2.5 stars to this fantasy that I really, really wanted to love.

This book is told in three parts - the mermaid, the witch, and the sea. Part one, the mermaid, was so slow. It took me forever to get going. I felt it finally picked up about 35%. Part two, the witch, was my favorite. The witches did their magic by telling stories, and it was so intriguing to me. I didn't want that part to end. Part three, the sea, was okay. It was better than part one. There was a lot of action, being the last part, but at this point I really just wanted the book to be over.'
My biggest issue was the pacing. It felt like it took forever for anything to happen, then it would keep slumping. I also didn't love the MC. I couldn't connect with her and just didn't care what happened. I really liked her love interest, though. I would have rather read a book about her.
This was one of my most anticipated reads, and unfortunately it fell flat for me. I won't be able to recommend this one.

Thank you to Netgalley and Candlewick Press for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feelings are my own.

I love pirate books and gay pirates are even better so that's why I wanted to pick up this book. Unfortunately, I didn't end up enjoying this one as much as I had hoped. The characters were my main issue with it as I couldn't connect with them and some of them were one step past morally grey and more unredeemable. I also didn't like the romance which was super insta-love and a little forced. I did however like the queer representation but I didn't enjoy most of the other aspects of this book which is why my rating is so low.

This book has a lot of elements I love magic, high seas adventure, and LGBTQ representation. The story has some very mature elements of violence, rape, and drug addiction but also some really sweet and innocent romance. I thought this worked really well that despite the awfulness of the world around them the main characters weren’t completely hardened and their romance underscored their own journeys of self discovery.

The book also weighed in on colonialism and justice and overall could have been a very heavy read but the gentler moments between the main characters really balanced this out and overall made the tone of the book very hopeful. The tone of the book also had a very classic fantasy feel particularly the voice of the sea. The pacing was sometimes off with some parts dragging a bit and other parts feeling a little disjointed but it was still a very enjoyable read.

The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea by Maggie Tokunda-Hall is a pirate adventure written for the gays. Yeah, you heard me right. In The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea, we follow a pirate and a lady and their adventure of love.

"Know your truth, not your story."

Flora, the pirate-boy known as Florian, is just trying to earn enough money to get a better life for herself and her brother, Alfie. Evelyn, a lady of the Imperial, is being shipped off to marry a man- because of her "inappropriate" relations with her maid. In a world of men at war, and a trade of mermaid blood angering the Sea itself, one would not think these two stories would intertwine.

"She was love as much as she was lies and a hope for power."

The world building of this was really well done and easy to fall into. The Imperial court vs. The Sea, the Supreme Pirate vs. The Nameless Captain, The Nameless Captain vs. The Sea, and of course, our lady and pirate witch: all well rounded plotlines. Flora learning to claim her truth as her story was beautiful. Evelyn learning to be brave- even though she had always been a little spicy to begin with, was exciting.

"And forevermore, the First Witch's sacrifice and cleverness, her trickery and her wisdom, was both the price and the gift of all witches."

The Mermaid, The Witch, and The Sea also contains so many different representations. From black characters and Asian cultures, to gender fluid and entirely nonbinary characters. Maggie Tokunda-Hall wrote a romantic adventure that pulls you in and holds you closely, with the kind of ending that makes you cry.

I really enjoyed Tokuda-Hall’s prose, finding it to be pretty and reminiscent of fairy tales. I enjoyed the magic (when it was actually there), though I would have loved to see so much more of it.

Flora is a pirate and she is bigender (though she does not use that word specifically). Her love interest is the other main character, the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa. Unfortunately both characters fell a little flat for me. So much of what they do happens because they are in love–but their romance felt far too fast for me. Maybe 20% into the book both characters are in love suddenly. There was no real growth there.

There are side characters that are more interesting than the main pair. Actually, ever side character was more interesting to me.

I likely would have rated this book higher if it were not for the ending. Oh, the ending. Spoilers ahead.

Evelyn dies during the final confrontation and is brought back to life by the Sea as a mermaid. Flora joins her in the Sea, also as a mermaid. Now I have my complaints about this.

