Mermaids. Murder. Mayhem.
Realm Award Finalist for Best Debut, 2018 Parable Award Finalist, 2018Alliance Award Semi-Finalist, 2018A red tide is rising.Seventeen-year-old Jade is recently engaged to a handsome soldier and about to choose her own career. But she didn’t expect to witness a murder.When her fiancé kills a naiad, plunging the underwater city of Thessalonike into uproar, tensions surge … plunging the underwater city of Thessalonike into uproar, tensions surge between the mer and the naiads. Jade learns too late that the choices she makes ripple further than she’d ever imagined. And as she fights against the tide of anger in a city that lives for scandal, she discovers danger lurking in every canal, imperiling her family and shattering the ocean’s fragile peace.
Can the city’s divisions be mended before the upwelling of hate rips apart everything Jade loves?
Breakwater is the spine-tingling first novel in a complete trilogy of YA mermaid fantasy books. If you like enigmatic mystery, stirring romance, and harrowing intrigue, you’ll love Catherine Jones Payne’s riveting underwater world.
Plunge into a page-turning adventure perfect for fans of Carrie Anne Noble, Leigh Bardugo, Jennifer Donnelly, and Kiera Cass.more
Breakwater is a mermaid fantasy novel. When Jade’s arranged-marriage fiancé murders someone, Jade’s life is thrown into chaos and she becomes involved in an interclass struggle in her city.
Breakwater was a pretty cool book. Unlike most mermaid novels, this book was not a romance. It was more of a mystery story with some action and social inequality. The culture of the mer-city was Greco-Roman; even the city’s name appears to be based off of a historical city. There was an elite class, which Jade was a part of, and a low class, and the elite class often looked down on the low class. Jade was discovering just how much the low class was mistreated and deciding what to do about it.
All in all, it was an interesting story that I would recommend. The cover is absolutely fantastic!
I loved this book. I read it fast–but was not disappointed by the depth Payne put into a page turner. This book is political, (discussion of race in terms of naiads and mers) but I still ate up every single page of it. By managing something both politically relevant and a page turner…I’m impressed.
If I had any major complaints, it would be that the character work could’ve been more fleshed out, but considering how fast I read it, clearly this wasn’t a major hurdle. Payne does use a faster/denser writing style in this book, so if that’s a deal-breaker to you, this might not be a good fit for your reading taste.
With Breakwater, Ms. Payne accomplishes several extraordinary feats. She:
1. Writes a novel about mermaids that can be taken seriously. (I don’t know why it’s hard for many people to take merfolk seriously, but whatever the reason, she overcomes this prejudice.)
2. Writes fantasy-world politics that are relevant to the real world.
3. Writes fantasy-world politics that are not an obvious, one-for-one allegory of real-world issues, but complex, subtle, and thought-provoking.
Breakwater’s undersea world is vivid and interesting, and while the worldbuilding is not flawless (a few picky things bothered me), the fresh take on merfolk and other water-dwelling peoples makes it worth the read for fantasy lovers.
Absolutely beautiful and a must read!!!
I fell in love with Catherine’s world from the first page and read this entire book in one sitting. Waiting for the next one is going to be difficult, especially with that ending!
Catherine creates a wonderful world full of color and follows a privileged young woman’s life as she discovers a world she’s never been privy to. I feel this is something we all experience as we grow up. We come to realize not everything is as it seems. At 17, her life is going well and Jade is to be married to an influential man that she feels she can grow to love. He’s powerful, rich and a easy on the eyes. What’s not to love? But at their engagement party, something happens that makes Jade question everything and she makes a difficult decision that leads her down a path she can never come back from.
This book addresses the issues of privilege, poverty and race in such a wonderful way. Did I mention the cover is beautiful? Props to the artist.
I eagerly await the sequel!!!