You know that feeling you get when you read such an earth-shattering book that you're pierced to your very core and don't know how to recover? Despite thoroughly enjoying a lot of the books I read I haven't experienced many books that insight such feelings in me. This is one of those books for me. I am so honoured that I was given the opportunity to receive an eARC copy of this story because it has so thoroughly altered my brain chemistry I genuinely don't know what to do with myself. 

This haunting story follows hateful scarred siren Dahlia and her equally hateful counterpart siren hunter Vidar. Both tormented by a shared tragedy that led them down paths of hate and malice, starved with a thirst for revenge they are forced to come together in unexpected ways when new threats present themselves both on land and in the ocean. 

I'm not going to lie, I was struggling a bit at the beginning of the book. Not with the story or writing but in trying to find a way to like the MMC Vidar. I initially felt about him the way I feel about Gabi from Attack on Titan. I could understand why he's doing what he's doing but it ultimately didn't change the fact that I sympathized with the sirens a lot more. His seething vitriol and hatred were startling and hard to get passed for me as I couldn't begin to think what could have happened to cultivate it. That very quickly changed when I saw what actually happened in his past. I am unaccustomed to the bad thing in the past genuinely being something truly horrific. Too often I've read a "dark" book that had the character's dark past be something either predictable or ultimately anticlimactic. I don't necessarily think I crave violence 😏 but if a tragic past is hyped up throughout the book and it ends up being daddy issues cause they witnessed their parent's murder I'm bound to be a little disappointed. This was not the case here. At all. In fact, I'm actually impressed at how truly atrocious the backstory was.

Similarly, it's often rare to find a true enemies-to-lovers story but it was done beautifully here. Watching the progression of their relationship from where they began to where they ended was devastating and ignited something within my soul so profound I can't even begin to define it. I honestly don't know why this story and relationship affected me so much but it was done so ravishingly that I could do nothing but watch eagerly with baited breath and anxiety. "I am in search of a certain torment and there is no other place I could think of." This wrecked me so wholeheartedly I may as well have been shot clean through my heart. When they came together it was so beautiful and dreadful and full of malice and relief I couldn't even begin to fathom where to put my emotions. Despite the gruesome nature of the story, this has somehow become a comfort book and I have no idea what that says about me but I'm choosing to never examine it.