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Daughters of Atlantea #1
Endless Blue Beneath
Not yet published
Expected 9 Jun 26A young mermaid is forced to choose between her old life above the waves and her new life below them in this eerie, romantic 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ocean cave, she finds her own body has changed: she can breathe underwater, her skin is turning scaly, her teeth have been replaced by fangs, and she is suddenly ravenous for human flesh.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.
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.
454 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication June 9, 2026
About the author
Shannon K. English
4 books18 followersShannon K. English grew up in the bleak and beautiful landscapes of northern England. She is inspired by mythology, fantasy of every kind, and powerful narratives about characters struggling with terrible choices. As an asexual and panromantic author, she tries to tell the representative sci-fi and fantasy stories she loves to read. Her favourite writers include Ursula K. Le Guin, Shannon Hale and Jack London.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 9, 2026
This was gorgeous, enchanting, but also so, so, so very painful. I’ve previously read another book by this author and I gotta say she is incredible at evoking very intense emotions in me. Because I loved this, but I also got so riled up by what was happening in the book, all the injustices the protagonist had to endure, that I had to put down the book a couple of times and do some calm breathing. It was so exquisitely painful to read sometimes. It was also so enchantingly atmospheric and wove such emotionally complex relationships between its main characters, I can’t wait to return to this world in the second book. I love these tragic sapphic mermaids.
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Many Thanks to Orbit Books for this ARC!
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Many Thanks to Orbit Books for this ARC!
Want to Read
November 12, 2025Sapphic mermaids! GIMME
March 22, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC copy of this book! 🫶🏻 🧜♀️
The writing in this book is gorgeous. Really dream-like and engaging; I loved picturing the varied biomes Eppie travelled to, from the dark of the deep, deep sea to the warm waters of the tropics. The concept behind the mermaid families and the lore of their matriarchs was SO compelling. The author isn’t afraid of tragedy and so many characters are complex and shades of grey.
I had difficulty with the pacing of the story — I would have liked a bit more time spent with Eppie as a human, and more time spent on each time Eppie’s loyalties shifted. There were a handful of times where her motivations/loyalties flip flopped two or three times in one or two scenes, and the confusion and struggle to figure out what’s “right” or “true” felt forced. There were many threads at work throughout the book — control, freedom, love, truth, change, grief, religion — and the story could have benefitted from trimming that number down to focus on only a few main themes. Having so many at once muddied them all.
3.5 stars! I genuinely enjoyed this story and am looking forward to reading the sequel.
The writing in this book is gorgeous. Really dream-like and engaging; I loved picturing the varied biomes Eppie travelled to, from the dark of the deep, deep sea to the warm waters of the tropics. The concept behind the mermaid families and the lore of their matriarchs was SO compelling. The author isn’t afraid of tragedy and so many characters are complex and shades of grey.
I had difficulty with the pacing of the story — I would have liked a bit more time spent with Eppie as a human, and more time spent on each time Eppie’s loyalties shifted. There were a handful of times where her motivations/loyalties flip flopped two or three times in one or two scenes, and the confusion and struggle to figure out what’s “right” or “true” felt forced. There were many threads at work throughout the book — control, freedom, love, truth, change, grief, religion — and the story could have benefitted from trimming that number down to focus on only a few main themes. Having so many at once muddied them all.
3.5 stars! I genuinely enjoyed this story and am looking forward to reading the sequel.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Endless Blue Beneath is for anyone that feels the call of another life as relentlessly as the rolling tides, feeling the sand under your feet as you dance along the shore… until the sea rips you away, and you find out that as quickly as the still ocean can turn into a dangerous storm, dreams can quickly turn into nightmares.
