Blog 90 - Fathomless Review

 

Author: Jackson Pearce

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 291

Publisher: Little, Brown for Young Readers

Publication date: September 4, 2012

ISBN-13: 9780316207782

About the book

Celia Reynolds is the youngest in a set of triplets and the one with the least valuable power. Anne can see the future, and Jane can see the present, but all Celia can see is the past. And the past seems so insignificant — until Celia meets Lo.
Lo doesn't know who she is. Or who she was. Once a human, she is now almost entirely a creature of the sea — a nymph, an ocean girl, a mermaid — all terms too pretty for the soulless monster she knows she's becoming. Lo clings to shreds of her former self, fighting to remember her past, even as she's tempted to embrace her dark immortality.
When a handsome boy named Jude falls off a pier and into the ocean, Celia and Lo work together to rescue him from the waves. The two form a friendship, but soon they find themselves competing for Jude's affection. Lo wants more than that, though. According to the ocean girls, there's only one way for Lo to earn back her humanity. She must persuade a mortal to love her . . . and steal his soul.

My Review

The Cover: I really liked that the cover got darker as it went down the cover; just like the ocean would the deeper you go down into it. I like the little necklace with the mermaid in the center, but I feel it didn’t match the story. There was no mention of a necklace in the story, and the girls living in the water weren’t really mermaids. At least I felt like they weren’t mermaids because there their fins were not mentioned at any given time throughout the story.

Things that I Liked: I really enjoyed the concept of doing a retelling of the Little Mermaid. I was kind of excited to get started on this book when I knew it was going to be that story. The main characters, Celia and her two sisters, was something that I had not seen before in a Young Adult story, and they had powers. I like that there was an interesting twist to the “monster” that the water girls became once they were “summoned” (or it seemed that they were summoned at different times. I did like the plot for the story, but the little conflicts felt like they needed something a little more to them.

Things that I didn’t like: I really didn’t like the alternating point of views throughout the book. It got confusing when Lo/Naida becomes the same person. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between them knowing that they were the same person technically.

Overall: It was an enjoyable read, but I would be torn on whether I would recommend it or not to friends. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.