The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea – Book Review

Hello friends! Welcome to my The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea Book Review! This was a funny little book and I had some trouble with writing this review. I hope you enjoy it!

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Title: The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea

Author: Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Rating: 3 Stars

Genre: Fantasy, YA/NA, LGBTQ

Content Warnings: Homelessness, Imprisonment, Violence, Sexual Assult (implied), Rape (allusion), Slavery, Torture, Starvation.

Format: eARC

Publisher: Candlewick

Date Published: May 5th 2020

Goodreads Description: A desperate orphan turned pirate and a rebellious imperial daughter finds a connection on the high seas in a world divided by colonialism and threaded with magic.

Aboard the pirate ship Dove, Flora the girl takes on the identity of Florian the man to earn the respect and protection of the crew. For Flora, former starving urchin, the brutal life of a pirate is about survival: don’t trust, don’t stick out, and don’t feel. But on this voyage, as the pirates prepare to sell their unsuspecting passengers into slavery, Flora is drawn to the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who is en route to a dreaded arranged marriage with her own casket in tow. Flora doesn’t expect to be taken under Evelyn’s wing, and Evelyn doesn’t expect to find such a deep bond with the pirate Florian.

Soon the unlikely pair set in motion a wild escape that will free a captured mermaid (coveted for her blood, which causes men to have visions and lose memories) and involve the mysterious Pirate Supreme, an opportunistic witch, and the all-encompassing Sea itself.

I received a review copy from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Review

I strongly considered DNFing this book at one point. Now I’m not saying this book was bad. But it wasn’t terribly good either. It was very middle of the road for me, and those reviews are often super hard to write. I’m going to try my best to use more descriptive words than “meh”.

Characters

Let me start off by saying that this book is wonderfully queer. We have a queer MC (she might be pansexual but I’m not sure), a genderfluid MC, a character that uses they/them pronouns, and many other queer characters. I loved that about this book, and I really enjoyed the diversity among the characters. I won’t get too much into their characters though, and I would recommend reading some ownvoices reviews for the different identities used.

However, I do want to comment on the relationships between these characters. They all felt really shallow. Especially the romance between Evelyn and Flora/Florian. I just didn’t feel it, and it didn’t add much to the book for me.

Characters = 6

Atmosphere

I love pirate stories. There’s nothing hotter than a pirate. The time we spent on the Dove was amazing and I loved seeing the daily workings of a pirate ship (even though it was in disguise). The rest of the worldbuilding was a little lacking. Most of the world has been colonised by a Japanese-inspired Empire, and it would have been amazing to dive into some of those finer details.

This book tried to be too many things at once, and as a result, we don’t get very in-depth with most things.

Atmosphere = 4

Writing

I had no issues with the writing, but it, unfortunately, didn’t hook me enough to enjoy this book. We also follow multiple POVs in the book and I felt like some of them weren’t really necessary. I wasn’t a big fan of Genevieve’s POV, and I did not like her as a character. Rake, on the other hand, was my favourite and I would read an adventure with him and the Pirate Supreme any day.

Writing = 6

Plot

Sigh. It was eh. We follow what is essentially three parts with three self-contained arcs. If we had spent more time with the first part and the first character arcs, I might have cared for them and the plot a lot more. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

Plot = 5

Intrigue

The cover and the description initially pulled me in, which is why I requested the book in the first place. The middle of this book really drags and the ending frustrated me so much that I wanted to DNF it with just 20 pages left. I was just annoyed and I can’t really say why.

Which is why I recommend reading some five-star reviews of this book, and ownvoices reviews.

Intrigue = 4

Logic

The magic system doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s only really introduced in the second part of the book, which is about 40% in. Magic is only really used twice in the last part, which makes me wonder what the point of the magic studying scenes was.

Logic = 4

Enjoyment

I feel very blah about this book, as you can tell. It was not bad, and it has some great qualities. As promised, here’s a positive review for you to read to get a full picture of this book! Enjoy!

Enjoyment = 5

CAWPILE = 4.8/10

Stars = 3

Let me know your thoughts on The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea (book review).

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