Emily Jane BuehlerCritiques

I read two other books in this series and I didn't like them all that much. I assume this one will also feel like a YA fantasy instead of an Adult romance and that's just not the kind of thing I like to read anymore.

A mermaid goes to land for the first time to try and find the missing king. On her way to beach, she sees a fisherman and becomes obsessed with his beauty. But she’s heard all the terrible rumors about humans and fae...

Like Forest Bride, this feels more like a YA fantasy than an Adult romance. I was particularly thrown when two characters in this pseudo-medieval setting started talking about the patriarchy. I certainly don’t have an issue with books discussing the patriarchy, but it felt awfully anachronistic, and also, both characters were from messed up feudal societies. I don’t think “the patriarchy” is necessarily the starting place to deal with that.

I liked the MM romance. I prefer a little darker aspects even in my fantasy reads but this was cute.

This was cute. The earlier books have been on my TBR, but I have yet to read them, so I know I'm missing some context but I didn't feel particularly lost. I'm sure the world would be richer with the full context of the earlier books. "Woodland Stranger" is sweet, cozy, and low-stakes for the most part, although Burne does have some *stuff* in his past. He definitely has anxiety brought on by bullying. He's a sweetie and a himbo, and I read him as being autistic-coded, although that's definitely my (biased) interpretation. This was a cozy peppers read--cozy with a bit of spice--and it's fairly straightforward. I did find the prose to be pretty simplistic, and I'm not sure why Burne kept feeling like he was running out of time after knowing Gray for, like, a day. The writing is closer to what I'd expect from a middle grade book, but then zesty scenes were happening, so that threw me off at times and is the reason I'm giving it a slightly lower than average-for-me star rating. Still it's a harsh world out there, and sometimes we need a low-stakes fairytale romance between a hot otherworldly gardener who can turn into a giant squirrel and a soft, soup-cooking himbo who lives in the woods. I won this as an ARC from LibraryThing, which has not impacted my honest review of the book.

I wanted to like the book. But it's just problematic in ways I couldn't ignore. A young teenager being seduced by a much older fairie didn't sit well with me. Also there was no romance between the pair, no chemistry.

Wholesome, sweet *and* flirty. I found the world and lore intriguing enough that I'd consider going back and reading earlier books from the series, but the writing style and language fell a bit flat and awkward for me at times, so I don't know if I will.

That said, loved the afterword from Buehler explaining how she found she simply HAD to give Gray his own story. Love how authors find their characters driving the writing.

Again, this was a sweet, relaxing read. The worldbuilding and structure just didn't fully hook me.
I received this book as a part of LT's Early Reviewers.

Adorable and heartwarming in the best of ways! I just love how the author brought two characters together that are relatively unknown and gives them life and love and such deep character development. Burne is a human who greatly struggles with anxiety. Throw in Gray the mischievous fae and you have hilarity and passion. Like I said the character development is huge and it’s great to see a character with anxiety portrayed so well on the page and have such a positive outcome. The story is cute and it’s a quick easy read! If you’re looking for all the warm cozy feelings this is it! I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving a free copy.

I enjoyed The Village Maid a couple of years ago, and I liked this one even better. The Sylvania books are set in a world with fairies and other magical folk alongside people; the two books I've read take place after the largely peaceful overthrow of the monarchy in the first book. This one is a sweet cozy M/M romance where they spend most of the time journeying in the woods. It had very Monk/Robot vibes for me until the last bit, which gets exciting but is all ultimately okay. The romance is smutty as it is sweet, though less than The Village Maid, and it has a more overarching plot. I'd definitely read another one; it's the perfect mind break.

Received for review via LibraryThing Early Reviewers; all opinions are my own.

The idea for this book originated with Gray, who first appears in the previous book of the series. When I finished drafting that book, Gray kept pestering me as if he were after his own story. So I thought about who might be his love interest and immediately remembered Burne. Burne is mentioned in the first book as “shy and anxious, not fit to be a guard.” I was interested in writing a romance with a main character who is nervous about relationships and struggles with anxiety, and Burne seemed to fit.

I worked with an authenticity reader on this novel and he suggested that Burne might be on the asexual spectrum. I’ve since read more about this spectrum and would guess that Burne is demisexual, although I hesitate to label him since I did not specifically write him to fit a label. He experiences panic attacks when he tries to rush into a relationship but does feel attraction. FWIW, I based his symptoms of anxiety on my own experiences, and one beta reader told me she couldn’t read them, so if anxiety is triggering to you, you might want to avoid this story.

