Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life. But these are human concerns. The concerns of those confined to land. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Stories that called sailors to their doom. Stories that dragged them down and drowned them. Stories of the creature that she’s always longed to become: a mermaid. Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine – the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill.
I enjoyed Ren’s character for the majority of the book however, she does become more and more unlikeable as the plot progresses. I think it’s mostly to do with her slow descent into madness and her lack of empathy and awareness of the feelings of those around her. She was so mean and nasty to Cathy throughout the book and it was very unwarranted I feel. Cathy continuously shows up for Ren and the couple of times where the peer pressure was too great for the both of them Ren blames Cathy for not speaking up more.
The pacing of this book wasn’t really consistent for me. There are times where Ren is on the go and then it slows down and we’re going around in circles a lot of the time. This is a pretty short book in terms of pages but it felt like kind of a slog to get thorough which made me a bit hesitant to pick it back up at times.
This book had a lot of potential. I can see how some of the themes in here can really relate to a lot of young people, especially those that are still in high school but I’ve realised whilst reading this book that coming of age stories aren’t my favourite thing to read any more. I don’t really have the patience to sit through hundreds of pages of young people making obvious and unnecessary mistakes over and over and not really take accountability.
⭐️3/5 stars fell a bit flat for me
