"The Last Atlantean" by Emily Hayse

Emily Hayse's books have a kind of direct, inevitable heroism that I find enthralling.  Her prose suits other and older worlds, filled with larger-than-life heroes and heroines, villains and villainesses.  This whole book felt like a movie made in the 1950s but set a few decades earlier.  

Hattie is a lighthouse keeper's daughter living in Maine in 1912.  A stranger washes up on shore one night, and Hattie rescues him, helps nurse him back to health, and falls in love with them.

Not even halfway through the book, they get married, after he's revealed that he's not just a random sailor, he's actually Isurus, the rightful king of Atlantis.  Yes, the lost kingdom of Atlantis.  Which seems not so much lost as hidden, in this.

Of course, Isurus and Hattie go to Atlantis.  With the help of a handful of faithful followers, Isurus attempts to take down his half brother, who betrayed Isurus and then usurped the throne.  There are underwater pathways and shark battles and other exciting and dramatic things, plus a sweet and clean love story.  Just enough worldbuilding to make Atlantis a convincingly otherworldly realm, but not so much that I got bored (this is often a problem for me with fantasy books).  I found this book a healthy dose of bracing and heartening fiction, which I definitely needed.

Long live the shark king!

Particularly Good Bits:

"The only thing you can do is make choices, one after another, and hope the fates smile upon us.  No one becomes a hero, or a villain, without a choice.  Everyone has a choice" (p. 22).

Life was moving on around her, relentless as ever, but the feeling of that moment -- she would have it to hold against all dark and sorrowful times (p. 73).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some violence and a smidgeon of kissing.  No smut; no cussing.

This is my 45th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.