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ezwolf's review
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
Crest is a merperson about to take their Journey to the human world, in the next month they need to help a human out of good will in order to make the choice to stay a merperson or become human. If they choose to be selfish and not help anyone, they will be forced to be human forever.
I will start out by saying I really liked the way that the merpeople were not gendered and that the author took every chance to make every character queer in some way and there was no homophobia or purposeful misgendering. There was also some good attention brought to body positivity. It also didn't end quite like I expected it too which was a pleasant surprise.
But otherwise this book really played into every cliche trope and had some weird plot holes. Like that merpeople don't have a gender binary but that when they send their children to land their bodies are set to the human gender binary without any in put from the merperson. Crest even makes a comment about they didn't know why they'd been given this body. Crest also talked about how they were given "human lessons" but then didn't know how to cross a street or open doors or what phone apps were (but then was able to open and use YouTube fine on their own).
Also the amount of pop culture references was incredibly over the top (including the name Ross, which I thought was a coincidence and I just don't like the name because I don't like the character from FRIENDS, but more than likely Crest was given the name Ross as a reference since there is a reference to Chandler too).
Thank you to Net Galley for making this book available in exchange for an honest review!
I will start out by saying I really liked the way that the merpeople were not gendered and that the author took every chance to make every character queer in some way and there was no homophobia or purposeful misgendering. There was also some good attention brought to body positivity. It also didn't end quite like I expected it too which was a pleasant surprise.
But otherwise this book really played into every cliche trope and had some weird plot holes. Like that merpeople don't have a gender binary but that when they send their children to land their bodies are set to the human gender binary without any in put from the merperson. Crest even makes a comment about they didn't know why they'd been given this body. Crest also talked about how they were given "human lessons" but then didn't know how to cross a street or open doors or what phone apps were (but then was able to open and use YouTube fine on their own).
Also the amount of pop culture references was incredibly over the top (including the name Ross, which I thought was a coincidence and I just don't like the name because I don't like the character from FRIENDS, but more than likely Crest was given the name Ross as a reference since there is a reference to Chandler too).
Thank you to Net Galley for making this book available in exchange for an honest review!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Infidelity and Sexual content
Minor: Mental illness, Body shaming, Fatphobia, and Sexual assault
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