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Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings by Helene Boudreau

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Jade is 13 years old and has just gotten her period, right in the middle of a department store changing room. She thought that trying to find the perfect bathing suit for her best friend Cori’s pool party was bad enough, but this takes trauma to a whole new level. And, of course, due to embarrassment over her late blooming, Jade had lied to Cori years earlier about already getting her period. So the only person she can talk to about everything is her father, who’s already overprotective due to the sad death of Jade’s mother by drowning the previous year. Which leads to Jade’s father careening down the aisle of the drugstore, cart filled with every sanitary product imaginable—right in front of Luke, Jade’s crush. Could life get any worse?

Well…yes. A few hours later, while relaxing in a bath with Epsom salts to help her painful cramps–Jade suddenly sprouts a tail. A real, live, holy-crap-I’m-a-mermaid??? tail.
Jade soon discovers that her mother was also a mermaid, and her parents were just waiting to see if Jade would show any ‘symptoms’ someday. But if her mother was a mermaid, that begs the question: How could a mermaid drown? Upon investigation, Jade soon discovers an entire world of mermaids in the waters around her coastal town, both friend and foe.
Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings was absolutely adorable. I think that mermaids may be the one type of paranormal novel that I have not yet burnt out on. While many aspects of this novel were fantastical, Boudreau grounds the more far-fetched aspects of the story in the protagonist, Jade, an utterly realistic thirteen year old dealing with everyday issues: getting her period, crushing on a seemingly unattainable boy, struggling with body image, and feeling insanely guilty for not being able to tell ANYONE the biggest secret of her life. Jade is self-conscious about her body and worried about acceptance, timid with boys yet utterly at home with her friends. Also, it is wonderful to see a character who worries about her stomach and her thighs without having these worries take over her entire life. She is also close with her father, who is both dealing with the aftermath of his wife’s death while struggling with being a single parents. Jade’s father is overwhelmingly supportive without being overbearing.
The portrayal of Jade and Cori’s friendship is also utterly refreshing. Cori is a three-dimensional character who is slighted when Jade distances herself after the big discovery. Cori’s reactions and emotions are utterly believable, but it is also wonderful to see how she stands by Jade in the end. Boudreau infuses this friendship with realism and the small details that truly bring these characters to life.
The author creates a rich, unique mermaid mythology in Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings, not content to simply use the traditional ‘palace under the sea’ tale that we see so often. The details of Jade’s transformation and her mother’s heritage are explained well and fully, and the mermaid creatures living in the waters around Jade’s town have their own twist, as well. In a far-fetched tale such as this one, water-tight details help to make the unbelievable believable.
This was a fun, quick read that left me with a smile on my face. While this book would most likely appeal to a middle grade audience, the lower end of YA would also enjoy it. I would of course hand this to fans of Tera Lynn Child’s Forgive My Fins, but a readalike more similar in tone would definitely be Erin Dionne’s Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies.

The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale (audiobook)

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She can whisper to horses and communicate with birds, but the crown princess Ani has a difficult time finding her place in the royal family and measuring up to her imperial mother. When she is shipped off to a neighboring kingdom as a bride, her scheming entourage mounts a bloody mutiny to replace her with a jealous lady-in-waiting, Selia, and to allow an inner circle of guards more power in the new land. Barely escaping with her life, Ani disguises herself as a goose girl and wanders on the royal estate. Does she have the pluck to reclaim her rightful place?


