Fairytale for Adults! What a joyous unexpected adventure Emily Jane has created. Just to be a kid again and have every quirky, hysterical, and imaginative idea come to life! I couldn't read the last 100 pages fast enough, but wanting to go slow to enjoy every detail. I highly recommend this story if you need some joy in your life!

This book was just the right kind of weird, with just (squid) oodles of different, and seemingly strange but fun pieces combining together into something fresh and charmingly bizarre. Emily Jane has a real talent for writing children and participating in literary discourse in a way that is easy to read and not overbearing or pretentious. Finally, of course I enjoyed the inclusion of some references to The Grateful Dead and assuredly other jam bands as well (Lotus is also mentioned).

Synopsis: Jenni and her two kids have to save the world from sea monsters with the help of her best friend who disappeared into the sea when they were 10 years old.

Thoughts: I’m gonna be honest, I don’t know how to write this review - this is a weird book y’all. I’m fairly certain it’s supposed to be weird though, so I think you just have to go with it! The plot is bonkers and kept me on the edge of my seat. Featuring scary, apocalyptic sea monsters and also cute lil monsters called Squidoodles and two charming kids who think they’re in a real-life Pokemon battle, it’s definitely a lot of fun. There’s also a romance side-plot with a hot contractor that I thought was a great addition to the story. If that all sounds fun to you, go grab this book next week!

Read this if you like:
🌊 sci fi
🌊 scary sea monsters
🌊 cute sea monsters
🌊 apocalyptic stories
🌊 Pokemon
🌊 family stories
🌊 humor
🌊 romance side plot

10 year old Jenni finally makes a friend, and he’s her best friend - Timmy Caruso visits Jenni’s beach town for the summer and the two spend all of their time together, until one day, Timmy disappears into the sea. Years later Jenni, separated from her husband, returns to her hometown with her children, and finds a 10 year old boy playing in the surf. It turns out it’s Timmy and he is there to help save the world from a vicious sea monster.

I think this book could have gone a few ways and I still would have liked it, but the actual execution didn’t work for me. I found this a weird book not only because of its plot line, but the tone of the novel didn’t seem to be written for what was happening on the page. I ended up skimming the last 30% in order to finish. I enjoyed the non sea monster parts because the tone worked and these scenes were about Jenni and her children interacting with the town, but the sea monster parts just didn’t work for me personally.

Thank you to Hyperion and NetGalley for the ARC to review

That was weird. But enjoyable?

Jenni, an author grown tired of her own series, is spiraling after the death of her mother and her husband leaves her and threatens to seek custody of their children. In a fit of mania, she takes her children and dog to the small island town she grew up in.

She needs to clean and fix up her mother's abandoned house. She needs to finish writing her next installment in the series.

Instead she develops a crush on the contractor her editor hired, finds her friends who went missing 30 years ago - somehow still 10 years old, and finds herself trapped on the island by a evil sea monster. But not to worry, friendly squid like sea monsters with a penchant for sweets is also there to help!

Yeah. I'm sure everything is meant to be a metaphor and has deep meaning for the author or those who care to dig deeper.

So yeah. It was really weird, but I did blast right on through it so it was engaging and definitely not boring.

A genre bending novel that at its heart is about grief and rebuilding your life. Jenn is back on Pearl Island after 30 years trying to cope with the death of both her mother and her marriage. Oh and her kids. Then her past, in the form of Timmy, who died all those years ago, returns. And so does a sea monster or two. Strange events (but never truly horrible) ensue and so does a little romance. It's an odd mix that wasn't really for me but I know that others will like it. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. It's imaginative and well told.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hyperion Press, and Emily Jane for allowing me to read a free eGalley of this novel in exchange for this honest review.

HERE BESIDE THE RISING TIDE by Emily Jane reads sort of like a STRANGER THINGS season if Nancy had decided to become a romantic suspense novelist and was stuck on one of the small barrier islands along the southeastern seaboard with a sea monster while having a middle-life crisis. There is a lot going on in this novel, and it is definitely unique in all that is tries to accomplish.

