Early on in her young life, Alexis knew she was different.  Considering her father is an important angel and her mother a mermaid, Alexis is a pretty well adjusted young adult.  While being a merangel has its perks because she can fly across the skies and swim to the deepest depths of the ocean teeming with its creatures at-will, her life presents many challenges.  Alexis is gifted with a great intuition for emotional pain, pain she has a hard time ignoring among Earth’s creatures.  She’s learning to walk among humanity, deciding when and where to use her special talents.  Lately Alexis’ dreams have been sucking her into a world beyond her vast knowledge which cruelly tugs on her emotions.  When a cataclysmic event sucks her into the deepest, most depraved environment she’s ever experienced, can she call upon her gifts to survive and provide a healing touch to her captor? 

Ever since I finished Joey Hill’s second Daughters of Arianne story, A Witch’s Beauty, I wondered how a little merangel would grow up and find everlasting love.  Be prepared for an emotional roller coaster of a read as you enjoy Ms. Hill’s A Mermaid’s Ransom.  This story starts 20 years later as Anna and Jonah’s daughter Alexis is sucked into a Dark One world, falling into the hands of Dante, a creature of both demon and vampire powers.  Dante harbors bitter resentment towards Alexis’ godmother who blocked him so long ago from escaping his dark world.  Believing he has the perfect formula to escape his unrelenting torment, Dante calls forth his demon power seeking to use Alexis and then blithely discard her after he achieves his goal. 

Alexis is no meek merangel looking to blindly follow Dante’s direction.  While others see Dante as a terrorizing bully deserving of complete annihilation, Alexis demonstrates true strength of character, seeing beyond the façade Dante shows to the other minions in his world and working with him to escape Dark One world. 

Most authors would end the story after resolving this conflict, but this is not so with the talented Joey Hill.  Bucking her family and the fates, Alexis decides Dante is her destiny and nothing will dissuade her from leaving his side.  Ms. Hill thrusts our characters into the modern world, showing intense moments of darkness and light as Dante must learn to navigate a much wider world with its interpersonal intrigue.  You’ll treasure these moments in A Mermaid’s Ransom when a delighted Alexis is presented with Dante’s softer side.  As I flipped the pages of this story I rooted for this unlikely couple, wondering if such a dark personality could coexist with an optimistic one.  They say opposites attract and this saying is so true of Alexis and Dante - two beings from opposite sides of the spectrum united by the undying love of one determined merangel.