The Scent of Salt & Sand

The Escaped #2.5

by Kristin Cast, P.C. Cast

The co-authors of the bestselling House of Night series reunite with a haunting, romantic, suspense-filled, original novella in The Escaped series.

Eons ago, Sirens were exiled from the Mortal Realm, held captive in a cove at the edge of Tartarus. They are beautiful beyond imagination, but deadly beyond compare. And they have set their sights on breaking free.

They risk everything to sneak out of Tartarus and ascend to the forbidden Mortal Realm with one mission—mate with human men to dilute their cursed bloodline and form a new race of Sirens, free from their prison in the Underworld. But for a Siren to become pregnant, she must revert to her True Form, a horrifying sight that drives men to madness, and makes killing them a mercy. In modern San Francisco, the Sirens blend in; each woman has a singular goal, and each man she meets is her prey…

Melody Seirina has always been different. She doesn’t believe that she’ll be able to bring herself to take a human life, even when the fate of her people rests on her willingness to do so. She’s even more convinced when she meets Dean, a charming cop who sees a loving future with her. Their romance threatens two worlds, the one the Sirens fled from, and the one that will destroy them if they can’t complete their mission as soon as possible. Melody will have to make a decision—risk the future of her people or follow her heart.

Praise for Amber Smoke, Book One of The Escaped

"With a unique twist on Greek mythology and heart-stopping action, Amber Smokekeeps you riveted to the very last page." —Jennifer L. Armentrout, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

"In Amber Smoke, Cast's wit, creativity and talent shine! I turned the pages at lightning speed, ready for more! What a tasty treat!" —Gena Showalter, New York Times and USA TodayBestselling Author

Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Novella, Young Adult, Mythology, Romance

142 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 3, 2016

About the author

Kristin is a #1 NYT and #1 USA Today bestselling author with over 30 million books in print.

She is proudly neurodivergent (ASD + OCD) and deeply consumed by character-driven chaos, emotionally vulnerable heroes, and smart, sexy heroines who always get the last word and the hot guy. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her devouring thriller, horror, and romance novels, practicing witchcraft, and being the exact kind of unhinged that makes group chats worth opening.

Reviews

[Felicia [Felicia's Ink(t)] · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book through NetGalley as a granted wish by the publisher Diversion Books. I also got it in exchange for an honest review. I’m thanking NetGalley and Diversion Books for granting me the wish and providing me with the copy of this book.

""Women," he huffed. "It's like they're a completely different species.""

This book did not feel like a novella. It felt like a book!!

This story was very captivating. A species fighting for their 'freedom' or 'curse'. A girl not wanting to participate in the family tradition, with human emotions. An exciting love story makes a thrilling novella.

I'm very happy to see Kristin and P.C. working together again, they make such a good team. Go Team Cast!! Their writing is intriguing and exciting to read. The story building was done very well, it captivated me multiple times.

I love how they portray the life of a siren. It's not easy to write for a species when there is a lot of information on them throughout history. One can easily portray them just a tad off and people could be offended. From what I know about sirens, Team Cast has written them in a very well!! But they also gave their own twist to the species and so this story was born.

This story is about a siren girl who doesn't feel like the others. She has orders to mate with a willing man. An order to break the curse that keeps them in Tartarus. While her cousins do the job, Melody feels like an outcast. She can't bring herself to sacrifice Dean. Yes, a siren with emotions!! The story continues with funny dialogue, steamy scenes and a race to keep her cousins from coming after Dean.

Will she succeed in keeping him save? Will she have the life she wants or will she be forced into the family tradition?



If you liked the first two books in The Escaped series, or you like the writing of either or both of these amazing women, this is a MUST READ!! I'm giving the full five quills to this novella and I surely can't wait for the next installment to be released. I'm hoping I will be as lucky with getting an ARC as I am with this novella and Moon Chosen, the first book in Tales of a New World series by P.C. Cast [review coming soon!!]

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[Artemiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, the blurb gives you wrong impression of what to expect, or at least I read different story. The story about Sirens who are sent to Mortal world, to find ways to escape Hera's curse.

Meoldy is one of the Sirens who are sent to Mortal world this time, and her mission is to mate with a human man, then eat him and become pregnant, so she could dilute their blood and maybe break the curse that way. When they were swimming to a surface she meet an specter, that asks for her help. Mel is different than the others, she does not want to go to Mortal realm, she does not want to kill and she does not want to eat men, but she must.

Dean is San Francisco's police officer, young, strong male, who goes to bay to count the crazy swimmers, hoping to keep them from drowning that way. One morning he sees an redhead twitching in a water, so he jumps in, even if he does not like the water. But she does not need help and she is surprised, that somebody thought her drowning, since she was just talking to sea lion and was laughing at his joke.

