Between the Monster and the Sea
by Tessa Kelwyn
🌊 New adult paranormal romance that will steal your sleep…
- Genre
- New Adult
- Chapters
- 30
- Status
- Completed
- Reads
- 1.2K
18+Review by Julia · · Updated
Liora’s village has a ritual every year of sending a girl across the sea as a sacrifice to the gods. They never return, and the village sees them as proof of divine favor. When Liora is chosen, she expects death or at least something sacred. Instead, she finds an island with no gods, only a cursed, isolated man who has lived alone for decades.
He is part human and part creature; he is feared as he has tentacles, sharp edges, and a past that has been forgotten. But underneath the scary exterior lies something unexpected: loneliness, dry humor, and a soft heart waiting to connect with someone. As Liora refuses to be another sacrifice, their unusual connection evolves into something warm. It soon becomes far more dangerous than either of them imagined.
Themes Discussed in Between the Monster and the Sea
🩸 Tradition and sacrifice
👸🏼 Beauty and the Beast dynamic
⚖️ Curiosity & fear
❤️ Unconventional love
Reasons to Read Between the Monster and the Sea
😈 Unique monster romance
🦸🏻♀️ Relatable heroine
🏝️ Atmospheric island setting
🖤 Dark themes with light, witty moments
Meet The Main Characters
👸🏻 Liora
She is unwilling to go quietly and is practical and resilient. She questions traditions that others accept blindly. Liora can bring warmth and defiance into a bleak situation. She starts as a survivor and turns into someone in control of her fate.
👹 Cursed man
A mysterious, cursed half-human who has been isolated for years. Struggles as he lost his name and identity, as well as his past. He is emotionally guarded but still has dry humor. He is extremely lonely but capable of a strong connection.
🔮 A fantasy romance about a luminous afterlife and a sexy male creature you will be obsessed with.
Between the Monster and the Sea synopsis
Every year, Liora's village sends an unmarried girl across the water as a ritual sacrifice to the gods of the deep. It is considered a sacred honor. The girls do not come back, which the village chooses to interpret as a good sign.
Liora ends up in the offering line. It is, genuinely, not her finest week.
What waits on the island is not divine mercy or a peaceful surrender to something ancient and holy. There are no gods. There is no gentle, luminous afterlife. There is a cursed man who has been alone for longer than she has been alive, a feral creature with an unreasonable number of teeth, and eight black tentacles that are absolutely, definitely, not coming from the walls.
They are coming from him.
He is not what she expected. He is not what anyone would expect, partly because of the tentacles and partly because he turns out to have a voice like gravel and a dry wit that has had many years of solitude to sharpen itself to a very fine point. He forgot his own name somewhere in the last century. She gives him a new one. The tentacles, supposedly instruments of ancient terror, mostly just follow her around.
This is where things get complicated. And warm. And significantly more tentacle-forward than she budgeted for.
Read Between the Monster and the Sea – Chapter 1
POV: Liora
We met where the rocks hid us from the village, his back against the stone and my hand in his. The tide was coming in and neither of us moved.
"I love you to the bottom of the sea and back," Jorin said, his thumb stroking my wrist. "Every wave that touches the shore, that is how many times I think of you."
My mouth twitched. The words were clumsy and too large for the boy saying them, but his eyes were steady on mine and his hand was warm.
"That is a lot of thinking," I said. "When do you find time to work at the forge?"
"I do not." He pulled me closer and pressed his forehead to mine. "My father says I have been useless for weeks. He blames the heat, but I blame you."
"You should blame yourself," I said, but my chest was full and tight, and I buried my face in his neck because I did not want him to see how much I needed this. "You chose to follow me to the beach that first night."
"I would choose it again." The words dropped low and certain. "Every night, Liora. I would choose you every single night."
I believed him because of his arms around me, the warmth of his skin, the rough certainty in his voice. I held all of it and did not look closely, because when you have been hungry long enough, you do not inspect the bread.
"Matchmaking day is coming," he said, his mouth against my hair. "When I come to your father's door, everything changes. No more hiding on rocks."
"My father will not make it easy for you." I pulled back to see his face. "He does not consider me an asset to anyone."
Tropes
- Intrigue
- Paranormal
- Enemies to Lovers
- Obsession
- Fantasy
- Forced Proximity
- Virgin girl