The Mermaids Mirror

Author: L. K. Madigan
Goodreads Rating: 3.59 Stars
My Rating: 3 Stars
Pages: 308


I love everything mermaid, so when I saw this book while I was in Mystic, I figured it was a sign from the big man on campus. It was also on my to-reads list simply because it had mermaid in the title which meant that I needed to read it. It wasn't a waste of my $8, so that was a win also.


Goodreads Synopses:


Lena has lived her whole life near the beach – walking for miles up and down the shore and breathing the salty air, swimming in the cold water, and watching the surfers rule the waves – the problem is, she’s spent her whole life just watching. As her sixteenth birthday approaches, Lena vows she will no longer watch from the sand: she will learn to surf. But her father – a former surfer himself – refuses to allow her to take lessons. After a near drowning in his past, he can’t bear to let Lena take up the risky sport.   Yet something lures Lena to the water … an ancient, powerful magic. One morning Lena catches sight of this magic: a beautiful woman – with a silvery tail. Nothing will keep Lena from seeking the mermaid, not even the dangerous waves at Magic Crescent Cove. And soon … what she sees in the mermaid’s mirror will change her life.


Jump into my review!

I'm so cheesy that it hurts sometimes...sometimes. I didn't hate this book, for the Young Adult genre, it was pretty cute which was nice. Lena starts the story after sleep-walking onto the beach and while a few strange encounters, we know that something is wrong with her. As the reader, it was pretty predictable that she was going to be half mermaid, but you saw that going into the book.


There really isn't much to talk about her life on land. She is the image of a normal teenager; trying to juggle friends with boys, rebelling against her parents, oh and this uncontrollable urge to go into the water. She keeps how she doesn't feel well to herself and doesn't tell her friends until she passes out at her dad's new office. All of the emotions that a teenager would feel, Madigan does a great job of capturing them. Lena has angst, she has embarrassment and young love, it was completely relatable and reminded me of what it was like to be a young teen.


What you don't see coming is about 100 pages of her living underwater. The world that Madigan created for these merpeople was pretty great. The way their community was structured was also really awesome and how things worked were just so different from our own world. Learning that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be was a bit of a letdown though. At one point, Lena overhears someone talking about using sharks to attack her father.


It was sad to see her lose her memories as she lived underwater but it was great for her to eventually get them back. All in all, this book was decent, but not a favorite book. More happened in this book than others, but at the same time, this book took a little longer to get through than I anticipated, it was still cute.