Well, when Sirens come to land, they start to age really rapidly, so their time to find a man is limited. Mel is not happy about her mission, but when Dean fins her later that day in Sirens Tour office, she is forced to go on a date with him.

Yes, it's nice to go to a date, to kiss good night, to recieve flowers, but Melodie's filings for Dean grow stronger day by day and also Deans feelings for her, but she can not show him her real face. When she finally is forced to do, the end is not what she was hoping for.

I guess we will see Melody in some other The Escaped story since she is somehow connected to James. Nice story.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has been the most enjoyable story in the series. I don't know if that's because it's about completely different characters or some other reason, but I would've like a full story about these characters.

I think the woman who died at the time Melody arrived might have been connected to the detective in the other two books. Her name is the same and she died the same way. I wonder if book 3 would've connected this novella to the full series?

[Trudy · Rating 5 out of 5]

*** I received an ARC copy of this novella from NetGalley. ***

The world that Kristin has created in her Escaped series is expanded in this unique novella. Here she shows us of the Sirens and their monstrous curse. Reading about their back ground and their life mission I wondered how I would even care about their story or come to root for the happiness of one of their kind but Kristin teaches you that what you are does not determine who you are or what your heart truly holds with Melody. She is a naïve Siren on her first journey to the mortal realm where her mission is to breed and feed but Melody is not like other Sirens and when she meets a true human hero her world is changed forever.

I enjoyed this novella so much and hope that in the future we will be able to read the rest of Melody's story!

[Sandra "Jeanz"]

sadly it seems this novella is set further on in the series than I thought so it's a Did Not Finish for me. I will be two ng a closer look at the first two novels, though I did find the language and writing style too simplistic for my taste, and it's not because this is a teen aimed book as I have read other teen aimed fiction and thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Talia C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are no words !!

I am a huge fan of the Cast crew. And I am honestly so sad that this doesn’t go any further !!

Like always, Cast wrote this novella so graciously that while you are reading, you feel like the main character. Your sad when she is sad, happy when she is happy, etc etc. I fell in love with both Melody and Dean in this short book.

Please write more for this !!

[KD Grainger-Peixoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recieved this novella from the publisher via Net Galley, in exchange for an honest review.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read. The tone of the piece reminded me of an Alex Flinn or Jackson Pearce fairytale retelling. Just with a unique take on the Siren, from Greek Mythology.

This is a quick read, however, Cast manages to pack a lot in less than 100 pages. There is family drama, unfolding mythology, conflicts of sisterhood, and even a touch of diversity by including a LGBTQ character.

The story might have had more impact if the author had expanded on how the Sirens were taught about men. There is an amusing reference to "those college boy romantic movies", which could have added to the satire Cast created by comparing the Human Realm and Tartarus.

One last note. I have not read the Escaped and House of Night series. This was my first experience reading Cast's work and I am intrigued enough to be curious about the original series.

I recommend this read for those who want to try Cast's writing style without the commitment of a full novel. Also, for those interested in a quick read with a suprising amount of depth.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to come soon!

I must say that I did enjoy this Novella.

Read my review here: http://booktasticnerd.blogspot.com/20...

[Jessica (a GREAT read) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going into Kristin Cast and P.C. Cast's The Scent of Salt & Sand, I knew it wouldn't clear things up about the series ending and I expected to be heartbroken by that, what I was not expecting was to experience a different kind of heartbreak because omigosh this ending hurt! Lol.

How to write a review for a short story that was apart of a novella series, it's a mini-mini review I guess! Lol. While this takes place in the same world with Tartarus and the mortal realm, we actually don't see any of our regulars. This is new territory and we get to meet the sirens. A brief history lesson was that the sirens had caused too many deaths and while Hera didn't want them killed for simply existing and being their natural selves, she had the Furies create an oasis for them, a prison within Tartarus, but separated.

The sirens were given a glided cove for their prison, but they would not remain imprisoned for long as they found a way to get to the mortal realm and...procreate. They learned they could be impregnated by mortal men and have a new breed of sirens as their progeny. They of course, killed the man after the deed, for they were still sirens. Now, every year, they send select their sirens to go to earth and do their best to get pregnant and kill as many men as possible. This is the year that Melody is selected and it fills her with dread as she's not your typical siren.

It's when she's resurfacing the ocean in the mortal realm that she meets Dean, a police officer on the night shift who thought she was a damsel in distress and needed saving as it looked to him that she might have been drowning. And soon a sweet romance begins to start between these two. Dean has always been looking for the right woman, and Melody has been more or less avoiding romance as her kind doesn't really get to have that in their lives.

Melody is dealing with the pressure of her siren family urging her to do the deed with Dean and kill him and move on. Their time on land is limited, because for unknown reasons the sirens start to age while on earth whereas in their prison, they are ageless. Strange things keep happening to Melody that she can't quite explain and I kept thinking something was up with that as I was pulling in other thoughts and thinking how they were not adding up.