We meet Eppie, living with her parents and younger brother in a coastal cottage in a small town doing their best to make the most of things, despite their humble change in lifestyle and her papa’s dwindling health. She does what she can to help her family and enjoy her small and quiet life, despite being born without a fraction of the musical talent the rest of her family has, and feeling alienated by the rest of the townspeople for being different since her former childhood friend betrayed her trust after a vulnerable show of affection went unreciprocated. While running an errand on a normal day, she’s shocked by a body on the beach, and when she runs to rescue the young woman caught in the surf, too late she realizes she’s been caught in a trap, and she is seized under the depths by a creature from a fairy tale: a mermaid. But not all fairy tales glimmer and glow in the sunlight, some are as dark as the bottom of the sea, and Eppie is taken to the depths in more ways than one throughout the story.
Okay, so. Normally I’m a bit more formal with these reviews, but I just have to scream about this for a second: OH MY GOODNESS THIS BOOK WAS PHENOMENAL. I read through the entire thing in a day, I could barely put it down except for the few moments that got me genuinely emotional. I cried three times. THREE. I rarely cry when I read books, but something about this one just really hit me. Alright, just had to get that off my chest.
To start, the only true critique I have of this book has nothing to do with the book itself, but with the little bit of marketing that I’ve seen. I feel like I should warn people that while the contents of this book aren’t necessarily dark in the same way that a lot of romantasy books are considered “dark romantasy”, I would still maybe categorize it as such. It’s a bit disturbing in the way that the violence will creep up on you quietly until all of a sudden, the water is blood red and limbs and viscera float around you. The sort of madness that Eppie experiences as the human side of her fights the new mermaid side of her is eerie, especially when those around her act perfectly fine, since their way of life is normal for them. There is a lot of gore and trauma in this story, and I feel like it could use a few trigger warnings for the readers that may need them.
The worldbuilding is well done, especially considering how much of it takes place under the sea, I felt like even when there were subtle differences between different places underwater, they still painted a distinct picture in my mind. I appreciated the variety of places we saw as Eppie and how her view of things changed shifting from her human self to her mermaid self. The fragments we saw of the human world were also interesting, and it was nice to see how that played into how Eppie interacted with other mermaids and the different levels of how everyone tolerated her humanness.
The writing was stunning, the prose was whimsical and alluring one minute, before shredding you with its teeth the next.
The plot surprised me, but I think it was balanced well with Eppie’s own plot and her own inner struggles. It made it feel all the more urgent for her to try to be better, to give herself something to fight for but also something to fight against, since she was so conflicted as to what was right and wrong. There were so many elements to the story, and while some of the time stretching felt unnerving at times, everything flowed together perfectly. Everything wove together so well, it was like the most enchanting and uncanny siren song.
Eppie was such a great character to follow. Throughout all of her emotions, her trauma, and her moments of going maybe a tad bit insane, she had such a clear voice the whole time, even if she couldn’t hear it herself, even when she didn’t have full control of herself. She was so strong, even in her moments of weakness, and I can’t think of many characters that could keep going after all she went through. I hope in the next book, if we see her again, she’s allowed a bit more happiness than she had in this book (please, Shannon, give my girl a break, I beg of you).
Her human family, though we saw little of them, left such a large impression. Even with how little we see them on page, the bits of them we do get are teeming with life, and it made me so emotional as the book went on. Somehow, even without much interaction with them on-page, Shannon managed to make them feel so vivid that I was devastated, DEVASTATED, when the story unfolded the way it did.
Her mermaid family was particularly interesting because of how the dynamics worked, how many of them there were, and how the other colonies responded to each other due to the extenuating circumstances. It felt like a real flawed family, a pretty strange and f*cked up one at times, but the relationships truly felt tangible, even with the members that we only got to see in spare moments here and there.
The romance appeared when I least expected it, but I was pleasantly surprised, especially considering the few characters in the beginning that I thought (worried) would turn into future candidates. The romance itself also surprised me… reading romantasy, you get used to louder, quicker, flashing, daring romance. Eppie and Marie’s relationship, instead, slowly and sweetly blossomed in the quiet moments. It wasn’t any less passionate, there were moments of adventure and defiance and bravery, but their relationship was built in such a tender and real way, and was such a fascinating counterbalance to all the other character interactions and the violence throughout the book, not to mention the religious trauma and the homophobia of the human world.
