Evhen, now queen of Vodaeard, is fueled by revenge after witnessing her parents' brutal murder at the hands of the king of Marama and his undead army. Initially set on killing the king's daughter in retaliation, Evhen's perspective shifts when she realizes Princess Kalei may be unaware of her father's true intentions. Choosing to conceal her royal identity, Evhen navigates a treacherous path, unsure of who to trust in a world of deception and danger.

Meanwhile, Princess Kalei finds her beliefs shattered when she discovers the sinister truth behind her moon-blessed powers. After an attack by a fiery pirate leaves her questioning everything she knows, Kalei must rely on her would-be assassin, Captain Evhen, to guide her to safety and help put an end to the war.

As the two princesses face betrayal and threats from all sides, they must find a way to break the curse of their kingdoms and forge a path towards unity. With Kirkus praising the book as a riveting tale brimming with tension and romance, readers can expect a captivating journey filled with twists and turns.


For some reason I never got this ARC! NetGalley, I would great appreciate it if you could resend this ARC for better review

Thank you author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book!!

I love lesbians and I love pirates. So I really thought I’d like this book but it’s just not the vibe. It was fun and pretty engaging but I didn’t love the love story or the main characters so much.


Something that annoyed me was that the moonstone was described as a piece of obsidian and I was like bruh.

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, Emerge, Kay Adams, Catherine Ho (narrator), and Hayden Bishop (narrator) for the opportunity to read and listen to the audiobook of Heirs of Bone and Sea in exchange for an honest review. 

While I do not know if Heirs of Bone and Sea is going to be a duology (it feels like it) or a trilogy, or some longer series, it is the first book in the Dark Depths series, and a debut to boot.

The story follows Evhen, no longer a princess, but rather a queen after the murder of her parents. Consider her the heir of sea, as it were, in that she takes one of her parents ships and becomes its captain. In an act of revenge, she plans to kill the Marama king's daughter. When she meets the princess, she keeps her own identity a secret, and the princess might not be as meaningful to her plans as first anticipated.

Never able to leave her tower, let alone her island, Kalei can be referred to as the heir of bone, as it were, for she has been moon-blessed. Her sacred power allows her to revive the dead. Her father wants her power to become immortal, and when she finds out what lengths he will need to go to acquire that, Kalei is more than determined to break what she sees as a curse. There must be some way to remove her power.

Taken captive by Evhen, Kalei does what she can among the vessel and its crew. She wants to help bring her father down from power as well, so she easily complies. What she doesn't expect is to start having feelings for her royal enemy!

It was a bit hard to get into at first because there seems to be a lot of political aspects in the beginning and trying to get a hold on each character's unique voice was hard to differentiate in the beginning. I did end up thoroughly enjoying this novel. There are some interesting romantic aspects and some unexpected twists that make the plot fun. This novel is great for fantasy lovers and pirate-captive LGBTQ romance enthusiasts.

(I never got to review it while it was available here, but I was able to barrow this title from my local library)
This was such a slowwwwwwwwwww burrrrrrrrrrrn sapphic romantasy.
I was slightly confused on who wants to kill who and who’s parents are alive and dead and want to kill them. I wanted more romance, or more tension at least. I was not sure till very end if this was a romantic relationship or platonic relationship. I wanted more development with “you have to marry my son” or sapphic feelings, or even developing/ establishing the magic system.

Princess Evhen of Vodaeard's parents were tragically killed and she swears revenge on the King who killed them. While seeking her revenge, Evhen runs into the King's daughter Princess Kalei, known as the Princess of Death. Kalei can bring people back to life, and has been doing so for years. What she didn't know about her power was that every life she saved was being used to fight the King's war. Evhen kidnaps Kalei and mishaps ensue.

I listened to the audiobook of this. I'm not sure if it was the reader or the story itself, but I had a hard time really getting into this. The voice of Kalei made the character sound older than she was though I think she was meant to sound young.

There were pieces of the journey that captured my attention such as the battles, the ballroom scene, and when Kalei was using her magic, however some of the other scenes felt too slow. The characters lived a lot in their heads and I think the romance was lacking though it was supposed to be there. I didn't really buy that the two characters were in love. I think that romantic connection could have been stronger, possibly with more action/dialogue rather than internal thoughts.

I was excited by the description of the book and I think it has a lot of potential. If there is a sequel I would probably still read it (or listen to it) to see where the main characters end up.

This one had a lot of potential but unfortunately fell flat for me. The premise of the story was intriguing but it was maybe a little underdeveloped. There were times I was losing interest and it was moving a bit slow. I feel with a little more development of the characters and a little more action, this story could have been really good.

I wanted this to be great but think it came up short. I finished it a couple weeks ago but forgot to write the review. I had to read the synopsis again to remember what it was about. That says everything about the book. It’s not bad but definitely not memorable.

Gay pirate romance? Enemies to lovers? Necromancy? This book has found it’s target audience. (Me. Hello. I’m the target audience.)

