Breakwater by Catherine Jones Payne

Mermaids. Murder. Mayhem.

Seventeen-year-old Jade is recently engaged to a handsome soldier and about to choose her own career. But she didn’t expect to witness a murder.

When her fiancé kills a naiad, plunging the underwater city of Thessalonike into uproar, tensions surge between the mer and the naiads. Jade learns too late that the choices she makes ripple further than she’d ever imagined. And as she fights against the tide of anger in a city that lives for scandal, she discovers danger lurking in every canal, imperiling her family and shattering the ocean’s fragile peace.

Can the city’s divisions be mended before the upwelling of hate rips apart everything Jade loves?

Breakwater is the spine-tingling first novel in a complete trilogy of YA mermaid fantasy books for lovers of enigmatic mystery, stirring romance, and harrowing intrigue.