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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
I picked this up for one of the challenges for Around the Year in 52 Books - this completed the challenge of reading a book that I chose randomly and this one was one that I did. It was just okay, it is about mermaids, but they don't come into play until about the last third of this book which was kind of disappointing and the ending felt rushed and too convenient. 2.75/5 Stars
More of my reviews at Paperback Princess.
I'm so cheesy that it hurts sometimes...sometimes. I didn't hate this book, for the Young Adult genre, it was pretty cute which was nice. Lena starts the story after sleep-walking onto the beach and while a few strange encounters, we know that something is wrong with her. As the reader, it was pretty predictable that she was going to be half mermaid, but you saw that going into the book.
There really isn't much to talk about her life on land. She is the image of a normal teenager; trying to juggle friends with boys, rebelling against her parents, oh and this uncontrollable urge to go into the water. She keeps how she doesn't feel well to herself and doesn't tell her friends until she passes out at her dad's new office. All of the emotions that a teenager would feel, Madigan does a great job of capturing them. Lena has angst, she has embarrassment and young love, it was completely relatable and reminded me of what it was like to be a young teen.
What you don't see coming is about 100 pages of her living underwater. The world that Madigan created for these merpeople was pretty great. The way their community was structured was also really awesome and how things worked were just so different from our own world. Learning that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be was a bit of a letdown though. At one point, Lena overhears someone talking about using sharks to attack her father.
It was sad to see her lose her memories as she lived underwater but it was great for her to eventually get them back. All in all, this book was decent, but not a favorite book. More happened in this book than others, but at the same time, this book took a little longer to get through than I anticipated, it was still cute.
I'm so cheesy that it hurts sometimes...sometimes. I didn't hate this book, for the Young Adult genre, it was pretty cute which was nice. Lena starts the story after sleep-walking onto the beach and while a few strange encounters, we know that something is wrong with her. As the reader, it was pretty predictable that she was going to be half mermaid, but you saw that going into the book.
There really isn't much to talk about her life on land. She is the image of a normal teenager; trying to juggle friends with boys, rebelling against her parents, oh and this uncontrollable urge to go into the water. She keeps how she doesn't feel well to herself and doesn't tell her friends until she passes out at her dad's new office. All of the emotions that a teenager would feel, Madigan does a great job of capturing them. Lena has angst, she has embarrassment and young love, it was completely relatable and reminded me of what it was like to be a young teen.
What you don't see coming is about 100 pages of her living underwater. The world that Madigan created for these merpeople was pretty great. The way their community was structured was also really awesome and how things worked were just so different from our own world. Learning that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be was a bit of a letdown though. At one point, Lena overhears someone talking about using sharks to attack her father.
It was sad to see her lose her memories as she lived underwater but it was great for her to eventually get them back. All in all, this book was decent, but not a favorite book. More happened in this book than others, but at the same time, this book took a little longer to get through than I anticipated, it was still cute.
I really enjoyed this book! As a sea lover I’m fascinated with all myths and legends related to it!
One thing that I really enjoyed in this book was that mermaids are seen in a different way than the clichés beautiful creatures that enchant the sailors with their angelical voices and other worldly appearance. No, in this book mermaids are much more than that. They are creatures who live in a structured world, where there are rules, and hierarchy, where they have traditions.
The characters are well developed and they are not flat, so they seemed believable to my eyes. But I think that other characters could be more developed, as Nyx for exemple.
The plot was interesting and I loved the sense of mystery and fantasy that was very present in it.
I liked the fact that this book showed instead of telling because it made it easier to me to enter Lena’s day-to-day life, which was very important, since that life that is shown to us in the first part of the book will dramatically change.
The end was the thing that I least enjoyed!
Overall it was good book, full of magic, mystery and fantasy.
One thing that I really enjoyed in this book was that mermaids are seen in a different way than the clichés beautiful creatures that enchant the sailors with their angelical voices and other worldly appearance. No, in this book mermaids are much more than that. They are creatures who live in a structured world, where there are rules, and hierarchy, where they have traditions.
