Disclosure: I have a professional editing background.
I wanted to like this book. I was intrigued by the blurb and the author’s descriptions on Twitter. Alas, after ten chapters I have to put it down and move on.
If this author paid for a professional edit, she did not get her money’s worth. If she did not get a professional edit, she did herself a serious disfavor. The portion I read is replete with rookie writing mistakes, spelling errors (the kind a spellcheck will not catch), tense changes, info dumps, and other issues that several rounds of beta reading, critique partners, and then professional edits would have addressed.
Aside from these technical issues, the main characters are quite dislikable. The princess is a brat; her guardian is a bitch; the prince is a dick. This made it very difficult to care about what was happening because I just didn’t want to spend time with any of these people. I also found a lot of the circumstances to be unbelievable. The story takes place underwater but is frequently written as if the characters are in the open air. There are references to smells and bad breath, as if people are actually breathing on one another, as well as beverages and meals that would dissipate in open water, among a lot more.
There’s probably a good story in the book somewhere but I feel in its current form it needs too much work and polish to really be worth reading.
Unfortunately, this book is definitely not for me, and I would not recommend it to others.
One star.
