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Book: “Endless Blue Beneath” by Shannon K. English
Publishing Info: Orbit, June 2026
Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: On land, Eppie will never be anything more than the outcast girl who kissed the grocer’s daughter. But beneath the water’s surface lies a future and a society she could never imagine. Stolen from the shore, she is transformed. Eppie is stronger, swifter—and hungrier. Human flesh smells like heaven on earth, and Eppie is ravenous.
Despite the horror of her new appetites, Eppie learns to love this strange second life. The mermaid colony is mesmerizing, and Eppie’s new sisters are fiercely loyal. When she meets Marie, a stunningly beautiful mermaid with a past as shadowed as her raven-black scales, Eppie finds she no longer needs to resist her deepest desires.
But dark sails are on the horizon. The mermaid hunters are coming, and Eppie must decide whether to protect her new, monstrous family or leave it all behind for a chance to live above the waves once again.
Review: This was an odd reading experience. At times, I was really loving it. At other times, I was a bit tugged down by the pacing. And at other times, I was actively frustrated. I guess the definite thing you could take away is that the book will elicit some sort of emotion from you! But if ever there was a time to describe a reading experience as “uneven,” this was it.
To start with what I enjoyed, the writing style was very lyrical and lovely. The author managed to capture that fairytale quality that I look for, nicely blending beautiful imagery with darker elements and themes. That said, the book was very character-focused, something I typically enjoy, so it was almost an odd case where I wish there had been more opportunity for the writing itself to come to the forefront with world-building, descriptions, and plotting.
The downsides of the writing come down to the character work. There is a lot of telling going on here, with very little showing of anything. And as much of the main character’s experiences in this book are negative, it’s a lot of telling the reader just how bad she has it, over and over again. I think the general premise of escaping human bigotry for a land of mermaids was stronger as an idea than in its execution, and part of this came down to this limitation in writing characters who were anything more than fairly one-dimensional.
I’ll also say that this book is much darker than expected. The book description is actively misleading, but I do think more should have been done to properly set expectations for what this book is actually like. This is not a romantasy read and instead is very much a dark fantasy. Eppie’s experiences are pretty traumatic throughout. The mermaids are by no means some sort of utopian alternative to the humans, and Eppie’s experiences there are just as dark in some ways. What’s more, the “romance,” such that it is, is not a healthy love story, and I was conflicted by the entire experience, including the end.
Overall, as a dark fairytale, I think this book has some interesting things to say and lovely world-building (what we got of it). But the pacing was rather uneven, and it did wear on me a bit to read of negative experience after negative experience. Readers who enjoy dark fantasy will likely enjoy this more than romantasy readers.
Rating 7: Darker than I think many readers will expect, but with some interesting explorations of themes like otherness and what makes a monster.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Endless Blue Beneath” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Romantasy books that have to do with the oceans and Sapphic Fiction 2026.
The Library Ladies 