Benny+Rio 🩵

This beautiful story is set in New York in the early 1900’s, which follows the Puerto Rican immigrant Benny as his life changes completely when he is tasked to create an unusual water tank that he finds out later is for the imprisonment of a merman. From this moment on, he finds a home with the rambunctious crew of the Luna Park menagerie as he also tries to fulfil a promise to the merman’s mother.

I really enjoyed this! I loved learning about Benny and the other characters within the menagerie and all of their different backgrounds and how they came to be at Luna Park. The story is so incredibly beautiful, both plot wise and how it is written with the characters bringing this story to life and there are a few little twists along the way.

The only slight downside was that there was some Puerto Rican Spanish that is present within the story but there are translations at the end of the book so it definitely wasn’t a deal breaker for me but it may make it difficult for some readers.

If you enjoy found family of outcasts, fated romance, and mermen - then I’d highly recommend this book - plus there are incredible illustrations that are scattered throughout that make this book even more enjoyable.

This was such a cute fantastical book fill with adventures and heartfelt characters that you can all relate with. It was interesting to read the only reason it look me longer than normal to finish was the fact I don’t normally read or speak Spanish . But other than that it was beautiful written,

I would definitely recommend this to anyone that is in of a new adventure !

Thank you net gallary for letting me read and fall in love with this magical story.

This was such a good book. I loved the story and the writing so much. The characters were great and the story flowed smoothly. Will definitely read more books by this author in the future.

Beautifully written and extremely atmospheric! Between the romance and the vibes, this was like a warm hug of a book. Really recommend curling up and losing yourself in this!

When the Tides Held the Moon is a beautiful book featuring Benny, a Puerto Rican in New York desperately trying to survive and live, and Rio, a merman who was captured the same night that he lost his mother, along with a found family circus troupe that really fill out the story. This book is heart-warming, has incredibly lush world-building, and is an absolute tear-jerker.

I loved this book and especially the illustrations that accompany it. The slang and descriptions of Benny's circus family really brought 1910s New York to life for me, someone who didn't know much about the setting before reading this book. I also really loved the lore of mermaids and the descriptions of Rio- they were truly beautiful and really put me in the world of this book.

Without spoilers, I will say that I wish the ending had been explained a bit better and explored a bit more. I also loved the found family aspect of this book, but I wanted just a bit more personality from the members of this family. I fell in love with them and wanted more!

Over all this book was beautiful and I had a delightful time reading it and I do recommend this book!

There are no words to describe this book other than BEAUTYFUL!

Fantasy? Yes. Historical? Yes. Found family? Yes. Adorable? Also, yes.

I can’t remember how many times I sobbed and then swooned over the main characters. One is desperate to find a home and the other to get free. Meanwhile, being afraid of losing each other. The way their story unraveled had me hooked in it.
There’s an amazing representation of multiculturalism and distinctness, too - with all the side characters having something to offer into the storyline.

I didn’t know when I picked the book that there would, also, be illustrations in it! Just, exquisite. I can’t say no more.

I really enjoyed this book. Although the plot seemed v familiar, it was a great read. Characters were built really well!

Thank you NetGalley, Kensington Publishing, and, of course, Vanessa Vida Kelley for the ARC!

Wow, this book was delightful. I usually don't like books with as heavy of a romance plot focus as this had, but I really thoroughly enjoyed this. The characters are diverse in every way imaginable, the plot is compelling, and there is something really magical about the way Vanessa Vida Kelley writes. I can't wait to read more from her! There are also gorgeous illustrations peppered throughout the book.

It's touching, substantive, entertaining, and heartbreaking all at once. It's also an incredibly detailed social critique disguised (masterfully) as a romance novel.

Kelley weaves together a narrative that highlights the desperate struggles that the main cast, all of whom are members of an oddities show and are marginalized in differing but parallel dimensions, face while contrasting them with the open kidnapping, imprisonment, and display of the merman. It's insightful, it prompts reflection (hopefully!), and it strikes the perfect blend of strong and clear messaging without being too heavy handed/transparent and losing the fantastical nature of the allegory.

