for Neptune”. The writing isn’t strong enough for me to continue reading it right now. Might try again later.

DNF at 48%

When you start to dread picking a book back up after having to put it down, you know it's time to call a quits. Honestly, I'm surprised I made it as far as I did with this. There was so much going on here that was annoying and so very little that grabbed one's attention. And like others have said in their reviews, you can't even tell what age group this was written for. It reads very childish with an extremely immature FMC, but at the same time her entire life's goal is to have sex with as many human men as she can so that she can start pumping out babies. You're also left with so many questions. Like about this war that Neptune is currently fighting. Who's he fighting? Why? And how badly is he loosing that every single male born to these girls is taken to "replenish his army"? Then you have the fact that this seemingly very large community of females live close to the shore, have ship wrecks all around them, don't seem to be down too extremely deep....yet they have never been spotted by humans? Ever?

Ellara is the main character here. She is days away from forever finding herself placed into the servant class because she has yet to get pregnant. Not for lack of trying. But during her first shift into her human form, things went badly and her song was forever broken. So now every time she even tries to talk to a guy about having sex, she starts choking and coughing. She thinks her chance has finally come when a huge storm hits and she sees a boat fighting it. With a little help from her and a few other not friends, they sink the boat. Which should give Ellara the perfect opportunity to save the life of a male who would be so grateful that he'd have sex with her right then and there. Too bad she saved a female. As it turns out, because she doesn't have her siren song, she can't erase the memories of humans. Instead, she sort of befriends this human female and makes a deal with her 'to be her pimp'. Yup. Let's just say it doesn't go well and the interactions between these two is always kind of awkward. Making things worse is that Ellara has been salivating over this girl's brother but she has been told, in no uncertain terms, he is off limits. Gawd did I hate how Ellara was constantly calling him "perfect human brother."

That's pretty much as far as I got with this. I just couldn't stand Ellara. Which is too bad because there really were some interesting parts to this story. Mostly about the underwater world and the dangers there. But I can't do it. I absolutely hated trying to read this.

I wanna start off by saying I had so much fun reading this book. It's been a while since I read a mermaid/siren novel and this was a totally different take from what I had previously read. This book sits at a 3.5 for me but round up to 4 as I'm still thinking about the ending and would really like to see this world grow.
The book follows Ellara a mermaid in training you could say. In her Merme society the biggest commodity you have is your ability to procreate but what happens when your ability to lure men (your siren song) is broken? We follow Ellara's last ditch efforts to procreate and ensure her place in her society.
As I said it was a really fun read for me, I thought a lot of the dialogue was super funny because sometimes it wasn't realitistic (exactly what you're supposed to be thinking imo) and although the world building wasn't super extensive, the imagery that Julie Catherine was able to get across was what had me reading this as fast as possible.
A part that I had a bit of trouble getting behind was Ellara's personality and sometimes her thought processing skills, she seemed like entitled child. Once I understood that that is exactly what you're supposed to notice with her, I got more comfortable with the book and had a lot of fun seeing how her perspective slowly changed and how she matured.
Thank you NetGalley and Xpresso Book Tours for sending me this ARC for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

The preface of the story had me drawn in alongside the art concept for the cover. The downside is that I have only managed to get halfway through the book and to be honest, it was a bit of a challenge to do so. I appreciate the opportunity to read this new book in exchange for my review. Others have said it was a great read for them and the story evolves further along but for me, I have gotten as far as I can and won't be finishing my read quite so quickly in comparison.

The first half of this felt kind of awful to me, but then it started to improve a bit. I liked the storyline, but not the bluntness of mermaids whose only goal was to be impregnated. I liked the adventure aspect of this, but not so much the character and relationship building. Elle does show some growth in her character towards the end, and I’m curious about what happens next. Overall, I wouldn’t go into this thinking it’s an amazing story, but there were some entertaining parts, (if you can overlook the “holy snot buckets” and other ridiculous mermaid lingo).

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you NetGalley and GCMW Publications for an ARC Copy of this book!

