Love Across Waters by PK Greenford

**This blog contains adult language and discussion of....ahem....adult activities.**

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!!  This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself.  Do NOT continue to read unless you want to have the story completely and utterly spoiled.

Tag Line: A BWWM Paranormal Romance like no other.  (Note from me: I'll give them that.  It's definitely like no other.)

From the "Back" of the Book: African American Shanice Graham has just got into the college of her dreams.  And excited as she is to be getting a good education, there's one thing she's excited about more than anything; making the swimming team.  With many great swimmers already involved, she'll have to put in the work to make the cut.  Focusing on doing well, the last thing on her mind is meeting a man...But that's exactly what's going to happen!  Enter Alan Shores, the school's best swimmer and a hunk to boot.  Will he notice the black beauty as she's noticed him?  And what is the secret behind his incredible swimming abilities? (Note from me: If I had read this "blurb" before reading the book, I might have been better prepared for the caliber of writing I encountered.)

This book was "published" in 2014.  I have no idea if Greenford is a man or a woman.  I tried to find out but hit a dead end.  I'm going to assume woman for the purposes of this recap but I offer an apology if that in incorrect.  That's the only thing I'll apologize for though.

We begin with our protagonist Shanice. She's excited about getting into her dream school – California Tech. She picked the school because the swim team is one of the highest ranked in the nation and she has big dreams about being an Olympic swimmer. The coach's name is Aarmin (but I'll just call him Coach because I can't be bothered to remember how to spell that) and he seems to like her chances for making the team.  He's never actually seen her swim, mind you, but he's impressed with her.....ahem.....talents.  In other words, she has a nice ass.

Shanice goes for her tryout and sees Alan practicing. She says he moves with an “inhuman grace” and she mistook him for a large fish at first because fish and humans look exactly the same. He has short black hair and gray eyes and he pays absolutely no attention to anyone else in the building. The coach says he hasn't really spoken two words to anyone and he spends more time in the water than out but he's a great swimmer.

Shanice goes to change into her swimsuit and gives us this description of herself......

“Standing five feet five inches tall, a lifetime of swimming had kept her well-toned, though she had sometimes wished her breasts were a little bigger, though she was usually fine with her 28B sized breasts, especially the sensitive chocolate-covered nipples that topped her mocha breasts, though they were a bane to her while she was trying to focus.”

Yes, folks, that was all ONE SENTENCE. How many times can a person use the word 'though' in one sentence? And who describes themselves like that? And how exactly are her nipples a bane while she's trying to focus?  I literally never even think about mine.  Do you think about yours?  Great.  Is everyone thinking about their nipples now?  Have I caused this massive lack of focus across all my readership? (So like....3 of you???) 

Focus, people!  Get your minds out of your bras!

She heads out to the pool where she is naturally the fastest thing the coach has ever seen next to Alan. I guess Alan isn't even technically on the team and the coach has no idea if he even attends the college. He just comes and swims. Seems legit. The coach offers her a position on the team.

Shanice watches Alan swim for a bit. He doesn't even disturb the water much as he goes back and forth and she can't identify the stroke he's using. The coach sees her eyeing him and teases her about having a crush on Alan. She asks him if she can come back to practice that evening and he smirks and tells her that Alan will be there.

On the way back to her dorm, she calls someone named Tina to tell her about making the swim team. She tells Tina about Alan as well but now he's on the team. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR OWN STORY, GREENFORD! She tells Tina that Alan is aloof and Tina recommends that Sanice be “outgoing, spontaneous and gregarious” toward him to which Shanice replies that she's going to look those words up in a dictionary because she's pretty sure Tina just made them up.

What?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?

She got into college and she doesn't know those are real words?

💩Bullshit.💩

Shanice can't get Alan off her mind. She finds him intimidating and tells herself it's just because he's nine inches taller than her. HOW THE EVERLOVING FUCK DOES SHE KNOW THAT? She never saw him out of the water. She never saw him standing up at all – he was swimming and treading water the entire time. There's no way she could know how tall he was.

That won't be the last time you see that picture, y'all.

Sharice is pissed that he didn't pay her any attention. No one has ever ignored her before because she is just a shining example of awesomeness and beauty. She saw the coach checking her out (gross) and she can't believe Alan didn't do the same.

She goes to the pool but finds the doors locked. She's about to leave when she sees Alan approach. He has a key and he unlocks the doors.  Don't ask me why this student who isn't on the swim team and doesn't actually attend this college has keys to an academic building.  We're all just supposed to think of our nipples and accept this.

Shanice thanks him for opening the doors and he asks if she's here to swim in the “false ocean” as well. It strikes her as odd but she says yes. She thinks his voice is odd sounding but doesn't bother to tell us in what way. I don't know if he has an accent or it's all scratchy or he sounds like a preteen girl seeing Beiber for the first time. In my head I'm picturing the last one.

