Bind Me Tighter Still

by Lara Ehrlich

The youngest of three siren sisters, Ceto is weary of an existence driven by hunger, no better than a fish. She trades her tail for life on land, marries the first man she meets, and bears a daughter, only to discover that domesticity is just as mundane as sirenhood. In search of something more, she flees with her daughter Naia to the ocean, where she establishes a mermaid burlesque and recreates herself, performing as a siren in a tank built into the limestone cliffs overlooking the sea. She trains more sirens, expanding Sirenland from a roadside attraction to a national sensation she rules without opposition—until Naia, at 15, begins to push back against the world Ceto has created and the role she performs in her mother’s shows. A death at Sirenland threatens Ceto's authority and leads Naia to question whether this women-ruled kingdom is truly as empowering as her mother would have her believe. Bind Me Tighter Still explores power and hunger, sacrifice and motherhood, and celebrates the fierceness of female strength in a male-dominated world.

Genres: Fantasy, Mermaids, Fiction, Magical Realism

216 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2025

About the author

Lara Ehrlich is the author of the short story collection Animal Wife (Red Hen Press, 2020), which won Red Hen’s Fiction Award, judged by Ann Hood. Lara lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this one, but unfortunately, it didn’t quite live up to them. Sirens? A boardwalk attraction? The premise had so much potential. I wasn't expecting extreme body horror or super gory violence—Red Hen Press doesn’t lean that way—but I was hoping for something more than what this book ultimately delivered.

Ceto was a siren, luring fishermen to their doom alongside her sisters, always ravenous, never satisfied—until she decides she’s done. She severs her tail, steps onto land, and marries the first man she meets. After bearing his child, she abandons that life too, eventually finding herself back by the ocean, breathing new life into a fading roadside attraction on the boardwalk.

The novel explores themes of feminism, trauma, bodily autonomy, and the lasting effects of harsh mothering. It has all the right ingredients for a compelling mermaid story, but the execution falters. The descriptions of Sirenland—the space where the sirens performed and lived—were difficult to visualize, and the flashbacks to Ceto’s past were scattered throughout the story in a way that disrupted the flow. Despite its intriguing premise, the story never fully came together for me.

I'm loving the mermaid fiction wave we're riding right now, but I wouldn’t be in a hurry to add this one to your collection. But who knows, maybe it will resonate with you!

[T Davidovsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bind Me Tighter Still frames itself as a sort of feminist novel about power, womanhood, motherhood, gender, identity, belonging, and coming of age. Borrowing from mermaid and siren mythology (along with a little vampirism thrown in there), it tells a story about women trying really hard not to define themselves by the men around them. You follow Ceto and her daughter Naia as they learn the ropes of what it means to be a woman living under patriarchy. The story is mostly a character study, and the book attempts to capture an experience without always explicitly gesturing at how readers should feel about any of it, even though it is very obvious where the author stands on the issues.

I should have really enjoyed it, but I only ended up liking the ideas behind the story, and the book could have just as easily been an essay about gender, performance, and the male gaze. The problem is the characters are a bit stiff. They don't have sharp observation. They don't make biting commentary. I didn't connect with them at all. They just do what's needed of them to serve the story's somewhat messy central metaphors.

While their narration is painfully generic, their situation is almost too extraordinary. It's convoluted, poorly motivated, and lacking a strong sense of place. The prose has a fluid quality to it, much like the ocean, but it's not lyrical, atmospheric, or precise. Ceto and Naia start the story as performers in a mermaid theme park called Sirenland. I still have absolutely no idea what the theme park looks like, and the reasons for its existence are so bizarre. I appreciate the author wanting to resist giving easy answers by making everything messy and complex, but this book is way messier than it needs to be. Ceto's motivations for everything are weird and flimsy. Her behavior doesn't feel real and organic. I get that she's not human, so she makes inhuman decisions, but I wasn't buying it. She doesn't act like a fish out of water often enough for me to be convinced of her inhumanity. I don't need every mermaid to lose their balance when they finally grow a pair of legs, but if I'm to believe they're going to make bizarre choices on account of their inhumanity, I do expect some scenes that emphasize how alienated they are from things most humans take for granted. We just don't get any scene of that nature from Ceto.

