First up a big thank you for allowing me to read this one and a sorry for that it took so long for me to read it.

Sadly, I am DNF-ing the book. While there were some good stories, I just don't feel the compulsion to read. I am struggling. I feel like I am forcing myself to read it and that is not working.

So here are the ratings for the stories I did read, I got almost to 50%.
Storm Song: 4.5. A lovely story about sirens and finding your own song. I found myself rooting for this girl.
We'll Always have June: 4.5, this was such a swoony story about a boy being saved by a merboy and encountering him when he is a teen. Merboy teaching swimming, our boy teaching merboy singing. Along with stolen kisses and lots of swoon!
Story of the Knife: 4 stars, a twist on little mermaid's descendants and what if one figures out the truth and goes for her own future?
The Dark Calls: 2 stars. It had good bones, an interesting idea, but in the end it was just too long and got boring.
Return to the sea: DNF. Not into that. Probably very privileged and blahblah from me but I wanted to punch everyone. The girl who was holding the presentation and the girl who thought she owned all of it.
The Deepwater Vandal: 2 stars, this is it??? I mean the story was quite good, but there is no conclusion. Plus, while I did like it at times it was just a bit cluttery.
The Nightingale's Lament: 3 stars, this was so good and then the open ending ruined it again, this could have been 4 stars easily.

In overall a lot of the stories had good bones but it just felt inconclusive in the end. A lot of them had open endings that just DIDN'T make sense. I would have rather seen it be a true short story with maybe some hints but not open like this. Some were just too long.

3.5 rounded to 4

I generally find anthologies difficult to connect with, they are so short it can sometimes mean that I don't warm to the protagonists in each story. I'd like to point out that there are some great stories written in this one!

I especially loved 'The Merrow' by Zoraida Córdova and 'Jinju's Pearls' by June Hur. I'd actively seek to read both of these authors work again!

I felt like this was enveloped in a blanket of folklore, and I just clung to those stories that I loved. Some stories didn't quite hit like others did, but I was happy to read them anyway.

I requested this mainly for June Hur's story as I am a massive fan of her work, but I ended up discovering new authors for me to read! This is such a good compilation and I absolutely plan on rereading it soon as I read this back in 2023
Thank you for the eARC!

I absolutely LOVE mermaids, and I had a good time with this collection. It's difficult with anthologies because my average rating always ends up being middle of the road -- there were some in here that I undeniably loved wholeheartedly, and others I just found okay. But it delivered on the mermaid front for sure ^.^

I really enjoyed this book, as a long time lover of mermaid folklore and stories it was right up my street. Some of the stories were better than others (always the case in an anthology) and some felt quite YA, but an enjoyable read.

Not for me. I tried so hard, but this was not good. Some stories were quite okay, most were just boring. I DNF-ed about halfway

Unfortunately this feel quite flat for me, I didn’t connect with any of the stories and found myself bored/uninterested in a few of the stories. I've now come to realise that short stories don’t tend to work for me, and the nature meant that a lot of the stories didn’t develop enough and hook me. But a good cast of BIPOC and queer characters!

DNF at 45%

I’ve been dragging myself through this book while not enjoying any second of it. None of the stories are well developed but what they ALL have are freaking open endings, which I absolutely despise.

I love mermaids and stories about them, so reading disappointed this just wasn’t the book I thought it would be.

Nonetheless, thank you NetGalley for an arc and apologies for super late review❤️

2.5 stars

There is always an issue when it comes to anthologies and it's a risk you always end up taking. I only really enjoyed a couple of these and ended up dnf-ing a few.

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

this was a very strong short story collection as every story felt like it could be the ‘main’ tale (or Tail) . There was such a variety in the stories, my favourite stories included family relationships and healing, but also the stories of defiance and revolution. This collection had something for everyone! I really enjoyed the variety of mermaid lore and mythology used, it didn’t feel repetitive or ‘samey’. I liked the mixture between different types of fantasy and speculative fiction
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley but my opinions are entirely my own

A fabulous collection of YA short stories!

A Vietnamese mermaid caught between two worlds. A siren who falls for Poseidon's son. A boy secretly pining for the merboy who saved him years ago. A storm that brings humans and mermaids together. Generations of family secrets and pain.

I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology.

4 stars

This was a really strong short story anthology. It had many different types of stories and many different styles of writing, all featuring mermaids, sirens or the cultural equivalent! I had a great time reading it and really enjoyed some of the stories. There weren't any stories I absolutely hated in this one, which is always a good sign!

Some of my particular favourites were The First and Last Kiss by Julie Murphy, The Merrow by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker and Jinju's Pearls by June Hur, but there were many other good ones that really stood out for me!

