KIERAN > Recent Status Updates

The tail fin sex scene was weird, but by far not the worst part of the whole thing.

Xander is still her employee, still not being paid, still needing to hide from those hunters.

All of which means it is very inappropriate to be having sex with him. Maybe, if one of those things had changed a little bit, it'd be different, but...

It doesn't help that Xander has, before this moment, been easily pressured by Hannah into doing things he doesn't initially want to.

Like showing off his tail to her friends, (one of whom told his husband about it without Xander's permission), the ensuing "Xander Watch" agreement, and, of course, him continuing to stay in the first place!

NO! The fact that you are giving Xander shelter from the mermaid hunters on top of the employer/employee relationship only makes it LESS okay for you to bang him!

What. The. Fuck.

If the genders were reversed, this would be treated as gross regardless of how "mutual" it seems.

Considering that Hannah and Xander are NOT married, but rather, employee & employer, I wouldn't say the situation is at all similar to the kraken romance novel.

Especially since Xander isn't even being PAID for the repairs he's doing to the B&B. He just gets free room and board.


In this case, keeping things professional is ABSOLUTELY the right call.

Given our heroine's reaction, it's clear that Ms. Duke understands that the behavior of most, if not all of these parties, is incredibly toxic.

On some level, she seems to understand that women acting out on their jealousy is just as bad as men acting out on their jealousy.

So why doesn't she seem to understand that Paulette's behavior is neither funny nor cute? Or that she shouldn't turn it into a running joke?

So, Ms. Duke later describes a very toxic situation between two married couples: Mimi and Tony, and Vinny and Joanie.

Mimi apparently slept with Vinny because Joanie "had her hands all over Tony". There is no word on whether or not Tony consented to this.

Tony later hits Joanie by accident because he meant to punch Vinny out of anger for this.

Hannah even calls Paulette's sister "stalkerish" and thinks said sister is "creeping on" Wills. And yet this toxic behavior is waved away because "family" and because "Paulette has a big heart."

No, Paulette is insecure, gullible, and arguably, pretty toxic towards Wills. Wills seriously needs to dump Paulette and this book needs to stop treating this behavior like a joke. Because it's not.

You would think that most adults, after someone has made MULTIPLE false claims about an SO's infidelity, would learn to ignore anything that someone says.

Not Paulette. For some reason, every time her sister lies about Will (Paulette's boyfriend) being unfaithful, Paulette immediately believes this woman every single time, and has to be guided by her friends back to reality.

And now here is where the book is going from a 4-star to a 3-star.

One, I don't really like how Hannah pressured Xander into showing his fish tail in front of her friends right after promising to keep his secret. Two, I also don't really like how Paulette's (she's the Greek-American friend) unfounded jealousy like a running joke.

I don't like how five minutes after promising to protect Xander, she immediately ropes her friends into the secret.

But hey, at least she doesn't blab it without Xander's permission. She invites them over so Xander can have the agency to do that himself. Hannah has that decency at least.

That is, it has the stink of "man's world".

That, and drawing them so that their breasts and/or butts are the center of attention as much as possible.

And while it's nice to see the lesbian representation, we inexplicably have Diana betraying her girlfriend Mala for a strange guy she met.

Because apparently the super enlightened women of Amazonia, kill injured strangers on the spot if they're male.

And apparently not identifying as female has a scent.

The lack of mythological accuracy is a given with the Wonder Woman franchise, but to add to insult to injury by having Hercules try to make Hippolyta his sex slave-something which DIDN'T HAPPEN in the myths-is another thing.

Also, Grant Morrison's idea of a feminist, all-female paradise seems to mostly translate into a group of athletic women in incredibly fetishy outfits.

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.

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.

The former of whom she has idolized, and the latter she has a massive crush on.

If Sansa were older, savvier, or simply less sheltered, she would never have gotten herself in this situation.

If she hadn't confused fairy tales for reality, she wouldn't be living in such a horror show.

I guess I understand the Sansa hate a little bit now, but again, she's ELEVEN.

And there's something kind of tragic about it all, actually. Sansa is an 11-year-old girl with a head filled with fairy tales, and because of that she ends up unintentionally destroying her family and trapping herself in an abusive situation with two horrible, manipulative people-a.k.a. Cersei and Joffrey.

Oh, Sansa, you truly are a sweet innocent creature. Ned didn't send Ser Loras because Ser Loras is a twink and Ser Gregor is literally called "the Mountain"!

He doesn't want to get Ser Loras killed!

Which also, indirectly, has the benefit of not pissing off the Tyrells by sending Ser Loras to his death.

Oh, screw you, Kingfisher. It's one thing to disparage the FL's species and disrespect her at every turn. But slut-shaming?

That'sow. That's just low.