These three authors are so good at taking history and turning it on it's head in a retelling. This is the third in the Mary series and takes Mary Read and the little mermaid and just tosses in a whole bunch of other interesting and funny interludes to create a very entertaining story. I enjoyed it as I have enjoyed their other retellings as well. Thank you authors for your sense of humor and zaniness.

My Salty Mary was the first story by the Lady Janies that I have read courtesy of HarperTeen and NetGalley.

It took me a long time to get through the book, but that is more to do with me than it is the book itself. However, it took the first five or six chapters for the story to pick up.

PROS:
🏴‍☠️All the pop culture references
⚓️Women pirates
🏴‍☠️Calico Jack
⚓️Underwhere
🏴‍☠️The twist on the classic tale of the Little Mermaid
⚓️Tobias Teach
🏴‍☠️Blackbeard
⚓️Anne
🏴‍☠️Blackbeard’s treasure

CONS:
⚓️Misogyny
🏴‍☠️Most men
⚓️The breaks in the fourth wall sometimes felt forced.
🏴‍☠️The pop culture references similarly occasionally felt forced
⚓️Did I mention misogyny?

💎💎💎💎 out of five caverns full of treasure

Like the other "Mary" and "Jane" books by this imaginative trio, My Salty Mary is a lighthearted reimagining that combines modern elements with history and fantasy to create a completely new and entertaining (though snarky) tale. I haven't read all of the Mary or Jane books, but I have read enough to know that I either like them or I don't. In this case, my interest is ambiguous. The premise is fun. The execution is creative. There are some witty phrases. But the characters and events are also kind of annoying to me. I'm not above reading for pure entertainment, but I do like to take something away from the experience. This time, I'm like, eh, there are other fish (*cough* books) in the sea.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of this novel. I highly enjoyed it and will be recommending it to others.

You can’t go wrong with this group of authors!! Such a unique twist on the Little Mermaid turning her into a lady pirate! The banter and wit is still on point from these ladies. There’s plenty of adventure, found family, and a touch of romance. I did find that the action was slow a bit at first, but it picked up nicely as the book went on. I will always recommend anything these ladies write, and I’m so glad The Lady Jane has brought them more fans!

This book was wonderful! The narrators were very charming and the fact that it's a pirate retelling of The Little Mermaid was icing on the cake. The characters were very likeable and easy to root for and the plot moved along at an enjoyable pace. As someone who enjoys the ocean/pirate genre, it was fun to see the inclusion of some famous names (including Captain Crunch!) as some of the minor characters. I will absolutely recommend this book and the series overall to friends and students.

🔪 Friends to lovers
🏴‍☠️ Pirates & Mermaids
🌶️ Chaste

The Little Mermaid meets some extremely fictitious Pirate Captains and a contest ensues! Mix some history in with a healthy dose of classic seafaring novels and out comes this novel.

I love a pirate story and a good mermaid tale, and this one delivered. It was more pirate than mermaid-oriented for sure. No famous captains in the history of the world are left unincluded, and no pirate pun or joke is left unsaid. It's so fun to read, and I heartily recommend to anyone that enjoys a lighthearted overall tone, like The Princess Bride and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Verdict: Loved it and have already recommended to a few friends.

I had a fun time with this one. I've always loved The Little Mermaid and I enjoy pirate stories as well, so it was interesting to see the two twined together. Sure the jokes were super cheesy at times (I'll admit, I rolled my eyes at a few). But I still had a great time on this adventure with these characters. I think readers that have enjoyed the rest of the books in the Mary series will like this.

I enjoyed this as I always do with this series. That said, I feel somewhat that this one lacked some of the charm as previous books. It was a very fun read, per usual, and I enjoyed the cultural humor thrown in. I do feel that every hurdle the characters faced was *immediately* neutralized. So there was no investment on my part for what would happen. Overall, I would recommend this one as a fun, mindless read. It seems to be rather rushed, which could possibly be due to the fact that it wasn't the authors' original draft. Not the best in the series but still a fun read. Thank you to NetGalley and HarperTeen for this copy.

I love this series and this book was the best addition to it! It was humourous and tongue-in-cheek and it made me laugh out loud so many times. As usual the characters were so darn vibrant and ultimately stole the so. It was a great reading experience and deserves all the stars!

Another fantastic addition to this series. I think this is a great choice for anyone who liked The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy.

This series is one of my all-time favorite YA series. These books are so clever, are so funny, and are so so much fun to read. Even if I had any skepticism, the authors blow me away every single time. I can't wait for more because I will happily gobble up anything they write.

This is a mixed retelling of pirate Mary Read and the Little Mermaid. Did I think this would work? I wasn't sure. Did it work? Absolutely. This was the perfect book to end my summer with, as it's full of pirate adventure, treasure hunts, a smidge of romance, and a great story. It's laugh out loud funny, the characters bounce right off the page, and keeps readers engaged from the first page. Feel free to read them in order, or out of order. They're all stand alone, but are easily one of the best YA series of all time. Love love love!

Edit-I changed my rating from 4 to 5 stars because this really did get me interested in something I didn’t think I would care about. That is 5-star worthy!

I almost didn’t read this one because I didn’t think I would be interested, but that would’ve been a big mistake! I knew nothing about Mary Read, but I’m glad I do now. This was told in the same cheeky, funny way as the others in this series and I cracked up at all of the random references. Don’t sleep on this one!

