Member Reviews

In the Veins of the Drowning is an exciting new Siren themed Romantasy that you will not want to miss! Imogen and Theodore are going to be your next favorite ship. Imogen is a Siren and ward to King Nemea who is a 26(!!) year old preparing for her marriage to the captain of the guard. Theodore is a young(27) king of the neighboring kingdom. Kalie Cassidy has crafted an exciting, adventurous tale that had me hooked from the very beginning. King Theo drops some absolute 'Anthony Bridgerton Love Declaration' BANGERS!

It was in the darkest, deepest pert of the sea that monsters were made.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown, and Company for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

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I think any author who finishes a book should be congratulated. And I also acknowledge that some books just won't hit for some people. This one was a miss for me. I struggled with caring about anyone in the book or anything. Hot characters just are not enough for me to struggle through a romantasy when there are such amazing ones out there! I am sure some people will love this, it just was not for me.

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Got to read this early as a “ read now” option on Netgalley and I may have found a new author to follow. Spoiler free review: a fresh new take on Sirens ( at least new to me) and the start to what I believe may be a promising new series. This is written really well and the FMC and MMC are both like able and engaging characters with the FMC dealing with much darker emotions and powers than her counterpart. The book itself also has some darker moments and the trigger warnings our listed out at the beginning of the book. The ending leaves it open to what I hope will be a series or a duology because I definitely need to know what happens next.

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I wasn't initially aware how much of a full-blown romantasy this was going to be, and I have to admit there was way more sex than I anticipated. This is not a slow burn, yearning sort of book, and the speed of the main relationship felt a little forced to me. Apart from that, I liked the setting and the writing quite a lot. I'd definitely give it to someone looking for a more sex-forward romantasy being thrilled.

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In the Veins of the Drowning was an interesting, easy, and well-paced read. It was a captivating plot in a unique world of sirens and gods and fit perfectly in what seemed like a lush version of "Pirates of the Caribbean" kind of setting. The world the author creates was intriguing and had me wanting to know more about the history of the sirens and gods. The setting is definitely a highlight of the book and really draws you in with its lore. However, Imogen, the female protagonist, did feel underdeveloped and not as compelling as we would hope. Imogen seemed to be exploring a "darker" side of her towards the end, and maybe it will be explored further in book 2, but this does make her character feel incomplete and leaves book 1 lacking some emotional depth so it was difficult to relate to her. But by the end I did find the story fairly engaging and feel hopeful that the next book will flesh out more of Imogen's character.

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3.5. Not sure what it was but it did kind of remind me of One Dark Window a bit. I think it’s the darkness or feeling like the atmosphere of the book could best be illustrated in shadows. The MMC is basically Anthony Bridgerton. The romance wasn’t tense enough for me even though it landed all the tropes. It’s probably in the writing. I had trouble tracking the magic. I also didn’t like that the mmc just dropped out. I’d have to see how the next book goes to really know how I feel about this one.

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This new high-stakes, page-turning romantasy had me hooked from start to finish! A siren in hiding must join forces with an enemy king to confront a rising darkness while navigating undead-infested waters, a dangerous blood bond, and a forbidden slow-burn romance. In the Veins of the Drowning is an addictive romantasy debut brimming with tension, magic, and self-discovery! 🌊🗡️

✨ WHAT I LOVED:

👉 A captivating world where sirens rule the sea 🌊

👉 A slow-burn romance filled with longing & tension 💕

👉 The internal battle between duty and desire ⚔️

👉 Captivating writing that effortlessly immersed me into the story world ✍️

👉 Themes of belonging & identity that add depth and relatability 🏠

👉 Sirens portrayed as an outcasted, misunderstood group—a timely allegory for real-world marginalization 🌍

✨ WHAT LEFT ME WANTING MORE:

👉 The side characters are so well-crafted—I look forward to knowing more about them as the series unfolds! 👀

👉 The unique siren lore & magic system had me so intrigued— it’s slowly revealed one layer at a time. I can’t wait for more depth in the next book!

✨ READ THIS IF YOU LOVE:

👉 Romantasy with forbidden romance & mythological creatures 🧜‍♀️

👉 Immersive world-building that sweeps you away 🏰

👉 Slow-burn romance with tension, depth, and just the right amount of spice 🌶️

📅 Releases July 15, 2025! 

📖 Huge thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the eARC—this review reflects my honest thoughts!

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This book has a really promising story line full of twists and turns. I was intrigued by the world and definitely wanted to know more about the mythology and setting of the world itself; and I feel like the book starts to deliver that with the promise of more to come (since it is a series). That said, I found the characters really hard to care about. They were all over the place in terms of their decision-making, and I felt like their decisions were less rooted in their personalities and more rooted in "this will make the plot do what the author wants". They also didn't have much going on in the way of character arcs, yes, the two main characters have a budding romance, but there was no personal growth or much reflection going on. Ultimately, it was this lack of character development that makes me ambivalent about returning to read the sequel; there's just not enough to motivate me to return to the series.

