“Sea Witch” by Sarah Henning is an origin story for the sea witch, Ursala from the ‘Little Mermaid.’ After her best friend Anna, drowned, Evie has been shunned by her town and is considered an outcast.

The premise of this story is excellent. I was intrigued and wanted to read Ursala’s origin story; unfortunately, this book was not executed well enough. The book read like a high school love triangle. For a book that has ‘Witch’ in the title, there was very little magic in it or a magic system to speak of.

The writing itself was very one-note. It wasn’t very well written and did a lot of telling rather than showing. In YA literature fashion, there was a love triangle, and it featured “Insta Love,” which is fine but there wasn’t enough character development to fully understand the characters. The issue I had with this book was that if I were handed a copy of this book without a title on it, I would have missed entirely the fact that this is a ‘Little Mermaid’ retelling and that it is supposed to be a fantasy book about a Sea Witch. The only mention of the MC really using magic was in the last one hundred pages. I also couldn’t tell the two Prince’s in the book apart, they merged into one person when I was reading.

My other issues with this book was the fact that this origin story didn’t suit Ursala at all. I just don’t buy that Ursala would become this great powerful sea witch that everyone under the sea fears because she was scorned by a man? Based on the cartoon I watched growing up, I think for her to become Ursala there has to be more to the story than she was shunned by two princes.

That being said, I would be interested to see where this series goes. The most exciting part of the book was the ending where Evie finally became the Sea Witch, and it ended where ‘The Little Mermaid’ starts off.