Warning: This novel contains excessive humor, action, excitement, adventure, magic, romance, and bodies. Proceed with caution. Why would anyone put a mermaid and a gorgon in the same room together? While Tulip enjoys being alive, her lineage brings her nothing but trouble. Snakes eat fish, and the mer love tearing apart their serpentine nemeses with their hands and teeth. As for the gorgons… … their hands and teeth. As for the gorgons… she’d rather not think about them at all.
The last thing Tulip wants is to rule the mer kingdom. First, she can barely swim. Second, she’s packing more than her fair share of her father’s genes. Third, what is a landlocked princess supposed to do with an aquatic kingdom?
If she gets her way, nothing. Add in her dirty little serial killing secret, and she’s an international disaster waiting to happen.
There’s just one small problem: her father’s bodyguard tempts her in ways no one should, and if she isn’t careful, he’ll uncover her secrets, domesticate her, and infect her with a severe case of normality.
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OH MY GOSH! Every Magical Romantic Comedy (with a body count) book is so much fun to read. You will laugh so much it almost interrupts reading. Enjoy!
I love the character of Tulip. She takes the vigilante action to an interesting level, but in a manner which entirely fits the personality of the character introduced by the author. Do I want to meet Tulip or not? I definitely want to meet Justin!
I received a free copy of this book from the author in a random drawing. I am writing this honest review by choice, not for any quid-pro-quo.
This was a fun book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the point of view of Tulip, land-locked non-mermaid Princess of the Mer-people, half-gorgon, serial killer of serial killers. It gets a lower rating than other recent reads because it didn’t shake my soul or cause me to change the way I consume media about mass shootings. It’s a magical romantic comedy with a body count; it’s wish-fulfillment, and some catharsis and an awful lot of puns.
Tulip is charmingly straightforward about her predatory instincts; finding an acceptable way to channel them is the penultimate struggle in her life, second only to asserting her authentic personality over the proper princess ettiquitte her Mermaid Queen mother demands of her. A Dexter-like career killing only serial killers satisfies both struggles, and makes use of the only legacy she has from her mysterious Gorgon father: the ability to transform into a rather large, very toxic snake. It does leave her sadly single… Until her father & his bodyguard show up and begin disrupting her plans. Then Tulip may have someone new to hunt, if not to bite.
Who would think that a princess (yes, a real princess) could be a serial killer? And yet that is Princess Tulip little hobby that often lands her in the middle of troubles! If you don’t believe me, I dare you to read it!
Loved this book. I almost didn’t read this after some of the negative comments, but I’m glad I did. Haven’t read a book by this author that I didn’t like. It’s outrageous, twisted, and funny. I loved Tulip’s grit. In fact, I really like it that none of the characters are weak. I do find it funny that health insurance and the CDC are a part of all of the books in this series.
I really enjoyed this book a lot. It moved quickly, the characters are vivid, fitting and varied AND the ending . . . I want to find the next book in the series.
Excellent book — as long as you don’t take it too seriously.
I’ve been a fan of this author for years (almost since the beginning). Not all of her books get five star ratings from me, but all of them are good, and this one is better than most. I’m on the cusp here between four or five stars because the plot is a little thin but the character interplay is awesome. The author sets this book in a world that is built from her other “body count” novels, but besides sharing the same magical races there is no crossover so it can be read as a standalone. The world is a parallel Earth type, where magic and magical creatures are abundant but the world is still very similar to our own. There’s very little actual worldbuilding done, although the world itself is very richly developed in the other books, so that’s an argument for not considering it a standalone. I guess, for me it works both ways.
I saw somebody comment that this ended with a cliffhanger, so I have to add this. I abhor cliffhangers and would never recommend any book with a cliffhanger (not even Lord of the Rings). But this is not a cliffhanger. OK, so near the beginning somebody almost kills her with a bomb, and it comes out later that this has happened before. And yet somehow she isn’t even the least bit curious who the bomber is or why. Apparently she takes it as part and parcel (small pun, she’s a mail courier) for being a serial killer. And so, at the end, we never do find out what that’s about, which can be disappointing if you take the story too seriously. But if you take it as just part of the comedy aspect (because basically, that’s what it is) then it’s really not a big deal. Now if she had spent half the book trying to track the bomber down and then nothing, that would be unforgivable. But nobody pays any attention to it other than as one of the ever-growing list of reasons why she should never go out in public again. To me, that’s just a joke. But that’s the thing about jokes. Most of them are only funny if you don’t take them seriously.
Anyway…
What I like most about this book, and what Blain does exceedingly well, is the playful banter between characters. Especially between the main character and her grandfather, and also with her prospective boyfriend. In fact, to me that’s the main draw of the book. Most of the rest of the book is simplistic and predictable, although still interesting enough and decidedly funny. It’s not something that scholars will be mooning over three hundred years from now but it’s a fun read and easily worth the time.