The Sea was previously described as a jealous mother in the book, punishing one of her mermaid daughters for trying to leave her along with the witch who gave the mermaid her aid. When Flora and Evelyn are joined together in the Sea, it’s meant to be joyous, but I could not help but worry. Why join this jealous mother who will hurt you if you try to leave her? This does not sound like a safe environment for these two.

Additionally, all the mermaids are considered the Sea’s daughters. While Flora does not have anything against she/her pronouns and gendered terms like sister, her biggest moment of growth in the book was her realizing that she is both a girl and a boy. I felt like her becoming one of the Sea’s daughters really undercut this realization and left me wanting something else.

Spoilers over.

There are characters I am really interested in. I would have loved to see more of Flora’s brother, to see him growing and changing. I would have loved to see more familial love and perhaps the three of them living well in Tustwe.

Oh well!

3.5/5

I was not able to access the book via kindle. I was unable to read or review it because of this. Thanks for the copy.

Epic swashbuckler. Featuring hefty doses of anti-colonial sentiment and magic and a lovely f/f romance.

Two young women, trapped by the circumstances into lives they do not control, fight for themselves, for what is right, and for each other.

I absolutely teared up at the end. This was powerful, violent and beautiful.

**I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

Such a fun book for kids. I really enjoyed this one. It's quite a page-turner.

Many thanks to the author, the publishers, and NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this book!
The writing style was great, and I was immediately sucked into the story. What I enjoyed most was the character development, though. I really enjoyed how the characters grew throughout the story.
The plot fell a little flat for me, sadly. Hence the reason for giving it three stars. I had anticipated a little more action and a little more pirate-life, but alas.

Thanks to Candlewick Press for providing a digital review copy of The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea in exchange for an honest review.

I can't remember the last time I read a book about a female/female friendship where I didn't secretly hope (against all logic and actual plot information) that they'd fall in love. It's probably not a good thing that the first time I didn't over-read into subtext to convince myself that two women were in love was when they actually were supposed to be.

The magic system here? Incredible. Loved it. Very big old fairytale vibes. The 'Witch' section of this book was definitely my favourite (and also happened to be the section where our romantic leads didn't interact with each other).

This book goes from "literate girl randomly decides to teach illiterate girl to read" to "both girls are madly in love and will sacrifice everything for each other". The chemistry here's non-existent which I think is something we let queer love stories get away with far too easily because hey, it's not like we have enough good love stories to pass up an average one but as more and more queer stories get told, I become less and less eager to celebrate mediocrity.

“There’s freedom in stories, you know. We read them and we become something else. We imagine different lives, and while we turn the pages, we get to live them. To escape the lot we’re given.”

Flora, also known as Florian, lives and works on board a pirate ship The Dove with her brother Alfie. Evelyn is an Imperial daughter who is on board to be shipped off to her future husband as part of an arranged marriage amongst other Imperial guests.
After some time on the ship, the Nameless Captain turns against his guests and puts them in the brig ready to sell as slaves, and the crew of the ship takes over the boat and helps themselves to all of the guests' belongings. Can Flora save Evelyn from this fate?
I must admit I struggled to get into this story and it seemed to last longer than necessary. There were some really lovely scenes with the mermaid early on, and I loved their stories and how they came to be - I could read about these mermaids all day. I think the romance could have been stronger between Flora and Evelyn, it just seemed a little rushed to me.
I felt the story was weak in that the characters were not as strong as they could have been. There should have been more to build the romance between the two main characters and overall the majority of them could have had a bit more development. I was expecting more from the witch, I wasn’t entirely sure why she was a ‘big’ character, I was waiting to see more magic there.
I especially enjoyed the way the story was split into three parts that were focused each around Flora’s and Evelyn’s journey around the mermaid, the witch and the sea. I loved the sea as a character and how she loves and protects those that respect her and look after her babies, the mermaids. I was captivated by the mermaid’s story. It was very interesting to see how she came to be and learning that she was a daughter of the sea. I’ve not seen a mermaid story from that point of view before and it was very refreshing. I was sad to see why the pirates want to capture them, to drink their blood as it makes them forget bad memories but again it is something different that I have not read before.
Overall, it is a nice book. It’s a nice fantasy read, where the biggest appeal for me was the world of pirates and mermaids and it did have some interaction with both, there wasn’t enough. I feel like the story was lacking in areas and it wasn’t enough to get me invested.

