oliviasbooks's Reviews > Forgive My Fins

I rate this mermaid romance, which I have impatiently waited almost a year for, 3,5 stars altogether. It was really cute, but very predictable. In core it reminded me a lot of Something, Maybe and other regular YA which tell the story of a girl nursing a long time crush on a boy she doesn't really know that well. After 40 pages or so I was a tiny bit bored, but I held on tight - I was reading a mermaid-love-story! - and it got better again.

As far as I-am-a-mermaid-here-is-my-story books go, I liked both Teenage Mermaid (also predictable, because basically a retelling) and Ascension, which both offer a romantic plot, better. The last books of the Ingo-Series, especially The Deep, are also far more enjoyable, if it is the underwater world and the different thinking of the merfolk the reader wants to immerge in. Forgive my Fins has some interesting explanations about underwater breathing and the tolerance of the cold ocean water, but it stongly focusses on the romance part, the emotions, the joy and pain of teenage infatuation. Be it either high school spring fling or underwater castle: The text does not offer a lot of visuals. It rather feels like skipping the landscape pictures of a slide show and getting only glimpses of beautiful things until the family pictures come into view and are to be admired and scrutinized. So if you search for the next cute teenage romance with a likable heroine and a hunky hero who hides his feelings, choregraphed in front of a wet scenery for a change, you cannot go wrong by reading Forgive my Fins.

I, for my part, have decided against reading Fins Are Forever, though. I will await the next mermaid-themed book (The Forbidden Sea) I have on preorder now - hoping it will offer the perfect mix (mystery, love, thrill, a believable, well-depicted underwater world) and I heartily thank Tera Lynn Childs anyway for writing a mermaid book in times that clearly favour faeries, vampires and angels.