Anyway, I hope you love reading Burne and Gray’s story as much as I loved creating it with them. And if you want a copy of Kate’s recipe for Easy Plum Jam, it’s part of the bonus content when you subscribe to my e-news.

I liked the opening scenes and thought this story had the potential to be appealingly fairytale-ish -- but I ended up not liking it much.

I was in bed with a bad cold at the time, and I didn’t try to work out whether this was because the story wasn’t to my taste, or if it simply wasn’t very good. (I suspect the latter, but I wasn’t exactly clear-headed at the time so…)

I enjoyed this story that gave little mermaid vibes. The mermaid falling for a human fisherman, that has her skipping beats. It's a romance tale that starts with tinge of forbidden love and a bucket of patriarchy.

When Muri is sent to the human world to find the merpeople's lost merking she isn't sure what to expect. Her whole life she has been told that humans and fairy's are brutes and do nothing but lie - but she quickly discovers the opposite is true. She befriends two fairies who show her how to blend in and starts to fall for a tall strapping human named Jack. When she does discover the merking she is aghast at the state he is in and the lies that he's told. Does she really need to go back to her people or can she stay here and keep falling for the tall broad chested man? This story is told in pretty simplistic terms, but I liked the overthrowing the patriarchy storyline and the sex scenes. I wonder what story will be next in this series.

I've been struggling to think of what to say, as the story was not what I expected. Anyway, after thinking about it, I decided to just tell it like it is honestly and nicely from my perspective. I was quite hopeful about this book with the description, but it was disappointing. I almost didn't read it at all because in the first chapter or two, as I was reading, I was like, what is this? It's way too close to The Little Mermaid. Initially, I thought this might be too similar to The Little Mermaid, but then it became a completely different story. The completely different story it became was nothing like I expected. Of course, after reading the story I looked at it again, the description, etc, and realized I should have known what the story was going to be like, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Anyway, there was too much intimate bedroom action on the page through a lot of the book and I wondered at some point if there was much of a story or just a bunch of making out and bedroom scenes. It ended up showing a story, but I felt like it was lacking a bit and I'm not the kind of person who likes all that explicit detail of bedroom action on the page so I'm not the right audience for this book and perhaps someone else might enjoy it more than me, but I won't be reading this author's books again because they're not for me. Thanks to LibraryThing and Jane Buehler for sending me a copy of this book and letting me read and review it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I've been struggling to think of what to say, as the story was not what I expected. Anyway, after thinking about it, I decided to just tell it like it is honestly and nicely from my perspective. I was quite hopeful about this book with the description, but it was disappointing. I almost didn't read it at all because in the first chapter or two, as I was reading, I was like, what is this? It's way too close to The Little Mermaid. Initially, I thought this might be too similar to The Little Mermaid, but then it became a completely different story. The completely different story it became was nothing like I expected. Of course, after reading the story I looked at it again, the description, etc, and realized I should have known what the story was going to be like, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Anyway, there was too much intimate bedroom action on the page through a lot of the book and I wondered at some point if there was much of a story or just a bunch of making out and bedroom scenes. It ended up showing a story, but I felt like it was lacking a bit and I'm not the kind of person who likes all that explicit detail of bedroom action on the page so I'm not the right audience for this book and perhaps someone else might enjoy it more than me, but I won't be reading this author's books again because they're not for me. Thanks to LibraryThing and Jane Buehler for sending me a copy of this book and letting me read and review it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

What a cute addition to the Sylvania series. Overall I think this story might be my favorite of the three so far. That being said the end action scenes did feel a little clunky and not as well written as the cute romance parts. But the romance scenes (including the spicy ones) were where the book shined. I want to find my own Jack!

I really enjoyed it as a quick easy read that brought me to a fun fantasy world. Looking forward to the next in the series.

loved the storyline, well-written, thoroughly enjoyed

It's about a young mermaid who is on a mission to find the missing merking, but gets tangled in a fisherman’s net and looses her magic shell (it lets her communicate with a friend back in the mermaid kingdom). Determined to get it back, she goes to the island village where the fisherman must live, and starts to find out that everything she’d been told about humans was a lie. At first she’s afraid to be among them, confused by their customs and baffled by their need for clothing. She’s even more frightened to find that there are fairies among them, who recognize her for what she is (the mermaids’ tails turn to legs when they dry, so they can appear human for a while). Within just a day she’s begun to loose her fear and made a few friends. Then she falls in love with a handsome fisherman (who doesn’t know she’s a mermaid), finds the merking- who isn’t at all the fearsome proud ruler she expected to encounter- and starts to realize that the society she grew up in is full of oppression and brutality. She only recognizes this when she starts to see how kind and understanding the humans can be, and how they work together.