At first, it started off really strong for me as a reader. I was excited to see how things unfolded. The novel opens with Jenni as a ten-year-old, enjoying life on Pearl Island where she lives with her single mom. Reading about her childhood at the start of her summer vacation was nostalgic for me as Jane paints a very rich and fully developed world with her depiction of Jenni's island life. It put me squarely in this setting and had me reminiscing about family vacations on similar islands to Pearl Island along the coastline of the Carolinas or Georgia. We know from the first as well, that things will suddenly change once Jenni meets and befriends Timmy Caruso who is on Pearl Island on vacation with his family. It isn't a spoiler to say that things do take a turn for Jenni when her new best friend disappears. From there we jump ahead to Jenn, now a successful writer, facing the end of her marriage and the possible loss of custody to her children. In response to this, she decides to return to her childhood home and spend the summer there with her kids to try and reconnect with them and also to escape the dumpster fire she feels her life has become.

There are many things that this novel does well. The way the author vividly paints the setting of this island at the beginning of the novel and later when Jenn returns makes it easy to visualize this place through the character's eyes. It was also fun to read some excerpts of Jenn's popular romantic suspense series throughout the story as Jenn comes to terms with so many things in her life that she's tried to avoid, such as the loss of her mother, her waning interest in the character that has made her a bestselling author, and her dissolution of her marriage and in some regards her relationship with her kids. The introduction of the strange sea life that Jenn encounters on Pearl Island as a child and later with her kids as an adult is also well portrayed. We aren't sure at first how benevolent some of these alien sea creatures are or how they are tied to the scarier sea creature that has shown up in the depths near this island. There are also some really beautiful moments where the author portrays Jenn's almost existential struggles and ties them to the reappearance of Jenn's best friend Timmy, still as a ten-year-old boy, and these sci-fi sea creatures. As with this quote here:

"...as a woman on a beach, feet in the sand, sun on her face, hair blown back by the ocean breeze while the weird squids sloshed along the shore, ....; as the future of a girl with a best friend and a pair of shovels and the dream of a hole in the sand, big enough to sit in for a picnic lunch. It didn't matter that the ocean would wash the hole away. She could find herself down there, the small pearl of her deepest small self. Smooth around the edges, like a piece of sea glass. Not new, but still bright."

As the story unfolds, Jenn's grief is inextricably tied to the disaster of the sea monster that wants to destroy the world, and Jane portrays this with some lovely and heartbreaking prose such as in this moment when Jenn discusses the loss of her mother with someone who knew her:

"Not close. But I knew Maureen. She was lovely. I'm so sorry--"
"Thanks. Me too."
"And so young. I--I guess you never know what will happen. You try your best and have hope, but sometimes, no matter what you do--"
"The unstoppable beast shows up."

All that being said, I did find the midpoint of the story, once Jenn returns to the island, to drag on. She spends much of the novel from that point, continuing to avoid her problems while also obsessing over them and questioning everything she's doing. And while this was marketed in part as a romance, I didn't see much romance developing throughout most of the story until almost the very end. I feel like there were many missed opportunities for character development for both the adult Jenn and for her love interest Dax. I also think the pacing of the story would have been better if it had been a shorter novel. So, while I did enjoy the beginning and found the ending to be a satisfying conclusion, I struggled to get through most of the story in between. For that reason, I give this one 3 out of 5 stars for this review.

Still, if you like novels that have crossover elements, in this case sci-fi, light romance, and starting over, components, then you might give this one a try.

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I was definitely expecting this book to be something it wasn’t. I think some people are going to love this one, but it just wasn’t for me. The writing was fine, the character development was lacking, and it was just…too strange for me.

What a fun read! I enjoyed the first book from this author and I also enjoyed this one. She is so silly and whimsical and outlandish while also being incredibly deep and introspective and poignant. I never knew where this book was going and I loved that. I think that some ppl may find this slow as there's lots of internal monologue, but I liked the main character and related to her a lot so l was down for it. I loved the concept of this book and I loved the execution!
Four stars because I think at times it was a bit slow but overall I would recommend.