So I DNF'ed this book just about halfway through. I remember reading My Lady Jane when it first came out and enjoying it, so when I heard this one was about Mary Read I was so excited. Unfortunately it just didn't work for me. For the most part it was fine, although it did kind of skew a little young. My main issue was that modern day references kept being inserted into it and it just drove me insane. I would be reading, everything would be fine, then all of a sudden one of the pirates would be named Captain Crunch or Bill and Ted would be mentioned. I understand it's a fantasy world but it just didn't work for me. In fact it drove me insane. I'm sure there are some people who will enjoy all of those little easter eggs, but I found it really cringey. I honestly can't remember if things like that were included in My Lady Jane or not, but if they were I guess they didn't bother me back then like they do now. It's a shame though, because aside from that it was a fairly decent story from what I read, if not slightly juvenile (almost more like MG to me than YA).

It’s no secret that I love a good retelling and Hand, Ashton, and Meadows are masters of marrying alternative history with comedy. Mixing The Little Mermaid with the life and times of the infamous lady pirate Mary Read means the reader is in for quite a tail er… tale. The strength of this series is the witty, sassy narration and dialogue, and My Salty Mary does not disappoint. This book is hilarious!

The POV’s rotate between Mary Read aka “Littlest,” her partner in crime Tobias Teach, and her cousin Calico Jack. With lots of “ahoys” and “yo-hos” Mary and her crew try navigating pirate life in the Caribbean.

Unfortunately for them, they must escape the perils of the high seas (aka notorious pirates and pirate hunters) if they want to succeed in their quest to make Mary the new pirate king, or queen in her case. The captain who returns with the most treasure will claim Blackbeard’s title and define the future of piracy. If Mary where to win, she could stop hiding her gender and declare that women are allowed to be pirates, The narrative is whimsical and adventurous, while still driving at themes of feminism and equality. This book is an instant new favorite!

I absolutely loved this book! I read it in one setting because it was so good and I could not get enough of the characters. I really loved the characters the author created and there journey that they took. The story was fast paced but detailed where I felt immersed but not bored. I will be recommending this book to all of my family and friends.

Yet another FABULOUS entry in the My Lady Jane series. This book has pirates and sass and adventure! What more could you ask for? I continue to love the humor and all-around fantastic vibes of this series. Every protagonist is engaging and entertaining. I love this series.

My Salty Mary is a fantastic addition to the Mary series. Little Mermaid meets Pirates of the Caribbean with Hand, Ashton, and Meadows’ tongue-in-cheek humor I have come to love from these authors. Students who love excitement, love, humor, and adventure will go head over heels for this book.

When I first saw My Salty Mary had three authors I was a little wary about the quality of writing. Thankfully, this wasn’t something I needed to worry about. The tone and quality of the writing was consistent throughout. Which is fairly impressive given this book has three authors, who I assume wrote one POV each.

I love a retelling, we all know this by now, and My Salty Mary was a really great one, although it’s not an outright retelling, so don’t expect to see an evil sea witch and a handsome prince. It pulls from multiple stories for inspiration and plot events, but the The Little Mermaid parts were my favourite, as this was one of my favourite stories as a kid - the original version and the Disney one.

Some of the dialogue that was used to reference other mediums (at one point the “don’t let go Jack” line from Titanic was used) was pretty funny most of the time. But some were a little forced and made me cringe just a tiny bit. These were easy to overlook though as the action was so fun.

I also really loved the “narrators” talking directly to the reader. At first, I thought these would take me out of the story and get annoying, but they were great. They added personality to the book and the tidbits of history were fun to read. I didn’t really know anything about real pirates before reading My Salty Mary and now I feel like I’ve learnt quite a lot.

Apparently, I love pirate books, which isn’t something I knew about myself until recently. Well, I like the ones that aren’t too brutal. This one definitely had elements you’d expect from a book back then (racism, sexism, slavery), but as the authors said themselves, they didn’t want to erase these parts of history so they have been included but they made them slightly lighter. I personally think they handled these topics in a considered manner.

I really liked all of the main characters. Mary was strong-willed and her development from the first chapter to end of the book was incredible - we love a strong woman. Speaking of strong women, Anne Bonny was by far my favourite character. I don’t know anything about the real life Anne Bonny, but this one was incredible. She was bloodthirsty and hilarious, two traits that make a great character if you ask me.

Every character had a distinct personality that came across in their dialogue and actions no matter which perspective you were reading and they were all just super fun and likeable.

I would highly recommend checking out My Salty Mary if you love funny, fairly light hearted books about pirates. It has a lot of pop culture references and the writing feels very fresh.

“My Salty Mary” by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows is technically part of the “Mary” series, but this is completely a stand-alone book. This book is a mashup of “The Little Mermaid” and Pirates - what is there not to like? I know a smidgen about “lady pirates,” and this book did take some historical liberties (but why not have some fun?) and there is some magic involved (hello Little Mermaid), but the reader meets a number of fun characters along the way. I liked the nods to trends and I know I missed many, but that was okay - the point of this book was to have a wild fun ride. There’s romance - and broken hearts - and feisty women - and general fun. I wasn’t sure how I’d like this book (maybe I’ll try My Lady Jane again), but it was a wild and fast and fun ride. And a book that makes me chuckle aloud (Taylor Swift lyric drops! Princess Bride lines!) is always worth its weight in gold (pun intended). Strong recommend!