A young mermaid is forced to choose between her old life above the waves and her new life below them in this queer fantasy duology from debut author Shannon K. English.

Eppie has never quite understood why the world hates her—all she did was kiss a girl. Must that mean she suffers isolation, with whispers and glares following her at every turn? She tries to focus on her duty to her family, but options are limited for a woman alone, and life in the seaside village of Hwenfirth is agonizingly mundane.

One day, as Eppie walks along the beach, she spies someone drowning in the shallows. Without thinking, she runs to rescue the poor soul—but when she gets up close, instead of a sputtering victim she finds an inhuman creature smiling up at her with rows of sharp, white teeth that snap closed on her arm and drag her beneath the waves.

When Eppie awakes in a deep ocean cave, she finds her own body has changed: she can breathe underwater, her skin is turning scaly, her teeth have been replaced by fangs, and she is suddenly ravenous for human flesh.

She has become a dreaded creature of the ocean—a mermaid.

Things aren’t all bad, though. The mermaid colony is mesmerizing and Eppie’s new sisters are fiercely loyal. And when Eppie meets Marie, a stunningly beautiful mermaid with a past as shadowed as her glossy, raven-black scales, she finds she no longer needs to resist the desires that were denied to her on land.

But the mermaid hunters are coming, and Eppie must decide whether to protect the new, monstrous family she’s found or leave it all behind for a chance to live above the waves once again.