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A review by lrenkate
American Mermaid by Julia Langbein
3.0
2.5*
The premise was a lot better than the book itself. The majority this book was ingrained in Penelope’s LA world, which was vapid and uninteresting, with a character I didn’t find all that compelling and who constantly made what I found to be the wrong choices. Many characters made choices that were not thought out, or the characters just disappeared like the author forgot about them.
The description of this book is what made me interested, but it’s really not representative of the three acts we actually get. The ‘Sylvia comes to life’ is really only in the final act and it’s not actually explored well at all. By the end, the pacing did pick up which was good… but that was because we no longer had chapters about Penelope.
If we only had the ‘American Mermaid’ within the book, rather than the page-to-screen development process, we wouldn’t have seen a lot of the symbolism and meaning the author intended. But manufacturing that understanding by spelling it out to other characters on page feels cheap and unrewarding. It felt like there wasn’t enough to this story for a full length book. It certainly won’t be made into a movie.
The premise was a lot better than the book itself. The majority this book was ingrained in Penelope’s LA world, which was vapid and uninteresting, with a character I didn’t find all that compelling and who constantly made what I found to be the wrong choices. Many characters made choices that were not thought out, or the characters just disappeared like the author forgot about them.
The description of this book is what made me interested, but it’s really not representative of the three acts we actually get. The ‘Sylvia comes to life’ is really only in the final act and it’s not actually explored well at all. By the end, the pacing did pick up which was good… but that was because we no longer had chapters about Penelope.
If we only had the ‘American Mermaid’ within the book, rather than the page-to-screen development process, we wouldn’t have seen a lot of the symbolism and meaning the author intended. But manufacturing that understanding by spelling it out to other characters on page feels cheap and unrewarding. It felt like there wasn’t enough to this story for a full length book. It certainly won’t be made into a movie.