At this point if I see a Christina Henry book I haven't read, I'll grab it (the actual seven-book series is probably an exception, sorry). I have some high expectations and this novel met them squarely then exceeded them. It's obviously a bit of a riff on Hans Christian Andersen, but there's an intentionally fictionalized P.T. Barnum in it (among other real-world derived characters) and the mermaid here is much more the driver of her own story--and it turns out to be a romantic story in ways really incompatible with the better-known versions of the fairy tales, especially the Disneyfied take. While the mermaid in Ms. Henry's story looks kinda monstrous, it's the humans in the novel who at least mostly turn out to be the monsters. A very strong, very modern and feminist spin on things. The anger that shows up in some of Ms. Henry's more outright horror novels is less present here, but there are moments when the flames catch.
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