I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and thought the characters were well-developed and interesting. It was also nice to see Korean mythology represented in children's fiction.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea was an honest to goodness delight. I love that our main character is so devoted to making the existence of everyone else better. I love Mina and her determination to do whats right for everyone. The writing here is so beautiful and lush and really paints every sentence in vibrant color for the reader to enjoy.

This has a little bit of like, found family, but in the afterlife, which i loved. There were twists regarding identity i didnt see coming. And a really soft and precious romance that i audibly said "aww" over. Fast paced, sweet, emotional, and definitely something i would recommend to a variety of readers.

A lovely YA fantasy standalone all about family, bonds, sacrifice, and love. The writing style was quite lyrical without tipping into overly flowery, the main character was determined, steadfast, and passionate, and the setting was enchanting. I hope the author continues to write more stories like this one.

My one minor complaint was that I wish the story had been a little longer, and that we'd maybe taken a little more time to see the main character interact with her brother before the plot picked up. Still, I had a great time reading it.

"Why must everything we love be taken from us? Why can't we hold what we love forever in our hands, safe and whole?"

⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to NetGalley and Fewiel & Friends for a free copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea follows Mina, a girl from a local village who chooses to be brave or reckless and throw herself into the sea to save her brother's beloved: the chosen sacrifice to the Sea God. Will she be sentenced to death for interfering with the sacrifice or will she find away to awaken the Sea God on her own?

I was most excited to read this book thinking it was a story of a girl who is specifically not the 'chosen one', who goes on an adventure with her brother and the woman he loves to find the Sea God. That is my own fault for not reading the synopsis properly! I still found the actual plot interesting, but I guessed the main plot twist really early on and felt it dragged out for far too long. I also struggled to care about the side characters (particularly the children), although I understand why they were involved in the plot.

The writing was beautiful and atmospheric, and I did enjoy it! This one just wasn't very memorable to me. I didn't even realize I hadn't reviewed it for a month! Definitely going to try Rebel Seoul next.

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for sending me the E-arc of The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea by Axie Oh in exchange for an honest review.

“There are many pathways destiny can take.” Is a quote from this book that has stayed with me.
This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 and man did it live up to the hype!
Elements of the folklore Shim Cheong and the Sea God are beautiful intertwined throughout the pages of this story. I loved the overall theme of this book, that we all have the power to make our own choices despite what fate is willing.What we wan tin this life doesn’t just come to us because fate wills it so, we must be brave enough to make the right choices to get to that outcome.
5/5 stars

***Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley, who provided me with an electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.***

A feminist retelling of a Korean folktale. Do I need to say more? This book is a 5 stars read for me. If you wish to be transported into a magical world, this book is for you. If you are looking for an enchanting fairytale that will give you all the feels, this book is for you. If you liked 'Spirited Away', this book is for you. If you want to read a true masterpiece, THIS. BOOK. IS. FOR. YOU.

I loved this book. I always have loved fairy tales from around the world and this had the core of what I always remembered as my favorite parts. I couldn’t put it down.

This book was amazing. I coudn't put it down. It was magical. Higly recommended! The characters, the plots, the writting: wonderful and perfect.

Really enjoyed this!

I will update the review with the link to on our blog as soon as I can.

I'd like to thank the publisher Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Feiwel & Friends and Netgalley for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a sweet & magical story about friendship, forgiveness, and learning to step out of your comfort zone ❤️
Ellie is a part of a family & community who have magical abilities- they are able to create little charms to give you confidence, find peace, break little broken things and much more!
This magical component was super unique & I so desperately want to try a cinnamon cupcake charmed with confidence 🥺
Ellie’s family owns a tea store and their teas are enchanted with little charms
This summer is supposed to be the best summer ever as Ellie will be road tripping with her best friend and has compiled an anti-wallflower list to help her venture out of her comfort zone & create new adventures/memories
However, after a prank towards her ex-best friend and now enemy Jack goes awry, Ellie and Jack are now forced to go on this road trip together
Ellie is distraught and frustrated as she wants nothing to do with Jack- her childhood best friend who completely cut her off without any explanation
But, as they begin their travels there may be an enchanting spark that grows along the way 🥰

