★☆☆☆☆
Alright, I decided to sleep on this review, because at the time I was rather uppity about my disappointment in this book.
I don’t know why, it IS a Disney book.
I had been really excited about the idea of this book, the first installment of a series! Except only a few pages in I found it to be similar to a history lesson, but hey it was educational, right?
Serafina is our MC, she’s a sixteen year old merl Principessa [har har, girl/mermaid, get it? yes, the book is also littered with Mermish. Yes…Mermish.] Who is readying to be appointed heir and also studying her songspell.
Everything about her from the start is more than a trifle tedious and ridiculous. From the nature of her waking up to how she deals with stress. I get it, she’s sixteen years old but she acts more akin to a twelve year old.
A twelve year old might act more mature in these days.
I guess for the majority of the book.. it’s just childish. Imagine a disney tv movie, NOT a major motion picture, but a disney tv movie, that’s LIKE OMG..TOTALLY NOT AWESOME… this is how this book reads.
Onward to the other characters in the book, Neela, her merlfriend Princess. Oh yes, truly that word is in the book. Need I remind you that the slang in here is terrible? Terragoggs, JACKWRASSE? you can guess what that one means. There are several characters thrown at us and likely because there is little no development or actual story going on that Jennifer Donnelly felt the need to introduce MORE flat characters.
If you’re hoping Neela and her cousin, Mahdi, the crown prince of Matalin add any depth to our story here, wrong. It just gets a little more ridiculous with every passing moment. There is absolutely no depth to this story at all. There are events that take place that should add character growth or should make me go, ooh..ahhh… but they fall very short of it.
I felt like action was thrown in because nothing else was there, the way Serafina dealt with it was ridiculous too. Being tossed in a prison and then giggling like “OMG..WE TOTES ALMOST DIDNT MAKE IT..”
I really had high hopes for this and I’m really upset that I didn’t enjoy it at all. The ideas were there, the plot and the characters just weren’t.
If I were 10-12, this story would seem interesting, but as a 28 year old…No.
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