This was such an achingly sad and hauntingly romantic story, and I desperately need the next one.
Thank you to Shannon K. English, Orbit, and Netgalley for my Digital ARC!
We meet Eppie, living with her parents and younger brother in a coastal cottage in a small town doing their best to make the most of things, despite their humble change in lifestyle and her papa’s dwindling health. She does what she can to help her family and enjoy her small and quiet life, despite being born without a fraction of the musical talent the rest of her family has, and feeling alienated by the rest of the townspeople for being different since her former childhood friend betrayed her trust after a vulnerable show of affection went unreciprocated. While running an errand on a normal day, she’s shocked by a body on the beach, and when she runs to rescue the young woman caught in the surf, too late she realizes she’s been caught in a trap, and she is seized under the depths by a creature from a fairy tale: a mermaid. But not all fairy tales glimmer and glow in the sunlight, some are as dark as the bottom of the sea, and Eppie is taken to the depths in more ways than one throughout the story.
Okay, so. Normally I’m a bit more formal with these reviews, but I just have to scream about this for a second: OH MY GOODNESS THIS BOOK WAS PHENOMENAL. I read through the entire thing in a day, I could barely put it down except for the few moments that got me genuinely emotional. I cried three times. THREE. I rarely cry when I read books, but something about this one just really hit me. Alright, just had to get that off my chest.
To start, the only true critique I have of this book has nothing to do with the book itself, but with the little bit of marketing that I’ve seen. I feel like I should warn people that while the contents of this book aren’t necessarily dark in the same way that a lot of romantasy books are considered “dark romantasy”, I would still maybe categorize it as such. It’s a bit disturbing in the way that the violence will creep up on you quietly until all of a sudden, the water is blood red and limbs and viscera float around you. The sort of madness that Eppie experiences as the human side of her fights the new mermaid side of her is eerie, especially when those around her act perfectly fine, since their way of life is normal for them. There is a lot of gore and trauma in this story, and I feel like it could use a few trigger warnings for the readers that may need them.
The worldbuilding is well done, especially considering how much of it takes place under the sea, I felt like even when there were subtle differences between different places underwater, they still painted a distinct picture in my mind. I appreciated the variety of places we saw as Eppie and how her view of things changed shifting from her human self to her mermaid self. The fragments we saw of the human world were also interesting, and it was nice to see how that played into how Eppie interacted with other mermaids and the different levels of how everyone tolerated her humanness.
The writing was stunning, the prose was whimsical and alluring one minute, before shredding you with its teeth the next.
The plot surprised me, but I think it was balanced well with Eppie’s own plot and her own inner struggles. It made it feel all the more urgent for her to try to be better, to give herself something to fight for but also something to fight against, since she was so conflicted as to what was right and wrong. There were so many elements to the story, and while some of the time stretching felt unnerving at times, everything flowed together perfectly. Everything wove together so well, it was like the most enchanting and uncanny siren song.
Eppie was such a great character to follow. Throughout all of her emotions, her trauma, and her moments of going maybe a tad bit insane, she had such a clear voice the whole time, even if she couldn’t hear it herself, even when she didn’t have full control of herself. She was so strong, even in her moments of weakness, and I can’t think of many characters that could keep going after all she went through. I hope in the next book, if we see her again, she’s allowed a bit more happiness than she had in this book (please, Shannon, give my girl a break, I beg of you).
Her human family, though we saw little of them, left such a large impression. Even with how little we see them on page, the bits of them we do get are teeming with life, and it made me so emotional as the book went on. Somehow, even without much interaction with them on-page, Shannon managed to make them feel so vivid that I was devastated, DEVASTATED, when the story unfolded the way it did.
Her mermaid family was particularly interesting because of how the dynamics worked, how many of them there were, and how the other colonies responded to each other due to the extenuating circumstances. It felt like a real flawed family, a pretty strange and f*cked up one at times, but the relationships truly felt tangible, even with the members that we only got to see in spare moments here and there.
