Title: Tangled Tides
Author: Karen Amanda Hooper
Series: Sea Monsters Saga

- Really didn't feel any chemistry between any of the characters (esp Treygan and Yara). It felt rushed and I don't get why she really liked him. Not even liked, she was ready to jump in and dash her existence to pieces for him. It just wasn't there for me. There was no growth.
- Too many tropes for me. Girls find out she is something special after being average. One "good" guy and one "bad" guy. Everyone fawning over her. Everyone wanting to protect her. No. Just no.
- Yara really just wasn't that likable. I didn't feel a darn thing for her.
- The coloring coding came off a bit juvenile.

- She did care about her uncle Lloyd and took care of him as best she could.
- She sacrificed a lot (but got quite a bit out of the deal as well).
- The overall plot of their world being shut off to them was pretty unique.

Pace really needs to pick up some. All the characters are annoying me right now.

Kelsey and Keekee are seventeen-year-old twin girls in the city of Elura in the nation of Equatia. This is the fourth city that they've lived in, banned from the first three by Keekee's Virtual Reality Addition. If she is caught a fourth time, they will be forced to live in the Central city, the hub of all government activity, where all citizens are forced to work for the government. Forever.

Kelsey is the good-girl, shunning virtual reality for the comfort of books instead. But our story starts when Kelsey meets Xander and is handed a Tarot card, the first step into the world of the Arcana. Within the Arcana is the hope of breaking free of Equatia before it is destroyed, to live free elsewhere in the world.

I'm really conflicted about Virtual Arcana. On one hand, the concept of the personification of the Arcana, people actually being the suits, and the Minor and Major Arcana, is interesting and so-far done well. Unfortunately, the story overall loses me in the dreams within dreams within dreams - never knowing if something that is going on is real or virtual reality. Is the real life "real" or is only the Arcana real? Just when something bad seems to happen, Kelsey can close her eyes and go back to sleep and it's different when she wakes up.. and this happens more than once in the first set of episodes. Episode Three, the last episode of the set, entering more into the subterfuge against the government, but the confusing with never knowing what is real and isn't continues throughout.

My biggest issue is the fact that Episode 2 has way too many similarities to The Matrix and causes the story to lose it's individual voice. You have Kelsey (aka Neo), who is contacted by the person she views as the leader of the Arcana (Xander, aka Morpheus), because he sees something special in her. She is taken to the High Priestess (aka The Oracle), who reads her cards and gives her a cryptic fortune, including telling her that "Sometimes one must die before they can truly live." Kelsey is even taken to a chasm where Xander tries to convince her to trust her and jump, letting her know that if she truly believes and if she seeks reality within herself, she wouldn't fall... Xander essentially gives her the choice between the red pill and the blue pill, but offering her the chance to enter the Arcana - or not - but telling her that only within the Arcana she will be free.

I honestly expected a reference to humans being used as batteries by the end of the Episode.

While there is a lot of promise in this collection, the story was lost for me in Episode 2 and I wasn't able to recover enough interest to keep reading past this set. If you don't mind the Matrix similarities and not really knowing what is real and isn't, you may love this book - it just wasn't for me.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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52% in, and I'm not entirely thrilled with this book. Virtual Arcana is a serial story, with Episodes 0-3 included in this collection. I've finished Episodes 0 & 1, and I'm currently reading 2.

Unfortunately, this story pulls from too many other stories and themes to be unique in itself... one in particular.

The problem really starts after Kelsey meets Xander. She somehow ends up in a world where not everything is real, time and places seem to shift, and Xander can help her override the government tracking devices to be "free" of control by altering her control band to link directly to him. When Xander offers her the red and blue pills... I mean, the choice of following the Virtual Arcana... he doesn't actually tell her what is going on until AFTER she gets involved. The next thing you know, she's stepping through doors into places that shouldn't exist and he's telling her that if she really believes, she can jump across a chasm and - if she seeks the reality within herself - she won't fall.

It'll be interesting to see how far this story goes combining Tarot with the Matrix, but at least so far they haven't made the "humans as batteries" analogy.

That will probably be in the next Episode.

EDIT @ 53%. I think they really are trying to make Kelsey into The One. The Oracle... I mean, High Priestess, just told Kelsey that "Sometimes one must die before they can truly live."

Tangled Tides by Karen Amanda Hooper

Publication date: October 14th 2013

Publisher: Starry Sky Publishing

Number of pages: 290

Series: The Sea Monster Memoirs (1#)

Genre: YA Fantasy

Source: Received in exchange for review. This is my honest opinion.

Goodreads synopsis:

Yara Jones doesn't believe in sea monsters--until she becomes one.

When a hurricane hits her island home and she wakes up with fins, Yara finds herself tangled up in an underwater world of mysterious merfolk and secretive selkies. Both sides believe Yara can save them by fulfilling a broken promise and opening the sealed gateway to their realm, but they are battling over how it should be done. The selkies want to take her life. The merfolk want something far more precious.

Treygan, the stormy-eyed merman who turned Yara mer, will stop at nothing and sacrifice everything to protect his people--until he falls for Yara. The tides turn as Yara fights to save herself, hundreds of sea creatures, and the merman who has her heart. She could lose her soul in the process--or she might open the gateway to a love that's deeper than the oceans.

Review:

My thoughts about Tangled Tides are, well, tangled. Excuse the pun.

But really, they are. This is my second book by Karen Amanda Hooper. I read and loved Grasping at Eternity some time last year and was really keen to read Tangled Tides. I mean, I've always had a thing about mermaid books and I had reasonably high expectations after the last book of the author's I read.

And it started off well. It dived (yep, another pun) straight into the plot. Nope, no hanging around there. If my memory serves me right, it starts off with Yara's transformation into a mermaid, and there's a hurricane. I thought that was unique.

Originally, I have to say that I was fully Team Rownan. That's right folks, there's some sort of love triangle. But it's not too bad, but that's coming from someone who doesn't really mind them. Back to the point, I really can't say I was a Treygan fan. I felt like he wasn't realistic enough and didn't really have enough...substance. So really I was a Team Rownan but Team Mermaid.

And that's another cool thing - the mermaid vs selkie business. I have never come across THAT before.

To be honest, towards the end of the book, I wasn't Team Rownan. But the twist is that I wasn't Team Treygan either. I was Team Whatever but I would suggest to Yara that she sticks with Treygan.

Speaking of twists, there were a few good ones in there.

The thing that I was probably the most annoyed by was the info dumps. But it would have been hard not to do a few info dumps. And the C-weed. Really?

Unfortunately, this was not the epic mermaid book I was looking for. I feel like a broken record reciting the same thing here but I am yet to fight an amazing mermaid book.

3/5 comets

The Earth shook. If they thought the Leaning Tower of Pisa was leaning before...

Add Tangled Tides to Goodreads

Goodreads author bio:

Author of YA paranormal and fantasy.

~TANGLED TIDES & DANGEROUS DEPTHS

~THE KINDRILY series

~VIRTUAL ARCANA series.

I was born and bred in Baltimore, frolicked and froze in Colorado for a couple of years, and I'm currently sunning and splashing around Florida with my two spoiled rescue dogs. I'm addicted to coffee, chocolate and complicated happily-ever-afters.

If a book is on my Read list then I enjoyed it (3-5 stars). I only rate 5 star books (those I loved so much I will read again and/or because they are by authors I know personally and adore) because I usually don't do reviews and I'd feel bad giving an author 3 or 4 stars without explaining why.

Feel free to friend me. I love meeting other book lovers and I like seeing what people are reading!

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