Summary from Goodreads
While I have read a few books by Shannon Hale before (Book of a Thousand Days and Austenland), I was truly blown away by The Goose Girl. Hale took a simple Brothers Grimm fairy tale, and created a fully realized world around that structure, truly making it her own.
Shannon Hale’s writing is lush and gorgeous, filled with stunning, vivid descriptions. Both Kildenree and Bayern become vivid, real places under her pen, and the simplest descriptions of forest trees or flowers bloom to life. On multiple occasions through the course of this audiobook, I actually stopped, paused my iPod, and thought over the phrase that I had just heard, marveling how a simple decision of word choice and word order managed to paint such a scene in my mind.
I wish I had read this book when I was in middle school. Ani is a strong, determined female character, one who saves two kingdoms from war and also manages to thwart a cadre of men and a devious ‘friend’ scheming to take her life. Yet she’s unsure of herself, shaky in her self-belief, and not at all confident that her meager powers are enough to allow her to either fit in or triumph over the forces pushing against her. It is quite refreshing to witness a character express that lack of confidence and to see a loner gradually opening up to people around her and finding a place in a world that welcomes her, exactly as she is. The fourteen year old me who was so anxious about acceptance would have found a kindred spirit in Ani.
One of Hale’s strengths in this book is pacing, as the action never drags, yet we still witness quiet moments of Ani settling in, exploring, and finding her place in her new environment and new role as a Goose Girl. On the surface, the plot of this books seems as if it should be so simple: Mutiny occurs, Ani becomes a Goose Girl, Ani regains her crown. As easy as one, two, three. Yet so much more happens within the lines of this novel, as twists and turns, complications and missteps occur, leading Ani to test her strength in new ways and to form new relationships. In addition to Ani, the supporting characters are quite well-developed and three-dimensional. I was especially impressed with the character of Conrad, the Goose Boy whose jealousy of Ani’s popularity with the fellow child laborers leads to unforeseen consequences. This character could so easily have slipped into the token antagonist role, yet Hale managed to make his motives complex and relatable. The villians, most notably Selia and Ungolad, are menacing, yet appear in the flesh rarely. Hale uses the threat of their plots and Ani’s fear to great effect, creating a sense of foreboding throughout the story.
The Goose Girl was my first experience with an audiobook produced by Full Cast Audio, which used multiple actors to play various roles, rather than just one narrator taking on the voices of all the novel’s characters. The result is a lush, fully realized production that feels more like hearing a stage production of a story than listening to an audiobook. The music is interspersed at the perfect moments, with lilting tunes accompanying Ani’s communion with nature and animals, and tones of foreboding announcing the approach of danger. The main narrator Cynthia Bishop’s voice is authoritative and commanding, grabbing the listener’s attention and blazing a path through Hale’s tale. Erica Lustig, the voice of Ani, has a sweet, melodious voice, one that seems ideal for communication with both nature and animals. Her intonation, while slightly timid, is able to gain enough strength to depict Ani’s transformation in the last half of the novel. I was also impressed with the work of Emily Holgate, the voice of Enna. Holgate perfectly portrays the strong, assertive character whose support and friendship gives Ani the courage to forge ahead and the acceptance to be herself.
I am looking forward to continuing with the next book in Shannon Hale’s Books of Bayern series, Enna Burning. I would hand this to fans of Robin McKinley, Tamora Pierce, or Gail Carson Levine.

