By: Derrolyn Anderson
Publication Date: March 30, 2011
Publisher: (self published)
Description: Something extraordinary is lurking in the deep ocean waters off of Aptos, California. Just weeks after moving to the beach town, sixteen year old Marina has nearly drowned twice, enchanted the hottest guy in high school, and discovered a supernatural creature.
If she can only survive her increasingly dangerous encounters with unpredictable mermaids, she might just unlock the mystery of her past... and maybe even find true love.
My Thoughts: Derrolyn Anderson's Between the Land and The Sea is a great mermaid book that gives an in depth look at the myths about mermaids and makes you fall in love.
Marina has traveled with her humanitarian father all her life. Homeschooled, and made to meet many different impoverished people, Marina's grew up with only adults and therefore grew up fast. An assignment for her father to visit Afghanistan to help out some of the people left Marina in Aptos, in a house near the beach with her Aunt Abby. It is here, where she meets her first mermaid. This event changed everything Marina knew about herself, her father, and her mother.
I absolutely loved this book. It made me want to be a mermaid and go surfing and do fun stuff all day. I loved the love interest Ethan. He is gorgeous (of course) but also strong, protective and independent. I especially loved how the love blossomed betweeb he and Marina. he best friends Cruz and Megan were also wonderful. I loved the world created in this book.
I read a few reviews about this book prior to accepting it from the author, and many people stated that they believed that Marina's life was too perfect. She had a rich "aunt" that showered her with expensive clothes and cars and anything else she wanted, perfect best friends, a perfect boyfriend that automatically wants to do anything for you and an all around wonderful life that everyone seems to want. I'll admit that her life is pretty perfect, but thats what makes me love the book so much. Its crisp, clean, and refreshing (water reference) like a Disney movie, and I LOVE DISNEY MOVIES!!! Its like a book where love conquers all and when you're done you feel like you're waking from a fantasy world. I just watched The Little Mermaid this weekend because I was inspired from this book. It was both light and deep at the same time and I giggled out loud a lot while I was reading. I must admit that this book was definately cuter than cute!
That being said, there was one (1) issue I had with this book. Derrolyn's writing style is great but a lot of her sentences had the conjuction for to begin the description of the reasoning in the sentence. I would be like if I said, "I went to McDonalds, for now I was hungry." It just sounded weird and every time I saw it it brought me out of the book and made me focus on that one particular sentence. It happened like every 10 pages or so and kept taking me out of the flow of the book. Why not put "because" or "since" instead of "for now." I remember back in elementary school when my teacher was teaching us about conjunctions and she said "for" adds a lot of weight to the sentence and should be rarely used but I had no idea what she meant when she said it adds weight to a sentence. Sentences dont weigh anything! Nonetheless, I understand now, and that annoyed me the most in the book. Maybe I'm just a little picky, but I just didnt like that part very much.
Obviously, since that was my only teeny tiny complaint in the book (and since it had nothing to do with the story as a whole) you can see that I loved this book. It was great and had me changing my mind from wanting to be a vampire for Halloween, to wanting to be a Mermaid. If only I could walk with that fin... O well. You MUST read this book! 4.5 stars
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Leave me a message! I love Reading them. If you are a New follower, let me know and I will be sure to follow back!