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A review by devannm
The Mermaid by Christina Henry
4.0
“I don’t belong to you,” Amelia said. “I don’t belong to any man—not to Jack, not to Barnum, not to you. I only belong to myself. But belonging to myself doesn’t mean I don’t love you, or that I don’t want to stand beside you.”
I receive an ARC copy of this book from NetGalley
This is my first book by Christina Henry, although Lost Boy has been on my TBR for ages, and I really enjoyed it. It might be more of a 3.5 but I thought it had enough good themes to round it up. This is a really fun take on P.T. Barnum's 'Feejee Mermaid' scam, except this time there's an actual mermaid. Most of the page space is spent focusing on Amelia and her relationships with and reactions to people in this world that is so different from where she is from. I really liked how she used the mermaid thing as a metaphor for freedom and the restrictions that were [and still are] unnecessarily placed on women in society. There are a lot of good quotes in here where people keep telling Amelia she can't do this and that because she is a woman and she begins to wonder if she really wants to be in the world of men and begins to miss the ocean.
My main problem with the book and the reason I almost rated it 3 stars instead of 4 is the ending so THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS
Amelia marries Lyman and he begins to become more controlling of her and also shows some of his more racist beliefs. She ends up having to flee while pregnant with his child because a mob is threatening her life and then the epilogue is four years later where he finally catches up to her on a far away island so they can presumably live as one big happy family. I guess there are four years that have passed and he could have come to terms with his backward beliefs in that time period but the reader doesn't see any of that so to us it's basically just a cut to him showing up on an island inhabited by people he called savages probably ten pages ago and you're kind of wondering whether Amelia and her daughter might actually be better off without him.
But it was still a great book and had some really great commentary on gender roles and society. I'll definitely be moving Lost Boy up on my TBR after this.
I receive an ARC copy of this book from NetGalley
This is my first book by Christina Henry, although Lost Boy has been on my TBR for ages, and I really enjoyed it. It might be more of a 3.5 but I thought it had enough good themes to round it up. This is a really fun take on P.T. Barnum's 'Feejee Mermaid' scam, except this time there's an actual mermaid. Most of the page space is spent focusing on Amelia and her relationships with and reactions to people in this world that is so different from where she is from. I really liked how she used the mermaid thing as a metaphor for freedom and the restrictions that were [and still are] unnecessarily placed on women in society. There are a lot of good quotes in here where people keep telling Amelia she can't do this and that because she is a woman and she begins to wonder if she really wants to be in the world of men and begins to miss the ocean.
My main problem with the book and the reason I almost rated it 3 stars instead of 4 is the ending so THE NEXT PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS
Amelia marries Lyman and he begins to become more controlling of her and also shows some of his more racist beliefs. She ends up having to flee while pregnant with his child because a mob is threatening her life and then the epilogue is four years later where he finally catches up to her on a far away island so they can presumably live as one big happy family. I guess there are four years that have passed and he could have come to terms with his backward beliefs in that time period but the reader doesn't see any of that so to us it's basically just a cut to him showing up on an island inhabited by people he called savages probably ten pages ago and you're kind of wondering whether Amelia and her daughter might actually be better off without him.
But it was still a great book and had some really great commentary on gender roles and society. I'll definitely be moving Lost Boy up on my TBR after this.