Tag Archives: tobie easton

Read This!: IMMERSE by Tobie Easton

March 19, 2019Read This, Reviewsimmerse, tobie eastonkathymacmillan

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.

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Read This!: SUBMERGE by Tobie Easton

November 21, 2017Read This, Reviewstobie eastonkathymacmillan

Submerge (Mer Chroncles #2) by Tobie Easton

Summary: Now that Lia and Clay’s love has broken the Little Mermaid’s curse, everything has changed. Will Lia’s family remain on land, leading the only life she and her sisters have ever known, or will they move below the waves, to the sparkling new capital city? Lia is adamant about staying on land with Clay for her senior year. But at Melusine and her father’s trial, new revelations threaten what Lia holds most dear. The verdict will shake Lia’s whole world, calling into question her future with Clay, her feelings for Caspian, and the fate of all Merkind. As she wonders who to trust, Lia sets out on a treacherous path that will lead her away from her sheltered Malibu home to a remote and mysterious school for Mermaids—Mermaids who may hold the secret to ancient magic Lia can use to either get back all she’s lost or to embark on a dangerous journey.

EMERGE was a thrilling start to Lia’s story, and SUBMERGE manages to completely sidestep the dangers of second-book slump and offer a story with higher stakes, more danger, and deeper relationships while remaining grounded in the characters and the world of the Mer. One of the things that made EMERGE such a delight was the layers of worldbuilding underpinning the story; here we get to delve deeper into Mer culture and language, from a courtroom trial to visiting a school below the waves. All of it is a natural part of Lia’s story as she explores what it means to be suddenly immortal and reconnect with the Mer side of her heritage. Everything follows naturally from the relationships and events of the first book; indeed, one of the things I love best about Easton’s writing is that, at the scene level and at the plot level, the story moves along inexorably and inevitably, like the tides. At the center of it all is Lia, proud and impulsive and warm and flawed – a character I would follow anywhere. (And don’t get me started on Caspian. Caspian, stop breaking my heart!) It’s a heck of a ride, and I feel like reading Easton’s work actually makes me a better writer.

SUBMERGE is out now.

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Read This!: EMERGE by Tobie Easton

November 16, 2016Read This, Reviewsemerge, tobie eastonkathymacmillan

Emerge by Tobie Easton

Summary: Lia Nautilus may be a Mermaid but she’s never lived in the ocean. War has ravaged the seven seas ever since the infamous Little Mermaid unleashed a curse that stripped Mer of their immortality. Lia has grown up in a secret community of land-dwelling Mer hidden among Malibu’s seaside mansions. Her biggest problems are surviving P.E. and keeping her feelings for Clay Ericson in check. Sure, he’s gorgeous in that cocky, leather jacket sort of way and makes her feel like there’s a school of fish swimming in her stomach, but getting involved with a human could put Lia’s entire community at risk. So it’s for the best that he’s dating that new girl, right? That is, until Lia finds out she isn’t the only one at school keeping a potentially deadly secret. And this new girl? Her eyes are dead set on Clay, who doesn’t realize the danger he’s in. If Lia hopes to save him, she’ll have to get closer to Clay. Lia’s parents would totally flip if they found out she was falling for a human boy, but the more time she spends with him, the harder it is for her to deny her feelings. After making a horrible mistake, Lia will risk everything to stop Clay from falling in love with the wrong girl.

What a delicious, swoony, sparkle of a book! Lia Nautilus may seem like a typical high school student, but she is actually part of a community of land-dwelling Mer, who attempt to cope with the mortality the Little Mermaid’s actions cursed them with by living among humans. Lia knows she has to stay away from Clay, the human boy she’s been crushing on, but when he falls victim to an ancient magic, Lia finds herself drawn deeper and deeper into forbidden magic to protect him. The worldbuilding here is spot-on, with thrilling details always moving the story forward, from the dynamic Mer anatomy (legs appear at adolescence – can you guess what they are used for?) to Mer record-keeping (Mer who hold shells to their ears hear not the ocean, but recorded books). Though this is the first book in a trilogy, there is no cliffhanger ending – I suspect that most readers will be sighing in contentment on the final page and excited to find out what happens next for this strong, loving, fierce and feminine heroine.

EMERGE is out now.

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Scenes from the #YARoadTrip Tour!

October 21, 2016Newsjan gangsei, karen fortunati, karen hattrup, lindsey roth culli, lisa maxwell, melissa Gorzelanczyk, rahul kanakia, teen read week, tobie easton, ya roadtrip 2016kathymacmillan

I was honored to participate in the YA RoadTrip tour October 6-16 with a fantastic group of authors in honor of Teen Read Week! Thank you to the many librarians and booksellers who made the tour possible, and to everyone who came out to see us!

Missed the tour? We left signed copies of our books behind at the following stores: