Some aspects are similar to The Little Mermaid
A lot of religion talk for a mermaid book
Some banter weird
She was stringing both guys along
All over the place

I loved this book!! I loved all of the complexities of these characters and their relationships, the bravery they exuded, and the evolution they experienced. And their character’ arc and growth was phenomenal too. It definitely resonated with me and pulled on my emotions, which I love in a story. Can’t wait to read more from the author!!

Unfortunately this book was not a favorite, I can’t exactly say I enjoyed it..

It took me two tries to get through this book, I DNF it on the first go and tried again after some time. I’m able to say that my opinion does not change on this story, I just did not enjoy it.

It had all the potential to be such a great and unique story but it was very poorly executed. It was meant to be a retelling of The Little Mermaid, and as someone who absolutely loves that film, I am unsure if I expected too much from the book or if it just was not worth the read in general.

I felt the “chemistry” between characters and love interests were not authentic and a bit forced into the reader. This could also be a sensitive subject for those who may not be religious, as it did have many religious aspects to it.

It’s my personal opinion that this book was just not eye catching to me, and quite frankly very difficult to read through, as it took me two tries.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the ARC of this title.

I have read a few retellings now and I was so excited for this one. Unfortunately it fell a little flat for me and I could not remain engaged. DNF’d at about a quarter of the way through.

I don’t believe I was the right target audience for this book and I hope it finds its way in to the hands of readers who can truly appreciate it, possibly those dipping their toes in to the fantasy genre.

I wanted to love this book so much. The Little Mermaid plus Atlantis had my 90s-baby heart so excited, plus the cover is gorgeous. Unfortunately it fell a bit flat.

To start with, while the story is marketed as a mashup of The Little Mermaid and Atlantis, when in reality, it is a mashup of The Little Mermaid, Atlantis, the book of Revelation, and stories of the early church. The whole reason that Aria went to Atlantea was because the end of times prophecies were starting to come true and she wanted to see if Atlantea had any solutions. (Spoiler alert, this is left almost completely unresolved at the end.) Long story short, the end of the world is coming because humans and merpeople are being so immoral. The comparison between Atlantea and America were a bit too pointed, with men in the women's bathrooms, mentions of population control, and discussion about the disregard for unborn life. While I generally love a good parallel, this one was too obvious and didn't feel like it fit the story.

Second, the pacing felt off. They jumped from action scene to action scene without any transitions, and I think the author forgot that readers don't have access to her brain when they are reading this, because there are so many contextual details and explanations that are left out. It was a bit challenging to keep up with the plot and the world building as a result.

Finally, Aria was just a hard character to like. I wanted to like her, but she kept knowingly making bad decisions without really attempting to justify them. And Sebastian (her guardian) just keeps picking up her pieces and falling in love with her, even though she betrays him multiple times. It just felt a bit unrealistic and hard to relate to.

Overall, this book had a lot of potential. I loved the concept, but it felt like reading a rough draft.

DNF at 15%

I like to go into books blind so whereas I did read the description when I first requested the book, I hadn't re read it when I started reading the book and have read several books since that initial request.

I could pick up on the retelling elements very quickly but became overwhelmed with all of the switching and traveling mentioned. The timeline didn't make sense to me and having a map would be helpful.

I did feel like this was very much a copy/paste story line from what I read from the little mermaid and Atlantis elements.

I was hopeful that I could be drawn in, but I've tried jumping back in several times and it is just not for me.

Thank you netgalley for the arc.

I have to say i was exited to read a little mermaid retelling but when i got into the book it felt a bit incomplete?? There was sp much description in the first part that left the characters little space to develop.
The love triangle was so unnecessary omg why do authors keep doing that ??

Thank you so much Netgalley for the arc

Overall, it’s written well. It needs another round of line editing to clean up some of the sentences. I stopped after chapter 1 (5%).

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the ARC.

Book Review 📚
A Mermaid Tale of The Lost Empire by Lily D - 4/5 ⭐

There's nothing I love more then a retelling that is a completely different kind of story to the original. I can promise you Lily D made this entirely different to what we know as The Little Mermaid. The whole feel from the book gives me SJM vibes also!

