I was intrigued by the premise and the gorgeous cover art, but this just didn't do it for me. DNF at around 30%.

After watching the Little Mermaid, I was really interested to read a book thsat involved pirates, mermaids and the sea and was obviousl really excited to pick this up. I really liked the darker elements of the story and the connections that both characters had with each other. Reading the action and how the story progressed was really nice and also on the edge of my seat reading for a lot of it. There is a lot to love about the book and I hope more people discover the story and read for themselves. I do need to pick up the next one in the series though!

It took me a while to finish reading this story, as the beginning lost me and I had to come back to it to truly appreciate it.

And I did. The more I read, the more I found myself enjoying the different perspectives in each chapter, and the more I wanted to read on.

Most of all, I love an unpredictable ending. This is an imaginative, thoughtful adventure with interesting characters.

I'm sorry I was not able to finish this book as there were letters missing in the words, making it very difficult to read.

I saw pirates and queer and my heart skipped a beat. The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea follows a pirate named Flora/Florian and an aristocratic lady named Evelyn. Their paths intertwine on the Dove, a pirate ship, and when they fall in love, they must escape, deal with witches, the Sea, spies, mermaids, and more.

The romance was a big part of the story, and it was in fact a large motivator for both of the main characters. It kind of irked me that they didn't have a lot of full conversations, personally it wouldn't be enough for me. Aside from that, the pace was a bit off, I've seen it referenced in other reviews. I feel like the book had a lot more potential that what it ended up being, but I saw there would be a sequel, so fingers crossed it will be fixed there!

I can genuinely say this completely took me by surprise... it was also low key brutal which again is a surprise in itself!

The reason that this isn't getting a full five stars is because just for me the middle was slightly slow and I think I just wanted something a little bit more maybe.

Some things that I enjoyed:
- There is SO much representation and I loved every single minute of it!
- Siblings... but it's complicated
- Characters (mainly Flora and Evelyn)
- Dark Pirates!

It was so goooood!

As someone who is mermaid obsessed I was a bit disappointed at the lack of mermaid volume in this book.
The story is good and I enjoyed the relationships unfolding in the story and of course the Flora/Florian story but for me I felt like it wasn’t a book for me.
I think this is a great YA book for those still figuring out who they are however.

Flora is an orphan, aboard a ship, hidden as a man, Florian. Florian keeps his head down, stays out of view. To begin with, the ship is just another fight for survival.

When Flora meets a somewhat applied rich girl, Evelyn, their paths converge and love blossoms, in the wake of some rather hairy adventures with witches, the Sea, mermaids and still more dangers.

Whilst I love queer fiction, I did find the romance somewhat stilted, but my love for fairytale-type shenanigans kept me reading and I certainly found it an enjoyable and diverting story.

Synopsis:

A story about two girls that were growing up in two different worlds. Evelyn, a rebellious imperial daughter who’s forced to marry a man she doesn’t know. She’s sent by her parents to travel by sea on the ship “Dove” to reach him. This is where she meets Flora. Flora and her brother Elfie were fighting their whole lives to survive in this barbaric world. They joined the crew of Dove as children. They learned everything they know there. As life on the sea is dangerous for a woman, she decides to become Florian.

When Flora became Evelyn’s guard, she didn’t know that this is going to change her desires and dreams for the future. Evelyn teaches her how to read and shares her beloved books with her. They spend a lot of time together, and they get closer each day. Everything is going perfectly until the voyage turns out to be a trap for imperials.

Book Review:

I have no words to explain how much I’m impressed by this book. First of all the genial representation of LGBT in the book. I love that it was portrayed as love, without any other name behind it. Evelyn fell in love with Florian but her feelings didn’t change when she found out that Florian is a woman. It doesn’t matter for her, because she loves what’s inside her not outside. Their love story is beautiful. They were both ready to sacrifice themselves for each other.

As much I love the love plot in this book, I love even more the sea and magic image in this story. Both very powerful and connected in a way that no one was expecting. Moreover, the kindness of the sea for people that were helping her children was beautiful! She helped Florian and Flora three times just because they saved one of the captured mermaids. I think I read only one book before where the sea was visualized as a living creature and both times I’m in love with the idea.

It wasn’t a surprise for me when I found out that Flora is a person of magic. Most of the time witches are women who went through a lot in their lives and Flora is one of them. However, I was a little bit upset that she didn’t use her magic that much, I was waiting for her powerful comeback to the ship.

As Flora’s growth was mostly in understanding her past and accepting herself, Evelyn did a great job in fighting to finally be who she wants to be. She was very unhappy as an imperial daughter, and she knew she will be even more unhappy as a wife. On her way to find herself she also allowed herself to admit that she loves Florian. She was ready to do anything to win her way back to him. Nothing could stop her.

The ending of the book was the most beautiful scenery in this book. It was so powerful and emotional. I wish I could share my every single thought about it but I would need to spoil what happens there. Well, I hope it will motivate you even more now to read this book. It is worth it!