The romance appeared when I least expected it, but I was pleasantly surprised, especially considering the few characters in the beginning that I thought (worried) would turn into future candidates. The romance itself also surprised me… reading romantasy, you get used to louder, quicker, flashing, daring romance. Eppie and Marie’s relationship, instead, slowly and sweetly blossomed in the quiet moments. It wasn’t any less passionate, there were moments of adventure and defiance and bravery, but their relationship was built in such a tender and real way, and was such a fascinating counterbalance to all the other character interactions and the violence throughout the book, not to mention the religious trauma and the homophobia of the human world.
This was such an achingly sad and hauntingly romantic story, and I desperately need the next one.
Thank you to Shannon K. English, Orbit, and Netgalley for my Digital ARC!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the ARC!
My heart has been ripped to shreds, pasted back together with a glue stick, and then torn apart again several times over. The emotions this book evokes are truly incredible. It tackles grief, loss, loneliness, family, internalized homophobia, revenge, and constantly made me question where exactly the border is between right and wrong. With beautiful prose, vividly described landscapes, and an enthralling plot, this novel had me in a trance all the way through. It fell a bit short for me at the end though.
The novel is deliberately unclear about how much time is passing throughout the story, and I don't fault it for that. It contributes to the plot in a huge way and really threw me for a loop. I actually thought it was quite clever the way that the author is vague about the passage of time. It makes a certain scene about halfway through hit extremely hard. A real gut punch. The romantic subplot was intriguing as well. slips into Eppie's life at just the right moment and becomes that stable pillar Eppie craved so desperately since her transformation. The overarching plot is riveting and constantly had me guessing at what was actually going on and where these mysteries would lead.
Up until the last 15% or so, I was banking on rating this five stars. Where I believe the story really stumbled was right at the end, where we see the aftermath of a certain character's betrayal. This character's circumstances, while somewhat sympathetic, just didn't justify their actions for me and did not match up with the character we were shown up until that point. The character who was betrayed was much too quick to forgive for it to feel plausible. It almost felt like she only forgave because she had no other choice (no one left) or out of infatuation rather than love. Like she was, once again, under someone's spell. It made the ending feel rather melancholy. If that was the author's intent, that's fine, but I don't get the feeling that it is. It just soured the relationship between these two characters for me.
I have some other thoughts about the novel, but want to save the specifics until after its release so as not to spoil anything. In spite of the ending falling a bit flat, I don't regret reading this at all. It went to far darker and curiouser places than I ever would have thought when I started, and it's quite the experience!
Story elements:
-body horror
-hiveminds
-sapphic romance
-internally tormented narrator
-plant horror?? iykyk
-mermaids that are definitely not disneyified
-gorgeous oceanic scenery
-character-focused
CW: I'm serious about the body horror and plant horror stuff. This novel gets darker the deeper you go, but it sets the tone with some heavy body horror near the beginning.
My heart has been ripped to shreds, pasted back together with a glue stick, and then torn apart again several times over. The emotions this book evokes are truly incredible. It tackles grief, loss, loneliness, family, internalized homophobia, revenge, and constantly made me question where exactly the border is between right and wrong. With beautiful prose, vividly described landscapes, and an enthralling plot, this novel had me in a trance all the way through. It fell a bit short for me at the end though.
The novel is deliberately unclear about how much time is passing throughout the story, and I don't fault it for that. It contributes to the plot in a huge way and really threw me for a loop. I actually thought it was quite clever the way that the author is vague about the passage of time. It makes a certain scene about halfway through hit extremely hard. A real gut punch. The romantic subplot was intriguing as well. slips into Eppie's life at just the right moment and becomes that stable pillar Eppie craved so desperately since her transformation. The overarching plot is riveting and constantly had me guessing at what was actually going on and where these mysteries would lead.
