When the Tides Held the Moon: Deluxe Special Edition

Mermaids and found family immediately sold me on this when I heard about it from a friend, and I did a little happy dance when my request for the arc was granted! This story absolutely captured me from the very start. Benny is down on his luck, and the offer to join Luna Park seemed almost too good to be true. I am always a sucker for a found family story and even if it took Benny a while to fully trust the Luna Park crew, I really loved all their interactions. I also appreciated the way Kelley incorporated Benny's Puerto Rican heritage, the language, and the memories of his Titi Luz. My mermaid loving heart was of course made very happy by the merman (keeping the name out of the review for now for spoiler reasons) and the beautiful lore that Kelley has created for the merfolk in this book. Their love story is absolutely a slow burn, but totally worth it. However, I wish Benny had given his lover a bit more of an extended explanation and apology for not freeing him sooner. The merman had to physically deteriorate for Benny to realize he had to jump into action, which made me a little sad. But I guess it is a very good example of "love makes you blind" - for better or for worse. Overall, I recommend this beautiful story that reads a bit like a historical fairy tale. A queer historical fairy tale. Thank you to Erewhon Books for providing me with an ARC of this book via NetGalley!

This pretty much sums up my experience with the book. I devoured it from the first page on. I have to admit tho, the English was tough, especially to a non English native speaker. Wasn’t enough tho, to slow my pace. This book hat a truly amazing and diverse found family and the main character with all his struggles as a Puerto Rican in early 1900s America truly touched me. I won’t go into too much details so I won’t spoil anything, but the book reminded me a lot of The Greatest Showman, which is a great musical, just with a lot more time and depth to truly explore the struggles of the characters with their invisible disabilities like the main characters Asthma among others. I truly loved the book and will probably recommend it to everyone. It’s a historical queer Romantasy.

When Tides Held the Moon is about Benigno (Benny) Caldera, who leaves Puerto Rico for America, hoping for a better life. Instead, he ends up working as cheap labor, facing discrimination, and trying to survive as a factory blacksmith. Things change when he’s given the job of building a huge iron tank. After an accident gets him fired, he finds himself at Coney Island and Luna Park -where that tank has been turned into part of a new attraction. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s meant to hold a living merman, captured to save the park from going under. What I really liked was how unexpected the story felt. Benny slowly finds a kind of family among the people at Luna Park, and Rio, the merman, becomes much more to him than just “a prince of the sea.” The book covers a lot of heavy but important themes alongside the romance - racism, homophobia, the struggle to belong, the exploitation of immigrants, prejudice, and also the courage to live openly as yourself. And all of that is wrapped up in a touching love story. The Luna Park crew were some of my favorite characters. They’re all outcasts for different reasons, but together they form a family. Eli and Emmett stood out to me, but the women were also really well written. Benny himself was such a strong character too - young, unlucky, not fully sure of who he is, but with a big heart and so much courage. I’ll admit, I had a bit of trouble at the start because of the slang. As a non-native English speaker, I had to pay extra attention to catch everything. But once I got into it, I was hooked. I’d definitely recommend this book - not just for the romance (which I loved), but also for the way it handles so many important topics.