Beautifully written, but some parts were too descriptive making it long and losing connection with the characters and plot. The main character fell flat for me, but I did love the darker themes and lgbtq representation. I also love a good quest and this book had one with the "overcome" and triump trope.

This started out feeling like an elevated, whimsical, literary take on the Little Mermaid and towards the middle it gets lost in its own one-dimensional, bleak tone. The heroine of this tale falls into a trope of being the "casual observer" that I see a lot in the literary fiction world. No personality of her own - simply observing and accepting what's going on around her with barely any sense of self-preservation or purpose.

Sanna is literally a fish out of water - a mermaid who magically grew legs in order to find her estranged mother. She is captured by a devil of a woman - a baroness who is also secretly a powerful witch who uses the bones of her family members to keep herself youthful. The baroness plans to wed her to her son in order to make an army of hybrid mermaid children that she can murder and absorb youth from.

Yeah.

Sanna realizes pretty quickly what's happening here and still barely does anything about it. For a majority of the book, she is just casually present and not much else. She doesn't fight against a marriage to a man she doesn't like. She realizes the witch's plot against her and walks back into a prison cell instead of trying to escape just to see what would happen. She conveys nothing in terms of personality except the repeated objective of finding her mother, which isn't really a personality trait and she doesn't really do a great job at.

There is not much light against the dark in this tale. The villain is a far more fleshed out individual in terms of characterization - and she is a depressing SOB. She has a room full of her own children's bones - she plots and fantasizes about murdering children to keep herself young. As a mother, that kind of imagery, set up against a lukewarm protagonist and a bleak, tragic tale of imprisonment, is enough to convince me this was not the book for me.

Thank you to netgalley for a digital copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

I received a copy of this book for a fair and honest review. I got some Little Mermaid vibes from this. I am not sure if this is a true retelling, but it was a powerful story. Sanna has to deal with magic, struggle with her duality of sea and land, and falling in love. It is a tale that makes you want all the best things for Sanna and her journey. Her father from the sea and her mother from the land. She wants to learn about her mother and her world. I enjoyed this for there was just something about Sanna that was very relatable and powerful.

I thought the author was great at world-building and descriptions but the characters just weren't that compelling.

Many thanks to the author, the publishers, and NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book was sadly not for me. I have read several books about mermaids and sirens, and for the most part just the fact that they are about these specific mythical creatures helps me like them, but Mermaid Moon was simply too boring for me. In the beginning I was intrigued by the quest the main characters is embarking on, but boy was I disappointed. This book has more or less no plot, no drive, nothing that made me want to keep reading. I also struggled a bit with the writing style, I was unable to connect with any of the characters and the switches between first and third person povs made it even worse. I did enjoy some of the lore and the magic, but it was not enough for me personally.

I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed are my own.

I pretty much request any book I see involving mermaids. Some have been good, some interesting, some terrible. This one floats somewhere between.

The story is definitely interesting and several of the characters are compelling enough to keep you interested. The author's writing style is...wordy. At times, it's lovely to get lost in. Others, it's a bit of a bore and you just want to flip pages ahead to see if anything happens.

I probably wouldn't necessarily read it again, but I did enjoy it and am glad I gave it a chance!

I really wanted to fall in love with this one. The cover both the dust jacket and the book underneath and the sprayed pages were just so gorgeous!!! But sadly it was far too lyrical for my tastes. It took a paragraph to describe one thing and thats just a little too much for me.

This retelling of The Little Mermaid puts a whole new perspective on the classic tale. The matriarchal, bisexual society that inhabits the waves is full of strong female characters who are happy to use their siren voices to wreck the mariners that would harm them. Sanna is a mermaid who has always been different than the other Seavish people. She has no mother to guide her, and no one in the flok (clan) has any memory of who Sanna's mother was. Determined to find answers, Sanna goes to the grotesque sea witch and learns that her father mated with a human woman. A spell was cast so that no one would remember that Sanna was the product of such a union. Undaunted, Sanna bribes the witch until she gains the magical powers to turn her tail fin into legs.

Searching for her mother, Sanna enters the land of superstitious island dwellers who consider her to be a saint sent from God. The lady of the land is a witch herself, however, a witch that (like Mother Gothell from Tangled) needs to absorb power from others to have a long life. This baroness determines to wed Sanna to her daughter Peder to keep the powerful mermaid in her clutches. But with determination, love, and a little magic, Sanna manages to foil everyone who wishes her ill, save the innocent from destruction, and come to the end of her quest.

This book had an interesting premise that wasn't fully executed. The world building was well done, but the plot and characters never crystallized completely. The character of Sanna was confusing, her motivations becoming more and more unclear as the book progressed. Peder, whom Sanna goes to great lengths to save, was one of the most unlikable characters I have ever met. Sanna's own love interest was a strange afterthought--at one point, I thought he might actually turn out to be Sanna's brother since he was obviously important but the chemistry between them was so off. Baroness Thyrla, the witch, was probably the most developed character. Her horrifying schemes unfolded like a nightmare with a macabre sense of humor and horror.