Thank you to Candlewick Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was something I thought I would love, since I absolutely love the cover, and I'm definitely into fantasy based on historical times, in this case Japan, but I really didn't. There are many parts about this book that I loved, representation for asian/black main characters, gender fluidity and a lesbian lead, but the didn't really come together in a way that worked for me.

To start with, I should note that, I love books that are very character driven, and this one wasn't. Evelyn is a rich girl who is being sent away to marry a man she's never met, which isn't surprising given the society this is set in (her mother and father's marriage was also prearranged). What does surprise me is how little she seems to care for those who care for her. Her maid is clearly in love with her, but Evelyn doesn't make sure she's taken care of before she leaves. Once aboard the Dove, Evelyn meets Florian (Flora), a pirate. Their love develops fully in about 6 pages and then they're so deeply in love Florian is willing to abandon her only family for Evelyn.

I loved the sea as a sentient being that works with humans to protect itself and its 'children'. And those sections of the book were my favourites. I didn't see the true purpose of the middles section of the book, The Witch, as it didn't really go anywhere, and magic was only minimally used.

Overall this book had a good storyline, but the characters didn't do it for me and the middle really dragged.

Warning: This book contains instances of torture, death, reference to rape, and drinking.

I loved the mix and take on mermaids, magic, and pirates. The characters were great as well. But it felt like there was a lot of places where the book was just to fast and places where it was too slow. So the pacing with this one was a little off. This story was very intricate where everything has a price and asks the question what are you willing to pay.

Un fortunately this one was not for me. Coukr have just been my mood but I had a very hard time getting into this one

I have very little in the way of positive words to say about this story. I think the world set up had some promise--with imperialism, classism, gender politics....but the execution fell distinctly flat. I'm not sure this book actually said anything of any substance, rather it was more pointing a heavy-handed finger at "imperialism is bad! men destroy!" but never actually saying more than just that. I don't know how you can make pirates (and even lesbian--maybe?--pirates) so boring, but the author manages to do this. The love story, which seems to be the catalyst of the main plotline is under developed, boring, and relies on the author telling the reader they're in love rather than showing it develop. There are scenes of graphic torture for not much of a reason or purpose and just about every character in this book is pretty much an asshole, making none of them endearing or likable. By the final third of the story, I had no idea what was really going on or why--there are conflicts everywhere but none of it ever made much sense. Then suddenly someone is a witch? Major points for the cool cover, but that's where my compliments end. This needed an actual story, well developed characters with motivations, a cohesive sensical plot, and if a romance was going to be attempted by the author it needed to have been done with care and purpose.

A magical tale about finding love, finding oneself, and finding one's place in the world! Florian (or is it Flora?) befriends Lady Evelyn who is being transported in Florian's pirate ship and the two save a mermaid from the pirates. Girl power and love lead to a satisfying happy ending for the good at heart.

In this YA-fantasy adventure from Tokuda-Hall we set sail into the oceans of Known World aboard The Dove, a slaver ship disguised as a passenger vessel.

Meet Florian, a pirate, and an Imperial nobleman's daughter, Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who's been married off to a stranger.
With Florian being commanded to guard Evelyn for most of the voyage, a cold relationship will slowly begin to unfold as the pair is thrown into a world of violence, escape, magic and difficult choices.

Although the title of the book may suggest this is a sort of retelling of The Little Mermaid or something similar, this has nothing to do with it. The concept of the witch is a little bit different than expected and the main characters and fuel for the plot are humans, although the Sea part plays a big role in the book as a whole concept and living entity.
There is a good representation of characters and races and a nice dark setting inspired on an imperial Japan force, but the romance plays a big part in the story and it seems rather underdeveloped. She just needs to teach him how to read and that's how they fall in love. Nothing else.
In my humble opinion, is because of this and other tiny details that I didn't feel any kind of interest in both characters over the chapters, althought their arcs are interesting.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall uses a variety of tropes to give them a whole new meaning towards topics like gender nonconformism, magic of storytelling, politics and piracy. If you're a fan of piracy romance and unusual queer stories set in a pirate's world maybe you should keep an eye on this one..