Kelley also contrasts Benny's position at the ironwork factory, where the workers of differing marginalized identities are pitted against each other, with his position at the oddities show, where shared struggles unite the workers and how that allows them to do great things. I'm a bit of a nerd about this, because my schooling is in social psyc and sociology, focusing on group affiliation and how it motivates pro and antisocial behaviors, and I can't overstate how well she did this. She's able to distill so much information about sweeping social pressures and the fabricated need to step on others for survival into interactions that perfectly represent them.

While delivering this very thoughtful critique, Kelley also tells a comforting and heartwarming story of found family and unconditional love and acceptance.

I really can't recommend this book enough, especially after seeing people on booktok say they don't like to read diverse stories because they "can't relate" to the characters. Perhaps picking something like this up can help them develop greater empathy and understanding for those around them.

What I absolutely loved about this book and what drew me in in the first place were the stunning art, the premise and the way this story has a Puerto Rican and a Merman fall in love in a carnival/circus kind of setting.

The characters are diverse and the background of an old timed American city was beautifully set up.
Sadly, the writing style was not for me and so I struggled to finish this book.
I wanted to love it more, the time and cast of characters made this wonderfully exotic for me but I could not get into it.
I can see other readers adore this story though and give it the attention it deserves.

Oh, this book. This beautiful, beautiful book.

It's essential to note that I'm no stranger to Venessa Vida Kelley's work—she's an artist of a particular kind, who can put every emotion on the page in a single image. Love, joy, despair, longing. The pictures she produces are vivid and pull you into another world. And how fortunate we as readers are to have, now, her writing, that does the just the same in captivating detail with enormous care.

When the Tides Held the Moon focuses on our protagonist and narrator, Benigno “Benny” Caldera; an orphaned boy from Puerto Rico in the early 1900s who found his way to New York after losing all the family he has back home, searching for something...more. He finds it in a sideshow in Coney Island, where, after a spiral of events, he ends up mixed in with the group and their plans to capture a real, live merperson. The merman they capture becomes part of Benny's "something more", too; Rio, as Benny calls him, is homesick from the sea and caged from the life he should be living as a sideshow attraction at Luna Park, not dissimilar to the way Benny is caged as a closeted man of color in a time where the world seems to pigeonhole him. As the two fall in love, and the stakes become higher, Benny has to grapple with loving Rio—and therefore wanting him free—and knowing that means he'll never see the merman again.

I have no shortage of praise for this book—so many pieces of it feel as if it was written for me. For one, the lush setting of Coney Island and the surrounding city was brought to life with such impeccable detail, and, along with the early 1900s setting, such research. I'm a massive nerd for historical accuracy—tiny details about the way people speak in a certain time, or restaurants that might have existed on a street, or events that coincided with the events of a story. And I could see that care and detail for the time and place of Kelley's story poured onto every page.

So many people love to believe that stories that are "historically accurate" might preclude diverse groups of characters—race, sexual orientation—but the way Kelley immediately dispells that narrative with a crop of impeccable characters who feel lived in, loved, and real is a rare gift. I am incredibly fond of a found family dynamic, and the cast of characters at Luna Park were that and more—they were messy, and honest. They had journeys of their own that I would read books about each and every one of them. Each character had their own, smaller arc; pieces of the puzzle that made this lush group of oddities into a family. Standouts for me were Matthias, the "strong man" of the group whose greatest strength seemed to be his kindness and intellect, Lulu—the menagerie's "largest woman", whose position as a caretaker often masked her own struggles, and Eli and Emmett, the so-called conjoined twins with more in common with Benny than he knows despite their early clashing.