Those who like fairy tale retellings may enjoy this twist on a classic tale.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Achingly beautiful prose and a story both new and reminiscent of beloved fairytales, Mermaid Moon promises to be a favorite on end-of-year roundups.

Beautiful writing with great details on the seavish society and strong, dark fairytale elements. However, the pacing was really slow and it's easy to get lost in the flowery writing.

This story spins The Little Mermaid on its head and it also adds in a few other fairy tale elements, that I really liked. The writing style is absolutely phenomenal. It feels very much like a modern fairy tale and of a traditional Grimm fairy tale. But it has a lot of modern themes and ideas woven throughout.

This story very much does not shy away from dealing with sexuality, race, and gender inequality.

Throughout Sanna's journey learning about the landish people, she starts to come to some realizations. She has a lot of preconceived notions. Especially at the very beginning that irked me a little bit. That is one thing I have to say about this book. A lot of the time I felt like this book was very much portraying men as beast. They were people who could not control themselves. they were the villains of the story. They were someone who could not be trusted by any means. This is a very female power heavy story at times. While I love the fact that it is women supporting women in some instances, it came at the cost of belittling men a lot of the time. Especially with how the Seavish people viewed their male counterparts. A lot of the time you could definitely tell that they assumed that they were more superior to the landish people and that was just comfortable and not very fun to read. So there were some of those moments that I wasn't enjoying the read.

Then it got to a point in the story where things really started to pick up and you had this flux of magic come in. You got this head to head battle from multiple different fronts, that really captured me and started to pull the story along. So I did enjoy points of this book. There were just points that I felt the book was trying to oversell and idea and it took away from the story itself.

If you do like darker mermaid stories, if you like Little Mermaid retellings that have a darker twist to it, I think you will enjoy this read. But if you want something light and fluffy and something that doesn't get as grotesque as this book does, you probably won't like this one.

This book is about a mermaid with magic, trained by the sea witch since she was a child, to be the new witch of the tribe.
The story begins when the young mermaid is leaving the sea in search of her mom. The tricky thing is that her mom and all the mermaids have been put under a forgetting spell because mermaids are not to have relationships with the humans
The mermaid was a relatable character but very naive in regards to the situations that she finds herself in. It was interesting to see the migration of religious views from Christianity and Pagan worship, that are scattered all over this book, and how it ties into the magic systems the author creates.
Thanks to Netgalley and Candlewick Press for an advanced copy of this book. It was really engaging concept.

Mermaid Moon is the story of Sanna, a mermaid with a human mother she's never met. She sets out to land, on a quest to find her mother in nearby Dark Moon Bay. While the story is interesting and the imagery is certainly lovely, I had a hard time getting into the story itself, for reasons I can't quite point out. Some parts of the book seemed unnecessarily drawn out to me and I had a hard time not skimming and others left me with unanswered questions (especially in Thyrla's case). That said, I did enjoy reading about mermaids from a different viewpoint.

Gorgeous cover aside, this was a beautiful telling of mermaids. Now, funny as it may seem to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the more 'realistic' take on mermaids compared to the cutesy version we typically see. I enjoyed reading this!

I couldn't finish this book. The style took me out of the reading every time I was feeling comfortable. I don't feel the passion or interest in how the author tells the story, although I really wanted to like this one because the synopsis is interesting.

*Some Spoilers Ahead*

Mermaid Moon is a very loose retelling of The Little Mermaid mixed with subtle elements from other fairy tales. It is about a young mermaid named Sanna, who is half landish and half seavish. To find her landish mother who she has been cursed to forget, Sanna becomes the apprentice of a magical witch who teaches her how to transform her tail into legs, thus allowing her to journey across both worlds.

The first half of this book was rather odd. In Chapter One, we're thrown into the book with practically no exposition at all, save the brief prologue that explains Sanna's birth and how a spell was cast so her people and her mother would forget about said event. We know that Sanna is on a quest to find her mother, but we're not sure how or why she plans to do that. Later in the story, background information is indeed provided that clears up any confusion, but it comes in the unfortunate form of info dumps. We're given tediously long descriptions of who Sanna is, her past, and how she will journey across the land to find her mother. I feel like the first half of the story was way longer than necessary, and if compressed, could have eliminated a hundred pages or so of the book. By all means, I'm glad that the author wasn't vague or dull in her set-up of the plot, but it did, unfortunately, come with the cost of my boredom.

What was vague, however, was this book's world-building. Some aspects of it, at least. The main events of the story take place in the Thirty Seven Islands, a place that, to my knowledge, does not exist in the real world. But references are made to several European countries, such as France, Scotland, and even Ancient Rome. This leads me to believe that the book is set in some part of Europe, perhaps. Though the setting is based off of historical geography, there are many fantastical elements to the world, including the existence of mer-folk, which are known as the seavish. I was a bit confused when it came to the relationship between the landish and the seavish... It is established that the two peoples have some sort of trading system, but we're given no further information explaining how that actually works. Since the landish and seavish trade with one another, you'd assume that they have a good relationship. But in the book, the mermaids discuss their fears of being caught and assaulted by landish men, which makes me wonder if their relationship is so great after all. I was just rather confused, and would have liked it if the author had cleared this aspect of the world up as the story was told.