Naia is a slightly easier character to swallow, but not by much. She's just an angsty teenager. Some magical shenanigans exaggerate her feelings and experiences, allowing the book to better capture girlhood and adolescence, but while all the metaphors and symbols around coming of age are cleverly deployed, Naia herself doesn't really feel like such a good example of what an actual teenage girl is like. (How many fifteen year old girls in her situation would be able to talk like they've just taken their first gender theory course in college? I accept that ideas around performativity might come to her more naturally given her upbringing, but some of her epiphanies are way too sophisticated.) Her story is okay in the second half when the plot picks up, and the final chapters do hit hard, but it's not enough. This narrative is too character driven for the plotting and pacing to matter all that much, and the characters aren't strong enough to carry the story. (Don't even get me started on how boring and irrelevant the side characters are.)

~Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a Digital ARC. All opinions are my own.~

[Cari]

This is a tough review, so I am leaving the stars blank. Read for Booklist. The writing is beautiful, but I had a hard time following the plot. Like many literary novels, though, the plot is sparse. Many scenes are super intense and made me uncomfortable. I'd say readers who don't shy away from cruelty and pain and are interested in the bizarre would enjoy this.

[fictionalrelapse · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.75 stars rounded down!

I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley.

I really was only interested in this book because I am a mermaid performer in reality. A book that deals with mermaid performers in a gritty way is just something I’d never seen before, and I was very interested. I had literally no expectations coming in, but MAN were they subverted at every turn… and I came out incredibly awestruck by the experience I had reading this novel.

The story is shorter and employs a type of prose that reminds me of those heavy books you would read in high school for an advanced lit class (think Grapes of Wrath, almost any historical fiction…). It’s a heavy read and is more poetic than it is narrative at times, but it works in the favor of the allure and mystery of the story, as well as with the backdrop of a gritty seaside circus.

Something to know that wasn’t immediately obvious to me: the main character’s mother, Ceto, is LITERALLY A SIREN. The rest of the cast, aside from her daughter and sisters, are human but probably know she is a siren. The prologue is NOT merely poetic, it’s an actual narration of her background. She sheds her tail to lead a life on land to escape hunger. This theme is effervescent throughout the whole book.

As the introduction whirls into the catalyst to the main events of the novel, it becomes immediately clear what the themes of the novel are; this is not simply a gritty book about mermaids eating people (which only happens like once), this is a story of the dark side of motherhood, trauma, sisterhood in a world that is geared against women, and power. POWER. The hunger for power, the consequences of power. Power over life and death, power over people, power over places.

By the end of the novel, I was left reeling. I had no idea I had such strong feelings toward these topics until Ehrlich dredged them up in me in such a visceral way. Basically, if you have mommy issues, you probably want to read this book. It’s healing in a way.

This would be a 5 star book for me if I didn’t feel that it sometimes gets lost in its own prose — there were moments where it really hit, more often than not, but in key places it hindered the reader’s understanding of characters and events by being too vague about what the situation was. Seriously one of the best books I’ve read in my life.

[Brigid Wander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a beautiful tale of the relationship between a mother and daughter and the issues many women face today. Written very poetically, this modern day fairytale about mermaids showed the sacrifices of motherhood and the power of female sexuality.

Thank you to NetGalley and Red Hen Press for the opportunity to read this ARC!

[Jennifer Minderlein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you net galley for being an early release reader.