The characters are well developed and they are not flat, so they seemed believable to my eyes. But I think that other characters could be more developed, as Nyx for exemple.
The plot was interesting and I loved the sense of mystery and fantasy that was very present in it.
I liked the fact that this book showed instead of telling because it made it easier to me to enter Lena’s day-to-day life, which was very important, since that life that is shown to us in the first part of the book will dramatically change.
The end was the thing that I least enjoyed!
Overall it was good book, full of magic, mystery and fantasy.
I don't usually give reviews so this is a bit of a shocker for me. But this book made me go out of my usual ways to tell others why I didn't like it as much as I wanted to.
I'm not going to give a detailed review on this book, read everyone else's review and you'll get the gist. I just wanted to focus on why I gave it 3 out of 5. The ending.. If the ending didn't leave me so unsatisfied I would have loved it more. I wanted more from the hard decision she made right before the end of the book. I also wanted more from the love story, I love happy endings and the "everyone lived happily ever after" bit. But I didn't get that here and if you agree with me and need that happy ending I wouldn't recommend this book. If you like the endings where it's up to you to finish the story and make it a happy ending with your imagination then you'll probably love this book. As for me, I will love to hate this book and hate to love it, hoping that what I wanted to happen in the end of the book happens.
I'm not going to give a detailed review on this book, read everyone else's review and you'll get the gist. I just wanted to focus on why I gave it 3 out of 5. The ending.. If the ending didn't leave me so unsatisfied I would have loved it more. I wanted more from the hard decision she made right before the end of the book. I also wanted more from the love story, I love happy endings and the "everyone lived happily ever after" bit. But I didn't get that here and if you agree with me and need that happy ending I wouldn't recommend this book. If you like the endings where it's up to you to finish the story and make it a happy ending with your imagination then you'll probably love this book. As for me, I will love to hate this book and hate to love it, hoping that what I wanted to happen in the end of the book happens.
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Lena seems to be your standard California girl: surfer boyfriend, lives within walking distance from the beach, and hardly a care in the world. But her life isn't as perfect as it seems from the outside. Her dad refuses to allow her to learn how to surf after he almost died in a surfing accident. She isn't as close to her boyfriend as everyone seems to think. And recently she's been sleepwalking her way down to the beach late at night. What is going on?
Lena is an engaging character that is struggling to find who she really is. And it all begins with a mysterious key, given to her in the water by someone...and the key opens up a whole new dimension to her life. A dimension that leads her dangerously close to losing all she already has and will force her make a decision between two parts of herself.
I loved this book. I loved the characters, they were all developed so fully. I loved the location, who can't love the beach, the ocean, and the waves. I loved the plot. The storyline unfolded and wrapped me up. Lena is a very real character with both good and bad qualities. She tries to bring out her good, and hide her bad, just like the rest of world.
There is a mermaid in the story, and an entire merfolk world. The world under the waves is beautifully simple and elegant. It's a new look at how they live and interact. The people under the waves are so different and yet so much the same. They seem so very foreign and yet their emotions make them so familiar. This was one of my top read so far this year.
5/5
Lena is an engaging character that is struggling to find who she really is. And it all begins with a mysterious key, given to her in the water by someone...and the key opens up a whole new dimension to her life. A dimension that leads her dangerously close to losing all she already has and will force her make a decision between two parts of herself.
I loved this book. I loved the characters, they were all developed so fully. I loved the location, who can't love the beach, the ocean, and the waves. I loved the plot. The storyline unfolded and wrapped me up. Lena is a very real character with both good and bad qualities. She tries to bring out her good, and hide her bad, just like the rest of world.
There is a mermaid in the story, and an entire merfolk world. The world under the waves is beautifully simple and elegant. It's a new look at how they live and interact. The people under the waves are so different and yet so much the same. They seem so very foreign and yet their emotions make them so familiar. This was one of my top read so far this year.
