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criticalmiss's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
I really enjoyed the mermaid parts of the story. Creepy, scary, some good body horror stuff. Where I fell out of it was with the main cop Andie. She made some questionable choices that really pulled me out of the story and that’s what brought my rating down.
Also I wanted more scary mermaids. I would still read other stuff by Brianna Morgan though, her writing was easy to read and I finished this in a day.
Has sapphic rep, bi rep, and a tiny bit of gay rep.
TW: blood, body horror, death of a child, divorce
Also I wanted more scary mermaids. I would still read other stuff by Brianna Morgan though, her writing was easy to read and I finished this in a day.
Has sapphic rep, bi rep, and a tiny bit of gay rep.
TW: blood, body horror, death of a child, divorce
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Body horror
Minor: Car accident and Child death
tifftastic87's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Synopsis: There are kind of two stories given in the book. The first is Liv's story and it is unfolded as she tells it as part of a police interview. The second is Andie's and she tells it as she conducts the interview.
We learn about Liv exploring an abandoned bunker while acting as a camera crew for her two friend's YouTube channel. She goes on this adventure with the two friends, one of whom is her ex, the other is someone she has a crush on, the younger brother of the ex, and the new camera woman. She survives, against a lot of odds, the attack of three deadly sirens. Upon her escape she goes directly to the police station to report it.
That's where we meet Andie, she is the police sergeant assigned to the case by her father the chief of police. We learn that she is having problems with her wife and it is causing her to spend more time at work. She listens to Liv's story for the better part of a month while falling in love with her the whole time.
My Review:
The premise is wonderful, I honestly added this to my TBR after I saw it on one of my favorite Booktubers wrap-ups. I really liked the idea of killer mermaids and was looking forward to it. But I was not a fan of a lot of this book. First off while the book is inclusive of race, disability, and sexuality, it made the bi characters assholes and cheaters. The lesbian character is just a reskinned alpha male who is willing to throw away her marriage and his career for a wounded damsel in distress. Andie uses her position of authority to get access to Liv's phone number and private space to confess her feelings in the middle of the night. Not to mention this is less than hours after she ends her marriage. Liv talks like she knew the different personalities of the mermaids and how they would react to things, even though she has only been directly around them for less than an hour.
A troubled marriage was set up for Andie so that she could be with Liv in the end, only for her to just end it for Liv anyway. During their discussion of ending things Joy, the wife, makes a comment about how it would be easier if one of them had done something to cause it. Less than 50 pages ago we had been told that Joy cheated on Andie a couple of months before the story started and had been sleeping on the couch since. Clearly, that was doing something! Apparently Andie agreed to help raise Joy's son that she was pregnant with in the beginning of their relationship because Joy was also sleeping with some dude? But then the kid died? And it has no impact on the story at all! We never found out why, we never saw it change her behavior, it was just there.
As soon as the first of the group dies to a siren, the brother confesses his love for the best friend. But Liv is jealous because she too loves the best friend. Best friend just so happens to be an overly handsome Korean man. For literally no reason is he Korean. Liv is jealous of the other camerawoman because they hired her after Liv quit for school. She was gone for three years and is jealous of the person hired to replace her and feels the need to compete. WHY? Just so we can have women fighting with each other over the affection of men?
The Unspoilery Bit:
The characters act irrationally and not in line with how they are presented. They are initially introduced and shown to be one way through minimal exposition, fine for a novella, and then they all act more and more irrationally as the plot moves. The women are either in love with each other or in competition with each other, there is no in between. The men are used for siren fodder, or to make the women's lives harder - honestly, no notes.
But there is a scene that I will give a mild spoiler two, Liv and Claire are discussing how to get the sirens on their side for escape and they agree to "use the patriarchy" whatever that means, they end up talking about how they have a family and in two sentences have convinced the siren to help them. I genuinely don't know if Morgan just doesn't know what the patriarchy is by definition or if she took a break and forgot what she was supposed to be writing before coming back to it? Claire and Liv also choose the siren they will speak to by deciding she is the leader, I honestly couldn't have told you she was the leader by how they trio were presented to us.
Another issue I had is that the chief decides that Andie is too close to Liv and needs to be pulled off the case. She convinces him to let her just take the backseat instead and says that means she will let her partner do all the questioning. Chief agrees and then Andie IMMEDIATELY walks in to question Liv alone, with no other officer, and no one questions it? It is like Morgan completely forgot that she wrote that in because we never see Lyle do the questioning even though Andie was ordered not to. Presumably everyone would be told that Andie isn't supposed to be alone with Liv?
Lastly, the ending. I like ambiguous endings as much as the next horror bitch, but this one was just awful. Nothing was explained or wrapped up or even hinted at. It wasn't ambiguous, it just stopped. There wasn't a "it might have happened this way, or it might have happened this way" thing, it just kinda ended.
