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2 stars. Spoiler-free review!
Synopsis:
There were once three friends, a prince, a witch, and a beautiful maiden. When they were young, Anna, the beautiful maiden, died taken by the sea. As the prince, Nik, and thought to be witch, Evie, continued to grow up, this haunted them. Until one day, a girl who bears the uncanny resemblance to their dead friend shows up. A girl named Annamette. Evie wholeheartedly believes this is her dead best friend come back to life and will do anything, absolutely anything, for them to have the happy ending she thought they'd never have.
Thoughts:
I tried really hard to be unbiased in my paraphrasing of the synopsis, but I couldn't help but think to myself that I should add in "her name is Annamette for goodness sakes..." To be honest, I can't quite fathom why I didn't really enjoy this book. It has so many things I like, villain origin story for Ursula, the ocean, mermaids, a fantasy land... But like, while reading, none of these things popped out to me.
This may sound harsh, but I'm going to be brutally honest.
I couldn't even tell this was a villain origin story until like the exact moment she was actually turned into a "villain." I didn't go into this book knowing it was a villain origin story, so I wasn't even expecting it.
The main character, Evie, was naive and boring. Annametta's reasoning was ridiculous and I felt she was just plain petty. Her background to how she came into the picture wasn't timed very well either. Because of that, I felt like the plot was predictable, messy, and unbalanced. Nik is probably the only character I somewhat liked, but even so he was just like... this flat, dumb boy who's purpose seemed solely to be there. He had nearly no personality. No appeal. Just did what he was told. The romance was twisted and all over the place and just messy. The "reveal" at the end was so flipping obvious... Then Evie just goes and changes her mind all of a sudden... I could not. These characters were just so bothersome with their romance. I could've cared less if more of them died. So if you couldn't deduce, the ending was unstatisfying. I never once worried or rooted for the main characters. I didn't care when people died. I didn't care when betrayals happened. It was just all so anti-climactic. If there is anything that I did like it's the setting and the language. I thought the city/country they were in was well thought out and reminiscent of a darker ocean side castle kinda place. And the names of everyone and the places all matched well with the atmosphere the book gave off. Even so, the magic system also fell flat and the background of the legends, magic, and mermaids was superficial.
Overall: All around I just needed more from all points of this book and nothing delivered. However, I made it through the whole book. So that has to account for something.
On the bright side, that is one very beautiful cover.