They go inside and it's pitch black. She asks him if he knows where the lights are and he says yes but doesn't turn them on. She stands there in the dark for three entire minutes before going to find them herself. She's stunned when the lights come on to see Alan swimming through the water completely noiselessly. His clothes are in a pile on the side of the pool and she wonders if he's totally nude.

She goes to put on her suit and then joins him in the water, trying hard to stay out of his way. He's still ignoring her completely and she has this odd sense that the pool belongs to him and she's just there because he's allowing her to be. She's never seen anyone swim so fast in her life. She runs through a brief practice but cuts it short because she's so butthurt that he's not paying any attention to her at all. As she's leaving she has the startling thought that she never once saw him come to the surface to breathe.

It takes two days for Shanice to find Alan outside of the pool. She finally spots him in the cafeteria eating a huge plate of fried fish and she sits down with him. He gives her a cold, panicked look for a second but then he recognizes her and goes back to eating. She strikes a conversation up with him about food and he tells her that he prefers seal and squid. This doesn't really strike her as odd at all. She asks him why he hasn't formally joined the team and he tells her that he likes to swim but hates everything about competing.

Shanice thinks he sounds a bit like a robot pretending to be human. She then says this, and I'm going to quote it so you can see the level of writing skill I'm slogging through to give you this recap.....

“Um, so Alan, I wanted to know if you could help me with my swimming, seeing you made the old jealous part of my ego almost flare up, but I would rather learn from you than be your rival.”

Again, all one sentence and written like a robot pretending to be human.

Sigh.

So we hop into Alan's head mid-conversation which is just hella lazy writing and he has some kind of 'flashback' except that he acts like it never happened at all which wouldn't make it a flashback, Greenford.

In this psychic vision or whatever it is, a 60 foot tall, 65 foot long sunfish in a cave tells him that he must help any human who asks him for help. Because of this, he can't refuse Shanice's request and he tells her he'll help her swim faster. They agree to meet that evening after everyone else is gone.

The next day during regular practice, Coach Perv thinks about what he'd like to do to Shanice's size 28Bs and then asks her to convince Alan to be timed. Shanice really wants to show off to the team and thinks manipulating poor Alan is the way to do it. She gets his attention and asks him to please impress the entire swim team for her. He seems confused but agrees to do as she asks because the sunfish told him he had to. The coach times him and Alan shatters a world record easily and then just goes back to what he's doing.

Now Greenford tells us that Alan definitely doesn't go to college here. So what the actual fuck is he doing at the pool and the cafeteria? I call 💩bullshit💩 again.

Shanice and Alan meet at the pool after dark. She's wearing a bikini because she wants to get him chained to her fast now that everyone knows how impressive he is. As they walk into the building she notices he's injured.......

“Shanice got out and walked to him, noticing as she got close that his shirt had a tear in it, exposing a small wound on his left arm, just above his nipple.”

First, I would really like to report this author to some kind of authority for comma abuse. Second, why is his nipple on his fucking arm?

She asks him about his booboo and he tells her some parasites tried to harm him and he had to attack them. They go inside and he just strips down and changes into his trunks right there in front of her. She hides her eyes so I have no idea if he's got a nice fin or not. She changes into her suit and tries her best not to “look at his body in a lecherous manner”. It literally says it just like that.

She notices his wound has already healed and starts yelling at him............

“You're different, too different! You could take every medal in every tournament and dominate the Olympics you don't! You never need to breathe when you're swimming! Now you're healing from cuts in minutes? What are you, a vampire or something? Are you an alien?”

So what does the second sentence have to do with anything else? Sigh. And seriously.....a swimming vampire? OOOOOOOOKay.

Alan just shifts into a Great White Shark to shut her mouth. They can communicate telepathically now which I think is worse. Before he could always plug his ears or just go underwater to get away from her. Now she's just in his head.

He tells her to ask whatever she wants. She wants to know if he was shark that turned human or a human that turned shark. I'm expecting him to explain he's both because he's a shifter but NO. 💢  No, he was born a shark and he became human to learn about the humans who pollute the ocean. Others have been granted this ability. One was captured because he revealed himself to the wrong people. (Not like that you dirty birdies – he showed the wrong person he was a shark.) Another loved being a human so much that she stopped going to the ocean to swim and eat and eventually got sick and died. (Note from future me: Greenford forgets that she told us the shifter died.  The shifter didn't die.)  He tells her that anyone who chooses to prolong their shift past 730 tide cycles will automatically be consumed so that their knowledge “flows back into the collective shark soul.”

None of that made sense and now I have to Google how long the tide cycles are.

I think it amounts to about 182 days but I could be wrong.