The story of veto finding her humanity and understanding the love for her daughter was riveting. This world of sure land calls you in. If you are looking for something out of the box this is your book.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was given an advanced copy for an honest review! I was rather disappointed in this book, the premise and the book cover was right up my alley! I was very excited to dive into this book! However it was very boring, long and very hard to get into. I feel like the author spent a decent amount of developing the characters and exploring feminine identity, however forgot about the readers experience with the book, so it just ended up falling flat.

I personally didn’t have a hard time with the difficult scenes as I’m no stranger to brutal scenes in books, but the story was very scattered and the book didn’t seem cohesive overall.

I had a very difficult time finishing this one.

[Oana · Rating 3 out of 5]

[This is a review based on an ARC obtained through NetGalley]

I am always honest in my reviews, so I’ll say that this book wasn’t really my cup of tea. Reading the synopsis attracted me, with its themes of motherhood, sisterhood, and womanhood in a world made and dominated by men, and with the added story of the siren, the mythological creature that attracts men to their death, I was sold.
But then I started reading, and I didn’t really get the message it tried to convey.
I was unfortunately put off in the very first page when it’s mentioned that “their nipples peaked in the wind”. A detail that I think added nothing at all to the narration.
I tried to move past it, but nothing in the narration or story made me reconsider my initial thoughts.

In the first few chapters you also have so many characters present (but not presented), leaving you very confused, and this confusion only clears halfway through the book.
The narration is confusing, moving through past, present and stories within the story with no apparent logic. The unfinished editing also didn’t help at all. Sometimes a repeated song would be written with a forward slash separating the verses, other times every verse was a new line.
I did also find some minor grammar mistakes but hopefully this all gets fixed in the official release.

Unfortunately, because all of this, the message it tried to convey fell flat, lacking actual depth. It tried to be profound but barely scrapped the surface. It didn’t really bring up any emotion in me. I couldn’t feel any affinity with the characters, I didn’t find reason in their actions.
There are also some major events that should’ve been way more important than what they are, but I can’t name them to avoid spoilers.

I thought it would be a modern spin on the Little Mermaid fairytale, and it tried to, but the result in’t really what I expected, and I had to force myself to finish it to be able to write this review. Not really a great sign.
Maybe someone else will find this book more intriguing than I did. It didn’t work for me. I don’t really have quotes to share as nothing stood out while reading. I can’t bring myself to give this more than 3 out of 5, only because from a technical perspective, it’s written well enough.
I have not read anything else by the author, and I don’t know if I will, but I wish her the best of luck in the future.

[Ruth Garcia-Corrales · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bind Me Tighter Still by Lara Ehrlich is a captivating novel that explores the complex bond between mother and daughter — the words left unspoken and the emotions that go unshared. Naia is raised by her aunts and her mother, Ceto, the queen of the sirens. But Ceto's hunger for more than just fish, combined with Naia's teenage rebellion, reveals that both the sea and the land are fraught with the same struggles. Ehrlich masterfully weaves a story where myth and reality collide, exposing the universal challenges of growing up, family, and identity

[Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! This book was published in the US on Sep. 9, 2025 by Red Hen Press.

“The hunger will grow stronger,” Ceto says. “You will hurt people, and they will fear you. This is a dangerous world for frightening women.” “Why must I be frightening?” Naia asks, clutching her mother’s hands. “Because the alternative is to be frightened. You and I—we fear neither men nor monsters. We are the monsters.”

Lara Ehrlich’s Bind Me Tighter Still is a siren story unlike any I’ve read before—lush, brutal, and devastatingly tender. The novel opens with a young siren who slices her own tail to experience love on her own terms, and from there unspools a tale of performance, power, and inheritance. At its center are Ceto, who builds Sirenland as both sanctuary and prison, and her daughter Naia, restless under the weight of her mother’s control and her own awakening hunger. Theirs is not a gentle love story but a jagged one, tangled in devotion, domination, and the terrifying freedom of becoming.

