A common case, when the blurb and the reviews are better than the actual book.

I wanted to love this so much. I was excited to start, and explore something new.

The first few chapters were great, I was enamored mostly by the writing (despite one teeny tiny detail), it was like it was written for children, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, it wasn’t childish, but this story was full with tales of how the Sea People came to be, of their history. And I loved that part.

What I didn’t like was that I didn’t understand how these creatures moved. Were they in the water all the time? I guess not, because they needed to breathe. The author described how this little community interacted with each other, they „sat” down to eat, but where, on the beach? Did they drag themselves in the sand? The whole picture was a bit fuzzy to me. When writing about fantastical creatures, I think one of the most important thing is to explain how they look like, how they move and interact with each other, and how they co-exist. And mostly I could picture it, but not all of it.

**This paragraph might contain spoilers, but I needed to write it down to explain my problems.**
And then we got to the part, where Sartin met his mate, Sommar. From then on everything happened too fast. Two days later the joy was ripped from Sartin, when after a shark attack, the current dragged him far away from his pod. That’s when he met Maru, a Land Person. Sartin learned the language of the Land People in a couple of days. (I’m insanely jealous of that ability).
And then the story focused on that growing love (or whatever it was) and I actually liked Maru, and where the story was headed, but then it was ripped from my grasp too.

I won’t say any more. But just know that in the end for me it wasn’t even about the love or the romance. For me this book was like Happy Feet (the animated movie with the penguins), there was romance, but it wasn’t the message. Sartin was bullied by his mates in the pod, and he wished he could live somewhere else, so his deity, called Princess, showed him with these adventures what it would be like to live in other places, like with the Land People. In the end Sartin realized he would rather live at Home Cove and be bullied, and he should be happy with what the Princess blessed him with. For me that was the message.


Overall, not what I expected, and not perfect, but I could enjoy some of it.