Status Updates From There's Something Fishy Abo...

I love that Xander's human disguise is so bad. Like, he straight up says "practice" when talking about walking, gets excited over chairs, and states that chicken tastes "just like haddock".

The only thing keeping Xander's cover from being blown is that his host/the female lead doesn't believe in magic.

It was that easy for her to want to spill secrets!? LISTEN LINDA👀 🤌

Xander is really a breath of fresh air after all the toxic alpha-male dudes I've put up with every time I pick up a romance book.

The friend group has not gotten too terribly diverse-aside from a Jewish guy, that is. Apart from Rita, it's mostly a bunch of white people as far as I can see.

We've also got a British guy and a Greek-American woman who acts like someone right out of a soap opera.

Hannah (the heroine) should probably tell her small business association about the people that want to buy the B&B.

Also, I am not sure how, exactly, Xander is supposed to have learned both carpentry and plumbing (he's stated himself that there isn't a lot of wooden things under the sea).

But I'll allow it for the plot.

We now have a Black Best Friend to add to the Gay Best Friend, and that is now the second time I've seen this double whammy of tropes.

(The first time I saw it was in that movie about a journalist romancing the prince of some European country during Christmastime).

Hopefully there are more friends to come and these two aren't just her cheerleaders like in that movie described above.

We're going to need a shelf that's the opposite of the "creepy romance" shelf soon.

There is a wee bit of a gay best friend trope going on here, but I'll let it slide because so far, Xander hasn't been remotely possessive despite literally having had the opportunity to do so when an obnoxious mailman came in the door a few pages ago.

Xander was polite to the mailman and not at all aggressive.

So yeah. I'm very charmed by the romance so far.

Okay, now that the merman has arrived, the story has become very nice and endearing. I like the wordplay and various (relatively harmless) misunderstandings.

If the author wants us to think "sell the derelict B&B and marry the hot merman already!" , well, she's succeeding on that front.

Or at the very least, if she's doing setup for that, it's good setup.

And at least the parents acknowledge that they are jerks.

But now we've come to a new problem; the place is at least partly in disrepair to the point of needing professional assistance. Which they can't afford.

And the heroine's dad didn't tell her. About something she considered her inheritance.

But so far, the romance part seems to be working just fine. We've only seen the male lead once, but no crimes against feminism have been committed by him thus far, which is what counts.

The parents are jerks. It is pretty heavily implied that they guilted the heroine into staying and inheriting a business she didn't want.

But now that she's an adult and ready to inherit, they planned to sell that same business without consulting her, or considering the fact that she might be homeless & jobless if they do that.

This is some Reddit-story worthy behavior right here.