Up until the last 15% or so, I was banking on rating this five stars. Where I believe the story really stumbled was right at the end, where we see the aftermath of a certain character's betrayal. This character's circumstances, while somewhat sympathetic, just didn't justify their actions for me and did not match up with the character we were shown up until that point. The character who was betrayed was much too quick to forgive for it to feel plausible. It almost felt like she only forgave because she had no other choice (no one left) or out of infatuation rather than love. Like she was, once again, under someone's spell. It made the ending feel rather melancholy. If that was the author's intent, that's fine, but I don't get the feeling that it is. It just soured the relationship between these two characters for me.
I have some other thoughts about the novel, but want to save the specifics until after its release so as not to spoil anything. In spite of the ending falling a bit flat, I don't regret reading this at all. It went to far darker and curiouser places than I ever would have thought when I started, and it's quite the experience!
Story elements:
-body horror
-hiveminds
-sapphic romance
-internally tormented narrator
-plant horror?? iykyk
-mermaids that are definitely not disneyified
-gorgeous oceanic scenery
-character-focused
CW: I'm serious about the body horror and plant horror stuff. This novel gets darker the deeper you go, but it sets the tone with some heavy body horror near the beginning.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you NetGalley and Orbit Books for this magical ARC ✨️✨️✨️🧜♀️
Endless Blue Beneath by Shannon English is a breathtaking, luminous work,the kind of novel that seeps into your bones and stays there long after the final page. English writes with a rare combination of lyricism and precision, conjuring a world that feels at once deeply intimate and vast as the ocean itself.
From its opening lines, the book casts a spell. English has an extraordinary gift for prose; sentences that move like water, now calm and glassy, now surging with unexpected force. The writing never shows off for its own sake; every beautiful passage earns its place, serving character and story with quiet confidence.
At its heart, Endless Blue Beneath is a meditation on what lies hidden — beneath the surface of the sea, beneath the lives we present to the world, beneath grief and longing and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. English navigates these depths with remarkable emotional intelligence, never forcing meaning but allowing it to rise, naturally and inevitably, to the surface.
The characters feel achingly real. Their relationships tender, complicated and sometimes devastating — are rendered with a nuance that rewards close reading. You root for them fiercely. You ache with them. And when the novel delivers its emotional payoffs, they land with the full weight of everything English has so carefully built.
This is also a book that trusts its readers completely. It doesn't over-explain or over-sentimentalize. It simply invites you in and lets the story do its work — and what extraordinary work it is.
Stunning, immersive, and deeply moving, Endless Blue Beneath marks Shannon English as a writer of exceptional talent. A gorgeous achievement, and essential reading. I need the aduio book 😍
Endless Blue Beneath by Shannon English is a breathtaking, luminous work,the kind of novel that seeps into your bones and stays there long after the final page. English writes with a rare combination of lyricism and precision, conjuring a world that feels at once deeply intimate and vast as the ocean itself.
From its opening lines, the book casts a spell. English has an extraordinary gift for prose; sentences that move like water, now calm and glassy, now surging with unexpected force. The writing never shows off for its own sake; every beautiful passage earns its place, serving character and story with quiet confidence.
At its heart, Endless Blue Beneath is a meditation on what lies hidden — beneath the surface of the sea, beneath the lives we present to the world, beneath grief and longing and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. English navigates these depths with remarkable emotional intelligence, never forcing meaning but allowing it to rise, naturally and inevitably, to the surface.
The characters feel achingly real. Their relationships tender, complicated and sometimes devastating — are rendered with a nuance that rewards close reading. You root for them fiercely. You ache with them. And when the novel delivers its emotional payoffs, they land with the full weight of everything English has so carefully built.
This is also a book that trusts its readers completely. It doesn't over-explain or over-sentimentalize. It simply invites you in and lets the story do its work — and what extraordinary work it is.
Stunning, immersive, and deeply moving, Endless Blue Beneath marks Shannon English as a writer of exceptional talent. A gorgeous achievement, and essential reading. I need the aduio book 😍
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews