angel_ontheother's Reviews (393)

I absolutely ate this up!!! I found this through my recommendations here on Storygraph which is very cool. 

This is a middle grade book, with the main character being 10 years old, but it doesn't read as dumbed-down. It's a great story about friendship, complicated family dynamics, being accepting of different identities, and standing up to injustices; set in the 1980s. I think the author did a good job at handling sensitive topics in a way that a younger reader can understand, without sugar-coating things.

I would definitely recommend this, not just for kids but for anyone.

I hate to call a book boring but that's literally my only thought on this. The only reason why I was able to make it through over half of it was because I had nothing else to do at the time. This just wasn't for me at all. 

I started with the print version but had a hard time getting into it, so I switched to the audiobook. The audiobook is much more immersive.

I'm not a big fan of fantasy, so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get into this. I'll admit I almost DNFd at only a few pages in, but I'm glad I pushed through. While I didn't love the plot, I really liked the lyrical writing style and dark atmosphere, and I liked the two main characters. I wish this were longer so I could have better understood the plot and gotten more attached to the characters. I'm usually not into retellings, but I do love mermaids and Frankenstein's monster type stuff, so I found this enjoyable. Especially with the way it leans into horror! It makes sense to me that mermaids would be scary.

I didn't like the main conclusion very much, but I did like the very end of the epilogue. Eerie! Read Behind Her Eyes first. Or go read that if you read this already!

Happy to see more Indonesian representation 🩷