But this book, truly, is about Benny and Rio. The way Kelley works in her own experiences as a queer Puetro Rican woman into Benny, and parallels his struggles with Rio's displacement from the ocean was masterful. The pacing of the relationship had me aching, watching the two of them messily realize their similarities—and differences—and how they'd slowly but surely found home in one another. Kelley did incredible work also crafting original lore for her merpeople, and by the end of the book, I still had questions—and yet found myself alright not having them answered because of the wistful feeling the story left in my chest.

Somewhere around halfway through the book, one of my favorite feelings reading books like this hit me—the awareness that, while this is a romance book, and, by definition, I know the characters should get a happy ending, but I still don't entirely know how that's going to happen. And what a journey it was getting to piece that together, bit by bit. I'm already eager to reread the book knowing the way it all comes together in the end, which is for me the sign of a lasting favorite read. I'm particularly eager also to see the final illustrations in the book—as a longtime fan of Kelley's beautiful art style, and having seen what the eARC calls "unfinished sketches" (which on their own are captivating), I know they'll be as stunning as the text they accompany.

I am so incredibly grateful to have gotten to read this book ahead of its release, and cannot wait to read more and more from Venessa Kelley after this touching debut. It's going to stick with me for a long time. Thank you Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review—I am so eager to tell the world how much I loved this one.

When the Tides Held the Moon is a beautiful and heart-wrenching tale of love, acceptance, and found family, featuring lovely lyrical writing and absolutely stunning artwork throughout.

Set in 1911 New York, this whimsical tale follows a struggling Puerto Rican immigrant and blacksmith, Benny, tasked with building an complex aquarium-like enclosure for a mysterious wealthy client, Sam Morgan. Through a series of unfortunate events, Benny finds himself taking a job from Sam and learning the cruel truth behind the tank's existence: to serve as a prison for a merman that is to be the main attraction for Sam's menagerie. While helping restore the menagerie's grounds to their former glory, Benny is drawn to the dubbed "Prince of Atlantis" and as their bond deepens, he finds himself facing his own secrets about who he is and whether he has the courage to do the right thing.

This was so much fun! A very quirky, whimsical, feel good tale with a diverse cast of characters and excellent BIPOC & queer representation.
It took me a minute to get into this one but once I got going, I couldn't put it down! Despite the plot being pretty straightforward and predictable, I still found myself up at 1 a.m, crying, unable to stop reading. While I enjoyed the writing style, it does have a quirky/whimsical element to it that I recognize might not be for everyone. The multi language phrases featured throughout were a fun touch, although I did find it broke my reading flow to keep having to go translate them. (It was only after finishing that I discovered the very convenient glossary of phrases at the back..oops)

I adored both the MCs, and their love story was just lovely - I only wish I'd had more time with them! Benny's struggle with his sexual identity and his journey of self-acceptance was heart-warming. The wonderful and chaotic cast of misfits in the menagerie gave this book a lovely found family element as well. The artwork was, of course, absolutely stunning, and really sold the emotional weight of some of the scenes.

Would absolutely recommend giving this one a go, and I will be picking up a physical copy for myself when it comes out!

Thank you NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the eARC. I appreciate having had the opportunity to read this one!

⭐4.5/5 (rounded up for NG/GR)
🌶️ 0/5

WTTHTM is a beautiful and heartbreaking LGBTQ romance with fantasy and a splash of adventure, perfectly blended with a POC main character who is so human and complex that you cannot help but love him and his development over the course of this novel.

I absolutely ADORED this, what a refreshing read! The story is so special and unique, the writing is so well done, I just can't gush enough about this.
I'm not a super huge fan of historical fictions but this was so immersive and well-done that I couldn't put it down.
The small bit of magic in the story is placed just perfectly so that we get a hint of the lore and fantasy element, but not so much that we delve fully into a completely different magical world. I would definitely recommend this to friends that don't enjoy the fantasy genre as much but would still enjoy a damn good story.
Also, the illustrations are gorgeous and I loved them.

