One of my favorites so far this year. Really loved the characters. Truly does mix elements of Little Mermaid and Cinderella.

I really loved this book! I enjoy fairytale retellings that have a twist and dark elements to them. Kell Woods was able to draw inspiration from the tales of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid while creating a beautifully unique novel. I really enjoyed the writing style and imagery. I listened to the audiobook, and Esther Wane was the perfect narrator for this book. Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with a ALC in exchange for an honest review. If you like dark historical fantasy, read this book! So good!

I featured this book on my Mermaids episode, not just because it features these beautiful mythical creatures, but because of the engaging ways this story combines Cinderella and The Little Mermaid in a Historical Fantasy. Real countries and historical context are the backdrop, as are social protocols from the time. This book also hits the ground running and keeps you turning the page with interesting characters and a great twist. At once an adventure, a historical fiction novel, and fantasy romance, UPON A STARLIT TIDE is one I'll definitely revisit each summer, when I crave stories of the ocean.

In a Nutshell: A historical fantasy taking inspiration from Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. The content is distinctly adult, but the writing style leans towards YA/NA, leading to flat characters, half-baked fantastical elements, and a romance/attraction-dominated plot. The ending saved my rating to some extent. Might be better for those who like YA/NA romance because the fantasy was disappointing. Outlier opinion coming up.

Plot Preview:
1758. Brittany, France. Lucinda Leon aka Luce, the youngest daughter of a wealthy ship owner in the port city of Saint-Malo, dreams of joining a ship’s crew and navigating the oceans, unlike her two older sisters whose obsessions are more typical: fancy clothing and a suitable marriage. The only one who knows about Luce’s secret desire is her best friend, a fugitive English smuggler named Samuel, who is secretly teaching her to sail.
One morning, Luce ends up rescuing the scion of the richest shipping family from the sea. This creates many changes in her immediate plans as she plans to attend the ball his family has thrown in honour of his safe return. Around the same time as these events, the local fae are disappearing from Saint-Malo, the English threaten attack, and Luce’s past finally catches up with her.
The story comes to us in Luce’s third-person perspective.

Bookish Yays:
🧜🏻‍♀️ The description of the setting of Saint-Malo and its various locations, whether occupied by humans or fantastical creatures – quite immersive.
🧜🏻‍♀️ The ending, with some pretty good reveals. It is somewhat anticlimactic, but that probably helped me. Not sure about how other readers would feel about this, though.
🧜🏻‍♀️ Quite a few good themes that are incorporated without the book feeling overloaded - class discrimination, colonialism, war mongering and profiteering are the ones best handled. There are shades of feminism also, but this could have been better.

Bookish Mixed Bags:
🚢 The idea of merging Cinderella and The Little Mermaid into a single story and making a convincing combo is brilliant. The implementation, though, is quite compartmentalised, with the Cinderella part being more dominant in the first half and the mermaid content coming more prominently in the second half. That said, the overall plot isn’t just a merger of the two stories but an independent plot with just some loose inspiration from the fairy tales. The Little Mermaid elements are still okay, but the Cinderella content is bland. Ensuring that a wealthy girl gets to a ball in a fabulous new dress because she lost her fabulous original dress isn't Cinderella – the struggle and the emotional pain is missing.
🚢 Luce as a character is fairly interesting, except for the scenes where she is romantically muddled. (More on this in the Nays.) However, her depiction is mostly one-noted, with her attraction being thumped into our face multiple times, and with no flaws shown in her personality. It gets annoying after a bit. Plus she seems to be dominated by her heart than her head, which might make sense for her age (whatever age it was – somewhere in her late teens, I guess. I don’t recollect any mention of the characters’ ages) but results in some naïve decisions.
🚢 The historical feel is somewhat mixed. There is excellent research of the time period, creating an alternate history where actual historical events have been combined with fantastical causes. However, the dialogues rarely feel historical. There is a lot of casualness to the conversations, even when it is between men and women or people of different classes. The interactions thus don’t seem believable.
🚢 Luce’s family dynamics had great potential to be memorable: a wealthy father who is openly biased towards his youngest, a mother who is determined to get her daughters titled husbands to continue her own noble legacy, and two elder sisters who are fond of Luce but also jealous of her. Unfortunately, most of the character development is so flat that any behavioural changes feel abrupt.
🚢 Some interesting kids of fae folk in the plot, but not much backstory. The fantastical content is mostly surface-level.
🚢 The pacing is terribly off. There is hardly anything happening at the start, with the initial one-third just providing a background to the main plot. Even when things are happening, it feels like the proceedings are dragged. Only the ending gets a proper tempo.

