Way Down We Go

By: Andrea Jenelle

Narrated by: Sarah Dawn, Corvin King

Tropes: Fated Mates; Star-Crossed Lovers; Marriage of Convenience

He's finally free and he has three objectives:

Claim Her.

Steal Her.

Sacrifice Her.

Callum is the Prince of the North Sea and he's going to claim his vengeance on the descendant of the witch that stole his brother's life.

Meghan is a research librarian in modern day Chicago. And he's the new maintenance guy in her apartment complex.

He's been waiting over a thousand years.

She's not going to let him drag her back to his cave, they're bound by prophecy and desire.

A paranormal shifter romance based on Scottish water horse folklore and mythology.

©2023 Andrea Kirk, dba Willow Creek Publishing (P)2024 Andrea Kirk, dba Willow Creek Publishing

Myth, Muscle and a Maintenance Man

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: ❤️💚💙🩷💛
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪🧪
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘📙
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍
Character development: 🤓😟🤯😎
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Duet Narration

Character Backgrounds

At the heart of Way Down We Go is Callum, the Prince of the North Sea. Ancient, imperious, and fueled by a grief that has festered for more than a thousand years, Callum is a kelpie, a mythological water horse from Scottish folklore capable of shifting between human and monstrous equine form. His entire purpose, his reason for enduring the slow grind of centuries, has been vengeance against the bloodline of the witch who stole his brother's life. He is not a softened, domesticated paranormal hero. He is old rage wrapped in an unnervingly beautiful exterior, and that tension is what makes him so compelling.

Meghan is a research librarian in modern-day Chicago, grounded, practical, and entirely unprepared for the supernatural to drag itself through her apartment building's maintenance schedule. She is clever and stubborn in equal measure, the kind of woman who does not simply accept a prophecy and fall into line. Her skepticism and her wit serve as the story's anchor, keeping the narrative from drifting entirely into mythological abstraction. When the new maintenance man turns out to be an immortal kelpie prince who has been tracking her bloodline for over a millennium, she does not swoon. She argues.

The pairing of these two works precisely because they operate on entirely different timescales and value systems. Callum measures time in centuries; Meghan measures it in library due dates. Andrea Jenelle leans into that contrast with confidence.

Plot Summary

The story opens with Callum finally closing in on his quarry after over a thousand years of patient, obsessive pursuit. He takes the role of maintenance worker in Meghan's apartment complex, a calculated decision to get close to the last surviving descendant of the witch who cursed and ultimately killed his brother. His intent is vengeance, clean and final.

What he does not anticipate is the ancient prophecy that binds them, a fated mates thread that makes Meghan far more than a means to an end. The closer he gets to her, the more the mythology begins to shift around them both. The story moves between Callum's centuries-old memories of the Scottish coastline and the steel-and-glass reality of contemporary Chicago, building tension between his world and hers.

The plot makes inventive use of the marriage of convenience trope, weaving it into the paranormal framework in a way that feels organic rather than grafted on. Meghan, initially resistant and frankly furious at being swept into a fate she never chose, gradually begins to understand the full weight of the history Callum carries. The romance develops alongside a genuine mystery about the original witch's curse, and the resolution manages to honor both the mythological stakes and the emotional ones.

“He has been waiting over a thousand years. She is not going to let him drag her back to his cave. And yet, somewhere between prophecy and fury, something older than either of them begins to pull.”

Highlights and Limitations

The single most refreshing thing about Way Down We Go is that it dares to be genuinely original within a genre that can feel overpopulated with the same wolf packs and vampire courts. The kelpie as romantic hero is rare in paranormal romance, and Jenelle clearly did her research. The Scottish water horse mythology feels earned rather than decorative, rooted in actual folklore traditions around shapeshifting equine creatures that lure humans to watery deaths. Transplanting that mythology into a Chicago apartment building is a genuinely clever move, and the friction between the ancient and the modern generates some of the book's best scenes.