Basically, there were a bunch of plot holes, inconsistent characters and a really lack luster ending. I was bored and kind of frustrated while reading it.
We learn about Liv exploring an abandoned bunker while acting as a camera crew for her two friend's YouTube channel. She goes on this adventure with the two friends, one of whom is her ex, the other is someone she has a crush on, the younger brother of the ex, and the new camera woman. She survives, against a lot of odds, the attack of three deadly sirens. Upon her escape she goes directly to the police station to report it.
That's where we meet Andie, she is the police sergeant assigned to the case by her father the chief of police. We learn that she is having problems with her wife and it is causing her to spend more time at work. She listens to Liv's story for the better part of a month while falling in love with her the whole time.
My Review:
The premise is wonderful, I honestly added this to my TBR after I saw it on one of my favorite Booktubers wrap-ups. I really liked the idea of killer mermaids and was looking forward to it. But I was not a fan of a lot of this book. First off while the book is inclusive of race, disability, and sexuality, it made the bi characters assholes and cheaters. The lesbian character is just a reskinned alpha male who is willing to throw away her marriage and his career for a wounded damsel in distress. Andie uses her position of authority to get access to Liv's phone number and private space to confess her feelings in the middle of the night. Not to mention this is less than hours after she ends her marriage. Liv talks like she knew the different personalities of the mermaids and how they would react to things, even though she has only been directly around them for less than an hour.
A troubled marriage was set up for Andie so that she could be with Liv in the end, only for her to just end it for Liv anyway. During their discussion of ending things Joy, the wife, makes a comment about how it would be easier if one of them had done something to cause it. Less than 50 pages ago we had been told that Joy cheated on Andie a couple of months before the story started and had been sleeping on the couch since. Clearly, that was doing something! Apparently Andie agreed to help raise Joy's son that she was pregnant with in the beginning of their relationship because Joy was also sleeping with some dude? But then the kid died? And it has no impact on the story at all! We never found out why, we never saw it change her behavior, it was just there.
As soon as the first of the group dies to a siren, the brother confesses his love for the best friend. But Liv is jealous because she too loves the best friend. Best friend just so happens to be an overly handsome Korean man. For literally no reason is he Korean. Liv is jealous of the other camerawoman because they hired her after Liv quit for school. She was gone for three years and is jealous of the person hired to replace her and feels the need to compete. WHY? Just so we can have women fighting with each other over the affection of men?
The Unspoilery Bit:
The characters act irrationally and not in line with how they are presented. They are initially introduced and shown to be one way through minimal exposition, fine for a novella, and then they all act more and more irrationally as the plot moves. The women are either in love with each other or in competition with each other, there is no in between. The men are used for siren fodder, or to make the women's lives harder - honestly, no notes.
But there is a scene that I will give a mild spoiler two, Liv and Claire are discussing how to get the sirens on their side for escape and they agree to "use the patriarchy" whatever that means, they end up talking about how they have a family and in two sentences have convinced the siren to help them. I genuinely don't know if Morgan just doesn't know what the patriarchy is by definition or if she took a break and forgot what she was supposed to be writing before coming back to it? Claire and Liv also choose the siren they will speak to by deciding she is the leader, I honestly couldn't have told you she was the leader by how they trio were presented to us.
Another issue I had is that the chief decides that Andie is too close to Liv and needs to be pulled off the case. She convinces him to let her just take the backseat instead and says that means she will let her partner do all the questioning. Chief agrees and then Andie IMMEDIATELY walks in to question Liv alone, with no other officer, and no one questions it? It is like Morgan completely forgot that she wrote that in because we never see Lyle do the questioning even though Andie was ordered not to. Presumably everyone would be told that Andie isn't supposed to be alone with Liv?
Lastly, the ending. I like ambiguous endings as much as the next horror bitch, but this one was just awful. Nothing was explained or wrapped up or even hinted at. It wasn't ambiguous, it just stopped. There wasn't a "it might have happened this way, or it might have happened this way" thing, it just kinda ended.
Basically, there were a bunch of plot holes, inconsistent characters and a really lack luster ending. I was bored and kind of frustrated while reading it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Body horror, and Infidelity
Moderate: Lesbophobia, Biphobia, Misogyny, and Suicide
sharron_joy_reads's review
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A group of amateur filmmakers who have a YouTube channel investigating derelict urban locations decides to investigate an abandoned military bunker. The bunker is flooded and something is hunting them, soon they are fighting for their lives.