Bookish Nays:
👠 Thanks to the book cover and the mention of the Little Mermaid and some other details in the blurb, we readers get to know an important character’s fishy [pun intended] secret much before everyone else (including the character herself) does. Moreover, the mermaid content is not as extensive as I would have imagined from the cover.
👠 The book seems confused about its target audience. Most of the writing style seems very YA, especially in the shallow character development and the simplistic and predictable plotting. However, there are a couple of gruesome scenes in the final quarter that won't be suitable to younger readers at all. The spice level is also more NA/Adult, and none of the steamy scenes were crucial to the plot. There is one make-out scene right at the start (literally within the first five minutes of the audiobook) that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make any sense given the characters involved. Can’t forget the abundant cuss words, some of which are blasphemous. Historical works cannot get away with anachronous foul language.
👠 The part that makes the book seem most YA is the abundant sprinklings of thoughts of desire and attraction and anatomical attributes even in between tense scenes. This is always the easiest way to pull me out of a narrative.
👠 The unexpected love triangle, and even worse, the lack of conflict or tension in the triangle. It is very clear from the start which ‘candidate’ Luce would swerve towards, which makes a triangle boring. Moreover, neither of the two men were appealing, both being stereotypical in their own ways. As it is, I hate the triangle trope, but when it involves such characters, it’s even more exasperating. Luce’s constant mental swerving between the two males was also an irritant.


🎧 The Audiobook Experience:
The audiobook, clocking at 14 hours 8 min, is narrated by Esther Wane. I am sorry to say that I absolutely did not like the narration. In my five years of listening to audiobooks, I have never allowed my opinion of the narrator to affect my judgement of the plot. But this is the first time when I am unsure if I disliked the book even more because of the narrator. I was not at all a fan of her character voices. The girls sounded shrill and somewhat kiddish, thereby very grating on the ears. But the male voices were even worse. Every single man sounded like a senior citizen! It took me a long while to accept that the two men in the love triangle who sounded so gruff were actually young characters. In all honesty, I cannot recommend the audiobook.


Overall, I did like the concept of this dual fairytale retelling, but the insipid character development, the boring love triangle, and the hyper-focus on physical appeal & attraction killed my enjoyment. The audio narration was a further dampener. I *might* have liked the book a tad better if I had read it, but I am pretty sure it would not have ended up as a favourite even then.

Mine is very much an outlier opinion, so please read through other reviews and take a more informed call on this novel. If I have to recommend it, it would be to NA readers who enjoy romantic triangles and fairytale-based plots.

2.5 stars, rounding down for the audio version.

The Little Mermaid meets Cinderella?! Yes, please! Though pulling inspo from both of those tales, this book is still somehow thoroughly unique. Set in 18th century, the story follows a spirited young woman torn between societal expectations and her longing for the sea. The author’s lyrical prose and rich world-building gives us a story filled with magic, romance, and self-discovery.

3.5 stars rounded up.

This was a good fantasy book! While fantasy isn’t usually my go-to genre, this one struck a great balance between world building and plot. The writing swept me into 1758 Saint-Malo with its vivid atmosphere, and I appreciated the blend of historical fiction and magic. Luce was a strong, determined lead, and her dynamic with Samuel added a touch of heart to the adventure. The pacing slowed at times, but the intrigue and growing tension kept me engaged overall. A solid read!

Thank you NetGalley & Macmillan Audio for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 Stars - Dive into a Deliciously Dark Fairytale

Imagine the charm of a quaint 18th-century French village, then stir in a dash of the uncanny and a sprinkle of pure enchantment. That's the world Kell Woods conjures in this utterly captivating fantasy, a clever reimagining that whispers of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, but make no mistake, this is a story with grown-up secrets and desires. If you've lost yourself in the atmospheric wonders of Ava Reid, the darkly whimsical tales of T. Kingfisher, or the haunting beauty of Kelly Andrew, prepare to be utterly absorbed by Woods' evocative writing.

This isn't a book to rush through; it's a rich, slow burn, inviting you to savor every exquisitely crafted sentence and lose yourself in the shadowy corners of its world. At its heart, the story delves into the complexities of class, the tangled threads of family, and a romance that simmers with a touch of magic.

