We’ve reached the end of our journey. Time for a nice summation and some tea.
If you missed the Previous parts they can be found here: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Let’s go.
So this book is about a shark researcher and underwater filmmaker who find love while filming a documentary about sharks and an underwater sonar shark detection system.
Not gonna lie, I bought this for the sharks. And I was hoping that this book wouldn’t do what a lot of books do when they feature sharks… turn them into the big scary villains.
And I was to be disappointed.
That’s pretty much the story of this book.
It’s a disappointment.
It felt like I was reading fanfiction, bad fanfiction, you know the kind where the author takes huge chunks of another fandom's text/plot and plops it into a new fandom but doesn’t manage to file the serial numbers off?
Like if you dropped Edward and Bella into the Hunger Games but kept all of the same plots, beats, and even lines from the Hunger Games.
That’s this book with Sharks.
It’s essentially a Real Person Fanfic featuring Ocean Ramsey as Grace and Andy Casagrande as Alec running into the various shark encounters as seen in such things as the filming of Jaws and pretty much every shark week special ever… Including the gods-awful Megalodon pseudo-documentary.
And the author didn’t even try to dispute this. She out and out states that she lifted the stories from documentary after documentary as well as Instagram stories and other social media influencers. In fact, she listed more social media influencers as her inspiration for her facts than actual renowned scientists.
Sigh…
I hated this book. Even my love for sharks couldn’t overcome the craptacular characterization and plotting. It was basically like… oh we can’t have the leads actually sit and bond we need more shark action. And by shark action that meant encounters.
Every time the heroine went into the water, or even on the water, she was attacked by a great white shark. EVERY TIME!!! It’s like Jaws but without the redeeming Indianapolis monologue or the adorable kid mimics parent scenes. I feel like this book helps to popularize the myth that sharks are mindless attackers and they aren’t. There are videos after videos of sharks just out there living their lives next to swimmers and surfers. They’re like any apex predator, respect them and stay out of their way and you won’t get hurt.
The story jumped from scene to scene without any real forward motion. The actual villains of the story weren’t dealt with. Plots were dropped all over the place going on for pages and pages and then ending up nowhere.
And worse… the sex sucked.
Here’s a taste of the book’s scintillating sex scene…
I could write better in my sleep… and this is not hyperbole… ask Rose.
The only real good thing about this book is that technically it was well written. As in the grammar was on point. The writing for the most part flowed. It just seriously needed a sensitivity editor or six, a content editor, and a crash course on how to write smut.
This book just made me angry. And disappointed.
I’m still angry and disappointed.
“The Meg” and “Deep Blue Sea” do a better job of shark rep than this book. I am not joking.
I hate this book
One Star
If you really want to read the horror that is this book, you can get it here.
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