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Emerge is a young adult mermaid fantasy by Tobie Easton. It is the first in the Mer Chronicles series. I absolutely love the cover of Emerge. Seriously, it just does it for me. I love the way the dress is the same color as the ocean. It has an ethereal feel to it. Sadly, and I really hate saying this, but the story did not quite live up to the beautiful cover for me. Don't get me wrong, Emerge was still a good read. I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it as much as I thought I would. And it is hard for me to pin down exactly why.

I liked the idea behind Emerge a lot. A Descendant of the little mermaid- umm yes please! And one of my favorite things about the story was also one of the things that caused me a great frustration. You are just dropped into this very imaginative and fanciful world that Tobie Easton created. And I loved that it kind of did have a little mermaid vibe. With all of its strange names for things, and the hectic excitable writing and characters. But it was hard for me to fully get my bearing and get a grasp on everything that was going on, which was difficult for me as a reader at times. Overall, I thought the world was a cool and different world, and I thought the characters were very true to their young adult age. That was spot on and well done.

The main character, Lia, is a mer that has grown up on land. I really liked that the mers that grow up on land have to basically come into puberty before they get their legs. There were a lot of neat ideas scattered throughout the book that I enjoyed reading about. It made the story fun. The romantic interest was also good. I liked the crush that Lia had on Clay. I thought it was cute the lengths that she was willing to go to to save him from the new girl. Lia did get on a nerves a bit. She was so indecisive. But she is a teenager after all. Let's just say she was very age appropriate.

Bottom line: Emerge is a cute young adult fantasy book, that may be good for fans of mermaid action and adventure stories. It falls squarely in the young adult genre, maybe erring on the younger side of the spectrum. There is a lot of action and the pace picks up as the book goes on. It was a decent start to what could be an interesting series. Check out Emerge if you love mermaid tales.

This review was originally posted on Book Briefs