The world building is atmospheric and confident. The North Sea feels present even when the narrative is firmly set in the American Midwest, partly through Callum's perspective and partly through Jenelle's prose, which has a tide-like rhythm to it that suits the material beautifully. The fated mates trope is handled with more nuance than is common in the subgenre; Meghan never simply capitulates to destiny, which keeps the romance from feeling predetermined even when it technically is.

On the limitations side, the pacing in the middle section loses some momentum. There is a stretch where the mythology is being explained rather than dramatized, and the story stalls slightly under the weight of its own lore. There is a ton of that, I almost wish the author had a bit more fun the paranormal aspects than making it all so heavy with lore.

A few secondary characters feel underdeveloped, present to move plot points forward rather than to exist in their own right. The star-crossed lovers tension, while effective, occasionally tips into repetition, with Callum and Meghan cycling through the same argument from slightly different angles a beat too many times before the story commits to its resolution.

Narration

The dual-narrator format is the right choice for this material, and the production makes the most of it. Sarah Dawn handles Meghan's chapters with a lightness and dry wit that keeps the contemporary Chicago sections feeling alive. She has a knack for comic timing and for voicing a woman who is exasperated in ways that are endearing rather than grating. Her pacing is natural, and she navigates the emotional range of Meghan's journey with genuine subtlety, from the sharp edges of disbelief through to something far more vulnerable by the final act.

Corvin King as Callum
Corvin King is, in a word, extraordinary. His voice for Callum is a deep, resonant instrument that seems to carry actual weight. There is a quality to his baritone that suggests depth and age without resorting to affectation. He does not perform ancientness; he inhabits it. Every line he speaks carries the texture of something that has existed long enough to stop being surprised by the world, and yet he modulates beautifully in the scenes where Callum's control begins to crack. The combination of that rich, commanding voice with moments of genuine emotional restraint makes his performance one of the standout audiobook narrations in recent paranormal romance. He is, simply put, exactly what this character demands.


The two narrators have a chemistry that works across the listening experience even when their chapters do not overlap. The contrast between Dawn's contemporary crispness and King's measured, sea-deep cadence mirrors the central contrast of the book itself. Listeners who prefer dual-narrator productions will find this one particularly well-matched to its source material.

Final Thoughts

Way Down We Go is the kind of paranormal romance that reminds you why the genre exists at its best: to take mythology seriously, to give ancient things contemporary stakes, and to build a love story that feels genuinely impossible right up until the moment it does not. Andrea Jenelle has written something that stands apart from the crowded field of shifter romance precisely because her shifter is not a werewolf or a big cat or a dragon. He is a kelpie, a cold-water creature from Scottish legend, and that choice makes all the difference. The book is not without its pacing flaws, but its originality, its atmospheric prose, and the sheer quality of its audiobook production carry it confidently past those rough patches.

For listeners who have grown weary of the same familiar paranormal archetypes, this is a genuinely welcome departure. And for anyone who simply wants to hear Corvin King say anything at all in that extraordinary voice for several hours, Way Down We Go delivers handsomely on that front as well. Highly recommended for fans of mythology-rooted paranormal romance looking for something with genuine depth and a kelpie who has earned every inch of his brooding.

I liked the background for this story, the fact that Callum hated humans, wanted nothing to do with humans, and had no moral dilemma when it came down to what he had to do, including mating Meghan, claiming her, stealing her away to his home, and sacrificing her life for the lives and benefit of Callum’s people. He knew from the start that she would be a sacrifice after giving birth for the prophecy.

Perfection 🖤

Resharing this review because my other one says anonymous.

Honestly... I had really high expectations going into this audio because this series will forever have a place in my heart. The narrators did not disappoint whatsoever. I immediately fell in love with this book because of how sassy Meghan is and how grumbly Callum is. I felt like their personalities were perfectly portrayed, and I'll definitely be going back and listening to this book again.

Never have I ever fantasized about Kelpies...

Sarah Dawn and Corvin King does such an amazing job telling this story. I loved all the hot and steamy parts as well as love getting to learn a bit more about Scottish mythology. I am such a fan of Andrea's works as well as these narrators!