I thought the concept for this book was so interesting! A society of mermaids who's only goal is to mate with human men in order to breed a whole mermaid army? Count me in! The world building was so interesting with the way the mermaids are able to transform etc. However the maturity level in the FMC at times was extremely questionable, given she was 19. There were points where I would have loved more world building like when it came to the drop off and Poseidons army and ruling. Overall it was a good read!

um. hm.

if i have to read "holy snot buckets" again in my life ever, i'll likely disintegrate, never to be seen or heard from again.

that aside, i am curious about the intended audience for this book. it read very juvenile, but seemed to want to tackle more adult-ish topics, in a way? though i'm left questioning even that, so who knows.

ultimately, this book felt wildly disjointed to me. there are some interesting aspects of the... mermaid culture, i suppose, but as a whole, it felt underdeveloped--if i thought too deeply about any singular aspect of it, the whole thing came tumbling down in a way that was immediately frustrating. i don't think this book encouraged thinking deeply, at least, so maybe that's good? it seemed intended to be largely humorous. maybe. i hope. the humor just didn't usually land with me, and there are only so many times you can make the joke of, "humans are prudes and lololol this mermaid turned human and isn't wearing bottoms" before it runs out. which is after one time. because i actually did think it was a little funny one time, and then i quickly got bored and annoyed with it.

there is a clear ticking clock in the narrative which is the book's driving force, and as it encounters that--trying to turn from a squirt to a fert--it tries to simultaneously allude to other driving plot factors and shit like... a huge war that's happening. and systemic drafting and child soldiers. it, to be expected, did not handle any of these things gracefully, or at all.

there is a degree to which i'm willing to set these things aside. like i said, the book didn't encourage thinking deeply about this worldbuilding, even when it did try to hold them up like "this is interesting look at this!" flags along the way to the finish line. but even the driving narrative was a little lost and meandering to me. the opening scene alone felt disjointed, out of place, and inorganic: it's clearly something that's necessary for understanding ellara's feelings, but at the same time, it felt shoehorned in specifically to give that information as opposed to worked in organically as the introduction built itself up. we jumped abruptly from one thing to the next. it was odd and unwieldy, and made the hand of the author unfortunately obvious.

there are a ton of minor grievances i held--for example, the queer rep felt so fucking uncomfortable, and it was clear there wasn't any thought behind the contextual consequences of being queer in a society like this (acknowledging simultaneously that this is a Cisgender society with capital C, and very hetero, but for some reason this persists despite the fact that relationships and sexuality aren't actually very much at all relevant to this society, it's literally just about objectively getting sex solely to get pregnant? i frankly don't even want to get into it, but it didn't feel particularly well thought out). the ending was odd, certain choices being made with side characters like maggie that just had me like "...why. what do you mean this was the best option." and i'm just furrowing my brow and trying to remind myself that i'm not supposed to think about it, that i'm just supposed to take it as is and enjoy it, but the crux seems to be hoping that it's funny and i don't think "haha man gets distracted by boobs awooga" is funny.

the book's relationship to sex is both... refreshing and yet simultaneously odd. let's just say, from what we did get, i wouldn't actually trust this author to write a decent sex scene, i guess. and for all the focus on sex that there is, even once we DO start getting into some "there's some nuance" territory, that is just as quickly torn away in favor of basic generalizations and a confusing question about what--if anything--this book was trying to say about it in the end.

i just wasn't a fan. it felt disjointed, clumsy, and ironically shallow.

Thank you NetGalley and GCMW Publications for the ARC!

In full transparency, I'm not entirely sure of who the intended audience is for the book. While the language and overall cult mentality are extremely crass, it does read very young. This book isn't really for me, so please understand my review will enforce my POV.

Overall the book left a lot more questions than answers; however, I do think that there is a very fascinating story to be further developed based upon this concept. One of the things that struck my fancy was this idea that not even mermaids explore the entire ocean..that they're hinder in by the Drop Off. This could just be mermaids and not mermen. There was a noticeable lack of context throughout the story.

For example, how deep down is the drop off? How deep down is the Merme settlement? It has to be deep enough that no humans ever stumble upon it while diving, despite the graveyard of shipwrecks and proximity to the shore (i.e: Maggie's rescue). Also, it has to be somewhat hidden for Poseidon's Army to never know it's coordinates.

