mintlovesbooks 's review for:

I Married A Merman by Regine Abel

2.0

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I feel like this book was an excuse for Abel to write about this cool idea she had about the water-based alien planet of Triton. To me, it read more like a story about Triton than a romance.

I appreciate how creative Abel was about crafting what life was like on Triton and thinking about how Neera could adapt to this new world. She describes everything - how people on Triton dress, what they eat, wedding customs, mermaid anatomy, alien animal anatomy, and more. It seems like Abel spent a lot of time thinking about these different elements, and they did help immerse me into Triton.

This is the first alien romance I've read with a protagonist of colour which was very cool! Neera is of partial Indian descent and she sometimes refers to South Indian customs.

At the same time, I felt that this description took a lot of focus away from the actual romance itself. As a result, the romance didn't feel all that romantic, even though there were plenty of scenes (steamy and non-steamy) that had a lot of romance potential. The plot is mostly "Neera getting used to life on Triton" and the scenes largely show Neera and Echo doing just that. It didn't help that Echo and Neera's POVs sounded quite similar to me.

I love romances that have great world-building but I feel that the romance should fit into the world that's being built. In this case, it felt like the romance was an excuse for the author to explore the world. This wasn't my cup of tea but maybe it'll be yours?

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