Review: Sea Witch – Sarah Henning

Sea Witch #1

SYNOPSIS: Everyone knows what happens in the end. A mermaid, a prince, a true love’s kiss. But before that young siren’s tale, there were three friends. One feared, one royal, and one already dead.

Ever since her best friend, Anna, drowned, Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town. A freak. A curse. A witch.

A girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appears offshore and, though the girl denies it, Evie is convinced that her best friend actually survived. That her own magic wasn’t so powerless after all. And, as the two girls catch the eyes—and hearts—of two charming princes, Evie believes that she might finally have a chance at her own happily ever after.

But her new friend has secrets of her own. She can’t stay in Havnestad, or on two legs, unless Evie finds a way to help her. Now Evie will do anything to save her friend’s humanity, along with her prince’s heart—harnessing the power of her magic, her ocean, and her love until she discovers, too late, the truth of her bargain. – via Goodreads

So I recently read this after I convinced my colleague to purchase a Kindle for herself and she read a few books I recommended, and then branched out on her own to select a book for herself. That book was this, and she told me to give it a squizz, and naturally I decided to do so because that’s how it works – you recommend, and you take recommendations.

So she told me this was a retelling of The Little Mermaid, and after A Curse So Dark and Lonely, I am willing to give these retellings a shot because I quite enjoyed that. It’s crazy, I saw The Little Mermaid so many times when I was a child, and yet reading this I could hardly remember any of the movie and the story, just the broad strokes. So this wasn’t a bad read. It wasn’t a great read, either. It was simply an easy, quick read. Not one of the characters surprised me, and I never felt a real sense of urgency, or attraction, or tension, or anything. But it was a decent little time filler.

The story floats between the present and four years before, and between different characters, but the way the writer chose to present these scene changes was not my favourite thing, such as the raven haired girl did this, the blonde girl did that, the prince saw whatever – they have names and we know them. Use them. This is not generating intrigue or a sense of magic, it’s just annoying. I understand what the writer was going for with this book, I just wish it was darker, especially seeing as we are dealing with a variation of Ursula’s story, and not Ariel in the purest sense.

All being said, I liked it well enough and can recommend it for people who like the re-imagining of classics, I don’t know that I will be continuing with this series. I wanted darker and grittier, and this just didn’t really give me all that I had been hoping for, but it was an alright book to keep me in the swing of reading.