Seaweed by Elle Strauss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A cute and fun YA read. If you are looking for a book that you can read while sitting by the pool, this is probably a good pick.
The story is very fast-paced. It starts off with a mysterious disappearance and never slows down. While the action is fast-paced, I still found myself skimming at times because I never grew attached to Dori, Tor, or Colby. I would have enjoyed a little more character growth or depth.
Seaweed is clean and solidly written — there no typos, major grammatical errors, purple prose, or undecipherable sentences. (Ok… there are probably a few typos, but so few that they did not distract me from the book).
The setting is fun. Not Disney-mermaid but a more realistic and gritty mermaid culture that I am sure I would have been drawn to as a tween.
While I am so, so tired of love triangles, you can see why Colby and Tor are drawn to Dori — she is spunky and athletic. What I didn’t see is what Dori saw in Tor other than novelty.
Unfortunately I found the story too predictable. All of the plot twists (view spoiler) were telegraphed too strongly.
A tween looking for a light beach read would love this book. As an adult, I wanted a little more.
