I found the pace a bit slow and the storyline itself quite boring. A lot of repetition as well, and quick relationships to form that felt unrealistic. I think this book is dated in a way a lot of YA books that came out in the early 2000s post-Twilight tend to be as well so it was fairly juvenile in places. Not my thing anymore.

The world itself seems fascinating and I liked that there was a lot of thought put behind the magic system but I found the story and plot itself was extremely slow to get going, and I was so bored.

 This book was disappointing as I had high hopes for it because I just love a story that's set around mermaids and while I loved that Parthenope was ruthless and scary in this, and not opposed to trashing a man now and again, the main reason I disliked this story and eventually DNF'd it is because of Pearla.

Now, I understand the story is focusing on Pearla's hang ups about her age and how she is really insecure in her aging body but I was just so uncomfortable with some of the comments made in this book, and honestly they would make you feel a bit crap about yourself if you weren't anything above a size 0. Pearla compares a young woman's body at one point to a 'soft serve ice cream cone' and marvels at the girl's self-confidence for having fun on the beach with a fat body. Ew. There was also another character who called herself fat because she's a size FOUR instead of the zero she used to be. I'll repeat that - a SIZE FOUR.

When Pearla began to have some fun with her youthful face, and she started getting followed by the creepy sales assistant - I said enough is enough. I could tell the story was going to get silly, I was already not on board with Pearla at all and her fatphobia, and while the writing is fine, it could definitely be tighter and the story more structured. In the first 5% we had already met Parthenope and had a rushed info dump into why Pearla hated her life - the start could have definitely been better laid out.