Review: Son of a Mermaid by Katie O'Sullivan

Son of a Mermaid by Katie O'Sullivan
Publisher: Crescent Moon Press
Released: May 15th 2013
Format: Ebook
Source: Review copy provided by author

Shea MacNamara's life just got complicated. After a freak tornado devastates his Oklahoma farm, the fifteen-year-old orphan is whisked away to Cape Cod. Struggling to make sense of his new surroundings, he's trying hard to deal with feelings of abandonment... and the emotions stirred by a girl he meets along the shore.

Kae belongs to an undersea world hidden from drylanders. The daughter of royal servants, she knows the planned marriage of her Princess to the foreign King should put an end to the war between the clans. But two things stand in the way of lasting peace: the ambitions of the foreign King's regent, and rumors of the Princess's bastard child. Sparks fly when she meets Shea, but could the cute drylander really be the Son of a Mermaid?

Son of a Mermaid is such an adorable book. When Katie approached me for a review, I immediately agreed (because, as you know, I am such a mer-freak).

How interesting can a son of a mermaid be? Not many mermaid books have guys as main characters, but Son of a Mermaid does fairly well with one. Katie proves this by filling her book with likeable characters, especially Shea. A boy with unique traits, one of which is a brilliant memory (thanks to his mer-heritage), Shea's POVs start off in a most amusing way by featuring the different kinds of trash he remembers clearing off from the beach. Even though Shea's upset about his missing father, he doesn't stay angry or miserable at his situation and tries his best to get used to Cape Cod. The longer he stays there, the more his curiosity about his mother, whom he never knew much about, grows. He also takes to his merman transformation pretty well and is quick to adapt.

Kae is a character I grew to love just a teeny bit more than Shea! I find that Kae's character has a little more depth than Shea and I connected with her really quickly. Her speech is occasionally peppered with bits of mermaid slang like "I'm such a jellyfish!" and "... you clownfish". It was so cute and wasn't too overwhelming. Her unfamiliarity with the human world is very charming as well. I admire how Kae's bravery slowly emerges as she seeks out the answers to her questions. She's a believable character who's got her own insecurities, especially those concerning her growing attraction to Shea.

The supporting characters do not pale in comparison, either. Hailey is quite amusing, what with grading everyday things using A pluses and B minuses with her brother. I soon viewed her as an annoyance in Shea and Kae's relationship, which was great as it meant that Katie was doing her job in making me feel something towards Hailey, who didn't fade into the background. Mr Guenther is pretty amazing as well, though I wish he had dropped more hints earlier. I think it would have been better if Brynneliana (can't say I like her name very much, it's such a mouthful) had been a more prominent character and had her own POV, as she's rather an important person mermaid to Shea. Shea's granddad is the funniest granddad I've read about in a while. As for the villain, Demyan is really convincing and we haven't seen the last of him yet!

Katie paints a beautiful picture of Cape Cod and Kae's watery world beneath the surface. Both were easy for me to visualise, and I particularly love the portrayal of the merfolk and their underwater world. Who knew mer-politics could be so interesting? The third-person POVs of Shea and Kae are simple and clear, while showing how the mer-royals are formal in language with each other.

The conflict is strong and the plot is brilliantly woven. The romance between Shea and Kae isn't the highlight of the story, which is a nice change, but it came off a tad strong in the last part of the book though. The ending is not bad at all, with the promise of even more adventures for Shea and Kae.

I was totally entertained by this novel and am absolutely looking forward to the release of the sequel, Blood of a Mermaid! Son of a Mermaid is perfect for younger teens as well as older ones, especially if you're looking for a light and enjoyable afternoon read. It'll take you on an amazing underwater adventure and leave you gasping for more, so dive in!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie O’Sullivan lives with her family and big dogs next to the ocean on Cape Cod, drinking way too much coffee and inventing new excuses not to dust.

She writes YA and romantic suspense novels, as well as working as an editor. For the last four years, she’s worked as the Editor of CapeWomenOnline.com magazine and writes “The Write Way” column for the magazine.

She hopes her debut YA novel, SON OF A MERMAID, will make a big splash this summer, engaging young readers with a Cape Cod tale of a boy who discovers both his roots and his destiny far below the waters of Nantucket Sound.

Connect with Katie: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Get your copy of Son of a Mermaid!

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble

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Review: My Name Is Rapunzel by K. C. Hilton

My Name Is Rapunzel by K. C. Hilton
Publisher: Createspace
Released: November 22nd 2013
Format: Ebook
Source: Review copy from author

My tale has been told again and again, and I’ve heard each one. Except for my hair, I barely recognize the pitiful renditions. Muddled versions, crafted to entertain laughing children…but the children wouldn’t have laughed if they’d known the real story. It wasn't their fault. They didn't know the truth. Nobody did.

My name is Rapunzel. I will tell you my story. I will tell you the truth.