Well as far as explanations go, I got one I was not expecting at all! It was eye-opening to say the least! Another thing I was not expecting was that ending! Omigosh, what was that?! I had hoped for closure with this one, closure for the series at large or at the very least closure for this story and I got neither! Lol. I was not expecting that ending and then the epilogue only made things more confounding! It made me wonder if the sirens would have been apart of the third novella we never got or if there would have been another short story with them as things just did not feel 100% complete. It was a "good enough" ending in some respects, but I guess it's the knowledge that we should've had more with the series at large that makes me wonder if there would've been more to this little story too!

So yes, I ended up torturing myself and my psyche with this series. I fully expected it, but as I said, I am glutton for punishment at times. I can only hope I will get a chance to talk Kristin's ear off later this month to get some much needed closure! Keeping my fingers crossed!

But all in all, this was a delightful and entertaining story! I enjoyed it parallelism to the OG fairytale, The Little Mermaid. While I wouldn't call it a retelling per se, there are definitely common trends to it that made it appealing! I just wish there was more!


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars

[Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for Reddit Fantasy's 2023 Bingo Square Novellas. This book qualifies for hard mode as it is by Diversion Books, and thus NOT published by Tordotcom Publishing. Using this in the food themed bingo card as it has Salt in the title.

In the first 2 books of Kristin Cast and PC Cast's The Escaped Universe, the walls that separate Tartarus from the mortal realm have been breached, releasing every variety of evil into the world. This novella is side story 2.5, focusing on Sirens whose storied history starts with their incredible charm and beauty rendering them all but nigh irresistible to men.


Their appearance hides a deadly secret - their monstrous nature is revealed once the reproductive urges take over, which led to quite a backlash.


Hunted, they chose to survive in exile in Tartarus, but the time is ripe for them to reclaim their heritage. The chosen ones escape to a base in San Fransisco, hiding in plain sight in human form, with a mission - find a mate, charm him, get pregnant, then KILL the him leaving no living witnesses, thus keeping their existence secret.


When Melody meets Dean, a policeman, she believes her goal will soon be achieved, but as they go on dates she starts getting very jealous and possessive, which basically means Dean isn't going to soon get eaten by one of her "cousins."


We all know what this means, it's the dreaded "L for Love" when Cupid's arrow strikes! This doesn't just complicate things, it might destroy them both since the Siren's goals are not really conducive to Dean staying alive.


Narrator Caitlin Davies' voice really suits this novella which reads like a classic urban fantasy paranormal romance with suspense. I enjoyed Dean's character, he came across as very real and a nice guy, however I didn't quite buy Melody falling in love as fast as she did, I felt like the novella needed a little more length to develop her (and her feelings), whereas with Dean it was very clearly a case of love at first sight, physical attraction and all when he sees a beautiful blonde struggling in the waves.


The ending felt abrupt, but it does give this story a chance to tie into the third and final book of the trilogy, so I'm excited to be reading the conclusion to this soon.

[Amanda P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always loved P.C. and Kristin Cast. They are a dynamic duo like no other and it helps they are mother and daughter! This series is like no other! Gods, Goddesses and Sirens, Oh my! But this novella I think is going to tell us how everything started and everything got all out of wack. But because the team Cast is unpredictable, so you never know!

But this story is about Mel the Siren who knows she is different from all of her sisters. The sirens had been banned to Tartarus, but being clever, they found a way out. Now they want to mate(kill) and reproduce to eventually be free of their prison. When Melanie goes to the Mortal Realm, she really finds out she isn't like the others. If you know anything about Sirens, they can lure men in with their voice, seduce and kill them. Well Melanie can't do that. For some reason, she is hearing voices, and she even meets a man in the water. Dean a police officer. And Melanie tries to keep herself away from him, In this story can Melanie go through with killing Dean knowing she is different? P.C. and Kristin Cast wrote a great novella about Melanie the Siren who happens to be different. And in the face of her diversities can she protect the guy she is falling for and what will happen if he finds out what she truly is? To find out read this amazing novella by P.C. and Kristin Cast but you will definitely want to continue on in this series! This Team Cast is full of surprises!

[Kitsch Haus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I downloaded this from my library’s digital loans just as something quick to listen to as I did something around the house.

I thought it sounded kinda cool. Sirens are cool. Them having to come to Earth and mate with human males and then eat them sounded cool.

It was not cool. It was pretty awful.

This is nothing more than a very bland, insta-love mess with a total weenie female protagonist and your typical male love interest written by someone that I think has actually never had an interaction with a human man before. I would explain more, but I’m bored at the thought of even having to do that.

