Sorrowland

Unique, creepy, and unsettling are the three biggest descriptors I can think of for this book. When Vern is a teenager she finally escapes the religious compound where she was raised - but not without some serious scars. She's married and seven months pregnant but she is willing to take a chance on the unknown world in order to get away. She gives birth to twins and raises them in the woods, but even though she's escaped she is still a hunted woman. When her body starts to change she knows she'll have to find help to get to the bottom of her upbringing and the compound's dark history. It's dark and filled with elements of black history, queer love, indigenous history, and violent, gothic themes. Even if you don't like it, you won't be able to stop thinking about it. Truly unsettling. 

The Deep

I haven't read a great adult mermaid novel in.... forever. The story was unique, dark, and captivating; although the plot was quite slow at time. Inspired by the pregnant African slaves who were thrown overboard to die on their way to America for being "disruptive" cargo; the authors wondered what happened to their unborn babies who were already breathing underwater in their mother's womb? Inspired may not be the right word; but that horrible back story helped mold this book into what it is. Yetu, an underwater being tasked with storing the entire history of her people, is barely hanging on. The history of the wajinru is a violent and bloody one and it wants to claw it's way out of Yetu. The wajinru are descended from the pregnant slave woman, yet that traumatic history is too much for their people to process so the historian (Yetu) must house all that painful history and bear the burden for all. Yetu must find a way to live with those truths or pass them onto others without breaking tradition. Dark, slow at times, but unique and enchanting!