This is their story told by the sole survivor in the local police station. The deaths are gory and gruesome. The bunker, dark and drowned in deep water. The characters are diverse. There are LGBTQIA characters, a character with fibromyalgia and of course the mermaids. The scenes in the police station and at the main police officer’s home are also tense and dramatic. A quick fun read with an ambiguous ending which I love.
This is their story told by the sole survivor in the local police station. The deaths are gory and gruesome. The bunker, dark and drowned in deep water. The characters are diverse. There are LGBTQIA characters, a character with fibromyalgia and of course the mermaids. The scenes in the police station and at the main police officer’s home are also tense and dramatic. A quick fun read with an ambiguous ending which I love.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Blood, Death, Chronic illness, and Gore
olliesbooksnbeads's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Blood, Torture, Death, and Grief
fictionaladventures's review
fast-paced
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
2.0
Dang, I really wanted to like this, because killer mermaids. But omg, the mermaids were not intimidating at all. How can they be with the names they had 😂 The story was fine, but it wasn’t great, and the ending was really abrupt and didn’t really give any answers.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Vomit, and Gore
alicenight's review
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Torture, Cannibalism, Gore, and Death
parasolcrafter's review
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
0.25
this book was not good, like...at all. the only good thing about it is that its short!!!
edit: i appear to be the outlier and almost everyone in the reviews seems to love this book so. ahem. the pacing is HORRENDOUS, the characters have little to no personalities at all (the main characters Especially are boring), the development between the characters is rushed in a way that feels horribly sloppy, the representation of the characters feels like its there just to say 'look! people of colour & non-straight people!', the plot was not gripping nor was it scary (andie really believed in sirens with no visual proof???), and the ending was the worst part of all.
god. im so glad this took less than 2 hours to read, but even that feels like it was too big a waste of my damn time 😒
edit: i appear to be the outlier and almost everyone in the reviews seems to love this book so. ahem. the pacing is HORRENDOUS, the characters have little to no personalities at all (the main characters Especially are boring), the development between the characters is rushed in a way that feels horribly sloppy, the representation of the characters feels like its there just to say 'look! people of colour & non-straight people!', the plot was not gripping nor was it scary (andie really believed in sirens with no visual proof???), and the ending was the worst part of all.
god. im so glad this took less than 2 hours to read, but even that feels like it was too big a waste of my damn time 😒
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Death, Grief, Murder, Violence, Body horror, and Cannibalism
Moderate: Lesbophobia and Vomit
babydog420's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Blood
Moderate: Body horror and Toxic relationship
Minor: Violence, Vomit, Lesbophobia, and Child death
ripxw's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Gore
Moderate: Death and Child death
enchantressreads's review
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Reyes Incident is a found footage type novella, where footage from several incidents make up parts of the story, which I’ve begun to associate with Briana Morgan. After reading Unboxed (which I also recommend), I love seeing unusual formats in books. The use of footage in this novella provides a different type of experience, one I believe puts the reader more into the story.
Liv Reyes used to film for an urban exploration YouTube channel with her friends before she went off to film school. She’s returned for a little while, and the team has decided to check out an abandoned military bunker in Dawsonville Forest. The novella switches between the past in which Liv and her friends explore the cave, and the present, where Liv is the only one remaining. It is up to Andie of the Dawsonville Police Department to figure out what really happened down in the bunker.
The use of flashbacks is a classic way to tell a story, and I enjoyed how it was used here. There’s the classic frustration where us, as the readers, know more about the true story as the authorities begin investigating. However, there may be more than meets the eye to Liv’s tale.
The Reyes Incident starts slow, but quickly turns into a fast-paced story where I couldn’t seem to put it down. I finished this novella in one sitting! I really didn’t want to put it down and lose the energy.
I received this novella as an advanced reader’s copy through Night Worms. All opinions are my own.
CW for blood, gore, death, vomit, and homophobia
Liv Reyes used to film for an urban exploration YouTube channel with her friends before she went off to film school. She’s returned for a little while, and the team has decided to check out an abandoned military bunker in Dawsonville Forest. The novella switches between the past in which Liv and her friends explore the cave, and the present, where Liv is the only one remaining. It is up to Andie of the Dawsonville Police Department to figure out what really happened down in the bunker.
The use of flashbacks is a classic way to tell a story, and I enjoyed how it was used here. There’s the classic frustration where us, as the readers, know more about the true story as the authorities begin investigating. However, there may be more than meets the eye to Liv’s tale.
The Reyes Incident starts slow, but quickly turns into a fast-paced story where I couldn’t seem to put it down. I finished this novella in one sitting! I really didn’t want to put it down and lose the energy.
I received this novella as an advanced reader’s copy through Night Worms. All opinions are my own.
CW for blood, gore, death, vomit, and homophobia
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, and Blood
Minor: Homophobia and Vomit
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