An beautifully written book, it did not kept my full attention had to paused a little but overall I adore the story.

The caracters were amazing. Lowspice romance.

Thank you, NetGalley, Hyperion Avenue, and Emily Jane for my advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I said it in my review of her first book, and I'll say it again now...Emily Jane is wonderfully weird. Her style is whimsical and heartfelt, while her ideas are simply out of this world. This makes for a winning blend in my opinion.

Timmy Caruso, a 10-year-old boy on summer vacation, goes missing during a day at the beach with his best friend Jenni only to reappear thirty years later--still 10 years old. Jenn, now 40 and our main POV, discovers him during a summer escape of her own with her two kids in tow. Running from the reality of divorce, deadlines, and burnout, Jenni must now help Timmy on his mission since reemerging--save the world from sea monsters.

At no point did I know where this book was taking me, but I was here for the ride. Here Beside the Rising Tide has elements of fantasy, sci-fi, romance, and mystery. I highly recommend trying one of Emily Jane's books if you're in the mood for something totally different and just a little weird.

Fingers crossed, I stumble upon a squidoodle on my next beach adventure.

This is a sweet, strange novel about sea monsters and friendship, about motherhood and grief and rediscovery. Our main character Jenn, still grieving the death of her mother 3 years ago, and faced with an unexpected divorce, is coping in perhaps not in the healthiest of ways; by packing up her kids, leaving her husband, and spending the summer on her childhood home of Pearl Island. Between cleaning out her mother’s estate and trying to write her last in a series of action romance books, Jenn is visited by a ghost from her past. Suddenly weird creatures appear on the beach, and even weirder events start happening, causing Jenn and her family to band together to save the island, and maybe even the world.

The prose is full of sensory details, which really transported me to the sticky island summer, and every time I thought I knew where we were going, the plot kept on surprising me. I especially loved the characterization of the children, wildly imaginative and obsessed with Pokémon and always convinced of happy endings. The only parts that didn’t work for me were the frequent mini-chapters from different perspectives, and the excerpts from Jenn’s books; I think those excerpts were meant to mirror Jenn’s fantasy life and her real life, but I felt they just disrupted the momentum of the story.

All in all, a fun and extremely original novel, with great characterization and some wacky sci-fi elements. I had a great time reading!

Thanks to Hyperion Avenue and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a melding of the story of a mid-life crisis and an unraveling marriage, and a scifi book about an extra-dimensional creature attack. Basically the concept is, "is the whole world ending, or just mine?" An intriguing combo, though the two were less well-melded than I would have really liked. Mainly we were kind of swapping back and forth between the two concepts, and when that happened the energy of each scenario, particularly the apocalyptic one, suffered. However while they weren't as seamlessly integrated as I'd have liked, both parts of the novel were intriguing and, while pensive, very funny. I think Emily Jane is a really interesting developing author.

Hey! You got sea monsters in my life-crisis novel!

But just like those peanut butter cups, those things go together, thanks to this creative and fun sophomore effort from Emily Jane. She crammed aliens and cats and television and bacon and swirled them into her successful debut, On Earth as It Is on Television, so with that, the jacket info, and the appealing cover, we know what to expect.

The multifaceted, wildcat plot centers around Jenni Farrow, author of the dime-store romance novel series starring action heroine Philipia Bay. When she was just ten, Jenni’s best (and only) friend Timmy found an odd creature on a beach on Pearl Island, where they lived under very different circumstances. Then, maybe or maybe not related to the “squiddoodle,” Timmy just vanishes.

And thus, while the subsequent thirty years resulted in Jenni’s emergence as a bestselling author, at mid-life everything seems to be wrong. The husband’s leaving, maybe taking the kids, and she’s getting sick of pumping out the same old action-romance story. So, under the pretense of renovating her dilapidated childhood home, she steals away back to Pearl Island. Suddenly, Timmy materializes…still age ten. And so do the squiddoodles. And something’s disappearing ships and wrecking the town…is it the creatures?