I would like to thank NetGalley, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, and Walker Books for providing me with the ARC copy of this book. It’s currently my favorite sea-based story I read in the last few years! I can’t wait to buy a copy of this book soon!

Although I enjoyed how fast I was able to read this book, I ended up having some mixed feelings about this story. I felt like I was reading three different stories thrown into one book and it didn't end up making much sense to me.

I really enjoyed what I read of this book, however found it hard to get through due to "Th" being missing as the start of any words with th when at the start of a sentence - which is often!

I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages as it has two of the things I like the most: sea and fantasy.
Unfortunately this book was not for me. The first indication is the time it took me to read it: months.

I struggled a lot to follow the storyline, the book was really to slow. I k’ow world building is important but in this case it was too long so I got bored. After that, it was impossible for me to focus on the book and I lost interest in it.

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book.

DNF @ 20%

This is definitely a “me not you” situation, I see why people love this novel but unfortunately, it wasn’t for me. I was bored and confused and my mind kept wandering, so I’ve decided to mark it as DNF, though I may come back to it in the future.

A fascinating story that mixes magic and fantasy with a connection to Japanese culture and history. A brilliant read for older teens who are exploring their feelings about gender and relationships.

I loved the cover of this book and the synopsis. I've heard great things. Sadly I could not read this Book as the earc I was sent was missing words and the format didn't load correctly, making the book hard to read on my kindle. I'm missing pieces of the story.

Thank you though for my review copy, I will pick up a physical copy at some point to read.

Fun, full of swashbuckling adventure and dealing with the subject of identity in a beautiful way, it was a rather enjoyable read.

I unfortunately really struggled to get into this book. It took far too long for anything of real note to happen, and while that doesn't usually bother me, the character growth just wasn't there either.

The world was brilliant and I liked and was intrigued by the magic system, it simply took too long for us to get to the main part of the story.

I feel like with better pacing and a better building of the main relationship this could have been a little better, unfortunately they both fell short and I DNF'd at around 50%.

This book is set in a fantasy world with guns. This is not a Western-based fantasy which is fun because that's boring now and no one actually gets into it. It is very genetic at this point. My brief knowledge of Asian is that the Imperials are based on Japan colonising everyone. One of the main characters is described as Black and another character has red hair, so a lot of islands being colonised. It does call what they are doing straight-up colonising and shows the impact it has had on the characters.

This book does involve piracy and some shit. I mean actual piracy and crime. The last book I read with mermaids and pirates, did not actually involve any piracy. It was very disappointing, which is perhaps a bad thing to say in the context of this book as the pirates are the slaver type.

So this is a fantasy so no labels are used but we have a sapphic main character and two non-binary umbrella characters. Flora has a complicated relationship with her gender, due having had to become Florian for safety reasons before he could have a chance to grapple with gender. He's probably genderfluid in he switches names and pronouns. There are some homophobic comments in this book by the Imperialist but it's pretty chill in I don't think it gets in the way of adventuring. No one really questions the non-binary characters. This very much covers Queer characters doing things, so I really enjoyed that part.

This book is third-person close narration to a few characters. It works fine, we get into people's head. I think maybe this choice was also a way to highlight the character's pronouns.

As this book was published in the US in May, the audiobook is already out, so being mad at myself for never reading anything in the past week, I listened to the audiobook in a day. It has one voice actor, Kate Rudd, also the voice actor for the Truly Devious series. She is a good actor and does a good job in this book as well. The paperback does have maps and lovely design though. Maybe a buy both situation.

We end up getting told a lot of stuff after the effect. I read the text to make sure it wasn't something I missed in the Audiobook. I guess it realistic, but it did make me confused for a second a few times.

Overall, I give this book 4/5 stars for Mermaid Blood. The end does feel like we're set up for more books in this world while having a self-contained story that is satisfying. I would definitely read more books in this world and more novels by Maggie Tokuda-Hall in general.

Thank you for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review!

I don't know what I was expecting from this book, but I probably wasn't ready for what it entailed. I believe this to be a queer-romance-with-pirates, but it was so much more.

I enjoyed the characters, which I found complex and well-rounded. At the start, I wasn't sure about Evelyn (I'm still confused why she has an anglophone first name?) but I grow up to enjoy her POV and, with time, to like it more than Flora/Florian. I like the characters' progress as well, but sometimes I found it difficult to understand how they went from reasoning point a to reasoning point b, especially in the second half of the novel.

My favourite POV, however, was the Sea, which I found compelling and beautifully written.

The book is well-structured, well-paced and all its themes are glorious (I have a soft spot for the subplot "f**k colonialism!"). This is combined with superb prose, that never relied on narrative cliché to get its point across.

The premise of the book really caught my attention, mostly due to the story around Flora/Florian.
I liked the book, it’s not the best but neither is the worst.