One of my favorite reads of the year.

**When the Tides Held the Moon** is a stunning blend of historical fantasy, romance, and self-discovery. Set in 1910s Coney Island, it follows Benny, a Puerto Rican blacksmith who becomes entangled with Río, a merman.

Why I love this book:
Found family
Queer romance
**The Illustrations!!** (I'm so glad Venessa found a publisher willing to let her include these works of art!)

I absolutely adored this book and *need* more time with these characters. I hope there’s a sequel in the works because I’m not ready to say goodbye to Benny and Río. If you love **historical fantasy** and **LGBTQ+** stories, this book is a must-read!

Thank you to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC, and to Venessa for having the courage to follow this dream! I'm so happy that all of your hard work has paid off! :)

When the Tides Held the Moon is a hauntingly beautiful tale of a Puerto Rican immigrant in 1910’s New York. Through a series of events, he finds himself as a part of side show and helping capture a merman. Trust me, it works.

This novel doesn’t shy away from the realities of the disillusionment of the American dream, racism, homophobia and stereotypes without ever being heavy handed.

The romance is beautiful and sweet. I’m a sucker for found family and this had it in spades!

I personally loved the era appropriate ways this book discussed mental health, masculinity and the traps we make for ourselves and for others.

The prose is a bit like reading a painting, which is enhanced by the author’s beautiful illustrations throughout the book. There is a lot of Spanish with direct translations, which I prefer as it more authentic. The context lays out the meaning and there is a glossary in the back for a direct translation. I can’t wait to see what this author does next.

Thank you so much to Kensington Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC!

I was drawn to this book because of the beautiful cover and the Coney Island setting. I had a lot of fun with it! I’m not a capital R Romance reader, so this wasn’t totally in my wheelhouse, but I still really enjoyed it. I think many fans of queer Romantasy and Romance will love it. Reading up a little bit on the author, I think this started out as part of a fanfic challenge, which feels right in terms of how it’s structured and the way it is in conversation with various tropes. If you like cozy queer romance, mermaids, sideshows, found family, and lyrical writing, you should give this book a try.

Highlights for me:
- A well drawn NYC setting; it was lovely to experience a little taste of 1910s Coney Island
- I appreciated the queer rep and the emphasis on queer love, joy, and acceptance
- A fun glimpse into sideshows; I especially recommend this book if you like circuses, carnivals, freakshows, etc
- Very poetic and lyrical writing
- Beautiful illustrations! They weren’t all rendered properly in my copy of the ARC, but the ones I saw were lovely and definitely enhanced the reading experience
- Good found family vibes and a lot of fun banter
- An interesting use of 2 POVs. Benigno’s POV is written in 1st person and Rio’s is written in poetry; it was fun to experience those two different voices
- Benigno’s POV included some untranslated Spanish, and I really like how the author handled that. They were careful to make the context clear to non-Spanish speakers, but using Spanish felt true to Benigno’s character and I enjoyed the effect. It helped me as a non-Spanish speaker appreciate what it might feel like to struggle to understand everything someone is saying to me, which felt on-point in this book, which was about two characters trying to connect and communicate despite very different backgrounds and languages.
- While not the main focus, there was some good trans rep

Things that didn’t work for me:
- The pacing was a little strange, and I found the book hard to get into
- The plot was very bog standard and fairly predictable. I thought the villain was way too obvious
- This is not what I would call a deep read. It’s fairly surface level, and doesn’t offer a huge amount of characterization or depth. As much as I enjoyed it, I doubt I’ll remember much of it
- The characters used a ton of what I assume was period slang. A little bit of that kind of thing goes a long way, and here I felt that this particular device was overused. As a result some of the dialogue felt a little stilted and cartoonish to me.

While there were a few things that I didn’t love, overall this book was so fast-paced and sweet that I didn’t really mind them. I sincerely enjoyed my time with this book and I’ll definitely keep an eye out for Kelley’s future work. I think this could be a huge hit with queer Romantasy fans, and I’ll also recommend it to folks looking for a sweet story about found family, romance, and queer joy.

