Goddess of the Sea by P.C. Cast

Goddess of the Sea:
Home alone on the night of her twenty-fifth birthday, U.S. Air Force sergeant Christine Canady yearned for something to cure her loneliness. After drinking too much champagne, she recited a divine invocation to revive her humdrum life. But how was she to know the spell would actually work?

When her plane crashes into the ocean, CC’s life changes forever. She awakens, bewildered, to find herself in a legendary time and place ruled by magic – and in the body of the mythical mermaid Undine. But danger lurks in the water, ready to swallow CC whole. Taking pity on her, the goddess Gaea turns CC into a damsel so that she might seek shelter on land. When a dashing knight comes to CC’s rescue, instead of falling for this dream come true, she aches for the sea and the darkly sexy merman who’s stolen her heart…

It's been quite some time since a book has made me all-out cry, well P.C. Cast did just that, and with gusto. Her writing pulled me right into the pages, and I felt every emotion as if it were my own. Cast's characters were well developed and engaging, CC is strong and independent, yet with a touch of softness shown with her vulnerable heart. The book is fast paced, and to put it simply: un-put-down-able.

CC spends her twenty-fifth birthday alone, and after indulging in a little too much champagne, offers up a prayer to the goddess, Gaea asking for magic to enter her life. And after CC's plane crashes in the ocean, the goddess answers through a choice CC must make: trade places with a mermaid named Undine, or parish. Thrown into the drama of Undine's life, CC is attacked by a merman named Sarpedon, who will stop at nothing to claim Undine for himself. Gaea thinks of CC as her own daughter and grants CC sanctuary on land far in the past, in order for CC to fully escape Sarpedon, she must find a man to love her for who she truly is--in both forms. Rescued by a handsome knight, CC believes her fate is to be loved by this man, only it is another merman, Dylan, who captures her heart. CC must keep up the masquerade of being a lost princess until Lir, god of the seas, responds to Gaea's petitions to stop Sarpedon. But danger surrounds her on land as the men who give her shelter begin to question her behavior and her unwavering beliefs in women's rights. A final battle leaves CC with another decision to make: stay in the past and live forever as a mermaid, or return to the present and the life she left behind.