This was a sweet story- the magical aspect of it was my favorite! I also really enjoy road trip stories and this wasn’t an exception
I will say, the internal narrative of Ellie is very immature & I struggled with it but it’s also very much 16-year old appropriate so I think I’m just personally not connecting with YA as I used to sadly
Overall, it was a sweet, fast-paced story that 16-year old me would’ve marked as a fave for sure

I was drawn in by the dreamy cover and the description, but this fairy tale retelling didn't have enough originality and bite for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Feiwel & Friends for providing me a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All the opinions and views expressed in this review are purely my own and not affiliated with any brand.

This book was stunning!! I'm so glad that I was able to read this. Axie Oh's writing is fantastic. The story is so well written and weaves together such a amazing story that I didn't want to put this book down! I would recommend this book for anyone looking to read a beautiful story!

Mina sacrifices herself to the sea God's dragon, because her brother Joon is in love with the intendended bride for the sea God. So instead of the intended bride, who is profoundly beautiful, Mina throws herself in the ocean instead.

Mina emerges into a city cloaked in fog and makes her way to the sea God's palace.

The city is deserted like it was in sprited away. The city is so still that when the wind chimes make noise Mina knows it is because spirits are present.

Mina meets the sea God to see he is only a boy her age. He is cursed and Mina vows to break the curse for her people.

Her soul, in the shape of a magpie, is taken from her. She is promised to get it back in one month if she can break the curse. Or she will become a sprit, because humans do not survive long in the spirit world.

This book dosen't waste time. It gets right into the action from page one. It hooked me instantly. The writing is smooth and beautiful.

I really loved how this felt romantic and mythological. I loved the romance and the world. It was all so beautiful. Highly recommend if you were a fan of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

“After all, not all storytellers are grandmothers, but all grandmothers are storytellers.”
My heart was a bit beaten and bruised while reading, but the way Axie Oh tells Mina’s story in The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea gave me all the feelings and healed my heart whole by the ending.

I am unfamiliar with the Korean folktale that Axie Oh retells in this YA historical fantasy/romance, but I can assure you that The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is equally enchanting and full of love, magic, and the wisdom that comes with listening to and honoring your beloved family and ancestors.

“It seems unwise to give fire to a clumsy person in a forest.”
Mina is a character who loves her older brothers but most especially her brother Joon. Joon has known for years that his bride will be gentle and beautiful Shim Cheong, but fate is tricky. Every year a bride is chosen to be sent down to the Spirit Realm at the bottom of the sea to the Sea God so that he may finally break his curse and stop the storms that ravage the seas, and terrorize the people who live nearby and work the land. Above all else, Mina cannot stand to see the people she loves in pain. So when it becomes time to send the newest Sea God’s Bride into the sea, Mina takes it upon herself to go in Shim Cheong’s place in the hopes that it will save her brother from heartache.

Once in the Spirit Realm, Mina is guided by the Red String of Fate straight to the sleeping Sea God. It’s there that she’s told she only has 30 days to help break the curse that plagues the Sea God or her soul will be separated from her. The friends—the spirits, beings, and other manner of characters that Mina meets and befriends on her journey are truly what make The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea so magical. Shin and Mina’s connection is utterly alluring and the obstacles that each of them face, along with the unspoken gestures and actions between the two will have romance readers swooning.

“Don’t chase fate, Mina. Let fate chase you.”
My favorite aspect of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is not only Mina’s determination, but also her intelligence as well as her ability to see the good in every being that she comes across. She respects everyone in the Spirit Realm, but also manages to keep herself safe and stay true to herself while doing it. I think the depth of Mina’s character is a testament to Axie Oh and her ability to create such a beautiful and magical world of the Spirit Realm while injecting so much humanity in a place where humans can’t even survive.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is going to be a story that sticks with me for a while and I can already tell you that it’s a top read of 2022 for me. Axie Oh’s storytelling, prose, and character development are so gorgeous. The words came alive around me while I was reading and I loved being immersed in such a vivid world. I can absolutely assure you that this book isn’t just for YA readers, and I can guarantee that a reader at any (teen or above) age will adore this story!