Of course a huge part of this story is the romance- so even though I was surprised that on her first day of knowing somebody (one of the fairies), the mermaid was discussing “human courtship rituals” and not long after she was having her first kiss with the hunky fisherman, and that led to more. But in between the steamy scenes (which thankfully didn’t have too much profuse flowery language or ridiculous euphemisms for things) there’s a strong storyline about the mermaid learning to stand up for herself, confronting the desposed merking, finding out some secrets, and returning to her kingdom to see if she can instigate some changes. Which comes with a hefty dose of danger she has to face alongside her new lover. And there’s also a serious bump in their relationship when he finds out her true identity- the shock, fear (humans have misconceptions about merfolk too) and sense of betrayal. However it all turns out well in the end. It was kind of sweet, although the constant refrain of mermaids getting manhandled by the mermen, and her having to learn to fight, and what would happen with the friction over the sea kingdom throne, and how would they set up the new merfolk society, got a bit tiresome. I did really like how some botany and understanding of weather patterns (which the fisherman figured out for himself) were woven into the story. But the writing style is not really to my taste- it was just a bit too much told, not shown. That all said, it was a nice story and for someone who enjoys this kind of genre already, I’m sure this book is a good read. It’s very much a romance, and very much about women finding equality.

This book was received as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers, but that in no way affects my opinion of this book. Thanks to LibraryThing and Jane Buehler for the ARC!

It took me a while to figure out how I felt about this book - I knew that I liked it, but something was holding me back from loving it. Ultimately, I think it's because it felt like 2 separate stories in some ways. The first half of the book was about Muri discovering the world above and getting to know various people (humans and fairies.) The second half focused on overthrowing the patriarchal merperson government. The first half? I really enjoyed it. The second half? I only kind-of liked. I think the "action scenes" were a little clunky in parts and maybe just needed a bit of finesse to fit it in more seamlessly with the rest of the plot.

I know this is "a fairy tale with benefits" but I actually think it might have been just fine without the "benefits." Most of the book felt more like it was written as a "clean romance" and then when the sex scenes appeared, they were a little jarring and took me out of the story. Maybe the other books in this series do a better job at fitting those in? I'll have to read those to find out, I suppose...

All told, I liked the concept of the book and the worldbuilding was interesting (although I like it a little more "show" and less "tell" personally.) I like the idea of a cozy fantasy romance though, and for a self-published author, I think this was a good escapist book. After all, who doesn't love a good mermaid story?

I'm not really a true Romance reader. I'm more a Women's Lit reader but I requested this LTER offering because I like mermaid stories. So that will inform my perspective in giving this review, just know I'm not the intended audience. The love scenes were so highly detailed and blow-by-blow that the other scenes were paltry by comparison. I understand this is probably true to form for that genre and so I don't really count it as a negative but I will say that I found that change in detail from one scene to the other jarring and it took me out of the story.
Some of the writing got on my nerves. For example "The merpeople had stopped visiting the land villages when she was a merchild. But she had learned about them from other merpeople. How was she ever going to survive among them long enough to complete her mission - to find the missing merking?" People do not talk or think that way. Ridiculous. Also, the much-mentioned Merman Patriarchy got on my nerves. I read fiction to escape reality, I don't need politics brought into my fairy tales, thank you very much.
What did I like about it? I liked the physicality of a merperson gaining their legs and what happens if they are out of the water for too long. I liked the interaction of the fairies and the mermaids. I liked the Happily Ever After.
Can't say I recommend it but I enjoyed the opportunity to read it.

The Ocean Girl was a fun and lighthearted fantasy romance read, following a young mermaid as she discovers that there is so much more to the world than the small corner of the ocean that she grew up in. The story itself was intriguing, albeit predictable. The author markets it as a "cozy fantasy", but please read trigger warnings! Some of the topic eluded to make it feel a little less cozy to me. Overall it was a great read, and i was excited to find out at the end that this was part of small collection centered around the same area and people. very excited to see the other stories!

Aka how the mermaids overthrew the patriarchy.