The plot definitely picked up in the second half of the book. As the events unfold, we get closer and closer to the very exciting climax. Susann Cokal's writing style is utterly bewitching, and it kept me invested in the story as it continued to progress. My only complaint is that I felt like the plot tended to stray from Sanna's main goal to find her mother. Since that was set up to be the main focus of the plot, I was confused when that was hardly mentioned in the bulk of the book. Not only that, but at the end of the story when Sanna does find her mother, it seems rushed and lacking build-up.

Speaking of Sanna, though, I enjoyed her character a lot. She was smart and independent, and her character arc did not depend on being in a romantic relationship. She doesn't really stand out amongst other female protagonists in YA, making her a somewhat forgettable character, but I appreciated her strength, determination, and kindness.

Taking everything into consideration, I'm glad I read Mermaid Moon, though there are definitely some things about it that knocked off a few stars from my rating. Susann Cokal's writing is remarkably beautiful, and I hope to read more of her work in the future!

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was lovely. I enjoyed the story line a lot and the writing style was fluid and well written. I loved the relationship dynamics and the pacing.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for this review copy.

Mermaid Moon takes the familiar story of a young mermaid begging a sea witch for legs to walk on the land, and turns it on its head.

Sanna isn’t chasing after a man, for a start; she is searching for clues to find her human mother, forgotten due to a magic spell on the night of her birth. And she is no helpless ingenue. She has strength and resources, and plenty of magic of her own.

Strangely, despite this, she still seems easily trapped and spends a large portion of the story passively waiting for answers to reveal themselves to her. Caught up in the selfish plots of the landish baroness and the desperate hopes of the townspeople, her own search is constantly sidelined as she is manoeuvred around the story-board like a pretty pawn. Until towards the end, when she suddenly takes control of events and begins to think, and act, for herself!

The writing is beautiful – conjuring up, not only an exotic underwater landscape and society, but also a landish society rich with magic and mythology of its own, and the juxtaposition of Sanna’s viewpoint with Baroness Thyrla’s as they consistently misunderstand and misinterpret each other’s behaviours is a very clever illustration of the human tendency to project ourselves onto others.

I was often reminded of the animated film of Peter S. Beagle’s story The Last Unicorn, with its old-fashioned other-wordly feel – strange and hauntingly unnatural, but beautiful – with Sanna as Lady Amalthea, Kett as Molly Grue, Tomas and Peder as Schmendrick and Lir, and Baroness Thyrla as King Haggard. However, the ‘red bull’ of danger in this story is actually, as mentioned previously, our speed and willingness to jump to erroneous assumptions about those around us. The characters here are all so focused on their own wants and needs that they unwittingly and repeatedly shroud themselves and each other in confusion.

Far darker and more adult in theme than the average Disney mermaid tale, Mermaid Moon, weaves a slow and strangely haunting tale around the reader, overwhelming them with the scent of salt tears and cloying, blood-red roses, and drowning the sounds of siren song with the clacking clamour of dust-dry bones.

Fans of slow-paced narratives, focused strongly on female-centric themes, will enjoy this swim in magical waters.



As I step toward them, I get another sensation, that which we call the Down-Below-Deep. I feel as if I’m moving below the sea’s striae of buoyancy, so far down it takes days first to swim and then to sink to the bottom. Anyone who reaches that place risks being held by the weight of water until it crushes her to death.
I am almost afraid enough to turn back, but I don’t. I am sworn to the quest. And anyway, my poor new feet can’t walk to the water again, and my grip on my magic is weak; I might not be able to change.
So I take a deep breath, and then the last few steps into sun and the edge of the crowd.

– Susann Cokal, Mermaid Moon

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

Mermaid Moon is a beautifully written story about a mermaid who leaves the ocean in order to find her mother on land. From the very first paragraph, I fell in love with Susann's lyrical prose and straight up stunning writing.

The characters are memorable. The villain of the story, Baroness Thyrla, has well-explained motives of constantly seeking eternal life and a vivid history of how she came to be where she is when Sanna encounters her.

The only minor issue that I had with this story was that at times it seemed rather long. Despite the beautiful writing and vivid characters and environment, at times I would go to continue reading this book and have to mentally prep myself in not really progressing too far in it before needing a break. It was definitely a slow burn read.

Mermaid Moon is told in both landish and seavish time, with primary interactions between a half-mermaid and a scheming Baroness, who will do whatever it takes to stay young forever. Add in a magical sea witch and clan of merpeople, and a bumbling heir to the castle and you have the ingredients for a thoroughly satisfying fairy-tale vibe. Sanna is seeking her land-born mother, forgotten as a result of the sea-witch's magic. She must seek the answers among the landish dwellers without giving away her true nature. There are plenty of moments to take your breath away and a few dark themes to keep the whole story moving and powerful, never fluffy.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this digital ARC in return for a fair and honest review.