The writing style physically sucked me in, it's not overbearing and full on but it's now slow and easy either. It's a really great read. Thankfully it's not to full on "the little mermaid" and has nice features of its own story.

I loved the relationships throughout the book and the little love triangle that was happening. I'm not normally a love triangle person but this one actually really sold me and I couldn't decide on who I wanted to win the heart of Aria.

All in all it was a beautiful read and I thoroughly enjoyed the entire thing. Thank you to NetGalley and Books Go Social for allowing me to read this ARC - this is an HONEST review from my own personal opinion

I would have to say that I gave this book a average/below average rating, because it was advertised as something that SJM fans would love, that it was a Little Mermaid/Atlantis crossover, and while that part is true, I don’t believe it lived up to the hype that it was trying to advertise itself as. I am a huge fan of both the Little Mermaid and Atlantis so I was super excited to read this book. I can definitely see the references of both things in the story, but I think that it went a bit too far into what the original stories were, like using the name Aria for the FMC and Sebastian, as well as the city of Atlantea being run by blue magic energy (exactly like the Atlantis movie). I would’ve hoped that it would’ve been a bit more original than that. I wasn’t super interested in either of the love interests in the love triangle because I felt like neither of them were truly good enough for Aria, seeing as they both had some sort of motive for being with her(even though Bastian turned down the engagement proposition). Besides these things, I was really turned off from the book as soon as I realized that it was a Christian fantasy book. There was so much religious undertones throughout the entire book and it almost felt like I was reading an advertisement for Christianity. The only reason why I have this opinion is because I personally am not religious and don’t usually read religious books, but I have it a chance once I realized it was a Christian fantasy book because I assumed that the story wouldn’t be filled with Christian references since it was about the Little Mermaid/Atlantis. I did enjoy the concept of the book and there were certain parts that I really liked, but overall this book wasn’t for me.
Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, and I apologize to you and to the author for my views on the book.

I have read a lot of retellings of old stories like the Little Mermaid, so when I saw this book I jumped at the chance to read it. I had high hopes for it. Unfortunately it didn't live up to them and it was a DNF for me.

This one was so not for me. I love retellings but this one just didn't work out. I didn't like the dialogue and the story itself was just meh. DNF at 15%

This doesn't happen very often for me but this was a DNF. Unfortunately, I just couldn't get into the story and wasn't compelled by the characters or events. I may try and read it again at a later date but this one was just not for me.

I didn’t see that this was a Christian fantasy until after I’d downloaded it. I was intrigued to see how this might affect the plot overall, knowing that some Christians believe that a lot of fantasy like witchcraft etc to be against their religion.

It took me a while to get round to the book and I couldn’t find any information about it anywhere other than on netgalley which I thought was odd. It doesn’t appear to be for sale anywhere or on goodreads. The author has such a generic name that it’s also not traceable. This made me wonder if it was ai written or something else was going on here.

The story is a little mermaid retelling with Aria, the main character essentially having the same issues as in the Disney film where she is bored in her own kingdom, kept at bay by her father and not allowed to roam.
We later meet Bastain or Sebastian who is appointed as her guard who she is desperate to shake off as she wants to explore the world.

Aria roams to Atlantea in search of the place her deceased mother had visited and told her about.

The story begins to feel like an allergory for modern life by about 35% in and societies movement towards secularism. The book comments on greed and wealth and technological advances in Atlantea being the reason they are bad and no longer peaceful, and have moved away from grace. The themes and storyline were ok in that it was a simplistic romance, easy to follow along and to start with despite the dedication being very clear this was written by a Christian author, I didn’t find it too difficult to read. Yes there were moments where the discussion revolves around darkness and light and God, and also how things related to fortune telling / potential witchcraft were ‘wrong’ but honestly there is often a myriad of religious detail in many fantasy books I’ve read, so I sort of brushed it off although it could be seen as a bit of a sermon if you disliked it.