That is another element that confused me, Poseidon's Army. The book makes you think you're operating under a matriarchal society with Quinn as the head of their clan(?). However, we then realize that the entire operation is for these mermaids to get knocked up and populate Neptune's army. So Quinn's power only exists to enforce Neptune's will, who quite honestly reads like a non-existent deity more than an active ruler. Then we have an actual merman who supports Poseidon's Army. Is Poseidon's Army who Neptune is enslaving the merman to battle? Are they one in the same and Poseidon is just a commander? It would have been nice to understand the juxtaposition between Neptune and Poseidon.

Outside of that, we really needed to see on the page why the mermen and merwomen were kept separate. It ends up being a huge plot point, but there isn't time to build up the reader's apprehension because we don't understand what this signifies. The book left off with a lot of cliff hangers as well..somehow still allowing Ellara a month to bang her way into pregnancy...

I digress, there was a lot of fascinating elements to the book that just need to be untangled. For me, it read like a very long second draft.

Thank you to Netgallery for this ARC.

The premise of this book is great, who doesn’t love mermaids and mythology? The main character Ellara took quite a while to grow on me. Her character development was fun to read about, gaining empathy and trying to relate to others in a new way. I struggled to connect with her, and most of the other mermaids, as characters because of the way they were written. The writing of the book is solid, though the story overall felt a bit slow, and the exciting bits over too quickly. For how much the book talks about sex, romance element of this story is minimal, which would be fine if the story itself felt were more engaging. Overall, I would still check out the next book, I think my expectations for this book were just misplaced.

Thank you NetGalley and GCMW Publications for an ARC of this book!

Cruel and Splendid Mermaids follows Ellara as she does everything in her power to mate with a human before her breeding window closes. I started reading this book and thought, “if I have to read squirt one more time I’m going to give up on this book”. Before I knew it I was 20% in and hooked (no pun intended). I couldn’t put this book down and thought about it while I wasn’t reading it.

I’d recommend this book for anyone whose favorite movie was The Little Mermaid growing up. Ellara makes some dumb mistakes throughout the book but she shows growth by the end of it.

Overall this was a very pleasant read. It definitely was a unique idea and it didn’t disappoint. This is a great fantasy book and I can’t wait for the next one.

I didn't vibe with this book. The storyline, the dialogue, the characters, and the plot just read awkward to me. While I enjoyed the overall premise, (and I am a huge of fan of mermaids!) it didn't capture my interest. I found it quite a chore to get through. Props to the author for taking this subject on; mermaid fiction is an area that is challenging!

Thank you to GCMW Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC of this book, in exchange for my honest opinion.

If I could give 100 stars for this book I would, it was by far the best story I’ve read this year! And I was nervous going into it because I’m not much of a fantasy reader, but man was I drawn in from the beginning. And now I am gutted to find out I have to wait an entire year for book two in this series, I’m not sure I will make it.

Ellara is a mermaid who lives under the sea in Merme, under the leadership of Quinn (the lead mermaid) and King Neptune. The mermaids in Merme have one purpose, to use their siren voice and mate with humans to procreate children to populate Merme and Neptunes Army. In Merme once you have become pregnant you will be a ‘fert’ for life, if you don’t you will be a ‘Barre’ for life, your only purpose to take jobs around Merme. Only problem is Ellaras siren is broken and every time she transforms into a human to seduce a man, she can only cough.

After saving human from a shipwreck whom she plans to bed, she discovers she has saved a woman and not a man. But she decides to strike up a friendship with Maggie in exchange for Maggie’s help for her to meet a man. Sounds like a simple plan, but it is anything but.

Full of so much adventure you will join Ellara and other Mermes, as well as Maggie as she tries to bed a human to become pregnant and finally achieve ‘fert’ status. Will she be able to do it before she runs out of time?

I truly cannot recommend this book enough, I felt like I was transported into the world of Merme this entire story with the vivid imagery, and I am truly so sad I finished so quickly. But now I’m counting down til book two!