Shanice does the next logical thing and asks if she can ride on his back. He tells her she can but his skin is not smooth. It's covered in something called denticles which are tooth-like and pointy. Sounds super comfy.

I have to tell you that I went on a 15 minute rant to my family about the audacity of her asking him for a ride. If I were him I would find it super insulting and demeaning.

I can't even believe I'm thinking about this that much.

Alan gives her a wild ride then tells her he needs to turn back into human form. Then we get this......

“You are hot,” he said simply.

“Why thank you, Alan, I think you are attractive too,” Shanice said while wishing she could disappear into the actual ocean from embarrassment.

“I mean you are physically hot, your heart rate has increased, are you ill? Did I go too fast when you rode on top of me?” Alan asked, genuinely, still unacquainted with being this close to a mammal he wasn't eating as well as the double entendre.

This book is awful but that actually made me laugh. I don't think it was supposed to, though. Also, I need to find a new picture.

Shanice is clearly turned on rather than sick and she decides to introduce him to the human art of kissing. He's never done such a thing before and thinks she's attacking him at first but then his “human brain” begins redirecting blood flow to the old fin....if you know what I mean....and he kisses her back. She immediately removes her bikini top.............

…...........but then Alan's shark senses pick up someone coming into the building that he finds threatening so he hides in a locker.

This is going well so far.

Some random dude named Manfree is apparently on to Alan and wants to capture the shark shifter. He also wants to get into Shanice's bikini bottoms which apparently isn't too hard since she just stripped naked after just once kiss. He introduces himself to Shanice as an Olympic scout and wants to know where Alan is. She doesn't tell him anything. She goes to change and then Alan speaks in her mind telling her that they're trying to attach something electronic to the lockers.

Shanice goes back out to the pool and snaps at the men to leave or she's calling campus security. They go but Alan mind-tells her that they've left something beside the pool and he doesn't want to come out until it's gone. It turns out to be a camera that she can't seem to destroy no matter how hard she tries. Alan says he'll shift his face to shark and his shark teeth will take care of it.

Um.

But then won't it send video back to wherever of him shifting his face into a fucking shark?

These people are truly brainless.

Alan loses a tooth in the process and Shanice keeps it. So weird. Alan tells her that she will be his mate. He will “mark” her and then she will be allowed to change into shark form and meet his clan. If she is considered worthy enough, she can stay and be their queen. He also tells her that usually sharks mate and then the male beats it the hell out of there because the female is bigger and scary but he think he might actually stick around her after mating because she's super special and ever so dreamy.

Shanice tells us how......ahem......happy his words make her in the panty region. Happier than any man has ever made her panty region before. Good God this book is actually killing me. I feel my brain waves slowing down.

Shanice has to go back into the locker room for her bag. Manfree has placed a camera in it and stolen her panties.

Wait.

She dressed now.

Why isn't she WEARING her panties?

We hop into Manfree's head. The captured shark Alan mentioned is in his lab. He's trying to learn how they shift. Manfree and shark boy argue for a very long time in a very poorly written way about who is the apex predator. Manfree gets so mad that he sedates shark boy and almost kills him but he's stopped by his superior. Manfree is given one month to figure out the shifting method or he will be “retired”.

I really don't care about any of that.

We're back with Shanice and Alan. He thinks he's not supposed to smile at her because it's baring his teeth and that's a sign of aggression. Alan says he's been trying to study biology books to learn how to be human but they just make him hungry. Shanice agrees to “teach” him. Uh huh.

Alan has questions about male-female dynamics, whether females lay eggs, why children don't eat each other, how sex works and why their skin is so soft. Shanice is WAY under-qualified to answer anything. She asks him a bunch of questions about whether he can have children and how he shifts. He tells her that shark pups will often eat each other in the womb until only one survives and I find this completely terrifying.

I Googled it and it's actually a thing. It's complicated and I don't want to type it all out but you should Google it too if you're curious.

Alan and Shanice have a ridiculous conversation for several pages about what would happen if sharks waged a war on humans. It about put me to sleep.

They go to the beach and Shanice asks to ride him again. She can feel his emotions now and the human part of Alan enjoys the request while the shark part is pretty indignant at her gall.

THANK YOU.

He gives her a ride but people see and start to panic. They manage to diffuse the situation and meet up in a little cove. Alan tells her he can tell she's.....ahem....interested in his fin because she's all hot again. Then he experiences his very first....ahem.....fin stiffening. Shanice takes her top off and wishes that she was brave enough to tell him how much she likes men to play with her chocolate chips (if you know what I mean).

I interrupt this sex scene to call 💩bullshit💩.

They can sense each other's thoughts. If she's thinking about it, he's hearing it.

LEARN YOUR OWN RULES, GREENFORD!!

