Rating: 4.5🌈
Isabel Murray continues to surprise me with her stunning perspectives on romance, relationships, and love.
I fell in love with her through her series, The Unwanted King, a fantasy series with unlikely, memorable characters, subtle heartbreaking elements, hilarious moments, and fabulous storylines.
Catch and Release is a remarkable paranormal romance, usually involving love story between a human and a mythical figure I don’t normally seek out in these romantic novels. I’m talking mermen.
Probably because I overthink the issues that come into play when writing mermen as viable/believable nonhuman beings. More so than other paranormal species, a mermaid or merman exists deep inside our minds, both in fables and mythology. And secretly for some strange reason, there’s a hope that our waters might be actually home to them as well. But would they be humanoid? Humans ,who for whatever reason, live aquatic lives.
Often that’s how they are portrayed.
Not here .
Catch and Release finds Joe McKenzie, 38, ex-hedge fund manager, living a new life as one of the world’s worst fisherman. Joe has moved to Lynwick, small harbour town tucked up between Scotland and northern England. He’s taken up not fishing very well, and been sort of adopted by Jerry Barnes, 58, owner of mid-sized trawler, the Mary Jane.
These are some of the best characters, with a uniquely wonderful dynamic between them. Half friends, and half family, it continues to grow throughout the story, with some of the beloved dialogue between them.
Which is great because there’s none between Joe and what they found in the netting. What they find is not human.
The chapters alternate between titles called Catch and Release. It’s both about the events and about the relationships that occur between them. Dave is the name given to the sea being caught in the nets. Who, what he is ? That’s all assumptions on Joe and Jerry’s part. We only get glimpses of exactly how removed from human Dave is by his actions and interactions with both men.
I love how Murray is able to demonstrate growth in a relationship and layers of understanding without losing sight of his otherworldly self or that Joe is fully human. And that there is a capacity to see each other’s viewpoint even if we have major differences to begin with.
So much deep humanity running into the shocking waters of another world. It’s wonderful, funny, sexy, and painful.
How do I review a book that will break your heart, mend your heart, and break your heart. And sort of mend it again. But only if you don’t think too far ahead past the end of the book.
Because Murray is beautiful in her realism. In her acknowledgement that Joe is and will always be human. And sometimes love is not forever. But it can be enough for today. And tomorrow.
Read this book. And, if you haven’t already, put Murray on your auto buy list. Highly recommended to both.
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Blurb
Joe McKenzie’s high-flying London life imploded six years ago, and it happened dramatically enough that paramedics were involved. That’s all in the past. Now, Joe couldn’t be happier living a solitary life as a fisherman on England’s wild northern coast.
Okay, he could be happier.
It’s not like he’s depressed or anything but, you know. The weather’s not great. Life’s a bit samey. He’s only thirty-eight. The idea of another forty years is a bit exhausting, to be honest. He passes the time pretending to be a fisherman but the truth is, he sucks at it.
Then Joe makes the catch of a lifetime when he stumbles across the mysterious Dave washed up on the beach—an enormous man with gills and uncanny power over the sea. Once Dave stops trying to kidnap Joe and/or kill Joe’s fishing buddy, Jerry, turns out he’s kind of…intriguing?
And not half as smooth as he seems to think he is.
There’s a lot Joe doesn’t know about Dave. He doesn’t know why Dave keeps disappearing or why he can’t seem to stay away. He doesn’t know what Dave wants from him. He doesn’t even know what, exactly, Dave is. And Joe can’t ask, because they don’t speak the same language.
Joe does know one thing, though. He is in love.
Which, great. How’s that going to end well?
Catch and Release is a gay paranormal romantic comedy featuring a truly terrible fisherman with an octopus phobia, a merman (maybe? Confirmation pending) with no sense of personal boundaries at all, constant communication fails, a whole lot of sea life not in the sea but in Joe’s house, yes, it’s dead, some epic yearning from both sides, and bewilderingly enough, maybe a way to make it work?
• Publisher: (August 16, 2021)
• Publication date: August 16, 2021
• Language: English
• Print length: 267 pages
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 