A beautifully written story that had me hooked from beginning to end. I have a place in my heart for every single character. They were so well crafted that they seemed like real people. I want this to become a movie so bad. It had me crying multiple times when Mina's grandfather was mentioned and I just loved the reveal of who the characters truly were.

Very much like its covers, The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is a work of art!! Retellings are one of my favorite genres, because they take stories we know and love and completely turn them on their head. While I have never read the fairy tale that this is based on, I fell in love with the utter beauty and magic of this world from the moment Mina found herself in the world of the Sea King.

Her home has been ravaged by storms that have washed away complete cities. This has led those in charge to believe that the Sea God is angry… and he needs to have a girl sacrificed every year until he finds his bride. So every single year, a young girl is thrown into the sea, in reality, murdering these children to appease a God.

When the girl that Mina’s brother is in love with is chosen, he plans to disrupt the ceremony, which would in turn have him punished as well. So Mina throws herself into the water instead so that no one else would be hurt. This act of bravery and kindness begins her journey into the Spirit Realm. Here is where she meets Shin and sets out to find a way to end the storms once and for all.

I love Mina so much! She is such a strong character… I mean she threw herself into a raging sea so that her brother wouldn’t be hurt or have to live with loss of the girl he loves. The story starts by saying that her brother is the person she loves most in the world, so what she does is the ultimate sacrifice to save him. It’s quite beautiful… and depressing.

I enjoyed their journey through the Spirit Realm, because we got to meet a lot of Gods and Demons along the way. The imagery was incomparable to any book I’ve read before and I’m sure I’ll be reading this again really soon!

10 out of 10!! Would recommend!!

As Asian American and Pacific Island Heritage month draws to a close, it’s not too late to broaden your worldview and sneak in one more read in May. In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea YA author Axie Oh gives us a feminist retelling of the Korean legend The Tale of Shim Cheong.

The story begins with a sister’s love, a country in turmoil, and the tale of an angry Sea God. Each year the nation hopes to placate the Sea God with a human offering, a bride of course. Mina’s brother’s beloved Shim Cheong is this year’s offering, and within a few short pages of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea’s lyrical tale it is easy to forget that such things are myth. You instantly find yourself afraid as you read that Mina has broken two of the Sea Gods three rules, her brother having already broken the third. You forget that such stories aren’t real thanks to the narrative talents of Oh and her clever scene styling. You forget that there is no real Sea God. When the dragon appears through the water, you realize that this will be no mere tale of a simple folks mythology concerning the tides and weather, but a full blown journey into the heart of myth and story, where dragons do indeed lie. Dark blue scales hit the deck as the dragon rises above the boat and in that moment I could almost taste the saltwater.

Mythology has always drawn me in. My elementary school teachers read to us from traditional Ashanti tales of Anansi the spider, and from the Punjab mythology that most of my classmates heard at home. The perpetuation of stories across cultures and nations has always appealed to me. All religions share similar stories of floods and saviors, all mythologies have a creation story, and some kind of pantheon of overlords. From a young girl growing up in England, to a young girl in Korea, or Alabama, it is stories that ties us together.

The memories of spirits and gods might be hazy, but not the memories of books. Stories are eternal.

The stories of Asian communities have appealed to me since I first encountered Amy Tan and Kazuo Ishiguro over twenty years ago. I am drawn to the stories of people who are unlike me in face and history. I know what it’s like to be a white girl growing up in a once great empire, but it’s everything else that I want to know about. In the opening pages of her narrative Oh sets up what for me is the perfect description of how we create gods around us all the time.

The world is filled with small gods, for each part of nature has a guardian to watch over and protect it.