So, suddenly the mind thing is working again and Shanice guides him through what she wants him to do to her 28Bs. He's alarmed because she just keeps getting hotter and hotter and he's sure she's dying. He thinks he can suck the heat out of her breasts somehow and she enjoys this immensely. She....ahem....crests the wave (if you know what I mean) and he's freaked out because he doesn't understand what just happened at all. She explains that it was a very good thing and then she decides to show him how very good it really is. Alan finds the entire experience a little terrifying because apparently shark sex is a dangerous endeavor, but she tells him to just surrender to her rhythmic ball skills (if you know what I mean) and he lets her manually wax his surfboard....ahem.

Afterwards, he senses Manfree and tells Shanice they have to run.

Greenford now treats us to a paragraph or two of Manfree practicing his own rhythmic ball skills with Shanice's stolen panties and that's a sentence I never want to type again. 💀

Shanice and Alan go back to her dorm (which is suddenly an APARTMENT because Greenford has NO IDEA what she's even writing at this point) and she changes into a wetsuit under her clothes while he eats a huge plate of raw fish. She finds his eating habits “arousing” and I think she might want to seek out campus psych services asap because he's basically ripping into it like a shark and swallowing it whole. It's disturbing.

Eventually he senses that she's hot again and decides it's go time. He knows he has to suck it out of her so he goes right for her 28Bs. When he encounters the wet suit, his shark goes completely crazy because she feels like fish now.

This is so stupid I want to cry.

He tears her shirt off in a frenzy that should alarm her if she had half a brain. If he half-shifts his face again, she's a goner. He goes to work sucking the heat out of her. She has herself a fine old time and then “sat back in the sand, catching her breath”.

THEY'RE IN HER FUCKING APARTMENT, GREENFORD! WHY THE FUCK WOULD SHE HAVE SAND IN HER FUCKING APARTMENT? IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING HARD TO KEEP TRACK OF WHERE YOUR FUCKING CHARACTERS ARE IN YOUR OWN FUCKING STORY!!

What follows is the most awkward sex scene I've ever read in my life. Greenford can't write. At all. It's awful and sounds like a 10 year old describing what he thinks sex might be like.  Shanice goes on for three or four pages about how she wants to have a "mind orgasm" at the same time as her "physical orgasm" and then Alan joins in and wants to time her "mind orgasm" and her "physical orgasm" with his "physical orgasm" and that's most times I've ever typed the word orgasm in my life.  I'll stop now.

And, yes, those are the words Greenford actually used.  MULTIPLE TIMES.

Afterwards she tells him she will be exhausted unless he stays beside her. Which makes no sense but I stopped caring. He tells her that “human sex is very amazing” and he would like to spend the night.

We head back to Manfree's head. He's questioning an older couple who saw Shanice swimming with the shark earlier. They aren't tell him what he wants to know, though, so he shoots them with some kind of dart and paralyzes them.

It's the next morning now and Shanice suddenly lives in a dorm again. I'm exhausted from all the mind-explosions I'm having.  (Which are NOT the same thing as mind-orgasms, believe me!)  They go to swim practice and Manfree is there pretending to be an Olympic scout again. Coach is thrilled but Shanice says she won't swim for him. Alan also refuses. The coach insists so they get in the water and swim as badly as they possibly can.

After their poor performance they leave the building. They're still in their swimsuits but Greenford seems to forget this so I guess I'll try to as well.  Manfree follows them out and tells them that he'll capture them both like he captured the other shifter. Alan wants to kill him but Shanice stops him. Manfree admits he killed the old man from the beach the day before. Shanice wants to kill him but Alan stops her. Then Manfree says he'll release the other shifter if Alan teaches him how to be a shark. Alan points out that it's impossible for Manfree to ever be a shark and Manfree collapses “in hypertension”.

Fuck me.

One of Manfree's assistants drops a card at Alan's feet and it turns out to have an address on it. They think it might be where the other shifter is being held. After the others are gone, Alan tells Shanice that they have a problem. When they had sex he lost control of himself and “seeded her”. She asks if she's pregnant and he tells her.......

“Well, no, not yet. But you will soon very much want to be, as your body is going to begin to alter within the next few days. Being seeded by a shifter will allow you to shift as well, but there's a process and the first time is usually difficult; especially for a human going to shark. I will be there with you, though, I just hope you don't become harsh and violent when we have sex; I like how it is now.”

Do you see the utter 💩💀💣 that I'm reading here? The things I do for you people.

The book ends with a chapter from that female shifter we were told was dead earlier. She's not dead. She's Alan's betrothed and she's looking for him so she can sex him to death.

As you can probably tell, this book was a cliffie. There's a second one and it IS on Kindle Unlimited so I might be persuaded to read it eventually. Maybe next year during shark week. If I've recovered by then.