I finished this on my plane trip to Florida and found the ending lacking.

It started off fairly strong, though the 'I'm not like anyone else' protagonist was tiresome, but the things she learned later on kind of made up for it, I just did not understand her 'relationship' with Ragna.

They didn't seem to have real feelings for each other, it was more 'this is a human and she's hot and is *new* for our protagonist so of course she'll choose her' but their insta-sex (the moment the MC has legs) and physical abuse (what the fuck) completely turned me off to their relationship so that ending made absolutely no sense to me because why would I want to be with someone that I felt the need to physically hit--and who retaliated from said hit by hitting me back enough to make me bleed?

As for the plot, it was not that interesting, though how 'Ursula' came to get her tentacles that we see in the Little Mermaid is explained in this story. That was the only thing I found fairly interesting--was that it was a retelling of an infamous Disney villain, though I don't know if it fits the character we've seen in the Disney tale?

Maybe that's my downfall, having the Disney version in my head, but that's all I had to go off so sue me.

I love fantasy, I kind of like Merpeople, this one just didn't do it for me.

Her best friend turned enemy immediately losing interest in the MC and falling for the saved character at the end was weird and kind of felt like it was there so the MC wouldn't have to deal with the 'guilt' of not 'choosing' him and going off and being with a human.

As for the infamous Loki that has everyone else in a titter--I hear the author is rewriting some things for the book, maybe this will be something that changes? All I can say about Loki is their complete assholeness--he seemed a secondary villain compared to the King, and didn't seem to be necessary to the story.

I feel the MC could have 'learned her lessons' by standing up to the King without falling privy to peer pressure for something dangerous, and though she might not have had her human legs, she would have been all the better for remaining a Merperson and going off on her own?

The author stresses that her and the human woman may not end up together 'forever' but she was enough for now, and I don't know if that's a good message to give the impressionable teens that will be reading this book.

I know they're probably not thinking of being with someone for the rest of their lives (or they are, thinking their current bf/gf will be around forever), but reading that a 'strong' female character left her whole family (because she hated everyone and everything all the time), because she couldn't 'deal' with the patriarchal society it had become isn't exactly a good message.

I'd prefer standing up for yourself and taking responsibility for what you do, yet she continuously puts the human in danger by going back to her, and she makes a deal with a trickster (knowing she shouldn't), in order to 'make things right,' aka undo the Grading that she went through when she could've just avoided it herself by speaking up TWICE. Once with her mother who advised her NOT TO do the Grading (she had A CHOICE after all), and another while DURING the ceremony when the sea witch (who oversaw the Grading) KNEW she didn't want to do it.

If she just spoke up then and there and said 'Hey maybe I shouldn't let peer pressure from a horrible Merperson like my mortal enemy control what I do,' she wouldn't be in the situation she's in, she wouldn't have to call Loki, she would've just been a Mermaid, probably outcast or whatever or subjected to the Mer-court, which doesn't sound that bad?

Idk, I'm just inundated with the 'I'm willful and different' heroines that we continuously get in YA Lit--especially fantasy. Be willful and different, but that doesn't ALWAYS mean you HAVE to object to the status quo. You can object to it and still get your own way without being a whiny, selfish brat which a lot of these heroines seem to be all the time and still 'get the other person' at the end of the book. For what? Being a selfish, terrible person?

I read this for a traveling book club, and I really wished I could've liked it.

Two stars for the writing style, short and action-filled, but two stars for the lack of description and world building (didn't really get a sense of where the story took place), and lack of well-rounded characters, ie.: the strong willful, refuse-to-bend-to-authority protagonist, the annoying love interest that becomes abusive at some point throughout the story, and the person the MC chooses, who despite their own abusive tendencies are 'different' from the MC's 'normal' and 'keeps them alive' and warrants the MC turning their back on everything they've known just to get their happily ever after.

I would've preferred if the MC went off on her own, exploring the world as a Mermaid and perhaps finding more on her travels.

