The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy #2)

This is the second novel in Kristi Nicolle’s Tidal Kiss Trilogy. This one finds Callie and Orion crowned rulers of the Mer. Callie is smothered by Orion’s obsessive clinginess, now that he’s finally found his soulmate, to the point she finally bolts and joins the psirens. (Honestly, good for her because he was driving me insane.) Despite being possessed by Titus and his darkness, Callie never really goes full dark. She partners up with another psiren, Vex, whom she has a romantic entanglement with, and who teaches hew how to fight, which comes in handy later when the psirens attack the Mer settlement. As the Mer settlement is destroyed by the psirens, led by someone who isn’t what we thought they were, the Mer who aren’t obliterated head north, to Alaska and find another race of Mer, and Callie is reunited with someone important from her past. She then finds out she needs to find the other 7 vessels and pieces of 8, so this launches the premise for book 3.
The novel ends on a cliff hanger. With Callie and Orion ending up in apparently Loch Ness?

I rate this one 4 stars, even though Mermaid books aren’t my usual jam and I hated Orion through 98% of this novel- it was well-written and plotted and left me wanting to go right into the 3rd book. Kristi’s writing matured in this novel as well- and she reminds me a lot of the OG urban fantasy authors (Karen Marie Moning, Gena Showalter, JR Ward, etc.)

Edit: now that I have read this entire saga, including the 10th and final- I’ve got to update my rating to 3.5, down to 3 because GR doesn’t allow half stars. This trilogy of the set of 3 is definitely my least favorite. It’s not a writing issue, KN is a great author, very skilled. I just hate the characters in this trilogy. Basically all of them except for Azure and Vex. Callie is insufferable (she’s barely 18, so no life experience… insufferable is expected, but still, as a 40 year old it’s hard to read it- and she doesn’t get any better in the final novel.) Orion is just a controlling asshole- Like I’d drop him faster than molten glass. I feel like I can fairly say this now, because I enjoyed the second and third trilogies so much- it just reinforced how much I disliked this one. Even in the final tie in novel I found myself hating even reading Callie’s or Orion’s name because I knew they were going to do some cringey stuff. No disrespect to the author intended- this trilogy just didn’t vibe with me— but the other 2 I loved.