Muri is on a mission to retrieve the missing merking. If he is away from the sea too long, he forfeits his title, and although he hasn’t been a great king, several of the mermaids think the other candidates will only be worse. Muri has never interacted with humans or fairies before, and from her first moment on land, everything she’s heard about these other peoples is challenged. Soon, she finds herself wondering if she really has to return to the underwater city - the fairies are kind, she’s enjoying “dates” with a cute fisherman (courtship is a new concept), and while the merking is easy to find, the secrets he spills raise further questions in Muri about whether the merpeople society is truly looking out for the mermaids’ best interests. Can she choose a new life, or will she always be an ocean girl?

This was up and down for me. Muri and Jack fall hard and fast for each other, and their initial romance is sweet. I enjoyed the tentative flirting and the gaggle of older women rooting for the pair. The spicy parts, however, weren’t for me. Another big part of the story relates to Muri’s isolated upbringing and the mermaids’ general ignorance of humans. Coming into town, she’s a fish out of water, jumping at the sight of fairies, questioning why humans are so enamored with clothing, learning new words and concepts like “dating” and “a patriarchy.” Her wonder and honest inquisitiveness was generally endearing, but as things progressed, it felt less like a character quirk and more like a device to communicate themes (“Hi fellow mermaids, guess what crazy things I learned on the surface, like “dating” and “patriarchy”). But if you don’t mind things being a bit on the nose, then hey, this could be a fun adult/new adult read.

Can be read as a standalone (I’ve only read book 2), but there are strong spoilers for the plot of book 1.

**Thanks to LibraryThing for the ARC**

A spicy little mermaid read! It really enjoyed this. I would be down for more adult Disney stories!
The story: Muri is tasked with finding King Strombidae on land as she is begrudgingly chosen to be his 10th wife. If she is unable to find him in time, the merkingdom will be thrown into turmoil.
While on land, Muri befriends two kind fairies (Gray and Hyacinth) and a handsome human named Jack. The more Muri spends on land, the more she realizes the stories she's been told don't up to the truth and there is a dark history lurking in her home.
I feel like the story was split into two parts: the first being the romance between Muri and Jack on land and the second being the action to save the merkingdom. For the first part, I adored the story. Muri's experience of discovering the human world while falling in love with Jack was magical. I absolutely adored their interactions and their love story felt very authentic. And Jack was an absolute sweetheart. The action part of the story fell a bit flat for me. I enjoyed reading the female empowerment as the mermaids fought back against the old system, but it seemed everything happened so quickly. I would have appreciated more focus on these bad-ass ladies!
Overall, I can't wait to read more from this author. I would absolutely love the next story being on Gray or Hyacinth.½

If this is a cozy fantasy romance then this is a new favorite genre! This book is part of a series but can still be read as a standalone. Muri is a mermaid on a mission to find the missing Merking on land in the human world. Muri is then plunged into a world that is unexpected and much less hostile than she was lead to believe. When she meets Jake she is fascinated and her feelings only grow from there. Jake is kind, understanding and super hunky. Muri and Jake have great chemistry right away and the spice level is fairly hot (yet a somewhat slow burn). The plot is different from the Little Mermaid and original. I love the world building and the fantasy elements. The romance is sweet and spicy and Muri is a strong female character. This was a very quick yet exciting read. There were lots of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming. A really great read. I will definitely read more in the series! I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving a free copy.

I thought this book was just as described: a cozy, fantasy romance! This is my first book from this author, but I am curious to check out the other books in this series. There were a few stylistic choices with which I personally did not mesh, but it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the book. It was a nice, cozy read for a dreary weekend!

Thank you for the ARC of this book.
Muri, a mermaid, has to find King Strombidae on land or else the throne will be forfeited and someone else will take over the merkingdom. Why does she have to find him? Because she's to be his 10th wife.
I did not realize this book was part of a series. This is the 3rd book in the Sylvania series. But you don't necessarily have to have read those to be able to read this one. There was a few characters who, I assume, were part of the other books since they were named a lot and seemed to be known by everyone in the book.
I, personally, would have not finished this book if it wasn't for receiving it to review. The style of writing wasn't for me. It was very hard to get into this story. The plot seemed to go off in different directions. And if any kind of drama popped up, it was all quickly handled within sentences. It just felt wrong to me. The ending also felt very rushed and thrown together. But I did like the character of Gray and I see that his story is coming next in the series. I'd possibly check that out to make sure he gets his HEA.½