Right there, that’s enough. The text is a feast for the imagination. Sea monsters, sea cuties, hot contractor dudes, oh my! I don’t know what kind of dreams (or nightmares) Jane has, but yeesh! That “Tentageddon” was tremendously well-conceived, and that translates into scary stuff. Same for the squiddoodle: it didn’t take much to picture that mythical creature.

Speaking of descriptions, she’ll make you run for Air BNB to book your stay on Pearl Island. The first section pans over Jenni’s age-ten summer, the first one she remembers being independent and fun. I could smell the fried dough and feel the breeze from the Ferris wheel. It’s the dead of winter here in Brooklyn, but this reminded me that Coney Island is a little slice of heaven at that time of year.

The action scenes are tense, detailed, and frightening. Timmy has supposedly returned to save the world, and we get a good idea why. There are sea battles, widespread panic, and mysterious dealings all throughout the story. One such battle probably had one too many “turns,” but it was still exciting.

I’m also a sucker for books featuring kids as main characters. Evie and Mason leap from their screens when they meet the adventurous Timmy, and their dreams of becoming Pokemon trainers approaches reality as they work with the squiddoodles. They have crazy ideas about how to defeat the evil monsters, and after a while the adults just follow their lead. I loved that: succumbing to fantasy and magic, letting go of adult-like realism.

There’s a lot to like about Jenni, since her story arc is a relatable one. Though told in the third person, the narrator seems to ask, “Is my life headed in the right direction?” That said, this seemed to me the slowest part of the novel, forcing a little too much length for my taste. Jenni’s crisis feels less like a diary and more like a diagnosis. A bit too much “tell” when the rest of the book is “show.” Also, Dax is a good love interest, and that relationship had potential, but it seemed to have been swallowed up by other plot elements. Finally, the title is a line from a classic Grateful Dead song, “Uncle John’s Band.” But there’s no connection in the book!

All the same, this is a very strong follow-up to her appearance on the scene. Jane seems to have imagined a genre all her own, a set of themes no one’s ever considered before. Call it “family-fantasy-romance-disaster-sci-fi.” Here Beside the Rising Tide is a creative Cyclone, a thrilling and imaginative ride. Get your tickets now!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

This is the first book I've read by Emily Jane and I absolutely loved it. It was weird but in a loveable, relatable way. The main character is a famous romance author and she's overcoming a divorce and her mother's death. She wants to get away so her husband doesn't come and take her kids for the summer so she and her family goes back to her childhood home by the beach to clean it out. Once there, a series of strange events happen that she and her family have to overcome in order to save the world. Oh, and sea monsters are involved and cute little ocean creatures called squidoodles. And there's a love interest with a cute contractor. There are some parts where I was laughing aloud. I'd say this is a cross between women's fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi, but heavy on the women's fiction. After reading this book, I really want to check out Emily Jane's first one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the eARC.

Absolute chaos, this book. Jenni's life in total chaos, dealing with a divorce, her mom's death and a deadline on a book she is bored of writing. Her chaos made me anxious, because for much of the book it seemed that she couldn't muster any momentum for changing anything. The kids' Pokemon-infused chaos was fun. The story reeked of summer -- I could feel the heat and smell the boardwalk. And then there's *waves hands around* all the other apocalyptic stuff happening on Pearl Island, what with a disappeared childhood best friend reappearing 30 years later, on a mission to save the world from the sea monster that is killing people and the mysterious, adorable, sugar-eating squidoodles. A LOT going on. Maybe too much. The anxious first half gave way to the crazy and whimsical second half and I didn't mind it. Although, every once in awhile I looked up and said, "This is insane." Out loud.

Thank you net gallery for the advanced copy of this book. This is a roller coaster of a book. I found t a fun read full of childhood, imagination, beaches, aliens, candy, candy and more candy with eye candy thrown in as well. I would definitely recommend.

