Stephanie’s Reviews > The Merman Boxset: Books 1-5 > Status Update

Quite the showdown!
This society sure seems a device to tie Aratare's series together.
I keep waiting for the shoe to drop and Gabriel to no longer (be able to) talk aloud. Why would Casillus' gills disappear on land too when he's wholly Mer?

The stand-off is getting ever closer! I'm curious to see how this will play out, who will "win": Johnson, or Cthulhu. And what the cost will be to Gabriel and the people he cares about...

Book 4 was 20%, so 30% to book 5 - love the imagery of Emralis, still a little annoyed at the pushing in of a progressively more explicit sex scene in each book (makes it less...natural feeling, I guess). Gabriel's advancing in leaps and bounds as a Mer, and I am SO curious to see how this stuff with the monster is going to play out.
Also, shout out to Corey, he's awesome! Love his attitude, his support, his color.

3 things:
1-Still no indication that Gabriel's actually getting webbing between his fingers.
2-Seems kind of arbitrary making Johnson fit into a villain/antagonist profile. Just Gabriel's growth/coming to terms seems enough friction in the story.
3-How can gills just appearing - without seeming to actually function - make Gabriel feel so much better? I'm having to suspend some disbelief here... 2/15

You're really working THAT into this mythology? I was happy thinking it was just a gigantic kraken...not sure how I feel about this rather...specific... insertion. Also, there's no biological reason so far that that would be a thing for Mer men, clearly just to make things easier for this m/m romance. I'm also starting to see that each component book must have at least 1 sex scene, even when not really necessary 2/15

TMI too soon in book 1 - but the world itself has me interested. And since I can read it through KU, time to read more and see if it still goes too much tmi, or if the story/plot/characters really take over to keep me reading. (really this is about where I was on 2/14/2020)