In Over Her Head-Judi Fennell

In Over Her Head
Judi Fennell
Sourcebooks, Jun 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 9781402220012

Although she owns a marina on the Jersey shore, Erica Peck suffers from hydrophobia ever since she nearly drowned as a child. When her former boyfriend Joey pushes her into the ocean to retrieve diamonds with sharks everywhere, she panics believing she is about to die. Instead the second son of the underwater King of the Mer Prince Reel Tritone saves her life.

Reel is attracted to the land dweller so he enables her to breathe in the water as he takes her on a tour of his home filled with friendly talking fish, nasty looking monstrosities and a weird colorful terrain. He especially enjoys her lung capacity "shell-fillers" and her in his third leg. Their mutual eyeballing of one another leads to hands on and a night of passion; with both wanting more trysts. However he is a royal from under the sea with responsibilities even if they are only as the spare while she has feared the sea for years.

With a gender bending of the movie Splash, IN OVER HER HEAD is a fun romantic fantasy starring two likable lead characters and a support cast like his pal Chum who makes the undersea kingdom seems real. The tale is fast-paced but somewhat distracted by an over abundance of watery humor that as individual puns are witty, but taken as a whole somewhat dampen the story line. Still Judi Fennell provides a fun under the sea romance.

Harriet Klausner