The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
Generations of storms have battered Mina's homeland, and her people believe an angry Sea God is to blame. Each year a village maiden is sacrificed to the sea as his bride, in hope of restoring peace. When Shim Cheong, beloved of Mina's older brother Joon, is chosen as this year's sacrifice, Joon follows her into the water rather than lose her — a act that should mean his death.
To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the sea instead. She wakes not drowned but transported to the Spirit Realm, a world of gods, spirits, and magic hidden beneath the waves. There she learns the Sea God lies in an enchanted sleep, and that she has only a single month to wake him before her world is lost to the storms for good.
Drawing on the Korean folktale of Shim Cheong, Axie Oh builds a lush, romantic fantasy about sacrifice, sisterhood, and the debts owed between gods and mortals, as Mina navigates a court of spirits to find a way home.
The beautiful girl chosen as the Sea God's bride, beloved by Mina's brother Joon.
One of the three lords who find Mina in the Spirit Realm; his motivations shift over the course of the story.
It is a feminist retelling of "The Tale of Shim Cheong" ("Sim Ch'ŏng"), a classic Korean folktale, reimagined by author Axie Oh as a fantasy about sacrifice and the Spirit Realm.
No — it is a stand-alone novel. Axie Oh's later Floating World duology (The Floating World, 2024; The Demon and the Light, 2025) is a separate, unrelated series.
It hasn't won a major book prize, but it was a 2022 Cybils Award finalist and a 2023 Garden State Teen Book Award nominee, alongside becoming a New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller.