Holy s@#t, this one was a looooong ride. My… I'm not really much into YA fantasy, especially epic fantasy though I'm trying to get into the genre, but this was crazy yo! I liked it, though I do wish it was shorter as it was 500ish pages long for me!!! The main characters are flawed and weird, and sometimes really frustrating, The worldbuilding is done pretty well, but wow, did the politics and stuff frustrated me… I hated queen Aduna… I liked Zale. Calandra was kinda annoying, and her relationship with Oyuke felt so cringe and fake… yikes. I felt like it was forced, ok? But it was to make a point, as here there are only female mermaids which here are called undines, and they marry human men, whom they control basically, and can't have male kids… it's messed up. It's historical fiction so there is a bunch of slaves there too. It's interesting to see Calandra's growth though, as she didn't think about this stuff much at first, but at the end she basically starts a revolution, which turns into a disaster, of course, to set the sequel. I don't know if I'll be reading the sequel, I want to read some other books first, but maybe sometime in the future, I will. I want to get more into the mystery, and MG books now as they make me feel better, fantasy especially YA ones always tend to mess me up, lol. I do recommend it to YA fantasy fans though, and this is a childhood friends to lovers to nothing trope. Also, there's no love triangle, just a jealous cousin that is desperate to get her mom's attention.