Extraordinary by Nancy Werlin

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I was less than impressed with Impossible, Nancy Werlin’s first foray into modern-day fantasies.  I really can’t tell you why I picked up Extraordinary.  Its plot seemed very similar in tone to Impossible and I worried that I would encounter the same contrived characters and unrealistic dialogue.
I expected to pick up the book, read a couple of chapters, and give up on it immediately.  Surprisingly, that’s not what happened – I started reading and before I knew it, I was halfway through the book and very resistant to setting it down until I had finished.
Phoebe Rothschild is the daughter of a very rich and successful woman.  She knows that her parents expect extraordinary things from her, and it can be daunting at times.  Luckily for her, she has a best friend in Mallory Tolliver, and the two girls help each other battle the trials of adolescence.  What Phoebe doesn’t know is that Mallory is a fairy, sent by the fairy queen to collect an age-old debt from Phoebe – and the friendship between the girls is a ruse to carry out the fairies’ plan.
Things are actually going OK for Phoebe until the fairy queen decides Mallory isn’t moving quickly enough and sends Mallory’s fairy brother, Ryland, to finish the job.  While Mallory’s character is ambiguous in terms of good or evil, Ryland is definitely a villain.  He glamors Phoebe into thinking she has fallen in love with him and commits several acts of psychological torture upon her, attempting to wreck her self esteem and crush her perception of herself.  There’s a purpose behind Ryland’s cruelty, but we don’t find that out until near the end.  Whether Mallory allows Ryland to destroy her friend whom she has grown to love, and whether Phoebe herself can find a way to fight back, is the crux of the story.
Despite my initial misgivings about the book, there were a couple of things that convinced me to give it a shot.  First, the cover is beautiful.  Second and more importantly, I appreciated that Werlin turned the abusive hunk as love interest trend on its head and showed Ryland for the creep he is – it’s not ambiguous, and he’s never painted as a misunderstood rebel.  Phoebe is glamored by him, and Werlin does a fantastic job portraying Phoebe’s inability to resist but also creating a sense of revulsion with the reader.
The writing in Impossible bothered me so much that I’m almost bewildered by the high quality of writing I feel makes up Extraordinary.  All of the dialogue was believable, particularly between Mallory and Phoebe, and I never paused at a moment in the book to wrinkle my nose and say to myself “That doesn’t sound right.”  Extraordinary is largely a fantasy, but it’s grounded in the real world and the relationships that make up the real world: the relationship between Phoebe and Mallory, the relationship between Phoebe and her parents, and the twisted relationship between Phoebe and Ryland.  It’s all excellently written and captivating to read.
Extraordinary is a book about what separates ordinary people from extraordinary ones (if anything), and to a lesser extent it’s about the meaning of friendship.  It’s the mark of a talented writer that the majority of the book centers around these topics but doesn’t become mired in pontification upon either point.  There’s little real action, but you’d never know by how quickly I read the book.
Some excellent characterization, particularly in the relationship between Mallory and Phoebe, also marks this as a much better effort than Impossible.  The entrance of Ryland and the escalation of the fairies’ mission in the human world necessitates the slow disintegration of Mallory and Phoebe’s friendship.  The fight that eventually breaks the two apart isn’t out of place between a normal human girl and her normal human friend.  It’s heartbreaking to read, but that’s how I know it’s good. 
The motivation behind the fairies’ involvement in Phoebe’s life concerns what it means to be an extraordinary person, in particular how one regards oneself.  Phoebe struggles with feeling overshadowed by her brilliant mother, her talented father, and her beautiful friend, and it is her perception of herself as extraordinary or ordinary that ultimately determines her fate.  This “magical forces at work to cripple a teenager’s self-worth” is an excellent metaphor for the worries of adolescence.  As a teenager, I struggled daily with my own self-esteem and perception of myself, trying to determine if I was special or merely ordinary.  Fairies as the manifestation of the force that tries to break a teenager’s self-worth is therefore pretty relatable and a great way to demonstrate the concept.
Extraordinary is a fantasy, but I’m not sure it would appeal to fantasy lovers who tend to avoid contemporary realistic fiction.  I’m also not sure it would appeal to lovers of realistic fiction who avoid fantasy at all costs.  For the reader who appreciates both genres or is willing to give anything new a shot, Extraordinary should hit home.  Obviously, I was pretty impressed with this one.  Nancy Werlin hasn’t convinced me that Impossible was an anomaly, but I’ll probably pick up her next book and give it a try.

Plain Kate by Erin Bow

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Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver’s daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden talismans are so fine that some even call her “witch-blade”: a dangerous nickname in a country where witches are hunted and burned in the square.

For Kate and her village have fallen on hard times. Kate’s father has died, leaving her alone in the world. And a mysterious fog now covers the countryside, ruining crops and spreading fear of hunger and sickness. The townspeople are looking for someone to blame, and their eyes have fallen on Kate.

Enter Linay, a stranger with a proposition: In exchange for her shadow, he’ll give Kate the means to escape the angry town, and what’s more, he’ll grant her heart’s wish. It’s a chance for her to start over, to find a home, a family, a place to belong. But Kate soon realizes she can’t live shadowless forever — and that Linay’s designs are darker than she ever dreamed
(Summary from Amazon.com)

Plain Kate is one of the most beautiful books that I have read in ages. ‘Beautiful’ is honestly the first word that comes to mind to describe Erin Bow’s prose, which is as lovingly shaped and whittled as the figures and objarka, or talismans, that Kate so artfully carves to protect others from the curses and mysterious sicknesses that threaten the land. The writing is so simple and straightforward, much in the vein of the classic fairytale, but at the same time manages to infuse worlds of emotion and description into each paragraph and every sentence.

