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A review by rinitealeaf
Merfolk by Jeremy Bates
adventurous
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.75
I have so many things to say about this book, maybe my first should be DO NOT READ this book.
It was poorly written and the whole story was incredibly boring. It took me 6months to finish it, at times I felt like just ditching it but I wanted to be able to say I read it and it sucked.
I picked up this book because it was hyped so much by others and I foolishly saw "#1 Amazon best selling" and "World's scariest legends" and I'm sucker for horror and underwater creatures like merfolk. Yeeah it was none of that. I am glad I didn't buy this, I read it via Kindle Unlimited.
It felt like someone else wrote the first half of the book, it was full of "fancy" words and it felt clunky, then pretty much after 50% it changed and got slightly better (which is why 2 stars and not 1). What I mean by "fancy" words is that it felt like the Author was in thesaurus looking for synonyms to every other word which for someone who has English as 2nd language is a bit daunting. Even if I use English pretty much 95% of the time and I still had to look up many of the words.
The story should come with trigger warnings for random sexual encounters that have no relation to the actual plot and don't give anything to the story (one of the characters was into erotic asphyxiation). You can also clearly see from the writing that it's a male Author from sentences like "Her brastrap was visible under her Metallica top" when describing a woman or "She hurried over, stuffing her breasts back into her bikini top".
Men please, when you're describing women's chesticles stuff like that is very cliche and cringey.
There is also one racist remark which honestly didn't need to be there. "She's from France, but her mother is Chinese, which is why she looks like that" then characters talk about how that was racist and it's "corrected" [insert eyeroll] by "She's from France, but her mother is Chinese, which is why she's so stunning."
The idea of the story had so much potential but all the action was packed in for the last couple chapters. I did appreciate the research that went to this book, to get all scientific stuff correct etc but that alone doesn't save the book.
It was poorly written and the whole story was incredibly boring. It took me 6months to finish it, at times I felt like just ditching it but I wanted to be able to say I read it and it sucked.
I picked up this book because it was hyped so much by others and I foolishly saw "#1 Amazon best selling" and "World's scariest legends" and I'm sucker for horror and underwater creatures like merfolk. Yeeah it was none of that. I am glad I didn't buy this, I read it via Kindle Unlimited.
It felt like someone else wrote the first half of the book, it was full of "fancy" words and it felt clunky, then pretty much after 50% it changed and got slightly better (which is why 2 stars and not 1). What I mean by "fancy" words is that it felt like the Author was in thesaurus looking for synonyms to every other word which for someone who has English as 2nd language is a bit daunting. Even if I use English pretty much 95% of the time and I still had to look up many of the words.
The story should come with trigger warnings for random sexual encounters that have no relation to the actual plot and don't give anything to the story (one of the characters was into erotic asphyxiation). You can also clearly see from the writing that it's a male Author from sentences like "Her brastrap was visible under her Metallica top" when describing a woman or "She hurried over, stuffing her breasts back into her bikini top".
Men please, when you're describing women's chesticles stuff like that is very cliche and cringey.
There is also one racist remark which honestly didn't need to be there. "She's from France, but her mother is Chinese, which is why she looks like that" then characters talk about how that was racist and it's "corrected" [insert eyeroll] by "She's from France, but her mother is Chinese, which is why she's so stunning."
The idea of the story had so much potential but all the action was packed in for the last couple chapters. I did appreciate the research that went to this book, to get all scientific stuff correct etc but that alone doesn't save the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Sexism, and Sexual content