Fathomless Review

Fathomless 
by Jackson Pearce

From Goodreads:

Celia Reynolds is the youngest in a set of triplets and the one with the least valuable power. Anne can see the future, and Jane can see the present, but all Celia can see is the past. And the past seems so insignificant -- until Celia meets Lo.

Lo doesn't know who she is. Or who she was. Once a human, she is now almost entirely a creature of the sea -- a nymph, an ocean girl, a mermaid -- all terms too pretty for the soulless monster she knows she's becoming. Lo clings to shreds of her former self, fighting to remember her past, even as she's tempted to embrace her dark immortality.

When a handsome boy named Jude falls off a pier and into the ocean, Celia and Lo work together to rescue him from the waves. The two form a friendship, but soon they find themselves competing for Jude's affection. Lo wants more than that, though. According to the ocean girls, there's only one way for Lo to earn back her humanity. She must persuade a mortal to love her . . . and steal his soul.

  

Midnight Thoughts: 

 

"Maybe it's true we're stronger together, but either way, I don't want to be weak if we're broken apart. "*

~Jackson Pearce is one of the few author's who could get be to read a "mermaid" book.  I don't know what I have against them (or angel and fairy books for that matter) though.  Hell, I wanted to be a mermaid when I was a kid.

~Disney's The Little Mermaid, with it's super happy ending, doesn't stay faithful to the Hans Christian Anderson tale that I remember.  Fathomless doesn't either, but there's a similar darkness that is found in old fairy tales.  And since I'm morbid, it appeals to me. ;)

~Main characters- Celia, the youngest of gifted triplets, Lo, a kind of mermaid, and Jude, the scruffy guitar playing boy that the Celia and Lo save from death by water.

~In the original Little Mermaid Tale, the mermaid saves the boy she loves and then another girl comes to his aide on the beach.  I always hated this other girl (in Disney's version she's actually the evil sea witch in disguise), but Fathomless taught me to feel sad for her.  The prince in the fairy tale only loves this girl because he thinks she's the one that saved him.  It's kind of bs, isn't it?  Love should be deeper, you know, based on looks and wealth too. ;)

~Celia has a gift, she can see a person's past when she touches them, her sisters, Jane and Anne, can see the present and the future.  Celia thinks her gift is useless when it fails to her her father, suffering from Alzheimer's, to remember his daughters.  Because I work with so many Alzheimer's patients, I couldn't help but thing how much Celia's gift would delight them.  So many of them love hearing about their past and talking about it.

~There's a moment in the book where Celia realizes that she's been blind to the fact that Jane and Anne's powers of sight must be unpleasant at times too.  I wanted to congratulate her for finally getting it!  It's so nice in YA for main characters to really grow and wise up. 

~Lo is not the mermaid's original name, it was Naida.  Which I am clueless as how to pronounce.  Like Nadia?  Na-i-da?  Nayda?  I don't know.  I am willing to learn this, but for the purpose of reading without straining the old brain too much, I thought of it as Nadia. 

~I loved trying to uncover how Lo and the other water girls ended up in the ocean, and who their "angel" really was.  My mind seized on the possibilities and just like that I had a hundred crazy theories, although maybe not as crazy as the author's version.

~I love that when Celia knows the 'Hey Jude' song by The Beatles, and how relieved Jude is too. 

"Oh good, I don't have to start hating you."  Let this be a lesson, Midnighters, know your Beatles songs!

 SPOILERISH

 ~I had one major problem with the plot.  I am not sure what wolves have to do with the ocean, but okay, what the frak ever.  And it's never really explained, which of course bothers me because this is not really a "sequel" book.  Fortunately, Pearce already had me well invested in the book, because I was all "WTF?"

~When Lo follows an old one to see where she goes, my heart was thumping with fear and anticipation.  It truly shocked me.

END of SPOILERS

~A thunderstorm popped up during the last 30 pages or so of this book whiles I was reading it on a screened-in porch.  It was perfect- matching the mood and the setting of the end of Fathomless.  It felt primal- like Lo and her sisters.  If you get the chance to read this during a storm- do so!

~This was a one day read.  I'm so glad I had the time to read it, because I was able to fully immerse myself into Celia and Lo's world.

Fathomless gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

The one part I had a problem with really kept this from being a perfect read, but ultimately it wasn't enough to ruin this book for me.

"-and the way she talks... It's disconcerting, like she is a very old person in a young body." *

* all quotes are from the ARC of Fathomless and subject to change upon final publication.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Fathomless through the Around the World ARC Tours in exchange for my honest review.  All opinion, snark and wit are my own.