Quest of the Mermaid Princess
by Lee Watts

4 out of 5 stars

Angelique is secretly a mermaid, abandoned as a baby in an orphanage on land. She has never seen another mermaid and avoids salt water so that she doesn’t transform into a mermaid. Although Angelique grew up working as a servant, but hopes to get a job as a handmaiden to the queen and find a true home. She rescues a little otter and names him Dash, and he becomes her faithful pet. Captain Tarren commands a rowdy group of privateers, and tells Angelique of treasures to be found in the ocean that could make her rich, so she decides to venture into the coastal waters and test her abilities as a mermaid. But dark magic and danger await her in the ocean depths, and Angelique is pursued by an evil witch!

This fairytale is such a delight! I love the magic and the adventure! We have pirates, and magical objects of great power, and hidden treasure, and remote islands, and a secret mermaid city, and a long-lost family! Cute little Dash is so adorable, and I loved his clever antics.

I also really loved the “pirates with a heart of gold” trope, and the way that various fairy tales are mixed in with Angelique’s adventures. She travels to Avalon and sees King Arthur sleeping there, recovering from his wounds, but she doesn’t meet any other fairy tale characters, just hears about them second-hand.

However, there was one place where the Midas gold magic system did not make sense to me, so that particular plot point felt very contrived. How the magic functioned was inconsistent.

The romance is clean and very sweet. Tarren and Angelique develop a close relationship that is very meaningful, and it was so lovely to see them gradually falling in love. I liked how through their adventures they prove their respect and care for each other again and again, saving each other from danger and generously putting the other person first.

…Generous except for one plot point, where Angelique has very poor accommodations on board the pirate ship, and the captain doesn’t offer his cabin to her or make sure that she is comfortable in some other cabin or even that she has a decent blanket. That felt like a plot hole that was purposefully left there to make a funny scene later on when Angelique gets angry because they didn’t give her nicer accommodations, but it felt like it was out of character for the pirates and for Captain Tarren. They have a character established through the story for being kind and generous, but in this one instance they weren’t acting according to their characters, and it was never properly explained why they acted as they did.

I have read other books by this author, and they have a sort of odd writing style with weird sentence structure and strange phrases sometimes, but I think that is just their own unique style or something. An editor would probably clean up some of the sentence structure and misplaced modifiers.

There is a lot of wry humor in the writing that had me laughing, and some fun references to other fairy tales that were really cute. But I didn’t like all the references to modern technology and movies; it felt out of place in a fairy tale world. There are references to Star Trek and Disney movies and live-action remakes and Weight Watchers and Blockbuster and the Batmobile and Ikea and Temu. Those things pulled me out of the fairy tale and interrupted the flow of the story. I think a few modern references would have been fun, but it was just too many of them.

Overall, I enjoyed this sweet mermaid story, and it really captured my heart!

Disclaimer: I received this book from the author in exchange for a free and honest review.