I liked sirens a lot, so it made me really happy to see Sirens feature so much in this book. I was glad that they really went into the dark sides of myths as well as having some lighter stories.

If there's a mermaid obsessed reader in your life, this would be the perfect book for them!

Mermaids Never Drown is a fantastic anthology of stories involving merfolk, with lots of different settings and themes. I loved reading each story and seeing how the various authors wrote about these amazing characters, and I could have read so many more stories in this theme. I loved that lots of the authors were ones I was familiar with and some were new to me but I was happy to have been introduced to them. I would definitely recommend this to any mermaid fans or any fans of the other anthologies by this publisher.

So many of my fave authors feature in this beautiful book and I LOVED it!!! i genuinely am so excited by anthologies becoming popular. theyre so fun <3

I don't generally read anthologies but I do love anything about mermaids, so I had to give it a try.

I haven't read all of them yet; I've been reading one or two each day. Some I loved, some not so much, but it is something I would recommend.

A collection of beautifully written short stories, that I loved. I've really struggled picking out a favourite, as I felt each of these where written incredibly well and stood out well in their own right.

As it tends to happen with anthologies, some stories I liked and some I didn't.

Out of the 14 stories I really liked Deep Water Vandal by Darcie Little Badger and The Merrow by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie C Parker, but I fell in love with The Nightingale’s Lament by Kerri Maniscalco. I want to know more. I need a full series following Skye and Hunter and their enemies to lovers slow burn romance. I knew Kerri Maniscalco wouldn’t disappoint.

Everything else was forgettable.

As a rare reader of anthologies, and a keen fantasy reader, reading this collection of short stories was an adventure in itself. Exploring the different faces of mermaids, this anthology doesn't shy away from crafting mystery and intrigue into its tales. It approached different subject matter in a usually effective format and did well at keeping a flow story to story. From authors who I typically devour work by in mere minutes, to authors who I'm relatively new to, the flow between the masters of the pen was easy to follow, and multiple tales were told in creative ways leaving questions unanswered or open, or concise and clear. A sweet, easy-to-read anthology with a variety of voice types and tales. Thank you Netgalley for my copy in exchange for review.

It's a mixed bagged for me. There's a handful of stories I really loved, One at the beginning, a couple in the middle, and one at the end, but in between there were a lot of stories that felt very loosely connected to the topic. A few of the ones I didn't like were supposed to be metaphors for a lot of really important topics about culture, the female body, choice, discrimination and so on, but it lacked subtlety so much that it felt like the message was hitting you in the face without subtlety (which works for a lot of people, obviously, but I like it when the story makes me understand this, I want to be shown, not told in bright blinking neon letters) and took away all enjoyment of it.
I'd say some of the gems are the following:
- Storm Song was beautiful and gave me a lot of hope for the anthology (however the second one was very cringe for me and did not resonate at all)
- The story of a knife was great and the teenage angst messaging was fairly subtle here as opposed to other stories, the writing was also really good.
-The nightingale's lament was very promising, I was into it, kinda excited knowing I have one of her books on my TBR.
- Sea wolf in prince's clothing was fantastic and deserving of a full book. The plot was very well handled for such a short novella.
- The first and last kiss was also pretty fun, like the very first novella, it was what I was hoping for when I picked up the anthology
- The merrow was lovely and I could see some of the inspiration behind it, but Zoraida has always been a favorite author of mine, her writing is insanely compelling even in very short stories.
-Jinju's Pearls was beautiful and lovely.

7 good stories out of 14 is not bad but it's definitely not great. I feel like some of these could have benefited from being lumped in thematical chapters, with the more poetic ones together, the fantastical ones together and the contemporary ones together.



I need to make a negative mention: Shark Week was insanely ridiculous as a metaphor and I wanted to bang my head on the table with every line until I eventually DNFed. If I was to rate the whole anthology based on that novella I would have rated it in the negatives. The mention of "eating fetus blood" at an actual abort!on clinic is also insanely inappropriate. I am pro-choice (obviously) and I had to research the author to check that she wasn't a pro-life crazed supporter, wtf is it with this line? Like, who actually thinks this is a funny cheeky call back to anti-abortion supporters? I can't believe no one batted an eye at that line. Also one character's name is Alphabet, I can't.

The first few stories unfortunately made this rating the way it is. There were some really good ones in there (Maniscalco nailed it!) but I was pleased enough. I think overall the stories many wrote were not meant to be short stories as a lot went lost. The timelines were not realistic and if you want love this is not the way to go.

Thanks publishers and NetGalley for this e-arc!