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This was a really fun fantasy romance themed book. There is a cliffhanger and already plans for book 2. There are sirens as you probably haven't read them before, political intrigue, and a bit of smut.
This was a really quick read for me as the story flowed well and was interesting from start to finish.

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I was so excited to see a romantasy about sirens and In the Veins of Drowning did not disappoint! The writing is beautiful and I really came to love Imogen. Such a great story!

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This was actually really good. Like if I was a BookToker I would make a video about it that would go viral and be the next ACOTAR or something. That good. I’ll admit my bar was really low because I got a free ARC of this from NetGalley. For a book I got by accident that I’ve never heard of, it kinda ate. I picked it up because (1) romantasy obviously and (2) I have been told I am pretty enough to be a siren so I figured I should learn more about my sistren.

The story centers around Imogen. If you’re into any fantasy, the baddies are always named Imogen. So you already know she’s a survivor and we love her. Then you have Theo. Kalie Cassidy must have attended the Tahereh Mafi school of pining and yearning because the way that Theo was down horrendous? Absolutely delicious and reminiscent of Cyrus (This Woven Kingdom).

The set up was classic romantasy- mysterious sexy stranger who is definitely a prince or something, an evil king, an arranged marriage, a fostered lost princess, all of the things. Frankly everything that occurred was a bit predictable but the writing was good so she gets a pass. I will warn you though, it was a bit graphic. Hopefully the rest of the series gets a little more creative.

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3.25/5 ✰ i liked the concept of the book a lot; i was kinda confused here and there & the world building & pacing was a bit off at times but i liked theo & imogen's dynamic!

thank you to netgalley for the arc copy in exchange for an honest review <3

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Thank you Kalie for giving me the opportunity to read an early copy of your book!

This was such an engaging story, I was immersed into this world from the start. The pacing is perfect, it’s fast and keeps your attention from the moment you start Imogen’s story. An undercover siren, hiding in a kingdom that hunts her kind, while a king from a neighboring kingdom is the one who knows her true identity, he agrees to a blood bond and steals her away.
LOVED the writing style, it was utterly beautiful, it flows effortlessly making the experience even better! And when I tell you this is going to be your summer romantasy obsession.. I TELL YOU

For fans of Rachel Gillig’s One Dark Window and Raven Kennedy’s Gild

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This is the romantasy we needed with Sirens! Absolutely obsessed.
I loved everything about this book from the darker vibes with Sirens and witches.

The romance is perfection!
It has the perfect amount of yearning and tension.

I cannot wait to see where this story goes. 🫶🫶

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3/3.5 ⭐️

this was mixed for me! on one hand, this was a very unique premise in this day and age of fantasy but the writing kept leaving something to be desired. i struggled to feel connected with the characters and their intentions, but the plot was veryyy fast paced! from the get-go, we were thrust into this world of sirens and i appreciated that! i’m intrigued enough to read the sequel and i’m sure the writing will only improve 💫

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This book was dark and moody. The societal power structure based on gods and god powers was really interesting. The powers were much more available to the characters than in a lot of books where they have to go through extensive training to access anything.

The lore of the land and the lineage of the different gods were intriguing. I enjoyed the banter. The chemistry between Imogen and Theo was electric. There were definitely twists and turns that I didn't anticipate, and the ending left me wanting more.

Overall, it was a really great read that sucked you in and kept you thinking the whole time.

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Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-arc. Unfortunately this book fell short for me.

My biggest issue with "In the Veins of the Drowning" is that there is hardly any exploration of the siren theme. What little there is, is entirely undermined by a widely prevalent ability to just not be affected by the siren power which completely subverts a primary element of this book.

In general, there is very little context for the book in terms of the world, the magic system, the politics, and the underlying relationships so not much ends up making intuitive sense.

We begin the book with the acknowledgement that Imogen is the king's ward, except nothing about this is explained, even the parts that the rest of the kingdom and general public would obviously know or have access to information about. There is some mention of her original family who were nobles who all died but no one ever seems to know who they are. How did she then come to be the king's ward? Who even is the king and how does he fit in the context of the world, their history, and other kings? What even is his kingdom beyond the fort?

To discuss the characters, Imogen is a weak protagonist who takes almost no direct action and only influences the events occurring in the book on one occasion. She is also extremely casual about the steps that lead up to her secret being discovered as if she somehow has zero context for what she needs to do to keep her identity safe. We're missing some essential foundational context regarding siren lore to help us understand how reasonable this all is, as well as context around how much Imogen even understood or tried to understand where she comes from. Has she not asked a single critical question about her past in 26 years? Also, sirens are getting killed left and right like it's just super easy to find and kill them. It's also suggested that sirens are hunted by the king's men in the water, but they can evidently exist perfectly fine on land in perpetuity. Why is this and what is the effect of this on their culture?

