Echoes of The Tide by Emma Hamm: Book Review

Pub Date	November 1, 2024
Publisher	Self-Published/Emma Hamm
Page Count	373 pages
Genre	Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Adult
Goodreads Star Rating	4.46
My star rating	3.5

Echoes of The Tide Book Summary

Echoes of The Tide by Carissa Broadbent follows Ace, who lives in an underwater prison city, and Maketes, a merman sent on a mission to negotiate with Ace’s boss. When her boss orders Ace to find a mysterious key or her sister dies, she goes on a mission with Maketes to find it. But deep in the sea, she might find more than she bargained for. 

Echoes of The Tide Book Review

After loving both Whispers of The Deep and Song of The Abyss (part one and two of this series), I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Echoes of The Tide. And so November 1st finally came, my pre-ordered copy arrived on my Kindle, and I was giddy with excitement. 

This series has been everything I ever wanted out of fantasy romance — impossible odds, forbidden love, magic and yearning and slow burn. Well, at least part one was. Part two was slightly less impressive, but still highly enjoyable thanks to its characters. 

Unfortunately, Echoes of the Tide is my least favorite of all three. 

It magnified all the flaws of Song of The Abyss, but didn’t have equally lovable and swoony romance to latch on to. 

For one, Maketes and Ace fell for each other too quickly. The moment Maketes sees her, he’s enamored and willing to do anything to be with her. And Ace is similarly in insta-lust, though she’s a little afraid of him at first. 

And sure, you could argue that they’ve been messaging each other for a while, but we see none of that happen, so it doesn’t have any impact. What I loved about Whispers of The Deep, originally, is that the main couple had so many obstacles and so much time together before they admitted to any feelings. They didn’t know if undines and humans could even be together. But Maketes and Ace know all of this, and the obstacles between them feel mostly contrived. They can talk, they know there are other couples like them, there’s a place where Ace can live among undines and not suffer any water-related illness, etc. 

It feels like all of their problems have been solved for them, and since they already have feelings for each other, there’s nothing keeping them apart.

The plot isn’t that solid either. All of the previous books had a plot that made sense, at the very least. In Echoes of The Tide, Maketes needs to help Ace find a key or Ace’s boss will kill her sister (who lives in another city). But if Maketes just sent people to find and save Ace’s sister immediately, the search for the key would be unnecessary — Ace could just leave the prison city. 

The romance, as mentioned, develops too quickly. Where Arges and Daios were uncertain and almost unwilling to fall for a human, Maketes is ready. He knows he wants Ace and pursues her without much fear. There’s a bit of a backstory to him, where he doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love, but he gets over that fairly easily. 

And I found his insistence that he should get a human mate because his brothers did too kind of icky. If you read the entire ACOTAR series, he’s kind of like Azriel in that extra Christmas chapter. I feel like he’s well-written as a side character, but needs a lot more work to become an interesting main character. 

Ace is better, more relatable, but still underdeveloped in her motivations. 

I wouldn’t call Echoes of The Tide a slow burn — as mentioned, they fall in lust/love pretty quickly and act on it within the first 50% of the book. Which is fine, I guess, and this genre is sort of known for it, I just much preferred Whispers of The Deep where there’s no spice until the very end. 

Despite all of my gripes, I did enjoy this book overall. I like this underwater world, the characters, and how obsessed and devoted the heroes get. It’s often tender and soft, with gentle moments that will melt your heart. 

I’m definitely excited about the next book too. That one will be about Fortis, the ominous and huge depthstrider and a mysterious warrior from the mysterious city of Tau. And if this author decides to write like ten other novels in this series, I’ll definitely read them. It’s just that some of them can be a novelette or a short story instead of a 500+ page book. 

Notes & Highlights

Here are some things you should know about Echoes of The Tide before you read it: 

• Echoes of The Tide is written from the third point of view from both Ace’s and Maketes’ perspectives. The POV chapters alternate. 
• This book is a monster romance, so it’s obviously spicy. Expect several scenes starting from about 30-40% until the end of the book. They’re not too outrageous, if you don’t count the fact that the hero has an extra organ (if you know what I mean). 
• I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone younger than 18. 
• Check the content warnings before reading. Some of them include: cannibalism (on-page, not by main characters), violence and gore, bullying (remembered), torture (not explicit), and more. 
• This book is a part of a series that’s still coming out. The main/overarching plot is connected between installments, but the books can be read as standalones if you’re just looking for romance. Though, I would recommend at least reading part one (Whispers of The Deep) to get a better understanding of the world and how all of these things came to be.