Book Review: Call of the Sea

The Official Blurb

“Kenna has never wanted the life ahead of her; trapped in her castle and married to someone she does not love. She dreams of a life of adventure, exploring the ocean, searching for mermaids. Except mermaids don’t exist. At least, that’s what she has always been told.

Unfortunately, her plans for exploration are thwarted. Every heir must wed, and with war on the horizon, her time is up. Five suitors are vying for her hand, but Kenna vowed never to marry someone only after her crown. Only, one of them doesn’t seem to care about her title, refusing to even use it. Just as she begins to consider opening up to him, he disappears.

Kenna chases after him and learns his secret, before a storm wrecks her boat. Finding herself stranded on an island with him, Kenna has no choice but to trust him to nurse her back to health. With the tension growing, and sparks she doesn’t trust flying between them, Kenna has to decide how to balance the desires of her heart and her duty to her people. And how far she’s willing to go to learn the whole truth.”

 

Spoiler Alerts & Trigger Warnings: body shaming/fatphobia

 My book for Season 2 Episode 11: Diving Into Underwater Romance, is Call of the Sea by Emily B. Rose. Published in 2024, it’s a delightful merpeople romp that’s giving me Splash!, Brave and Bridgerton (a la Penelope Featherington) vibes.

Let’s Talk About the Author

This is Emily B. Rose’s first romance novel. Hopefully we’ll see more from her in the future if Call of the Sea is any sign of her talent. A true Californian, Rose is a cat mom who co-owns a “bookish shop” and is a freelance writer.

According to her website, “Emily is a proudly fat, demibisexual, ADHD woman who wants her stories to reflect people often ignored, especially in love stories. She hopes her books will make people feel less alone, and affirm that everyone deserves the love story of their choosing.” You can learn more about Emily B. Rose by clicking here.

My Spiciness Ranking

I rank at a Poblano. There are a couple of intimate scenes but they are pretty brief and not very graphic. They are gentle love scenes if you will.

Let’s dive into the main characters.

The Main Characters

Makenna Murdina MacNamera – Makenna is the princess of an island kingdom that shares a lot of similarities with Scotland. She is heir to the throne as the first born child. Kenna is a full-figured/curvy lovely, neurodivergent with ADHD, and demisexual (a person who experiences sexual feelings and attraction only after developing a close emotional relationship and not on the basis of first impressions, physical characteristics, etc.).

Prince Tristan Owen MacNamara – Tristan is her twin brother. He is bisexual.

Cameron MacKenzie (Calder) – Cameron is one of the young men from another clan in the kingdom vying for Makenna’s hand in marriage … or is he?

The Storyline

Princess Makenna is obsessed with mermaids and has been since she was a little girl. At the age of five, she fell off a boat and almost drowned but was rescued by a mermaid. No one believes her about the mermaids, though, but she is unswerving in her knowledge and belief they are real. Combine her belief of mermaids with her bookish nature and the fact she’s a pleasantly plump lass, and you’ve got the classic story of a girl being picked on growing up. Even the boy who was her first crush body shames her and makes fun of her when he thinks she isn’t listening. Which really breaks her heart and causes her to have trust issues with her peers.

As heir to the throne, Makenna has now reached an adult age (early 20s) where she must marry. As the kingdom is currently at war with fairies who have been raiding and destroying farms, etc.; marrying a young man from one of the kingdom’s clans will also help strengthen bonds and, ideally, help the war effort.

There’s a special festival – much like the one in the Disney cartoon movie Brave – where five young men will compete for her affections. Makenna has no high hopes for true love and simply wants to pick one of the five guys who she can at least be comfortable with as a partner and friend. She’s already ruled out one of the young men because he was her childhood crush and it’s obvious he still doesn’t really like Makenna because he totally fat shames her for eating at the festival and he clearly only wants the title that would come with the marriage. 

Makenna finds herself physically attracted to one of the young men, Cameron MacKenzie, and they have some witty banter and chemistry. He actually cares about her thoughts and feelings and even tells her at one point he’s not interested in her crown. He gives her a really beautiful necklace made from gold and pearls during the festivities. So he’s definitely scoring points all around.

But Makenna has problems trusting her own feelings sometimes and also people because of her past trauma. And it doesn’t help when she overhears Reid – the jerk from her childhood who broke her heart – talking to another one of the gentlemen callers and they’re both just trying to get a title and crown and talk disparagingly about Kenna. And, for some odd reason, she thinks it would be bad if she’s physically attracted to her future husband. 

Despite all that, things are still going along swimmingly with the festival and soon Kenna will have to choose her fiancé. But on the last night of the festival, during a ball, there’s some questions about whether Cameron MacKenzie really is who he says he is. And, later that night, he sneaks out of the castle and Makenna follows him.

That’s all I’m going to say about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who is reading or wants to read it. I will just finish by saying there are a couple of really good plot twists that tie the story together very nicely. 

What I Enjoyed About the Book

Mermaids. I am totally here for mermaids. And mermen. 

Tristan. I adore Makenna’s twin brother. He’s hilarious and provides much of the comic relief in the book. He’s also a genuine person and very supportive and loving brother to Kenna.

The book also contains lots of great consent and body affirmation. I love that the female character is curvy and many of the characters seem to be physically realistic and normal to average looking. There’s some really nice conversations about trauma and depression that some of the characters work together through as well.

In addition, I really appreciate how the author, Emily B. Rose, put together the book.  At the beginning of the book she makes a very clear statement that Makenna is fat and neurodivergent, etc. She’s very strong in her convictions in presenting those elements. There’s also a nice little explanation (at the end of the novel) of some of the Gaelic terms she uses in the book including a pronunciation guide.

And there’s a quote that may be one of my absolute favorite book quotes now of all time. From p. 351: “… my heart has always belonged to the ocean, and it’s found its home in you. I love you.”

I was so obsessed with mermaids (okay, I still am obsessed with them) when I was little. Child me wanted to BE a mermaid. True story: I used to make my mom and Aunt Vicky put salt in the bath so I could grow my mermaid tail. And for huge parts of my life I’ve lived near the ocean and I grew up going to the beach. I’ve always been drawn to the ocean. So that love line just really speaks to me and it’s such beautiful wording.

What Challenged Me About the Book

The first 60% of the book is really slow. We spend a lot of time throughout the story being immersed in Makenna’s expansive thoughts. It got to be too much for me at various points and especially because some of the thoughts were repetitive. The lengthy paragraphs just really slowed the pacing of the book for me and I feel I could have gotten through it a lot faster if those had been condensed a bit.

My understanding is Emily B. Rose originally wrote Call of the Sea as a short story. So I’m sure she used Makenna’s thoughts to help expand the story to a full-length novel. For me, personally, I just could have used a little less of that.

Final Thoughts

By the last several chapters, though, the book contains lots of action and development of the plot and it’s a much quicker read. Overall, I enjoyed and appreciated the well-crafted storyline and character development.

If you want to hear more of my thoughts on the book, you can listen to the podcast episode on your favorite podcast streaming service. Or click here for our in-house podcast player. I share some fun anatomy references as well as my Romantic Reminder. You can also find out if I won the episode Boobie Prize. Want to read the book for yourself? You can get it here from The Ripped Bodice or here from Amazon.

Have you read Call of the Sea? Let me know your thoughts on this book in the comments!