There were some cliched elements and I guessed what was going to happen, I don’t think this was groundbreaking storytelling.
But I did like the premise of a retelling as well as Atlantis being included.

What I did stop at was what I felt was thinly veiled racism in this book. The author described how Atlantea had been ‘tainted’ by the other kingdoms it had conquered. Going as far as to say that it was like water that had been tainted by ‘dark tea’, false religions and gods. Given that this book felt like allegory to me, this just did not sit right with me and I felt whilst it wasn’t outright saying this was the problem with modern society, I felt the parallels previously made between Atlantea and modern society and the implications of this statement were too much to ignore.

In one way if this book hadn’t have said it was a ‘Christian’ book, I probably wouldn’t have minded but given that it proclaimed to be and also that this book is not for sale anywhere but is essentially been given away for free, I question what the purpose of this is and whether it has been used as a way to share the authors personal feelings about society today behind the guise of a pretty fantasy book.

I’m not clear but I personally wouldn’t recommend this book.

Unfortunately this was one book I had to DNF midway through. I just couldn’t get into the story - the writing was immature, the romance was lackluster, and I found myself not caring about the characters at all

The little amount of the dialogue from this book made me put this book (re:dnf), and maybe i can give it a try later.

However, Thank You Netgalley and publisher for this ARC!

DNF at 41%.

It's not a total dnf because I skimmed through the rest of the book. I just couldn't handle it anymore. With the premise of it being a retelling of the Little mermaid & Atlantis the lost empire, this book caught my attention. It even has a beautiful cover and yet this reminds us yet again that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

I thought the mixture of how Aria ''Ariel" could change between being a mermaid and a human. I also immediately recognized certain elements from Atlantis which was fun to puzzle together. A thing that was funny and bizarre to me was that Sebastian, or Bastian as he's known in this version, was also a mermaid. I admit, while it being an original idea, my head struggled because all I could think of was the crab.

The writing wasn't that bad but there were so many long descriptions, I just got bored of it. Aria is also quite stubborn and refuses to listen to her father and escapes time and time again instead of trying to plead her case with arguments. She even escapes a lot from Bastian who's her guardian and at some point you're just like: girl. Stop. The plot also just lost me at some point.

As I said, I skimmed through the rest of the book with reading some bits and pieces and from what I gather, there could be a second book but if there comes one, I won't be reading it.

I do think the author has potential but I think this book could have been a bit more shorter. More show than tell and perhaps speed up the pacing a little bit.

A Mermaid Tale of the Lost Empire by Lily D was not my cup of tea. Normally I love, love, love retellings, but something didn't click for me with this one. The writing seemed clinical and like it was telling me to care instead of actually making me. I was so excited when I found this book on NetGalley. Unfortunately this book was a DNF for me. However, I know that you love a retelling, then you'll probably like this book. It seems that I was in the mood for a coffee.

Whilst the book was mostly well written and an enjoyable read for me it's just didn't quite hit the mark on this occassion. I stuggled somewhat with the retelling aspect in that the main character was called Aria (Ariel) and one of the love interests Bastian (Sebastian) which was just a tiny bit too close for me to really invest myself. Whilst I Loved bastians character and some of the side Characters, I have to admit that I found Aria hard to like as an MC as she came across selfish and a tiny bit woe is me at times unfortunately. Whilst some people have found the religious aspects of this book to be hard to read, I didn't find it super detrimental to my reading experience, however I can see why some people may find it a little bit out of place.

A Mermaid Tale of the Lost Empire was a promising retelling Little Mermaid also first book into fantasy adventure under the blue sea. The story following Princess Aria who yearned for glimpse of freedom and big adventures.

The writing is okay but the POV choice only scrapes top layer information from all the potential this type world building could offer.
I wish more conversations between other characters and real action not only telling.
Although the cover is wellmade, beautiful and eye catching. The plots, the characters, the world and the romance are brimming with potency but felt cliche, underdevelopment and predictable.

Thank you Netgalley and Books Go Social for provided me with this ebook. My thoughts and opinions are my own.