I'm not even going to the touch the transgender Loki thing because I am not transgender and had no real comment on that character. ( )

A BookTuber I like recommended this when it first came out--she'd gotten an ARC, actually, so it was before. She warned about the dating violence and asked why the author had included it. She warned about the negative views about infertility. She warned about the low-level sexism. I was stunned and told myself not to read this book, but was also so curious about it. I checked it out and was swept away, except for the parts the reviewer warned about. Those got me saying rude things about the author. This year, I was looking for books with entirely different themes, but the author's last name matches something I was looking for, so it popped up in the search results and I checked it out again, interested to learn if my opinion changed. It did, and for the worse.

Good parts are: that the author knows how to write. She does one of my favorite things: writes about wintertime and icy weather beautifully, and on beaches! The imagery and descriptions were wonderful. She writes about bodies of water in ways that were still new and interesting to me, and I liked how she described these particular mermaids and their world. Onto the other stuff: I was deeply unimpressed with everything else the second time around. Her descriptions of body fluids being expelled into the water and ice, while needed and understandable, I nonetheless found disgusting. A mere mention of--it somehow being cleared away and replaced with a new current or something, would have helped immensely. There are several instances of I'm Not Like Other Girls from the main character. It's a quick way to make me not like a character, and she was the -narrator-. Hers and Ragna's relationship amounted to little more than instalove, which I also don't like. The men in this story were harsh, cruel, and I can't help but wonder why. I felt no attachment to Ersel's mom and thought the story would be stronger if the king had killed her, or a human with a harpoon, or Ersel's childhood friend. It could have been a great device to continue showing their cruelty. That seemed a lot less creepy before I typed it. When Ersel gets tentacles, she whines that she'll never be able to have sex with her girlfriend again...after only knowing her a few days total and sleeping with her twice at most. I just stared incredulously at the book. The author apparently has no idea that tent*cle p*rn exists, nor that it's so popular. In fact, I was -expecting- it both times I read this book because it seemed to be leading into it. Nothing. This time around, I found it hard to believe that Ragna becomes a captain, coded as Captain Hook no less, so fast. I'm short and tend towards the skinny side, so I should have cheered. Instead I tightened my jaw a bit.

Putting a Captain Hook-favored "Peter Pan" retelling with a "Little Mermaid" retelling can actually work excellently. I've seen authors do similar things, and absolutely cheered. Here, it irritated me. Maybe that it was done with so many other stories going on. The trickster god Loki has a huge role in the plot of the fourth story that this novel tries to tell, and on second read, I was exasperated. It didn't help that I couldn't stop picturing the movie counterpart, despite only having seen clips. This was supposed to be a Norse-influenced retelling of "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Anderson, but that story was really short when I read it as a kid. This one feels like a lot of padding and like the author wanted to retell multiple favorite stories of hers at once, when some of them have nothing to do with each other. When I finished this book, I felt really on edge, defensive and super irritated, and couldn't figure out why. I don't intend to read future works of this author's. ( )

Not my favorite, but could be a good choice for a teen looking for a Little Mermaid retelling. I didn't love the violence between the romantic leads, but honestly it's not any worse than most of the Joker/Harley stuff lots of our teens are into. And there are definitely shades of Disney but darker, so it might also work for fans of the Disney Twisted Tales series.

This is one of my favorite books. It has lesbians, pirates, mermaids, norse mythology, magic, and a princess in need of rescue. All the things I love and to top it all off it has a strong female lead. Cannot say enough good things about this book the only downside for me is there isn't a sequel...yet. ( )

4.25

a thoroughly entertaining read. I loved this take on the little mermaid story. Although I did take issue with some of the violence that took place in a couple of the relationships (and seemed to be passed over), overall it was still a very good story. I liked the diversity, and I did appreciate how gender and sexuality were treated in this story. I could see myself picking this book up again. ( )