4/5

This was a fun and thrilling read, full of killer mermaids and a boat packed with scientists with very little self preservation instincts. It was almost comical how everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

I did enjoy the amount of research the author put into making the mermaids feel believable, and sprinkling in pieces to tie in real biology in ways that it almost felt plausible that they could live in the deep dark parts of the ocean.

The characters also felt very real and interesting, each with their own reasons for joining the crew but also flawed in their own way. There were many of them, almost too many, but they were all well done.

The thing I did not like though was that omniscient narration. It felt very jarring for me to head hop so much with no warning. I got confused many times as to whose head I was in all the way through the book. It worked in some sections but overall it was a bit of a struggle to keep shifting my mental image so much.

Overall though it was a fun read, even with a slower start and possibly going on longer than it needed to, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.