Review: Mermaid Moon by Susann Cokal

Mermaid Moon
by Susann Cokal

Available as: hardcover, Kindle edition, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 336
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication date: March 3, 2020
Suggested tags: young adult, fantasy, mermaids



From the publisher:

"An award-winning author tells of a mermaid who leaves the sea in search of her landish mother in a captivating tale spun with beautiful prose, lush descriptions, empathy, and keen wit.

Blood calls to blood; charm calls to charm.
It is the way of the world.
Come close and tell us your dreams.

Sanna is a mermaid — but she is only half seavish. The night of her birth, a sea-witch cast a spell that made Sanna’s people, including her landish mother, forget how and where she was born. Now Sanna is sixteen and an outsider in the seavish matriarchy, and she is determined to find her mother and learn who she is. She apprentices herself to the witch to learn the magic of making and unmaking, and with a new pair of legs and a quest to complete for her teacher, she follows a clue that leads her ashore on the Thirty-Seven Dark Islands. There, as her fellow mermaids wait in the sea, Sanna stumbles into a wall of white roses thirsty for blood, a hardscrabble people hungry for miracles, and a baroness who will do anything to live forever.

From the author of the Michael L. Printz Honor Book The Kingdom of Little Wounds comes a gorgeously told tale of belonging, sacrifice, fear, hope, and mortality."

Well, I've just discovered a new author whose words speak to my very soul. This story was so magical, a bit of a grown-up mermaid tale that edges just enough onto the dark side, and it was told in such an evocative way. I loved these seavish folk and their world, both on the shore and under the waves. And those mermaid songs... I wish I had a whole book of mermaid poetry to devour.

To be honest, I was expecting kind of a frilly mermaid story, but instead I got this intense, intricate, beautifully told masterpiece - and I'm so glad I did. If the synopsis sounds the least bit interesting to you, I would say definitely give this one a read - you might fall completely under its spell, like I did.


Final verdict: I'm obsessed with it! I thought this book was amazing! It's now officially one of my favorite books! I shall be shouting about it from the rooftops for days and I am currently recommending it to everyone I come in contact with!

{ Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers and the publisher
for providing me with a review copy.
My reviews are honest and my opinions are my own; 

your reading experience may vary, so give it a read and see what you think. :) }

Review: The Body under the Piano by Marthe Jocelyn

The Body under the Piano
by Marthe Jocelyn; illustrated by Isabelle Follath

Available as: hardcover, Kindle edition
Pages: 336
Publisher: Tundra Books
Publication date: February 2, 2020
Suggested tags: middle grade, historical fiction, mystery
Series: Aggie Morton, Mystery Queen (#1)



From the publisher:

"A smart and charming middle-grade mystery series starring young detective Aggie Morton and her friend Hector, inspired by the imagined life of Agatha Christie as a child and her most popular creation, Hercule Poirot. For fans of Lemony Snicket and The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency.

Aggie Morton lives in a small town on the coast of England in 1902. Adventurous and imaginative but deeply shy, Aggie hasn’t got much to do since the death of her beloved father . . . until the fateful day when she crosses paths with twelve-year-old Belgian immigrant Hector Perot and discovers a dead body on the floor of the Mermaid Dance Room! As the number of suspects grows and the murder threatens to tear the town apart, Aggie and her new friend will need every tool at their disposal — including their insatiable curiosity, deductive skills and not a little help from their friends — to solve the case before Aggie’s beloved dance instructor is charged with a crime Aggie is sure she didn’t commit.

Filled with mystery, adventure, an unforgettable heroine and several helpings of tea and sweets, The Body Under the Piano is the clever debut of a new series for middle-grade readers and Christie and Poirot fans everywhere, from a Governor General’s Award–nominated author of historical fiction for children."

A middle grade mystery series inspired by young Agatha Christie?? Yes yes YES. I was so excited to read this one! 

I think the historical setting and the characterizations were my favorite parts. I loved going around Aggie's turn-of-the-century town with her as she gathered clues. And Aggie and Hector are such cute little mystery-solving pals. It's fun to follow along as they try to do some important work in an age where all the adults were trying to get them to leave things alone. I loved young Hector/Hercule and his proper finicky ways even more than I loved young Aggie/Agatha, I think.

The mystery was well done, and I was definitely deceived at first! I did manage to piece it together before the reveal, but it was satisfying to see how it all came together. Some of the book I felt moved a little slowly, but I was definitely into the parts where it picked up.

There is quite a lot of detail put into some rather gruesome elements (the effects of a poisoning, dead bodies both human and animal, brains leaking out, etc) - Aggie is based on a mystery writer in the making, after all, and she does a lot of thinking about these shocking things she sees, describing them in her head with a mystery writer's touch. Some readers may be turned off by this, but I think most readers who are interested in a historical mystery are going to be just fine with it. My middle-grade-age self would have been ALL about this - I loved the morbid and macabre and all that good stuff (aaand maybe I still do).

Overall, I thought this was a brilliant idea for a book and I'm looking forward to joining Aggie and Hector for another mystery in the next book in the series, Peril at Owl Park, due out in September 2020!


Final verdict: I liked it! I thought this book was good! I enjoyed reading it and I would probably recommend it to others.

{ Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a review copy.
My reviews are honest and my opinions are my own; 

your reading experience may vary, so give it a read and see what you think. :) }

Picture Books to Celebrate National Park Week

I've been deep in quarantine mode for a while now, trying to entertain our little guy while my husband works from home, but I'm finally starting to find some time in the day to do a little reading. And when I saw that this week was National Park Week, I knew this was the perfect time to jump back into blogging! I love being outdoors, especially when I get the chance to visit National Parks, and I've got a long list of children's books about National Parks that are on my TBR. So I wanted to start celebrating National Park Week by sharing some of these with you!

NPS has a checklist of 20 ways to celebrate National Park Week virtually, including:

• games and challenges
• a "Find Your Park" quiz
• virtual tours with virtual passport stamps
• park webcams
• Junior Ranger Online programs
• a calendar of virtual events

They also have a theme for each day of National Park Week:

• Saturday, April 18: National Junior Ranger Day
• Sunday, April 19: VIP (Volunteers In Parks) Day
• Monday, April 20: Military Monday
• Tuesday, April 21: Transportation Tuesday
• Wednesday, April 22: Earth Day
• Thursday, April 23: Throwback Thursday
• Friday, April 24: Friendship Friday
• Saturday, April 25: Park Rx Day
• Sunday, April 26: BARK Ranger Day

I'm so excited to celebrate National Park Week! I'll be checking out all their virtual offerings, and I'm planning to read whatever National Park ebooks I can get my hands on through my library. I'll be sharing some books on my own TBR each day. To start with, here are some of the picture books on my list I'm most excited to read. Let me know what you'll be reading to celebrate!