This book has a beautiful cover and a beautiful synopsis, but left me floundering when I was barely a quarter in. I had expected much more of My Name Is Rapunzel. I did not have the easiest time writing this review; I’ll section it so that it’ll be easier for everyone to process.

Undefined goals. It's extremely frustrating to have a main character and villain who both do not have defined goals. In the traditional fairy tale, Rapunzel is held captive in a tower by a witch. Gretta is the witch in this story. However, Gretta's ulterior motive for keeping Rapunzel captive is not clear until the 80% mark in the story. I was constantly distracted by what Gretta wanted exactly from Rapunzel, as nothing more was given except for a rough idea. I was reading page after page and hoping that Gretta's motive would be stated clearly, but it wasn't stated for most of the novel until I was 89% through with the book.

Rapunzel's father places her in Gretta's care in the hopes that Gretta would one day reverse the curse on his daughter. Doesn't sound like a good plan. Gretta doesn't stand to lose anything by not removing the curse. If I were cursed with immortality and lost the love of my life, I would have committed suicide or tried ways to kill Gretta instead of living for 250 years in a castle with her (which is exactly what Rapunzel did). Rapunzel wasn't actively searching or trying all means and ways to escape from Gretta. All she did was grumble about having to live with “that witch” for 250 years without any fierce struggle, based purely on her father's hopes that Gretta would remove the curse one day. In the eyes of any villain, one day is the equivalent of fat hope. The logic doesn't make sense at all. And most times, Gretta just disappears into the background.

Characters and writing style. The tension created in the prologue was pretty awesome. However, the first chapter didn’t build up much personality in Rapunzel for me to connect with her. The chapter starts off with Rapunzel panicking about her first kiss with Henry and whether he would dump her if he found out that "no man had ever before found [her] worthy of affection". The writing was exaggerated in Rapunzel's POV and didn't give me a likeable impression of her. It was totally absurd because Rapunzel actually thought that her true love would be shallow enough to judge her based on a single kiss.

As I read on, I got more and more annoyed by the writing style of Rapunzel’s POV. She asks too many unnecessary questions which comes off as very childish. There’s an average of 4 to 5 questions on every page within the first chapter, and I counted 8 of these questions on a page in Chapter 2. The questions consist of things like "What did that mean?", "Why now?", "Who was that?", "What now?". One paragraph even had 4 questions in it:

Should I go to Henry's parents? Or to my home? Where would I find help? Even as I asked myself, I knew the truth. There was no help to be found. I was on my own. After all, who could help against forces such as these?

It was a major turnoff for me, hearing the voice in my head read out so many questions like an annoying child. Rapunzel runs around like a headless chicken whenever something bad happens. I couldn't feel for her or Henry at all even when disaster struck. Henry didn't have any depth to his character and I felt like I should feel bad for Rapunzel, but I didn't. The first time I felt for a character was in Chapter 5 – for Rapunzel's mother. It's not a good sign if I'm actually feeling more for a supporting character than the main character.

Gretta doesn't seem like a complete villain. Her villainous side appeared when she first cursed Rapunzel, then it disappeared during the 250 years with Rapunzel. Gretta is totally un-villainy after that until the last 15% of the book, and hardly poses a real threat to Rapunzel (I’ll discuss this further in the plot holes section).

Jenkins. Ah, Jenkins, the skeptical reporter. He wrote a newspaper article scoffing at fairy tales and also ridicules Rapunzel's famous hair. Rapunzel reads it, gets hopping mad and decides to write him her autobiography, letter-style. The flashback-like writing style of the letters is very poor. The letters don't sound like letters, they sound like a novel within this novel. It's ridiculous how Rapunzel bothers so much about what a stranger thinks of her. At this point, it's almost half the story and Rapunzel's goal is still undefined. Even if her goal is to make Jenkins realise she's real, the stakes are not high enough. When they meet, Jenkins' character suddenly undergoes a 180° change overnight and they both take to each other a lot. It was not believable at all, given how skeptical Jenkins is and how Rapunzel detests him. All seems to be forgiven just because Jenkins is handsome.

Also, I cannot feel anything for Luke. He's a useless character who lets his wife push him around.

Major plot holes. There's a dragon which has lived 250 years with them. Up till the last quarter of the novel, it isn’t clear whether Gretta controls the dragon or vice versa. Rapunzel's convinced that the dragon "protects" her and wants her "safe" when all it does is fly around and roar. Unless a nightly candle is lit in her tower, the dragon cannot rest as that is the only way it knows she is “safe”. On one occasion Rapunzel tries to run from the castle, but the dragon “caught her” just by roaring, because it hadn’t seen the candlelight. The dragon doesn't seem to actually be able to stop her, so Rapunzel could still have left. Jenkins gives Rapunzel an electric candle and that’s it, problem solved. It's so absurd. Rapunzel would have been able to acquire an electric candle without Jenkins’ help as she knows how to use the Internet on a laptop to go online shopping.