The gods of Korean folklore that she presents us with bear a remarkable similarity to the Greek and Roman pantheons. Each with their own characteristics and playing their part in ruling over an area of the human world. What Oh then does with the nature and “life” of gods as the story develops follows a more unusual approach, and I am fascinated with the perspective of the gods that she paints. The dialogue she allows them to have regarding their own feelings towards humanity is an illuminating insight into the ego of man and myth. All of which begins from the perspective of Mina, as she throws herself into the path of the gods.



An unbearable anger rises up within me, starting in my stomach and clawing up to choke me. The gods have chosen not to grant our wishes – our wishes from the paper boat festival, but also the small wishes we make every day. For peace, for fertility, for love. The gods have abandoned us. The god of gods, the Sea God, wants to take from the people who love him – take and take and never give.

This is the expectation we have upon entering the world of the gods, and Oh starts from here in painting a fuller picture of the ruled and the rulers, the gods and the supplicants. Nothing is simplistic, and nothing is as it seems. The development of the Goddess of Moon and Memory is particularly captivating, and bears great similarities with how we build certain people up in our modern world.

The book is remarkably aware of the times we currently find ourselves in, but then all mythology has something to say about principalities and powers, the way the world works. Maybe we all need a little mythology to thrive on right now when the world is so very cracked and broken. Great stories should inspire us, and this retelling of the classic Korean folktale inspires me. The tale of Shim Cheong, Mina and the Sea God has been repeating in my mind since I finished the tale, and has me reaching for more mythology, for more retellings.

My eldest brother, Sung, says trust is earned, that to give someone your trust it to give them the knife to wound you. But Joon [the younger brother] would counter that trust is faith, that to trust someone is to believe in the goodness of people and in the world that shapes them. I’m too raw to believe in anyone right now…



Mina, the central voice and actor of the narrative, is an irrepressible heroine. You know almost immediately that she will risk everything for her people, and when she utters the words “Take me instead” you aren’t surprised at all. This is barely even a spoiler as it happens so quickly in the opening of the story.



An unbearable anger rises up within me, starting in my stomach and clawing up to choke me. I am the maker of my own destiny.

Every step Mina takes shows that she will take active agency in her own life. Even when her choices are limited, she is the agent of her own change. She will look at her options and pick the best one, even if it matches the one others would choose for her. She advocates for herself. She makes decisions at her own expense. She will choose action over comfort and her own happiness. Once Mina sacrifices herself to the sea, she learns that not everything she has been told in her stories is quite true, and she must navigate the myths of her people with the people of the myths in order to save herself and her country. I did not want her story to come to an end, and I sincerely hope Oh decides to provide more mythology from this world so that I can immerse myself beneath the sea once more.



Oh has an absolutely wonderful way with words. Not only does her narrative draw you in, but you will find yourself tasting the words she uses, and the phrases she employs, as if at a delightful bakery full of wonderful treats. She borrows from mythology, and family legend, and modern times, to create a patchwork of story and words that is so wonderful to read you don’t want to skip a beat. While my English literature oriented brain will often seek to speed read, I found myself often pausing and re-reading sections just to feel the words again.

I’ve heard the cadence of these words before. They’re a farewell.

Axie Oh is a first generation Korean American, born in NYC and raised in New Jersey. She studied Korean history and creative writing as an undergrad at the University of California – San Diego and holds an MFA from Lesley University in Writing for Young People. Her passions include K-pop, anime, stationery supplies, and milk tea. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada with her puppy, Toro. The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is her fourth book and was released on February 22, 2022. GeekMom received a copy of this book for review purposes.

Luscious, romantic, and so perfectly fairytale-esque. I loved reading this so much and I think it captures the heart of the original Korean folktale so well.

For fans of Spirited Away, this is a book for you!

This book feels like a Miyazaki film in the best way possible: you're immediately thrown into the action, dragged along as you discover the world at the same time as the character. At times, the characters are cliche, but the intense worldbuilding and setting more than make up for their lack of depth, as well as the core message about family.

In short, this is a beautiful story about family (whether blooded or found), and as an added bonus, the cover is beautiful!