5/5
This was a fantastic read. L.K. Madigan created a wonderful story For Lena that kept me happy and sad at the same time.
The Mermaid's Mirror was an easy read. I would have enjoyed more prose and imagery, but then again, it was more of a childlike storyline to begin with: On her sixteenth birthday, Lena pieces together that she is the daughter of a mortal man and a mermaid, thus making her half mermaid herself. Her mother was under an enchantment that made her forget her human family of land-- she had ridden herself of her mermaid nature and become a human women to be with her human lover-- and made her return to the sea... until she glimpses Lena. Lena becomes obsessed with seeing the mermaid (later discovering it's really her mother), defying her fathers wishes to go surfing. She goes down below with her mother and lives with the mer-folk for a while, finds her "soul-mate" down there, and falls under the same enchantment that her mother did--- to forget her life above the sea. In the end, she breaks the enchantment and has to decide whether to live underwater with her newfound mother and lover and friends there, or back on land with her heartbroken dad, stepmother, and little brother.
Overall, it was good, but very predictable. Although there were a few different angles at the story (I really liked the incorporation of the sealskin cloak! Wasn't that a poem or something? I don't know why I know about that legend, where the mermaids leave their sealskin cloaks on the sand, and if some mortal finds it and hides it, the mermaid has to remain on land with them), it feels like it's been done before... girl realizes she's part human, part mermaid; goes off in a search to find the other parent she hasn't known her whole life; has to decide which one to stay with for eternity, forsaking the other forever.... (however, I do expect a sequel here. Things with her lover Nix don't tie up and she ends her one life so abruptly that it left the reader rather unsatisfied: thus, I expect a sequel.)
Overall, it was good, but very predictable. Although there were a few different angles at the story (I really liked the incorporation of the sealskin cloak! Wasn't that a poem or something? I don't know why I know about that legend, where the mermaids leave their sealskin cloaks on the sand, and if some mortal finds it and hides it, the mermaid has to remain on land with them), it feels like it's been done before... girl realizes she's part human, part mermaid; goes off in a search to find the other parent she hasn't known her whole life; has to decide which one to stay with for eternity, forsaking the other forever.... (however, I do expect a sequel here. Things with her lover Nix don't tie up and she ends her one life so abruptly that it left the reader rather unsatisfied: thus, I expect a sequel.)
It's a good thing that the author indicated at the end that she took liberties with the geography/climate/etc. I live in the area that this book was written in, and I kept getting confused by various references. I've been to Pigeon Point Lighthouse, for example, and there's nothing between it and Santa Cruz but thin strips of farmland that are squeezed between the ocean and the mountains. The book makes it sound as if there are many surfers in the area, but... there aren't.
That being said, this book did make me cry. The parts that took place in the ocean were lovely and interesting, and while I expected the ending to go in a particular direction, it did... but wasn't the answer that I expected.
The first half felt more juvenile to me than the second, and I imagine this has more to do with Lena's everyday life and worries. Lena makes a lot of decisions that I absolutely couldn't relate to--she did a lot of lying for what seemed to be pointless reasons. I have always been an advocate of talking things out. She also walked out on people a lot, which is yet another thing I can't fathom.
And unfortunately, while I understand that the chat conversations were supposed to show modern communication, it's really hard to take something seriously when it's written in chatspeak, even if it is between teenagers. I imagine this is my age showing.
That being said, this book did make me cry. The parts that took place in the ocean were lovely and interesting, and while I expected the ending to go in a particular direction, it did... but wasn't the answer that I expected.
The first half felt more juvenile to me than the second, and I imagine this has more to do with Lena's everyday life and worries. Lena makes a lot of decisions that I absolutely couldn't relate to--she did a lot of lying for what seemed to be pointless reasons. I have always been an advocate of talking things out. She also walked out on people a lot, which is yet another thing I can't fathom.
And unfortunately, while I understand that the chat conversations were supposed to show modern communication, it's really hard to take something seriously when it's written in chatspeak, even if it is between teenagers. I imagine this is my age showing.