Gretta is not a real threat at all to Rapunzel, being easy to kill (Rapunzel did not kill her). Rapunzel could've set herself free if she had a weapon and a moment alone with Gretta. And Rapunzel had plenty of those opportunities to kill Gretta throughout the 250 years!

HUGE SPOILER ALERT
(FURTHER PLOT HOLE EXAMPLE)

I don’t like to include major spoilers in my reviews, but for My Name Is Rapunzel, I simply have to in order to show you how flawed the plot is.

Henry is the dragon. And he’s been that dragon flying around and roaring and supposedly keeping Rapunzel “safe”, when he doesn’t really do anything at all. We find out that Gretta cursed him so he would be a dragon for all time except for “mere moments of time” as a man. If Henry should lay eyes on Rapunzel’s face, he will turn back into dragon form.

Now, we only find this out at the 83% mark of the book. At 85%, Henry reveals himself to Rapunzel in a manner that would have been possible at the very start of his curse, but he chose to do that only at the end of the book. The solution to his problem was very simple and the stakes had not been high enough. Also, other solutions would have been simple, such as writing a letter and sending it to Rapunzel when he was in human form. He needn’t have waited 250 years. The whole thing was incredibly ridiculous.

~ END OF SPOILER ~

BOTTOM LINE: The synopsis of My Name Is Rapunzel sells the supposed true story of Rapunzel, and so I felt that this novel had a lot of potential. However, the characters really lacked depth and the plot was full of holes so laughable, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The story did not flow or move forward well. Seriously, don't waste your time on this one. Not worth it.

* I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are solely my own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born and raised in Aurora, Illinois I spent my childhood climbing trees and playing street games with the neighbourhood kids. I was a proud tomboy, until the day I didn’t want to hike the land to an old graveyard. From that point forward I was considered a “girl”. At the age of seventeen I moved to Kentucky and eventually began to raise a family of my own. Having worn several “hats” my life has been an adventure all on its own. Still, to this day, I yearn to be a mechanic and own a pink toolbox with pink tools. I can usually be found updating my website, reading great books, watching awesome movies or creating videos for my YouTube channel. Most days I crave Diet Coke, pizza and chocolate, in no particular order. I don’t read scary books or watch horror movies… I’m way too scared! Lol.

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In My Mailbox #1: Library Loot & more!

Welcome to my very first post for In My Mailbox (IMM)! IMM is a weekly meme created by Kristi @ The Story Siren which features books bought/received in the mail, borrowed from the library as well as other awesome book-related goodies in your mailbox.

Note: IMM is probably not going to be a weekly thing for me, what with school and other stuff. I'll do my best though!

LIBRARY LOOT

The Small Blue Thing trilogy by S. C. Ransom. I read Small Blue Thing about two or three years ago and loved it very much. I could never find Perfectly Reflected (the second book) in the library after it was released, and subsequently, the series fell off my radar. I'm so pleased to have found the whole trilogy now!

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix. I loved Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, and though I'm not big on sci-fi, I borrowed this because – oh come on, it's by Garth Nix!!

Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama. I'd seen this on a few mermaid book lists but never quite prioritised it on my to-read list. My search for other mermaid novels proved to be futile today, so this shall suffice (: 

Starling by Lesley Livingston. This book had me at the mention of Norse gods and is supposedly action-packed, with fencing in the mix. 

The White Rabbit Chronicles (Book 1 & 2) by Gena Showalter. Alice in Wonderland has always intrigued me, and Tim Burton's movie of the same name was simply astounding. I've heard rave reviews about Alice in Zombieland and can't wait to start on this series!

Sweet Evil by Wendy Higgins. I know, I know – I should've read this sooner and all, but better late than never! This book has fallen angels and bad boys in it.

Spellcaster by Claudia Gray. Being a fan of the Hex Hall series by Rachel Hawkins, I had to borrow this. Spellcaster's synopsis screams witches and curses, and I do love a witchy book every now and then!

MY MAIL

I received a signed sampler and bookmark of Degrees of Wrong by Anna Scarlett, which I won in a giveaway hosted by Carly @ Lis Les Livres. Thanks Carly! (: 

Aaaaaand that's a wrap for my first IMM! What did you receive this week? Leave a link to your IMM post below so I can visit your blog!

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Micah finally received his copy of Love At First Slight!

Last month, I held my first ever giveaway (exclusive to my blog) offering a paperback and ebook copy of J. Marie Croft's Love At First Slight, kindly sponsored by Meryton Press. The winner of the paperback copy was Micah Ketchens, and he's finally received his prize!

I asked Micah to send me a photo of him and his copy of LaFS when he got it, and here's what he sent me:

Fantastic, isn't it? I can totally feel his excitement!

Congratulations for winning the giveaway, Micah, and thank you for sending me this awesome photo! I hope you enjoy J. Marie Croft's twist on Pride & Prejudice, and please do return for future giveaways!

P.S. Micah runs a blog too! You can find him at Mad Man in a Blog (:

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