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inkandplasma 's review for:
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea
by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/08/20/the-mermaid-the-witch-and-the-sea-by-maggie-tokuda-hall-review/
Trigger Warnings: homophobia, off-screen rape, slavery, violence, loss of limb, death.
Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book, it hasn’t affected my honest review.
Reading this book was a genuinely stressful experience. Every single chapter I read, something new and terrifying happened to Evelyn and Flora. I would have thought I’d get sick of constant plot twists, but they’re executed so artfully that I just couldn’t look away from it. Stopping at our buddy read chapters each day was torture. The balance between emotional moments and exciting plot moments was perfect, honestly, and the POV characters were really well split. Each jump had me eager to find out happened to them next, and I adored the interludes from the sea herself. A lot happens in this book, which makes me think that this will be even better on the reread, and I’ll definitely come back to it in a few months to give it another read and it’ll probably emotionally wreck me even more than it did the first time.
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is gloriously queer. I read a lot of queer books but I was still giddy at this one just because so many characters were non-cis. I was curious how a genderfluid main character would be portrayed without seeming gimmicky, but it felt very authentic to me and the moment where Flora realised that they could be Flora and Florian both was incredibly satisfying. However, I will point out that as a cis-woman, this isn’t my expertise and I hope that genderfluid and non-binary reviewers were also given the opportunity to read this book as I’d love to read their opinions on the rep. The sapphic romance was just perfection and I loved the way that Evelyn felt towards Flora/Florian. Their relationship felt so authentic and I’m so glad that we didn’t have to have any kind of gender/sexuality crisis from Evelyn as a response to Flora’s coming out.
The aesthetic of this book is just incredible and I’m obsessed with it. I would literally die for the Pirate Supreme without any hesitation. Xenobia is cool as all hell. The Sea herself might be my favourite character in the book. The characters in The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea are all heavily flawed and I cannot stress enough how that’s my favourite thing in books. Perfection is boring and overrated. Maggie Tokuda-Hall created a full cast of complex characters and I went through the emotional wringer falling in and out of love with them from page to page as their actions and motivations were exposed. I honestly cannot wait to see what she writes next because her character work is everything I’ve been looking for.
Trigger Warnings: homophobia, off-screen rape, slavery, violence, loss of limb, death.
Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book, it hasn’t affected my honest review.
Reading this book was a genuinely stressful experience. Every single chapter I read, something new and terrifying happened to Evelyn and Flora. I would have thought I’d get sick of constant plot twists, but they’re executed so artfully that I just couldn’t look away from it. Stopping at our buddy read chapters each day was torture. The balance between emotional moments and exciting plot moments was perfect, honestly, and the POV characters were really well split. Each jump had me eager to find out happened to them next, and I adored the interludes from the sea herself. A lot happens in this book, which makes me think that this will be even better on the reread, and I’ll definitely come back to it in a few months to give it another read and it’ll probably emotionally wreck me even more than it did the first time.
The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is gloriously queer. I read a lot of queer books but I was still giddy at this one just because so many characters were non-cis. I was curious how a genderfluid main character would be portrayed without seeming gimmicky, but it felt very authentic to me and the moment where Flora realised that they could be Flora and Florian both was incredibly satisfying. However, I will point out that as a cis-woman, this isn’t my expertise and I hope that genderfluid and non-binary reviewers were also given the opportunity to read this book as I’d love to read their opinions on the rep. The sapphic romance was just perfection and I loved the way that Evelyn felt towards Flora/Florian. Their relationship felt so authentic and I’m so glad that we didn’t have to have any kind of gender/sexuality crisis from Evelyn as a response to Flora’s coming out.
The aesthetic of this book is just incredible and I’m obsessed with it. I would literally die for the Pirate Supreme without any hesitation. Xenobia is cool as all hell. The Sea herself might be my favourite character in the book. The characters in The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea are all heavily flawed and I cannot stress enough how that’s my favourite thing in books. Perfection is boring and overrated. Maggie Tokuda-Hall created a full cast of complex characters and I went through the emotional wringer falling in and out of love with them from page to page as their actions and motivations were exposed. I honestly cannot wait to see what she writes next because her character work is everything I’ve been looking for.