Would not recommend.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ends on a cliffhanger!
The world building was so interesting and well written but this isn’t a full story and there are too many unanswered questions. I’m not sure if there will be a part two. This is really just the beginning of a story.

I wish it was required for books to label when they end on a cliffhanger. I prefer to wait until the story is finished to read it.

This is a clean romance, for anyone who was wondering.

This book is listed twice for some reason, both on Goodreads and in the Libby app.

[Crystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

much more enjoyable then the other escaped novels... but doesnt include anything that ties it to the first two other then the fact that tartarus/ underworld was spoken about as thats where the being came from...

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Ms. Cast and everything she writes...her writing style, level of detail, and creativity are perfect:-) While a little disappointed that this is only a novella, it was amazing!

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahh soo good!! Hope we will see more of Melody's story soon!! 😍

[Kayla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hated the ending.

[Sosa Coleone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Your always in the water and eat anything from a the sea what you expect roses?

[Alexandria Blaelock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so interested in the story, and I’m annoyed this turned out not to be a complete story. The hero dies, the heroine absconds, and the villain runs amok. Nothing is tied up neatly.

[Carmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book

[Holly Marks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my God this is such a good book and it left it open at the end for the third book in the series and I can't wait to try to read that That's if I can ever find it

[Ld Dupes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this take on sirens. Hope to see them again in further stories. Read without rest of series and now going back to read that !

[Sarah Dawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really good, with an awful and confusing ending... I cannot believe that dean dies at the end, I am so frustrated with this ending!!!

[Holly Towe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok, definitely need to read the others in this series to understand more

[Summer Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of P.C.Cast and Kristin Cast. My goal is to read all their published work, even small novellas like this one.It took me a while to read this one because it was hard to find & only available via ebooks. With my new Kindle and Audible, I was able to finally read it! If you like sirens, the trope of Forbidden Love and books set in San Francisco, this one is for you! It was short and cute!

[Piph17 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Besides some violence, this felt like a book for Middle School aged children. Too short, and a thin plot.
****************
I'll come back and give it a second star, ONLY because i didn't realize it was a 0.5 installment. That explains the brevity, but not the other issues.

[Latasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the book, the ending was really said. I like how connected the James and Mel to the story line. I can't wait to read book 3.

[Carla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked the background to the sirens' existence and the story between Melody and Dean is amazing and sweet and just overall quite lovely to read about. Overall I really liked all the aspects of the story. The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is that throughout the whole novella all I could think was: 'okay but how does it relate to the rest of the Escaped Series except for the Tartarus part? Still confused as to why this was written as a novella for this series and not a standalone short story, but maybe it'll all make sense by book 3

[Payton (Payton's Book Thoughts) · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as it pains me to do this officially, I feel like this novella only deserves 3 stars. Not that it was a bad read. It was very, very interesting. But when you think about it in the perspective of being #2.5 in a series, you’d think that it would have something to do with what’s going on in the other 2 books or provide a little more information. This did none of that.

I was hoping to get my fill of the escaped series to hold me over until the third book comes out. This did not do that. Unfortunately.

That being said, it was different than I was expecting because it was literally a completely separate story. Which is fine I was just under a different impression I guess. And expectations can definitely sway your opinion.

The book was still good and a quick, easy read. Which is exactly what I needed at the time. The ending was like the worst possible scenario. Trying to avoid something and it happens anyways. So that was kind of a let down.

The most disappointing thing though, in my opinion, is that it didn’t seem like there was much of a point to the novella. It ended and I was just kind of like ok…

Please excuse the language, but really.

I want to point on the positives here because it really was a good book. Where the title comes from is beautiful. The cover is beautiful. The writing is beautiful. I guess I just wanted something more. The best words I can find for it. I’m not exactly sure what that MORE would have been, but I needed that to feel better about the novella.

[Abi Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

So after reading Scarlet Rain (and Amber Smoke), I tweeted about when the next Escaped book would be out and Kristin Cast replied saying about The Scent of Salt and Sand. I pretty much counted down the days to get my hands on it, I knew I would be in Canada when it came out, so I had a good chance of actually buying it in a shop. However, the day it came out I went into a bookshop in Halifax, no luck, and I tried in Toronto's Eaton Centre, no luck. So I decided the only thing to do was to order it on Amazon, unfortunately it was out of stock but I could order it for it to be dispatched the next time they had stock. A month after release day, I had an email to say it would be delivered on December 3rd, but the next day I got a text from my friend saying it was delivered! I was so happy to finally have it, and I may have read it within 14 hours (including work and sleep). I did not know anything about The Scent of Salt and Sand, except that it was part of The Escaped series. I do not feel that you need to have read Amber Smoke and Scarlet Rain, purely because there is only a little bit of linkage which is explained enough in The Scent of Salt and Sand.

Read more at: http://abisbookreviews.com/2016/11/16...