Esther Wane's narration is truly a standout, giving each character a unique voice that pulls you deeper into the story. While she shines, I couldn't help but wish for a dual perspective to fully immerse myself in all the emotional nuances.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced listening copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own!

I don’t even know where to start with this one.
It didn’t wreck me—it washed over me until I realized I’d been completely undone.

This book is soft, but not weak. It’s quiet, but never hollow. It sneaks up on you with tenderness and then—bam—you’re crying in the middle of a chapter about sea foam and regret.

The characters feel fragile and real, like people trying to stitch themselves back together with moonlight and half-spoken truths. And the writing? Gorgeous. Like walking into a dream you almost forgot and realizing it still knows your name.

It’s not trying to be flashy or fast.
It just knows what it’s doing.
It wants you to feel something—and you will. Whether you’re ready or not.

This story stayed with me in a way I didn’t expect.

Enchanting! After a bit of a slow start, I ended up being totally engrossed in this fairytale retelling with elements of both Cinderella and the Little Mermaid. Falling on a darkness spectrum somewhere between Hans Christian Anderson and Disney, this story focuses on family dynamics, magic, and societal expectations in 1700’s France. I really enjoyed the narration of this audiobook and the author’s vivid descriptions. Would recommend for anyone who loves retellings or Elizabeth Swan from Pirates of the Caribbean!

I voluntarily listened to and reviewed an advanced copy of this audiobook. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Macmillan Audio!

This is one of the books where I was drawn in by the cover but the writing hooked me. There are some parts that draw on familiar fairy tales such as Cinderella and The Little Mermaid but Upon a Starlit Tide is really its own unique spin on the classics. The symmetry is there without it being a scene for scene retelling.

The author uses beautifully descriptive prose throughout the book. I highly recommend the audiobook. The narrator, Esther Wane, did an excellent job keeping all of the characters’ voices distinctive. She managed to make the scenes even more vivid.

This is the first book that I have read from Kell Woods but I hope to read more of her work in the future.

This was an amazing retelling of Cinderella x The Little Mermaid, but also the Mythology/Folk Lore that was intertwined into this made it such a fun read!! Although, as much as I enjoyed Esther Wane as a narrator, her narration of the male voices (which I am not blaming her whatsoever for) made it a tad bit hard to get into the MMCs. It just might’ve pulled me in more if I had read it… But other than that, this was a fantastic tale!! And that ending was so perfect, at first I was like 😭😭😭😭 But then the epilogue hit.

This book took me a little while to really get into. I think I was initially frustrated by the love triangle but honestly, I really grew to appreciate it by the end of the story. It was necessary in order to weave these two fairytales together.

Also, what a clever idea! A mash up of two very famous fairytales in a way I’d never seen before! I loved it.

As I often do, I flipped back and forth between the audiobook and ebook and thought both were enjoyable formats. If I had to choose one, I’d say the audio edged out the ebook and was slightly superior. The narrator was really engaging and the different accents and voices really brought the side characters to life.

This was not my first book by this author and it definitely will not be my last.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

When the youngest daughter of a wealthy French shipowner rescues a drowning man from the sea, the secrets of her mysterious past begin to emerge and she is torn between two worlds...

Why have I not been reading books about mermaids until now? This story is every bit as beautiful as its cover, and the ending of this book is deeply moving. Upon a Starlit Tide is full of adventure, fae fantasy, and romance, and I enjoyed every moment.

Lovely narration by the audiobook narrator.

I think this will be a huge hit for so many people. First, the whimsical fairy tale vibes are immaculate. The author captures the atmosphere of the classics, eerie and enchanting. The plot was intriguing and the main character was interesting as well.

What didn't work for me were a few things. First, I don't think fairy tale retellings are for me. I've read a few and always struggle to get into them. So that's on me and I feel bad giving the book a lower rating.

Second, the plot became predictable and I guessed the twists pretty early on.

Third, there were steamy moments that felt so at odds with the whimsy that it threw me out of the story. Not every book needs steam to be a lovely romance.

Overall, I understand why so many people loved it, it just wasn't for me.

While I have enjoyed many fairy tale retellings in the past, I have honestly been a bit burnt out by them as of late. I was beginning to feel like they all run together and tired of the formulaic nature many of these romantasies followed. So when I read that "Upon a Starlit Tide" was a fairytale mash up of The Little Mermaid and Cinderella, I came in with mid expectations. Well, I can now admit that I was wrong. This story is well worth you time!