The title drew me in, lyrics from the Grateful Dead’s Uncle John’s Band, which I had been listening to in my car. Then the description sounded offbeat and amusing. Sadly, I don’t think I’m the target readership for this title. I struggled through it. I don’t mind superficial every now and again, and I can certainly suspend disbelief, but this, well, there was no character development, and while I wanted to like the characters there just wasn’t enough to them, and I found the sea monster battle ridiculous, I am nonetheless grateful for the opportunity to read the eARC, because you don’t know if you don’t try!

Current-day Jenn is a best-selling author and mother to two distracted and bratty children. She's in the process of divorcing her entitled husband, and mired in a sea of transactional emotional relationships. Childhood Jenni grew up on Pearl Island, where her best friend Timmy mysteriously disappeared in the ocean 30 years ago. (For 10-year-old Jenni, it had been the best summer ever until suddenly it wasn't.) Returning to the island with her children after her mother's death, ostensibly to clear out her mother's house, Jenn inexplicably encounters Timmy. Frozen in time at age 10, he claims he was sent back on a mission to save the world. But from what, exactly? What really happened to Timmy? And what, exactly, is that lurking out in the water?

Holy cow, what a ride. The book sometimes seemed like it didn't know what it wanted to be, it was a mash-up of sci-fi and mid-life existential crisis with a dash of romance. It also had more of a horror story element than I expected, especially as the book went on. There was a lot of underlying tension and a persistent feeling of foreboding, and I was unsure what or who to trust after awhile. (Much like adulthood, I guess.) The wistfulness is strong in this story (especially in the first half), and there's a palpable mournfulness for all things lost. Jenn seemed adrift, and also deeply unhappy. In fact, there's a distinct thread of unhappiness in all of the current-day characters. I'll be honest, I do think that the ennui and emotional listlessness of the first part of the book went on too long. It started to feel like a bit too much, because for a large part of the story there wasn't lot of hopefulness and the narrative and interpersonal detachment among the characters constantly kept me on edge to some degree. This definitely served as a distinct juxtaposition to the final chapters of the book, but I think the author took a risk that she'd lose readers to all of the free-floating emotional misery that hung over a large part of the book. Overall the writing was very well done and the mystery of Timmy's disappearance and return, as well as the looming danger that kept snowballing (and an enduring hope that everything would turn out okay), was enough to keep me reading.

I did not see this story coming and I don't think the book description really does it justice. I haven't read this author before and I am in awe of her imagination, that she created such an off-kilter and fantastical story that blended together such a punch of emotions by the end. I did struggle a bit with the layers of this complex story, which kept shifting my expectations of what it was, especially when things took a dark turn. Events didn't really pick up speed until after the halfway mark so I was glad I kept reading. I did eventually enjoy this book, even though I'm still not 100% sure what I read. My best advice to you is to stick with it and suspend disbelief, you'll be very glad you did. I gave it 4 stars but it was really closer to 4.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of this story, this has been my objective review. Publishes January 28, 2025.

Part chick lit, part sci-fi, part family dysfunction, Jenn is a character most of us can relate to. She's become the family bread-winner, but lost touch with the raising of her kids. So when her husband threatens divorce, all she can think is to find some solitude, spend some time with her kids, and to go thru her mom's house to close it and sell it. But what she finds in Pearl Island is her past coming back to haunt her, in a way she never expected-the reappearance of her best friend from years ago, spit back onto land by the sea that took him. Only what took him was a sea monster. An actual sea monster....As she struggles to come to terms with chaos that seems to be swirling around her, odd natural occurences start happening and her kids realize it is up to their family to save the world, only Jenn isn't quite sure about that...Meanwhile her editor's contractor for hire that is supposed to be helping at her mom's house, is proving to be a distraction not a help, but then he suddenly is more than just part of the solution they need to thwart sea monsters. A hysterical read with heart, don't miss this book!