Ehrlich’s writing is gorgeously visceral, weaving blood and salt, tenderness and violence into sentences that cut as much as they shimmer. The prose leans into metaphor and sensory detail, blurring myth with lived reality until sirenhood feels less like fantasy than a mirror for how women are consumed, contained, and commodified. Performance and illusion saturate the novel: Sirenland’s staged mermaid shows are both survival strategy and cage, raising piercing questions about what we sacrifice to maintain safety and what it means to be “authentic” in a world that demands spectacle.

What struck me most is the novel’s treatment of hunger—not just for flesh, but for love, freedom, power, and recognition. Ceto embodies the contradictions of survival: a mother who loves fiercely yet controls mercilessly, a woman who transforms her loneliness into authority, a monster both feared and self-made. Naia, meanwhile, yearns to break the cycle, resisting her inheritance even as she feels its pull. Their conflict speaks to the ways monstrosity and motherhood can be bound together, and whether it is possible to choose a different way of being without becoming what you most fear.

Bind Me Tighter Still is one of my all-time favorite retellings—subtly queer, unapologetically feminist, and unafraid of the mess and violence that simmer beneath mother-daughter love. It is a story of what it costs to survive in a world that fears and desires women in equal measure, and what it means to embrace monstrosity as a kind of liberation.

📖 Read this if you love: feminist retellings, mother-daughter stories steeped in myth and monstrosity, lush and visceral prose, and explorations of hunger, power, and survival.

🔑 Key Themes: Hunger and Desire, Monstrosity and Liberation, Motherhood and Control, Performance and Illusion.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse (minor), Emotional Abuse (minor), Sexual Harassment (minor), Blood (moderate), Child Death (minor), Sexual Content (minor), Alcohol (minor), Adult-Minor Relationship (minor), Misogyny (minor), Torture (minor), Gore (minor), Murder (minor), Sexual Assault (severe).

Content Note: There is a graphic description of sexual assault that occurs at approximately 90%.

[Emily O'Leary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a difficult one to rate if I'm honest - there were parts of it that I really loved and the writing was beautifully mesmerising and that WORKED with the kind of story being told (like literally, sirens you know, they're supposed to be alluring and mesmerising) and the slower pace and lyrical writing was perfect for that, however... it was also really difficult in parts to truly visualise what was happening, or understand the intricate details.

I think it came down to far too much being alluded to and not enough solidity of the facts? I truly couldn't tell at times what was going on which led to me trying to reread pages to get a grasp on something that actually, didn't have a grasp on itself to begin with.

That being said, I actually did enjoy it as a whole. I love a feminist style horror and Bind Me Tighter Still definitely had elements of this. I also loved the depiction of motherhood, as toxic as this one was, shown her - in fact all the relationships in this book were raw and fractured and tender in quite a toxic way but that's a realness we have likely all experienced at some stage.

All in all, a captivating read, I just wish it had felt a little more cohesive, rather than fever-dreamy.

Big thanks to NetGalley for providing me a copy for review!

[Shawna Alston · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this book. I absolutely adore the title and cover and the premise is so cunning and sharp. About halfway through, though I was having trouble picturing/understanding the physical setting of the book, I was dazzled by the language and the feeling. Soon, however, the glamour faded and I was left with an underdeveloped main character and a trite mother-daughter conflict.

If I can be candid, the second half of the book read like fanfiction—predictable, a little corny, and, funnily enough, borrowed (which was the worst part because the premise feels sooooo original).

I don’t regret this read, but I am disappointed.

[Elly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well. That was slow to start, big on the mystery but also very dry, easily veering into DNF potential. Sirens in this book aren’t whimsical, they’re dark and ravenous. The end was when things picked up, I didn’t expect the twist (though, if I’d sat with it instead speed reading towards the end, perhaps I might have anticipated how things shook out).

There was a lot in this, the alternate versions of a mother’s love, of anticipation and trauma and what it means to hold true to yourself, especially when you’re still figuring out who you are.

