When the Tides Held the Moon

A Story of Outcasts, Love, and Finding Home

Rina aus Mannheim am 21.08.2025
Bewertungsnummer: 2573833
Bewertet: eBook (ePUB)

When Tides Held the Moon is about Benigno (Benny) Caldera, who leaves Puerto Rico for America, hoping for a better life. Instead, he ends up working as cheap labor, facing discrimination, and trying to survive as a factory blacksmith. Things change when he’s given the job of building a huge iron tank. After an accident gets him fired, he finds himself at Coney Island and Luna Park -where that tank has been turned into part of a new attraction. What he doesn’t realize is that it’s meant to hold a living merman, captured to save the park from going under. What I really liked was how unexpected the story felt. Benny slowly finds a kind of family among the people at Luna Park, and Rio, the merman, becomes much more to him than just “a prince of the sea.” The book covers a lot of heavy but important themes alongside the romance - racism, homophobia, the struggle to belong, the exploitation of immigrants, prejudice, and also the courage to live openly as yourself. And all of that is wrapped up in a touching love story. The Luna Park crew were some of my favorite characters. They’re all outcasts for different reasons, but together they form a family. Eli and Emmett stood out to me, but the women were also really well written. Benny himself was such a strong character too - young, unlucky, not fully sure of who he is, but with a big heart and so much courage. I’ll admit, I had a bit of trouble at the start because of the slang. As a non-native English speaker, I had to pay extra attention to catch everything. But once I got into it, I was hooked. I’d definitely recommend this book - not just for the romance (which I loved), but also for the way it handles so many important topics.

„This book got you chained to it!“ -a friend

Bewertung am 07.02.2026
Bewertungsnummer: 3038582
Bewertet: Buch (Gebundene Ausgabe)

This pretty much sums up my experience with the book. I devoured it from the first page on. I have to admit tho, the English was tough, especially to a non English native speaker. Wasn’t enough tho, to slow my pace. This book hat a truly amazing and diverse found family and the main character with all his struggles as a Puerto Rican in early 1900s America truly touched me. I won’t go into too much details so I won’t spoil anything, but the book reminded me a lot of The Greatest Showman, which is a great musical, just with a lot more time and depth to truly explore the struggles of the characters with their invisible disabilities like the main characters Asthma among others. I truly loved the book and will probably recommend it to everyone. It’s a historical queer Romantasy.