Book Review: “The Undertow of Evelyn Graymore” by Matteo Franco

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Paranormal Romance/Thriller

Length: 524 pages

Format Read: Paperback book

Published: October 20, 2026

We start this story with Evelyn, a young woman who helps her ailing widower father to run his slow and fairly unprofitable fish shop in Seattle. In the midst of her day, she’s also chasing off a pretentious and entitled real estate owner guy of the area who has been pursuing her and not taking her “no’s” seriously. (Typical). This heightened situation ends up with her killed and being transformed into a siren in the waters near Seattle. Now she comes up on land only to feed from the darkness in men’s hearts and get her revenge.

I loved this story so much. The setting is incredible and immersive. I got great vibes that reminded me of the feeling of watching movies like “Daredevil” from the 2000’s. (Since I loved that movie actually.) It had a gritty atmosphere that I could almost feel from the descriptions of the city and its sights and smells.

Evie is such a realistic character in my opinion; her inner monologue and motivations felt real to me. I loved her rage, which also reminded me of Elektra in the 2000’s Daredevil movie when Elektra was fully intent on getting revenge against her father’s killer. I also love that we see kindness from Evie too though, with her giving coffee to the homeless man and all her scenes with Ethan. Similar to Elektra, Evie loves her father very much as well, and that also shows us her kinder and softer side.

I most related to Ethan of all the characters. His office job thoughts were incredibly relatable, and he’s such a millennial-minded type of character with his music taste, his pet choice, and his office/Monday woes. I got real attached to Ethan while reading this book.

“The office was alive with its usual chaos, the furious clacking of keys and raucous voices of lawyers talking about money and arguing over who’d be getting sued that day. Nothing filled Ethan with more joy than the buzz of conversations from people who made far more money than he ever would.”


His sassy, sarcastic thoughts continued in other areas of the book as well, and I loved that from him.

Now I do have more spoiler-y thoughts to share as well, so I’m adding those below this line.

STOP NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS/SOFT-SPOILERS

I liked Layne a lot more than I initially thought I would. I had gone into this story expecting to be just “Team Ethan” but about halfway into the story, Layne shows some complexity that I hope will be resolved in future books. He seemed to hate or at least have mixed feelings toward what he was doing to Evelyn all along which culminates at the end of the book when Evelyn is dragged back into the ocean and Layne is set free. That ending gave me a lot of feelings as well.

The part that made me cry though was when Evelyn had to practically “Air Bud” Ethan to get him away from her for his own good. Her telling him all these horrible things and specific things to trigger his insecurities to chase him away had me sobbing.

LINKS TO THE BOOK:

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QOTD: What is your favorite romance or book trope? Comment below!

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