Out of the blue by Jason June

A mer person takes human form with the quest to save someone, a kind of initiation process in the mer world, and the challenge becomes to reunite lifesaver Sean with his inconstant boyfriend Dominic. The novel construct of Crest, the mer person becoming Ross on land, gaining legs and learning about the human world, provides for humorous scenarios that carry this novel along. That, and the side character of Kavya, Sean’s best friend, only too eager to tell it how it is, full of lusty gags and puns, keeps the comedy flowing.

This is a rom-com, as Sean himself recognises only too well as he is a great fan of rom-coms and has aspirations to be a film director, so the plans to get the faithless Dominic back are mapped out like the schedule of screenshots in a movie. It all goes to plan, until, as you might guess, fake date threatens to turn into true romance. The question becomes whether this is true love; and whether there is any possibility of Sean and Ross really getting together, since Ross must return to the sea at the end of the month.

Jason June creates an interesting fantasy with his depiction of the mer world where there are no binary gender definitions: Ross hasn’t experienced gender distinctions, and isn’t comfortable being defined as male. The pronoun for Ross are ‘they’ and ‘their’. The nice thing in this novel is that everyone, Sean included, accepts this naturally and just moves on.

Because this is all new to Ross, there are numerous references to ‘hard-ons’, ‘driftwood’ and ‘bone talk’, but the intimate scenes actually include really good conversations about consent. And the strong messages that resonate throughout are about building self-esteem, being authentic, and talking things through when there are problems. It’s a mixed bag of comedy, romance, self realisation and social comment; with an ending that is not as predictable as you might expect.

Themes: LGBQTI+, Humour, Romance, Identity, Acceptance of diversity.

Helen Eddy