Thank you to NetGalley for a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! This did not affect my opinion in any way.

I liked the idea of it and enjoyed moments of it but overall I think I got lost in it with the movements of the character perspective change in every chapter.

I wanted to like this book so much because it’s about pirates, and mermaids, and queer people, all of which are things I love reading about. Let’s address how all of these in order.

The pirates, unfortunately, were rather historically accurate in their uh, occupations. The pirate ship that Florian is a part of is, in fact, a slaver! So that’s a bad start right off. There’s some morality conflict addressed and yes, people do bad things for understandable reasons. But beyond a sort of general unease from the main character (and obviously the people being abducted), no one else seems that bothered. Not even people that we’re supposed to be rooting for. The main character doesn’t even care that much until the other MC is in danger of it. And then only rescues her; the rest die, I guess? So. Yeah. Not the fun kind of pirate.

Surely, you say, the mermaids must’ve been cool! Well. They were… ok. In this universe mermaids are a kinda semi-intelligent species which just personally isn’t the kind of mermaid that I like to read about. They also function as a container? of memories? for the sea? I’m a little unclear how that works exactly or why it didn’t have more plot relevance. So anyway, no one is really a mermaid *SPOILERS START* [until the end when one of the main characters dies suddenly and she’s absorbed/transformed because she was nice to one mermaid once and then the second main character spends like two seconds doing something else before jumping into the ocean and also being transformed/absorbed] *END SPOILERS*.

Well that’s disappointing, right? Hopefully, the queerness is better. And good news!! It is! I actually really enjoyed a lot of the romance between the two main characters — Evelyn is sapphic and Florian is enby and they develop a relationship and have some cute moments! Not something I would write fanfic about but I wouldn’t really do that for any standalone. There’s also the mention of another f/nb romance between some other characters which I would’ve loved to see more of. Overall, I enjoyed reading about them, but it was kinda overshadowed by the rest of the stuff happening? It felt pretty busy for just one book.

In addition, the plot seemed a little disjointed, whenever there was a switch in locations, I got kinda lost because of how abrupt it was. It took me some time to get through this and I took a lot of breaks so that might be part of the problem but I powered through the last quarter and it still was kinda choppy so maybe not.

The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea is a complicated book to review and I'm not sure I'm the right person to do it. There's a lot to love here - sea-faring adventure, unique mermaid and witch mythos, spies/deception, anti-colonialism.
Sapphic romance! Gender-queer MC! (This is a bit of a spoiler, but I've seen it everywhere.) Pirates! Most of the pirates are terrible, but they're the only ones standing up to The Empire and they're led by the Pirate Supreme, who is nonbinary and not terrible!

But there's also a lot that made this a hard read and I suspect might be even harder for other readers. There are off-page rapes, the ship on which much of the story takes place is a slave-ship--it's a passenger vessel that enslaves all the passengers after a few days instead of delivering them to their destination--and one of the main characters has been working on that ship for several years. She's not just complicit, she's been an active participant. And she and her brother are black, which doesn't seem to have the same meaning in the book's fantasy setting (slavery seems based not race but on conquering of island peoples, though the ruling empire is Asian/Japanese), but is a choice that kept pinging something for me.

The book is told from multiple POVs and while that's often confusing for me as a reader and indeed took longer to settle into than one or two perspectives, I was easily able to tell who's head we were in and I appreciated the way the story was built from each character's view. Secrets, etc. In the end, I felt the romance was underdeveloped. It's a little too close to love-at-first-sight for me, but that's totally my own preference and other readers might not mind at all.

Anyway, my three-star rating is based on my complete inability, even after three days, to figure out how I feel about the book. I set it down a few times and searched out spoilers because it felt for the first 1/3 of the book like I was going to see a bunch of on-page rape and I simply couldn't handle that right now. There's a scene where one character's finger is cut off, another who is brutally whipped, and a few murders. Also near-drowning, etc. It's A Lot. But I wanted these two to find their HEA and while the Empire has not been taken down, there's a lot of opportunity here for follow-up books with different characters.

I suggest taking a look at other reviews to decide if it's for you.


I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher for review.