This was a 3.5 star read for me, but I’m rounding it up to 4 here because I know I’m not the target audience.

Huge thanks to Venessa Vida Kelley, Kensington Publishing | Erewhon Books, and NetGalley for generously providing an ARC for review!

This book was truly beautiful! 🥹 It perfectly captures the essence of found family, love, and bravery while telling a powerful story about embracing your true self and finding solace in trusting who you are. The relationship between Benny and Río was deeply emotional and raw, bringing an authenticity that makes their connection unforgettable. The supporting characters were just as well-developed, adding more depth to the story and making the world feel lively and engaging. I absolutely loved this book—it’s a moving and heartfelt journey that resonates long after you finish reading. Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for the ARC!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Absolutely breathtaking! Venessa Vida Kelley’s When the Tides Held the Moon is the kind of book that sweeps you off your feet and carries you away to another time and place. Benny and Río’s love story is heart-wrenching and magical, and the Coney Island setting is pure nostalgia mixed with fantasy. The illustrations? Chef’s kiss—they make this book a treasure to hold. If you’ve ever wanted a queer, historical romance with a dash of mermaid magic, this is it. Prepare for tears and swoons!

I am very much in the minority with this one, but I could not get into it. This has a very fanfic-like prose which, if that is for you, I think you will love. I personally don't usually love that style of writing as it makes the characters feels too young/two-dimensional. With that, there's a lot of telling and not showing, so not much trust was given to the reader. Altogether, I think if you know you like fanfic-turned-book style of romance, you'll really like this.

The one thing I absolutely loved though? The art. Art elevates a reading experience on a good day, but the art in this was absolutely stunning!

The fun parts: extremely cozy, solid representation (a little detail that I appreciated immensely and which honestly sold me was how on point the Punjabi curses were, that lady has my whole heart) the multilinguality wasn't awkward or clunky, the main characters were veryyy likeable and so easy to root for

The less fun parts: I honestly wish that we'd gotten more conversations and more time on paper to see the two MCs getting to know one another, not just having meaningful conversations. It's something I get very nitpicky about in romance, but I do like to see the quiet moments because I feel like they're what makes the chemistry between a couple really shine. Still, I adored this novel (read it at the right time, for one) and it was certainly a breeze to get through.

Thank you for opportunity to read an advance copy of this book!

When the Tides Held the Moon, by Venessa Vida Kelley is a romantic YA fantasy with lyrical prose, stunning artwork, and a world that will leave you mesmerized long after you've left.

Set in 1910's New York, Benny is an immigrant from Puerto Rico, working as a blacksmith in the mills when he receives a mysterious job opportunity to build an elaborate tank for wealthy business man Sam Morgan. Impressed by his work, Sam offers Benny a new job on Coney Island.

Soon things spin out of control as Benny is swept up into a world of carnies and sirens. By the time Benny realizes what he has done, it's too late. Benny's work has become a prison to showcase Morgan's latest attraction, the Prince of Atlantis.
As Benny works to help restore the old failing theater, he can't help but feel drawn to the Merman held captive by his own invention. As plans for survival and escape devolve into love, Benny must face everything he's kept hidden and choose between his friends, his love, or everyone's freedom.

While I found the plot of this book straight forward and predictable, it was a light and easy read. I enjoyed the complexity of the relationships in the book and the diverse representation of cultures and languages within the characters. I found even the sections written in other languages were easy enough to interpret the meaning given context clues, but a glossary of translations was included in the back for those who prefer to know exact meaning.
Rio and Benny were a beautiful couple and it was easy to root and swoon for them.
The artwork of course was breathtaking also, and paired well with the atmosphere of the book.
I would highly recommend this to any collector of beautiful books and covers.
I am looking forward to seeing the finished product when published.