Bow creates a well-developed, three-dimensional heroine in Kate, whose plucky, adventurous, and stubborn nature does not allow her to languish in misery or self-pity after her father dies. Although she is persecuted by her fellow townspeople and encounters suspicion once she joins up with a band of Roamers, she still stays strong in her desire to find acceptance and a home. Throughout Kate’s struggles: to not get thrown out of her village, to find belonging with the Roamers, to escape Linay, and to ultimately save the village of Lov from destruction, she never loses hope. Perhaps it is this idea of hope that is so central to fairy tales and that is key to why I adore fantasies so much. Plain Kate embodies this idea.

The supporting characters in Plain Kate are amazing. Linay, the villain, is creepy and compelling, bargaining for Kate’s shadow and then stealing her away for further sacrifices. Without giving spoilers, I will say that his ultimate scheme is incredibly eerie, and one of the most original motives I have seen in ages. Drina, the Roamer girl who befriends Kate and is ultimately and inextricably linked to Linay’s devious plan, is a welcome companion, providing a wonderful look at a best-friendship that is nurtured and developed throughout the course of the book. Scenes with Drina and Kate plotting, sacrificing for each other, and huddling together in the dark hours talking made me yearn for the sleepovers of my youth.

And who could leave out Taggle, one of the most adorable talking cats I have ever had the pleasure of being introduced to. In the depths of her loneliness after her father’s death, Kate only desires friendship and companionship. When this, her heart’s desire, is granted to her, it is embodied in the talking form of her cat, Taggle. Taggle’s humorous lines (“Look, I’m still damp. Fuss over me.”), preening arrogance, and deep love for Kate are the heart of this novel.

Full of mystery, superstition, heart, and pure emotion (I dare you not to cry–you’ll know when I mean), Plain Kate is one of my favorite books read so far this year.

(Also of note for Harry Potter fans: the table of contents of this book is done in the exact format and font as the Harry Potter books (both are Arthur A. Levine books)—that, more than anything, will tell you how good this is!)

Field Notes: The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

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Megan Chase’s brother Ethan has disappeared. But this isn’t the first strange thing to happen in her life. When her father disappears from the family — and we’re not talking about “leaving” in the sense as we understand it, it’s a real disappearance into thin air here — her mother moves them to a remote part of Louisiana, where she begins seeing strange things. Of course, she’s also a misfit in school, though she has a strong friendship with Robbie.

And it’ll be Robbie who introduces her to the idea that Megan isn’t who she thinks she is: she’s a member of the fairy world. Her father sired her with her mother, he being half-fairy and her mother being a mortal. So, now that that bomb’s been dropped in Megan’s life, she gets the news that Robbie, too, is a member of this world. In fact, he’s Robin Goodfellow; that’s right, he is who we lovably know as Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And Megan’s dad? Oberon.

Through a series of discoveries and battles in the fairy world, Megan traces down her family’s roots, her place in this half world, and aims to track down and save Ethan from this world in which he doesn’t belong.

The Iron King was a fast-paced fantasy that appealed to all of my senses, despite my hesitation to fall into a fantasy book. This one just worked for me. Megan is a strong female character who begged me to escape into her reality, and the use of Shakespeare’s fairy world kept this book pulsing forward. Kagawa develops her own world and does a fantastic job world building, but I can’t help saying that she has a lot to work with in the original story, as well. In short: I really liked this book and think it has wide appeal.

Kagawa’s story will appeal to fantasy fans, as well as non-fantasy fans who may want to try a book in that genre. Teens who are drawn to Shakespeare’s original tale will enjoy this one, and I believe that those who are seeking to be writers will love what Kagawa has done here. The entire time while reading the book, it felt to me like it could have began has a writing exercise: taking a well-known story or set of characters and shaking up their worlds. I think this is one of those books that could be quite inspiring for young and new writers.

The Iron King encompasses the fairy world, making it a true fantasy (rather than a paranormal book). This is refreshing in a world of paranormal thematics. An additional and interesting theme is technology. Kagawa’s world dives into how technology has changed humans — err, fairies — and what impact that has had on societies as a whole. So, while we’re swept into a created world, it is very much grounded in many of the issues and challenges present in our own world.

Kagawa has convinced me enough to check out her forthcoming sequel, The Iron Daughter, as the title alone has me intrigued after the conclusion of this book.

Don’t forget, too, you have a week to enter our contest to win this title. You can find the details right here. This is one title worth devoting a up-too-late-reading excuse to (or in my case, it made a wonderful plane read!).