Captivate (Submerged Sun, #1)

by Vanessa Garden

[Raven]

This book was provided for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

For the last year, Miranda has been harboring a deep secret relating to her parent’s death that has caused a rift between her sister and her. She decides to come clean, but before she can, she is taken by a stranger during a midnight swim. Awakening in the underwater world of Marin, she learns that King Marko arranged her kidnapping so that he could keep her as his bride. The women in Marin have become infertile and without an heir to the throne, he runs the risk of losing it to his deranged elder brother Damir. Miranda is desperate to escape, and befriends Marko’s personal guard, Robbie, in attempts to bargain her way out of the city. Trouble is brewing and terrible secrets are being revealed, Miranda will have to figure out who she can trust, and if she will ever get back home alive.
Captivate wasn’t what I expected it to be. It starts off in past tense and either slowly changes to first person or else I just got used to it. I hate past tense. Always have, always will, it just throws me off when I am reading. I just prefer first and third person in “real” time. You also have to take note, that this book is from Australia, so the language and slang are written accordingly. It isn’t hard to follow really, the few times I felt a bit lost I could basically guess what was being said. That, and I have a bunch of British friends, so I knew some of the terms that the countries share. My biggest thing at first was the “misspelling” of certain words like “color”, but that is just because I am American. You learn how to spell something and then you start adding u’s into the words and even spell check is like “What is this nonsense?” None of this ruins or takes away from the story, it just threw me off and made the first bit slow to start until I fell into the groove of the book. I knew it was an Australian book and it still threw me, which is the only reason I mention it at all.

The story was nothing like I expected. Based on the synopsis and the listed genres for this novel, I expected a mer tale. I was expecting an underwater world where people could morph between human and mer depending if they were in the water or not. Instead, you are given a world where everyone is human, they just all live in a big dome underwater. There are mermaids in the story, but it is talked about in more of a mad scientist type of way than anything. The plot was unique and easy to follow and the character interactions were quite realistic. Some of the plot elements, such as the pull of the city that makes people not want to leave, felt a little convenient to me, but they didn’t take away from the story either. The traitors were relatively easy to spot for me, with the exception of the one who is caught in the middle there.

I found myself liking all of the characters. I especially liked Robbie. I had trouble warming up to Marko, much more trouble than Miranda did. I don’t completely agree with the quasi-triangle there, but at the same time, it felt right. I don’t know, I found myself rooting for the both of them and neither of them both at the same time.

The ending was the worst for me. Mostly, because I hate waiting between installments. It feels like the next book in the series will feature a large time skip that I really don’t want to deal with. I feel like there is more story happening right now, so I don’t want to wait the months into the future to see how things either mend, or more likely, fall apart.

I found this book to be highly entertaining and compelling and I will be looking forward to the second book in the series. While I was disappointed at the lack of real mermaids in the story, I still enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to everyone.

Originally posted at arielavalon.com