Maybe the concept got my hopes up a little too high but you can’t just lure me in with all my favorite buzzwords and then expect me to be unbiased. This book was, in a word, underwhelming.

⚜ The… Romance

I wanted the romance to be good so bad, man. I’m still a little upset about it. Look, it wasn’t all terrible. There were moment that probably would’ve been really cute. If the romance was well written.

These girls had zero chemistry. For the entire book. The enemies to lovers tension was sort of there in the beginning but even then, it didn’t last long. The entire time the romance just felt so… Empty. As the characters became closer and the romance plot was progressing, the whole time I just kept wondering ‘Why do they even like each other?’

On paper it makes sense. They build trust over the course of the story, right? They get to know and understand each other. Sure. But there was never any romantic chemistry. Their bond felt more like vaguely friendly acquaintances for a majority of the book while acting like far more. Their actions felt so disconnected from the story because their romance just wasn’t that convincing.

⚜ Pacing and Plot

The pacing of the romance was weird and stilted but the rest of the book wasn’t much better. The frequent changes in POVs probably didn’t help. I really felt each chapter, if that makes sense. There was a very clear beginning middle and end to each plot line. It was like I could see the author’s planning document ‘Chapter one: X happens. Chapter two: Aftermath of X. Chapter 3: Y happens.’

While we’re talking about plot- I don’t think the antagonist had a motive. They were just kind of… Evil. I think it was meant to be a ‘power corrupts’ type thing but if it was, it wasn’t done well.

The antagonist was boring. Not much else to say about that.

On a more positive note- I was promised an undead army and hey, spoilers, there was an undead army. Kalei’s magic was pretty sick. Some of the descriptions got a little repetitive but overall- I was having the most fun when Kalei was using her powers.

⚜ The Audiobook

If you’re going to read this book, don’t listen to the audiobook. This is probably the first audiobook I’ve listened to that has made dialogue sound more unnatural than the written dialogue. There were multiple times (Mostly in very serious moments, unfortunately) Where they just miss the tone entirely.

While both narrators had this issue, at least Evhen’s voice actor seemed to fit the role. Kalei’s narrator was just a strange casting choice. Her voice was just too mature for the role and her weak voice acting skills totally killed the more emotional scenes. Sorry, girl.

⚜ Final Words

Again, underwhelming. A sub-par romance lacking in chemistry. Characters with basically no depth. An okay plot. No amount of buzzwords or potential can make up for that in my opinion.

One day I’ll read the lesbian pirate love story of my dreams and it will destroy my life. This one was just too good to be true.

Unfortunately this wasn't for me. I'm all for a sapphic pirate adventure but the book just didn't quite get there. I think my first problem was the Tangled thing. One princess had insanely long hair with magic powers and runs around barefoot - it can only be Tangled, right? It also feels a bit like a fanfic because some character beats are missing. We spend a lot of time in the character's heads but I still don't really understand why they made certain choices. I feel like these beats are something that would have been inferred from knowing the characters from whatever content the fic was based on. But, as a stand alone novel the characters are lacking that depth that you need to really know them and their choices. Ultimately, the main characters ended up very similar and mostly flat. The dual POV affected the pacing a bit because they didn't really have a drastically different perspectives on the events, so it felt like just rehashing old events sometimes. I did enjoy the world and would love some more piratey things to happen. I liked the concept of an undead army and such as well. So there were some good bones here to work with, but the book didn't grab me. The narrators were ok. There were some weird pacing issues with how some lines were delivered. Also, the Kalei narrator chose to do a whisper which made all the other voices sound loud and harsh and anything expressed by that character outside of the whisper was very jarring. Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

To start, overall I found this to be a very enjoyable tale. The story had good pacing, interesting characters, and good world building. I will say that I felt at times some of the non main characters felt a little one dimensional, why build a relationship between Kalei and the advisor just to tear it down so easily? Or to vilify the prince after one decision he made in what was honestly the best interests of most and stayed true to his character. It just felt at times the side characters personalities/morals were more flippant and a bit shallow since they were described/seen as one way by Kalei and then completely flipped once it was Evhen's point of view.

Speaking of pov's, I will say the choice in narrators made it hard to follow who was who. The voices were a bit too similar in pitch, but each did a great job carrying the story outside of that. It would have been almost better to have one narrator just use different voices if the tone was going to be so similar anyways. Overall I did enjoy this book and am looking forward to continuing the series!

Audiobook Review- Overall, the audiobook was okay. After awhile, it seemed like the two narrators started to sound very similar and it was hard to tell who’s POV I was listening to. This, along with some slow points in the story, it was a little hard to keep wanting to listen. I did like concept but wished it was executed. I did think Kalei raising an army was pretty cool but I don’t think we got to see enough action from that.

Thank you NetGalley for letting me listen to this audiobook early!

It was ok. I don't feel particularly attached to any of the characters. The audiobook made it hard to distinguish which of the fmmcs were speaking. Their voices were different but I constantly got them mixed up.