With poor characters, the character relationships also suffer. Agatha and Lachlan are 40 years old, I believe, and sound as immature as Imogen does. There is much mention of a romantic history between these two and that is meant to be a satisfying replacement for actual active relationship building on the page. Theo and Imogen alternatively, were a predictable case of insta-love. She antagonized him to no end and yet we are meant to accept that this is true love.

A direct consequence of how insufficient this world is, is that the magic system is at best flimsy and unexplained, and at worst completely contradictory. The magic that the villain Eusia possesses makes little sense and isn’t sufficiently explained. Without spoiling too much, we're told that there are two types of magic and yet their use cases and consequences are inconsistent. When we finally come to understand the magic at the heart of the problem, the explanation that we are led to ends up falling apart on the foundation of its own logic. To consider some of the broader magical questions, how do sirens have wings and still go in the water? Do they fly in the water? Do some never go in the water? Do they get tails? What even is a siren, is it a species or an inherited power? Where do the sirens come from? When Imogen finally decides to leave, why doesn’t she just use those wings and fly away or jump into the water or have thought at all about escaping even a single time in the past 26 years?

There is also the matter of the blood bond, a deeply consequential magical connection that renders a siren utterly useless and yet it's so easy to make you could force it unwillingly on someone in their sleep. So her powers often don't work on people, she's not a particularly critical thinker, she cannot fight either. What makes her a hero?

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World: Loosely defined, with a "soft magic" system. It has the feel of a folktale, where the setting isn't really the point. I don't feel that the lack of deep world-building was in any way a flaw, as the plot and characters aren't dependent on the world being super defined. I really liked the sirens and what the narrative implies about them (we aren't given any lore-dumps, but things are mentioned in narration and conversations, and you have to put the pieces together).
Characters: Interesting complex characters. I liked that quite a lot of the conflict between the two main characters were properly heavy things like duty to one's people, international politics, and other external threats. Personally I find that kind of tension in a romance more interesting than the internal conflicts or contrived misunderstandings. There were very real reasons why Imogen and Theo shouldn't be together - though I feel this was kind of broken a bit with a revelation we get near the end of the book (with Theo's betrothed). I think it would've been better if there had been separate conflicts going on, that not everything had to tie back to the main plot and the big-bad. We also aren't much in the characters' heads, and so a lot of their personalities and motivations we can only guess at through the narration. It works best with Imogen, since we're mostly following her, but most of the other characters are enigmas in one sense. They aren't flat, exactly, but it's just hard to know what choices they're going to make because we don't know their deepest motivations.
Plot: I'll be honest, this book feels prematurely chopped. Why was it split into (at least) two books? The plot doesn't feel expansive enough to warrant it, and there aren't really any secondary plots to pad it out. In this first book, a lot of the conflict remains the same until the last third of the book, and it sort of feels like things were rehashed a couple times when it could have been more streamlined.

Overall, this was a fine read. I wasn't wowed, but it also wasn't bad. I liked the sirens and their lore, and I was interested in the actual plot (once it started getting going... in the last part of the book).

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In the Veins of the Drowning is a mesmerizing blend of folklore, romance, and intrigue, plunging readers into a world where sirens are both feared and coveted. Kalie Cassidy crafts a gripping tale of survival, power, and reluctant alliances, weaving myth and magic into an irresistible storm of a book.

Imogen has spent her life hiding what she truly is—a siren trapped in a kingdom that would see her destroyed. Bound by duty and betrothed to a man she despises, she sees no escape. But when Theodore, the cunning King of Varya, arrives with a dangerous proposition, everything changes. He knows exactly what she is—and he believes she is the key to saving their kingdoms. Their fragile alliance is built on distrust, but as threats mount and betrayals unfold, their fates become irrevocably entwined.

Cassidy excels at crafting morally gray characters and high-stakes tension, delivering a story laced with treachery, ancient magic, and slow-burning chemistry. The world-building is lush yet layered, revealing secrets piece by piece without overwhelming the reader. While the romance simmers beneath the surface, the true heart of the novel lies in its exploration of power, sacrifice, and the lengths one must go to survive.

For those who crave dark, immersive fantasy with ruthless politics, sharp banter, and heroines who refuse to be tamed, In the Veins of the Drowning is an unforgettable read. And if you love a man willing to kneel for the woman who could ruin him—this book delivers.

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I could not put this book down!!! This is a great read for fans of Adalyn Grace, Stephanie Garber, and Rachel Gillig. Imogen has grown up as the prized prisoner of a terrible king on a barren, rocky island in the middle of a vast sea. Her only hope to get away from him is to marry his lead guard. The night before their wedding, Imogen learns she is actually a siren with great powers not seen in decades. But sirens have been demonized and hunted almost to extinction. Imogen's only way to escape the island with her life is to bind herself to a man she only just met...a rival king from across the sea. Leaving with him with surely bring war and devastation. I can't wait for the sequel!!!

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