Part of "Paranormal 13" set. Looked worthwhile maybe, but skipping it for now for other reasons.[b:The Paranormal 13|23387007|The Paranormal 13|C.J. Archer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413552098l/23387007._SX50_.jpg|42945188]

This is the fifth book in the Paranormal 13 book of various paranormal romance authors that I downloaded free from Amazon.
It starts out at a strip club in Alaska. The crew of a large crabbing vessel is out celebrating, or rather, mourning the loss of a crew mate who must have gone overboard and whose body is missing.

Trevain Murphy is the captain of the ship. He’s almost fifty years old and he has been on fishing vessels for most of his life, since he was a child because his father was also a seaman. In all of the years that he has been crabbing, he has never had a loss of a crew member. He prides himself on his sixth sense that keeps him away from danger but he didn’t see this coming.

Aazuria is actually a mermaid who is working as a dancer in a strip club to earn money for her underwater kingdom, Adlivun, where she is soon to be the queen. She was imprisoned along with her two younger sisters by her cruel father for hundreds of years until she killed him. Now, she has to fight off all the enemies her fathers has acquired over the years, mainly a clan of mermaid who train by wrestling and killing sharks, then making their teeth into necklaces and wearing them as protection. These mermaids like killing fishermen. They have been responsible for many of the ships that have disappeared that humans have not been able to explain.

Trevain meets Aazuria at the strip club and, after hearing that she is supporting two younger sisters, offers her a place to live at his large home. She agrees on the condition that he always allows her freedom and never tries to hold her back from any decisions she makes.

I was a little grossed out that Trevain was hot after someone he thought was only 18 years old but the author did a good job at letting the reader know that he was not a pervert and that he was attracted to her personality and other qualities. And, of course, the reader knows that Aazuria is really 603 years old so it helps to get over any objections of the age difference.

Trevain and Aazuria start falling in love but she has not told him her secret and I thought he was a little naïve or desperate to not have seen how strange and secretive his new love interest was, not to mention her two sisters who were really strange. One sister doesn’t speak and only uses sign language yet when he goes to a few classes to learn sign language, they still can’t understand each other because she’s using the language of the mermaids. The other sister who is supposed to only be nine years old, speaks like a well-educated adult. They also have strange accents. But he just overlooks all of this.
He even accepts, when her sister tells him, that Aazuria killed her father because he was a cruel man who raped women and kept them prisoner.

The author makes him out to be an easy going man with a big heart but then he gets downright hostile towards Aazuria, saying cruel things to her like she is a murderer and even manhandles her a couple of times which turned me ‘like-him’ switch off. I thought it was weird that the author would make his personality do a 180 degree turn like that. It turned me off so much that I just didn’t care if they ended up together or not.

There was also a lot of unnecessary introspection in certain scenes. I CAN NOT STAND TOO MUCH INTROSPECTION. It drives me buggy! There’s nothing worse than a scene that can be done in one or two paragraphs but has so much self-reflection or self-struggle that it takes pages to complete the scene. It is worse when it is an action scene or a sex scene. Say…someone starts to kiss the other person and the author inserts all the mumbo jumbo which is meant to help us but because the author thinks that we are too dense to get it with just a short self-analysis, the author over compensates and puts paragraphs and paragraphs of it and by the time that the couple’s lips meet, we have forgotten that they were about to kiss. It wipes the romantic mood clean away. It’s worse when it is an action scene; someone is about to get stabbed but the pages of introspection that happen in between the start of the scene and when the knife is actually coming towards the person, give me anxiety and sort of ruins the scene. My anxiety is because I’m thinking that it is taking all this time for the person to think all of this while the other person is going to kill them in less than a second. Too much introspection can ruin a book for me.

Overall, it was an okay book but it isn’t a story that interests me enough to continue the series. I’ll continue on to the next story in the Paranormal 13 book.

www.parnormalromanceslut.com ( )

She started a revolution under the sea. Now, she must escape to a foreign land to survive...

Left with no other options, the destitute daughter of a murdered king must flee to Alaska. Doing all she can to keep her younger sisters safe, Aazuria tries to assimilate and work among the Americans. She tries to hold her head up high even in the lowest of places, until she meets a somber man in a dark corner, with eyes that remind her of home.

Trevain Murphy is a successful crab fisherman who has spent his life building an empire on the sea. When a graceful dancer captures his attention, he becomes fascinated with her old-fashioned speech and unique mannerisms. Learning that her father has recently died, he cannot resist extending his kindness in offering to guide and protect her.

As it becomes clear that the dark-haired woman is much more than she seems, Trevain is unprepared to uncover the staggering secrets behind her innocent facade. Neither the captain nor the princess can imagine that their lives will become forcibly entwined as a common enemy threatens both of their worlds...

I wanted to like this book, really. The characters are interesting and for once, one of them wasn't a young charismatic male but a seaman in his fifties. That was a refreshing change. But I couldn't help getting bored. It's too long and fifty percent into the book, I still can't see where it's going. So I give up on the series. ( )

Was bogged down in the middle by turgid dialogue and tried several times to get through it. Couldn't do it.