CW: Religious trauma, internalized homophobia

I don’t typically read romantasy. I haven’t jumped on any of the big titles, even though friends and family, including my husband, have read at least one. And yet, I had to read this one, because the author wrote my favourite book. I don’t make the rules in my brain, I just have to abide by them. I didn’t really know much going into this book except that there’s a water horse spirit and a nun, which was the perfect way for me to read it. Given that, I’m tempted to tell you all to just go read the book because it’s excellent, but you are here for a review. So if you trust me, please skip to the buy link. If you need more, let’s get into it.

Hæra is an Each-uisge, which means she’s part of an ocean-dwelling, shapeshifting herd of horse spirits. Her father is dead, her mother and brother hate her, she has no friends or allies, and she doesn’t want to become a broodmare, because their lives are truly terrible. Instead, she dreams of becoming the first female Stormhorse, flying in the sky to rain down thunder and lightning like her father did when he was alive. To achieve her dream, Hæra has to find a worthy human to drown and eat so she can take their strength into her body. She doesn’t have many years left before she’ll be forced into the brutal, endless breeding cycle, but luckily Hæra finds someone with great strength of character and just has to lure her in.

Sister Madeleine Laurent is visiting one of the less-well-travelled Orkney islands in Scotland when she hears her name being called. This leads to a confusing encounter where she thinks she drowned a horse only to nearly drown herself trying to save it. The course of her life is changed when she’s saved and kissed by a naked woman, who tells her to return.

Six years later, Madeleine is not a nun anymore and is back on the island, looking for answers about the guardian angel (or demon?) who saved her. When she meets Hæra North, daughter of the now-sober man who had drunkenly helped Madeleine after her angel had left her on the beach, Madeleine can no longer pretend to herself that she’s not a lesbian. And Hæra? Her Stormhorse dreams are closer to being achieved than ever, since the worthy woman she’d saved has come back to her. But can she bring herself to hurt someone who churns so many unfamiliar feelings within her?

Each character has a distinct and well-fleshed-out arc, which were my favourite aspects of the story. Hæra’s arc is about obsession, because she has a singular goal that she pursues with tenacity and eventually has to decide whether she wants it after all. After spending decades as an underwater predator, Hæra has to adapt enough to at least seem human, since she’s still an Each-uisge on the inside. She puts her six years between meeting Madeleine and re-meeting her to good use, learning human customs, mannerisms, and skills including how to read, so she can be better prepared to have good conversations with Madeleine and understand her before killing and eating her. Of course, it’s not so simple when they reunite.

My favourite part of Hæra’s journey is how she wrestles to understand the difference between hunger and love, because hunger is something she deeply understands as a predator. But love? Not so much. This is also what makes the romance work so well for me, because I was captivated by the way Hæra comes to understand what love is and what it means to her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the concept of love explored in quite this way and it makes all of the sense. She’s an Each-uisge trying to understand a specific person she feels a connection with, even though it’s because she initially wants to eat Madeleine (insert sex joke here).

For Madeleine, her arc is about finally choosing to live authentically and learning along the way what that means for her. We learn very early in the book that she’d joined the convent because she’d been alone and adrift, finding it a good place to hide from the world and from her unwanted attraction to other women. Making out with her angel/demon/beach saviour rips the bandage off the wound that is her internalized homophobia, kicking off a journey of self-discovery as she prepares and heads back to the Orkneys. Embracing authenticity isn’t easy for Madeleine, because it’s often painful to look at the parts of herself she’d kept locked away for decades.

Madeleine’s arc includes a thoughtful, in-depth interrogation of faith and its relationship to the self. Catholicism features so prominently that it almost feels like a side character, although I’m not sure I would call it a friend or a foe. I was especially struck when Madeleine’s conversations with Hæra invite her to consider whether the rigidity of Catholic tradition and doctrine serve her now or ever have. Even after years of therapy and healing, my mind was blown when Hæra tells her “If we don’t doubt or question what we’ve been told, we don’t learn. Haven’t you found that’s true?” In moments like this, I stepped back from the story to check in with myself, and I was pleasantly surprised each time to learn that I was okay. Instead of feeling uncomfortable, I was encouraged by Madeleine’s departure from a dogmatic, unquestioning place as she learns how to listen to the little voice within.

Speaking of religious trauma, if that’s something you have, especially from the Catholic church, you may not have the same positive experience I did. Frankly, if I hadn’t done as much therapy specific to religious trauma as I have, I’m not sure I would have had the same experience either. Madeleine’s internalized homophobia is bound up with her faith and what she was told about homosexuality by people she’d truly cared about, so challenging those narratives is often painful. I appreciated where the story leaves Madeleine’s relationship with the church and her beliefs, because it felt very real to my experience and reminiscent of what I’ve heard from friends who also live with religious trauma.

This is a book that got under my skin and left me flailing for a few days after I finished it. As much as I loved and believed in the romance, the character arcs and exploration of religious trauma stole the show for me. They gave my brain a lot to chew on and I’m going to need to read it at least a few more times to pull apart all the nuances, because there is just so much there. Even though it’s much longer than most books I read, topping out at around 560 pages, I could have read more, because I loved Madeleine and Hæra so much, from who they were at the beginning to who they are at the end.