Summary: Lia can’t wait for her parents’ coronation. Now living in the sparkling palace beneath the waves, she sneaks off to Malibu whenever possible to see Clay. Tucked away in an abandoned seaside mansion, Lia and Clay devise a plan to ensure they can stay together forever. But when an old enemy resurfaces and Lia is restricted to the palace for the safety of all Merkind, she and Clay are ripped apart once more. She fears not only for Clay, but for her best friend Caspian, who seems to be swimming down a dangerous path. He has invited the conniving Melusine to the coronation ball, convinced she’s capable of change. And no matter how hard Lia fights it, showing up on Caspian’s arm is just the start of Melusine’s insidious return to her life. With threats Below growing more ominous by the day and a powerful ancient ritual looming, soon the two girls can’t escape each other. As their fates grow increasingly intertwined, Melusine might be the only one who can help Lia find the answers she desperately needs to save everyone she loves and to achieve her happily ever after. But can Lia trust her?
EMERGE gave a thrilling love story; SUBMERGE let us delve deeper into Tobie Easton’s meticulously built underwater world. Now, with IMMERSE, the triumphant conclusion to the Mer trilogy, Easton challenges the reader’s assumptions, letting us see Lia, the great heroine who saved the Mer, from the perspective of her enemy, Melusine. As the two characters play off one another in alternating point of view chapters, the strengths and flaws of both are thrown into sharp relief, reminding us how easy it is to dismiss what we don’t understand. Despite all they’ve been through, they face their greatest challenge when the two of them – one impulsive, warm, and sheltered, the other cool, distant, and calculating – must come together to stop a plot that would destroy the human world. This is a series finale that has it all: sigh-worthy romance, nail-biting adventure, and a gripping story of two very different girls navigating the shifting tides of family and societal expectations.
IMMERSE is out now.
Kathy MacMillan 