Catch and Release, by Isabel Murray

This is all Erin@TheSmutReport’s fault: she wrote this review, and I had no choice but to read a sample, get hooked (sad pun not intended), buy it, and start reading it on the spot.

Beware: explicit sex on page; swearing; near death by exposure; parents being assholes about mental health; a fantastic grandfather.

Catch and Release, by Isabel Murray

To the best of my recollection, this story is my introduction to the author’s work, and I gobbled it down in a couple of hours. Now I’m struggling to review it without a) spoiling the hell out of it, or b) incoherent squeeing.

So. Let us start with the blurb:

Joe McKenzie’s high-flying London life imploded six years ago, and it happened dramatically enough that paramedics were involved. That’s all in the past. Now, Joe couldn’t be happier living a solitary life as a fisherman on England’s wild northern coast.

Okay, he could be happier.

It’s not like he’s depressed or anything but, you know. The weather’s not great. Life’s a bit samey. He’s only thirty-eight. The idea of another forty years is a bit exhausting, to be honest. He passes the time pretending to be a fisherman but the truth is, he sucks at it.

Then Joe makes the catch of a lifetime when he stumbles across the mysterious Dave washed up on the beach—an enormous man with gills and uncanny power over the sea. Once Dave stops trying to kidnap Joe and/or kill Joe’s fishing buddy, Jerry, turns out he’s kind of…intriguing?

And not half as smooth as he seems to think he is.

There’s a lot Joe doesn’t know about Dave. He doesn’t know why Dave keeps disappearing or why he can’t seem to stay away. He doesn’t know what Dave wants from him. He doesn’t even know what, exactly, Dave is. And Joe can’t ask, because they don’t speak the same language.

Joe does know one thing, though. He is in love.

Which, great. How’s that going to end well?

The story is narrated in first person, past tense, by Joe; throughout, the reader only knows what Joe knows. Which turns out to be surprisingly little when it comes to the being Joe’s friend Jerry has decided to name Dave, and who may or may not be an actual merman–because, as it happens, humans can have a hard time making themselves understood, or understanding others, in the absence of verbal communication.

After a couple of false starts, Joe and Dave manage to convey to each other some basic concepts, such as “no” and “yes, please”, but there are vast areas of each other’s lives that remain essentially impenetrable to each other. As much as Joe extrapolates and infers things from Dave’s behavior–and, presumably, Dave from Joe’s–there’s a lot of flailing about (physically and emotionally) and inadvertent hurting of each other.

The writing voice is very, very funny to me; there’s some self-directed sarcasm and gentle snark; the sex is quite explicit and very hot, and the whole has a surprising amount of heart.

I unwisely started this book during lunch, then looked up to find I had already read the first six chapters by the time lunch was done; it was a struggle to put it aside to finish the work day, whereupon I grabbed it again and inhaled the rest.

By the by, this hit me like a ton of bricks:

“The truth is, I’m a hedgehog at heart. Prickly. Shyer than you’d guess from my sarcastic demeanour. Hard to get to know. Carrying enough self-doubt, even at thirty-eight, as to whether or not I was worth the effort. Any effort.” (Joe, chapter 7)

(Sometimes, seeing one’s truth on the page is fun; other times it makes you cry.)

Joe is very much a solitary man who doesn’t allow himself to realize how lonely he is until he meets, and falls utterly in love with, Dave. And things there are complicated (to say the very least), because not human, not land-based, and no verbal communication.

I have very much enjoyed other stories with protagonists who are, literally, from different worlds, never mind different species (exhibit A: Ann Aguirre’s Strange Love), but this is the first time in my memory where the relationship doesn’t depend on either eliminating their differences or artificially bridging the communication issue.

I’m not ashamed to say that I cried a little at this:

“Perhaps this is was where all the stories came from. Perhaps this was what merfolk did. … It wasn’t murder. They didn’t kill on purpose. Perhaps Dave’s kind loved you to death. They saw you and loved you. They took you, and never understood they were killing you.” (Chapter 20)

The book isn’t very long, just over 250 pages, but the story spans over two years; the pacing allows the author to flesh out the characters–Joe, Dave, and Joe’s friend Jerry, who is hilarious–and to build up the intensity of the emotional connection between Joe and Dave to a painful degree (see above re: not human, not land-based, no verbal communication).

I love the treatment of consent and acceptance and cultural sensitivity and respect and differences in the story; Jerry is funny and nosy and occasionally insensitive, but he’s also caring and generous. Joe’s parents aren’t worth shit, but his grandfather and his partner are worth their weight in gold. Joe is vulnerable and full of heart, and Dave is…well. Dave.

There is a happy ending, a relationship and a future for Joe and Dave, and the author made it work for me, one hundred percent. At the same time, I can see how it won’t work for other genre romance readers, because–despite being a romance between a cryptid and a human–the characters must bow to reality and compromise in a way that someone reading entirely and only for the fantasy is unlikely to find as satisfying as I did.

Catch and Release gets a 9.00 out of 10.