Thank you to Netgalley, Dreamscape Media, and Kay Adams for the audiobook arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book got me out of a reading slump! It's almost like a sapphic Tangled retelling meets pirates. I enjoyed the characters, though one definitely broke my heart close to the end there with his decision. Evhen was my favorite out of the two FMCs, but Kalei was definitely a well rounded, if not traumatized character. (Speaking of which, definitely check the trigger warnings before reading this book, there is some gore.) The writing, descriptions, and narrations were great.

I thought the plot was great overall, though the pacing lagged in some places and went by too fast in others. This was perhaps the biggest thing that knocked it down from being a top-tier book. I also wish there was a little more world-building, especially with the sirens and the moon connection, though maybe that'll be something explored in the next book.

Overall, definitely an enjoyable, fast-paced read!

I was approved for this book Heirs of Bone and Sea and than it disappeared the next day off the app so I don't know how I'm supposed to read or review audiobook I was never given enough time to actually read.

This is one of my favourite reads of the year so far. I recognise that we are only in March but I am obsessed with this and I mean OBSESSED.

Heirs of Bone and Sea follows Evhen who was once the princess of Vodaeard but is now the queen after the brutal murder of her parents at the hands of King of Matama and his undead army. She’s now on a revenge mission. Kidnap the King’s daughter. Murder the King’s daughter. Should be easy, right? It’s only fair and it will disadvantage his supernatural edge in the war. That’s until she gets to know the princess.

Princess of the Dead x Pirate Queen??? I knew I would eat this up. Like seriously, say no more.

The world-building, the characters… EVERYTHING. This was so fantastic and I have spent the past few days talking about this book to anyone who would listen.

This world is so easy to lose yourself in. I was fortunate to be able to receive the audiobook and I would sit down to listen and not even realise how much time had passed because I was so absorbed with the book.

I am completely and utterly obsessed with this book. Have I said that already? Maybe I need to repeat it.

I can’t wait to read what comes next for these characters. I will be anxiously awaiting for another book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for providing me with this audiobook. I received this audiobook for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I want to, thank NetGalley, the publisher "Dreamscape Media" and the author Kay Adams for providing this audiobook-ARC. I will be giving my honest and sincere review.

We follow two princesses, connected by the dark crimes of one of their Fathers, the King of Marama.
Princess Evhen of Vodaeard saw her parents die before her and she now only thinks of revenge.
Princess Evhen kidnaps Princess Kalei to punish the king for his greedy actions. but Kalei is so clueless about the King's affairs outside of their lands, trapped in a boat on the way to Vodaeard, she starts to see the cruel truth, leaving her to process the lies she was fed all her life, and fear of a truth related to her gift, that not even she will be immune to her father cruelty.

I feel that the story was unique we have a zombie concept with Kalei having moon powers to turn the dead into living again, but they don't come out how they were. I felt it, to be quite repetitive being a duo POV, The narrator did a good job. We see an enemy to lovers (Sapphic), and you can understand the attraction and the conflict from the beginning.

#HeirsofBoneandSea #NetGalley #bookstagram #bookaholic #bookreviewer #Bookreader

Oh this one was good! I can't wait to read more in the series. There is a lot of violence and gore in the story but I like the play on "healing" really being necrotic. Resurrections aren't just a new "life" like in a video game. The enemies to "something more" trope isn't usually my thing but I was hooked in this one.

Two princesses, warring kingdoms, sacred stones, and a frantic race against time, "Heirs of Bone and Sea" retells the traditional story of "Rapunzel" with heightened stakes and enemies more ruthless than ever.

This book includes:
- a lonely, moon blessed princess with the ability to bring people back to life
- an undead army
- LGBT subplot
- betrayal of the highest order
- a queen terrified of her responsibility and the gravitas of her role
- cliffhanger ending

I really enjoyed "Heirs of Bone and Sea." It was a fresh take on Rapunzel that added so much depth to the classic story. Evhen and Kalei were both dynamic and flawed in ways that made them believable and their struggle for power engaging. Kalei in particular drew me in, and I am eager to read more of her story and hope she gets some much needed reprieve in book 2. Fans of "Red Queen" will really enjoy this book and I hope it reaches a wider audience because I could see it easily becoming a huge hit. There are so many satisfying twists and turns, and a great back and forth where the princesses must choose between themselves and their futures.

I listened on audiobook and I was a massive fan of the narrator who voiced Evhan. They were very emotive and really brought Evhen's terrified rigidity to life in the way that made her so easy to relate to.

I received this ebook as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Kay Adams, and Dreamscape Media for the opportunity to review this book. This review has been posted to GoodReads - check out my profile https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/62314863

DNF @44.%

I regret not stopping sooner, but I thought it might get better. If anything, it got worse. I don't know how the author managed to make such a violent book so boring. I hated all of the characters. Nothing they were doing made any sense.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the Tangled vibes this book gave me, but I wanted to know more about the magical hair. I enjoyed the pirate vibes too because it was great fun. We need more pirate books in the world. I want to know more about the magic in this book and the blood moon. I look forward to the next book in this series.