Not sure I’d read it again, but it was an okay read.

Thanks to NetGalley for the eArC!

[Susan Kietzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mermaids in folklore can be good or they can be bad. Lara Ehrlich's mermaids in Bind Me Tighter Still are bad, in a good way. Sirenland, a mermaid burlesque attraction, is where the reader meets the novel's heroines, with Ceto as their literally fearless leader. They live in Sirenland, as a means of pushing away their ceaseless attraction to the sea, where they once beckoned ships onto the rocks and devoured hapless sailors. But is living on the land any better? Naia, Ceto's daughter, a questioning teenager discovers that there is more to life than Sirenland - and that every choice comes with its consequences.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really exciting premise that dragged me in. The setting was fun and unique. The writing and imagery were beautiful, but it lacked a good plot. This story felt like it was dangling something really good in front of you, only for nothing to happen. The themes of power, motherhood, and sacrifice were very prominent but weak and it left me wanting. It’s a very loose story but I did enjoy it.

Thank you Net Galley for the eARC.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always like stories set in theme parks, carnivals, or road side attractions. Love the collection of people and how they got there. I enjoyed this book and its brevity. Sometimes stories add pages and people just to reach a novel length for no real plot movement. This book had just the characters that were necessary and captured a moment of "coming of age" for a mermaid with just enough background without making it heavy. Didn't see the ending coming.

[J R · Rating 4 out of 5]

exciting, interesting, and uniquely premised novel with some interesting themes of sacrifice, isolation, and family, and some characters that generally work well. 4 stars. tysm for the arc.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning literary page-turner!

[Danika Varekai · Rating 3 out of 5]

I initially picked up this book because of the cover; I recognized the gorgeous photo of a mermaid bound in a hanging shibari tie, shot by my friend, Renee Robyn. I kept reading because of my love of dark siren stories. I loved the short-lived Netflix show Tidelands, and “Bind Me Tighter Still” shares the same feminine-centred, maybe-might-kill-you, is-definitely-a-criminal, mysterious vibes.

The story follows some notes of the classic little mermaid tale. The tone of this book starts off with a dark and dreamy flashback of a siren in her home in the ocean, who takes a drastic step to join humanity on land. We jump back and forth through the timeline from there, as if the events of the narrative are perfunctory, and we care only about the snapshots of moments and feeling. The prose is trying for moody and emotional, but at times it stumbles too far into just confusing and disjointed.

I definitely enjoyed the characters, cared about each of them, and was carried along by the fast pace. I loved the surrealistic carnival boardwalk, and the secretive overgrown Sirenland.

The conflict seems to waffle between feminine vs masculine, or maybe women struggling to belong, or maybe the primal struggle of community vs selfishness? I could see where the story wanted to go, but it didn’t always get there. I enjoyed the visceral scenes, but I wished this story came together in a tighter, more fulfilling arc. I was left flopping like a fish out of water, craving more but just struggling along to a sad conclusion.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy!
This is a tricky one for me to rate. I feel like the story has good bones, but I also find it lacking in some aspects which makes it feel weaker. I really like the premise for this—Sirens performing in shows at a theme park caught my interest. I remember having a mermaid book kick several years ago and I’ve wanted to revisit that. Unfortunately the story itself ended up being on the weak side—I would have loved some more exposition, especially about the sirens and the shows they put on. I know a lot of authors recently tend to over-describe things, but this had the opposite issue. There were some characters present who I feel could have done more or been more involved, we get backstories for some of the performers but not all, and there are a few humans that I wish would have stuck around longer to have more weight to what they added to the story. Things felt jumbled throughout the book, but I think with some stronger transitions or additional scenes all of the threads could have been pulled together. I still enjoyed the book while I was reading it, and I actually really liked the ending. I could see a direction where I thought it was going but I didn’t expect it to actually happen! The ending alone made up for some of the aspects of the book I didn’t like