It is difficult to reimagine a familiar story into something truly unique, but that is exactly what Kell Woods does here. Luce is the youngest daughter, and the only adopted daughter of a rich sea captain. As the story progresses she encounters a man washed up on the sea, the pull of adventure on the sea, an invitation to a ball, the jealousy of her sisters, and a potential war between France and England. But most importantly, she has to come to terms with who she is and where she comes from. Woods takes the fairytale vibes and weaves them into a profound story about identity, colonization, and the cost of greed and self interest. Luce must decide who to trust, who should have her loyalty, and who to love in this twisty new take on old favorites, making them compelling and relevant while adding her own flavor to the story.

I enjoyed listening to this story on audiobook. It was easy to follow and the narrator really pulled me into Luce's point of view as her world comes apart and has to be rebuilt. The running time is 12 hours and 21 minutes which I'd normally think is a little long. However, the second 1/2 of the story really picks things up and kept me enthralled until the very end. This is a stand alone story that will take you through all of the feels.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review!

I quite liked Woods’ debut and I was interested in reading her take on The Little Mermaid, so getting this from NetGalley was exciting. While I found myself engaged during the first half, unfortunately as the story progressed I found myself not gelling too well with the story. I do love Woods’ writing and I love when authors mix fantasy with historical fiction, but at a certain point it became a little difficult for me to care very much about Luce and her choices. I actually loved the pirate/mariner aspects and found the sailing aspects engaging and I appreciated the callbacks to the original Hans Christian Anderson. The story is well-crafted, I just personally could not find it in me to care about the romance in any capacity, which made the story difficult to fully engage in. It’s well-plotted and Woods does a good job with fitting the world building into a novel that’s pretty light on the fantasy elements, and so I don’t want to be too harsh on a book wherein there was a mismatch between book and reader.

I enjoyed the audio and found it easy to follow, though I think Esther Wane’s narration skews a bit on the older side and I definitely thought the characters were older than they really were.

This was such a beautifully written historical fiction fairy tale. I felt like I was there with these characters. It was dark and atmospheric in the best way. I listened to the audio and Esther Wane did such a beautiful job. With the intricate writing I did feel like I really had to fully invest all thinking to catch every detail, which was hard to do when I love to listen at work. I cannot wait to read more books by Kell Woods. Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this audio ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy of this audiobook.

This is a captivating, dark, enchanting take on a historical fantasy, folklore, and fairy tales, specifically "The Little Mermaid" and "Cinderella." The descriptions of Luce and her family, the charming Morgan and stalwart Samuel, the opulent homes and fabulous gowns of Saint-Malo, and the dangerous coves of the sea are all highly detailed and weave together a plot full of likeable characters and dangerous intrigues. Esther Wane's narration was well-done. I particularly enjoyed Charlotte's love affair, Luce's relationship with her sisters, and the various fey throughout the story. This was a refreshing take on a fairy-tale retelling.

Upon A Starlit Tide✨🌊

Cinderella meets The Little Mermaid in this dark fantasy by @kellinthewoods

I enjoyed this one so much, it was a step out of reality and straight into 1700 France with a twist. The twist being that fae & sea maids exist (but do we really know they don’t, I mean come on).

I was able to listen and read this one and the combo of the two was such a good experience! I felt a little more immersed if I listened and followed along in my physical copy, but each on their own would be just fine.
The audio production was done extremely well and felt exactly if I was listening to 1700’s ladies and seamen talking, very well done!

& thank you @macmillan.audio for the audio copy in exchange of an honest review!

As far as retellings of a classic go, this wasn't my favorite. I am a HUGE "Little Mermaid" and "Cinderella" fan, so this could just be my bias speaking. I just couldn't be fully sold into the world Woods was building. This is where retellings or reimagining tales gets incredibly difficult. I am however extremely excited it wasn't another retelling of "Beauty and the Beast." Can we agree in the romantasy community that we have enough of those and we can just move on. I'd appreciate that!
This was a balanced tale of old (from the original tales) and a new unique twist, so it wasn't bad. I just kept waiting throughout the unraveling of the tale for there to be MORE. I don't feel sated. I can't even say I really like the main female character, Luce. Samuel on the other hand was a character that had some depth and I really look forward to seeing where his story leads.

Thank you to the author, NetGalley, & Macmillan Audio for the audioARC in return for an honest review. I look forward to seeing where the story goes from here.

Maybe a regret...or two!!!
solid 3/5 stars