Blood calls to blood; charm calls to charm.
It is the way of the world.
Come close and tell us your dreams.

Sanna is a mermaid — but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna’s people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever.

Out March 2020

492

MY THOUGHTS:

I received this book in exchange for my honest review. I’m not usually attracted to retellings, but this one peeked my curiosity. It’s a Little Mermaid retelling.

What I enjoyed about this book is that the author did not create stereotypical mermaid types. In Little Mermaid, merfolk were nice and sweet, not in this book. The author also creates a whimsy, fantastical style of reading that is smooth and enticing. She keeps the fairytale theme and tension alive.

The characters were not as developed as I would have liked. The magic system was okay and interesting. The Antagonist was clever and easy to dislike. Overall, I was very entertained with this book and felt the author did a good job of retelling in her unique voice.

Plot seemed to weave and bend and disappear only to reappear into confusion sometimes. Plot twists made this even more confusing at times. I think this is because I expected Muriel from Little Mermaid to come swimming along and clarify everything for me. Knowing that this was a retelling going into the book, I think my expectations often got in the way of my reading enjoyment.

I still if not just for the author’s style and voice, recommend this book to anyone who loves mermaids and fantasy genre books.

I gave it: