EverBlue (MerTales 1) By Brenda Pandos

Mune · Post by **Mune** » 03 Oct 2013, 12:19

I have been looking for a good, more mature, mermaid themed book. I have found myself trapped in these YA books more often then I like to admit. This book, however, really disappointed me.

The storyline is great. The abilities of the merpeople, their limitations, how everything functions, was well thought out. There is some good visualizations of different places in the story.

My biggest problem was dialogue and missing conversations. The heavy petting scenes and violence speaks of young adults, the dialogue reads more like middle school level children. I almost stopped reading this several times. If I saw the phrase "holy crawfish" one more time, I was going to scream. The pun-like explicatives were ridiculously over done and unnecessary. The sudden sprouted love dialogue was way too over the top and nauseating. All sense of maturity vanishes about half-way into this book, when the sudden diarrhea of love declarations and cheesy moments overflow on every page.

My other problem was with the lapses in scenarios. ****minor spoiler alert*****

When Fin is talking with his parents, after escaping the kingdom and before meeting Ash, they already know what occurred between him and her. First of all, he never tells anyone but his sister and there is never any indication they knew. We go from them knowing nothing to them knowing everything. Way too much is completely dropped out. On top of all of that, how is it that these kids have known each other since they were 12 or 13 but have never met each other's parents, who are neighbors? And when Ash goes from injured to perfectly fine and constantly liplocking with a boy, she still gets to stay home from school.

In all, if the dialogue was improved and the book did not read like giant chunks had been ripped out of random areas, I think I could have actually enjoyed the story.

bookmate96 · Post by **bookmate96** » 03 Oct 2013, 21:00

I have heard a lot of great things about this series, but it seems that for every good thing I hear, there is a complaint about how this series is not original. If I had to relate it to any books in particular I would call it a combination of Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon and the Madly series by M. Leighton. Despite the fact that the premise and storyline were not the most original thing I have ever read, the personality of the characters made it an enjoyable read. I especially like Finn, and not in the cliché I'm a girl and he is the heartthrob of the book kind of way. Hearing things from his side made him a really likable character, and let the reader see why he did what he did, rather then leaving us girl wondering what was going on in that fishy head.
My one complaint would be the fact that when reading the teenage dialogue, I felt like I was ease dropping on 5th graders. I know not every teen has a SAT level vocabulary, but there were hardly any words over 3 syllables that came out of the mouths of 15, 16, and 17 year-old characters. Outside the dialogue the writing was fine, but the teens sounded like they were being dubbed over by 11 year-olds at some points.
For an easy read that is entertaining, not too mind bogging, and free on the kindle store, I think this book is perfect.