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My Review:Title: Ripples & Waves
Author: L.A. Witt
Published by: Indie
Release Date: October 1, 2019
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 228
Genres: Fairy Tale Retelling, Romance, Contemporary Fantasy, Mythic Fiction
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2020 Retellings Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Quarantine Edition
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:Colin Everroad should be dead, but after his lobster boat founders during a violent storm off the Maine coast, he wakes up on a beach. He’s cold, but unscathed… with strange memories of a face he can’t conjure and a voice he doesn’t recognize.
No one can explain it, but a friend suggests Colin was saved by one of the mer. Except the mer don’t exist. Do they? But… that face. That voice. Someone was in the water with him. Someone saved him. If not a mer, then who? And whoever it was, Colin wants to see his face.
Lir broke protocol by rescuing a land person, but he couldn’t just let the man drown. When disobediently resurfaces to see his beautiful land man, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forbidden to leave the depths again.
One clandestine visit turns into more. Soon, Colin and Lir are meeting at the shore as often as possible, and the connection between them deepens. The only problem is that neither can live in the other’s world. Or can they?
Then Lir finds a way for them to be together, but only for a little while… and at a cost. As time grows short, they have to choose: does Lir return to the sea and never see Colin again, or stay forever with the man he loves in a world that will never love them?
Ripples & Waves is a modern, queer retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid.
4 stars — This was a solid emotional and entertaining Little Mermaid retelling. Thankfully without the tragedy of the original (sort of spoiler, but I’d want to know).
I loved the way that the Mer were portrayed, especially that they didn’t look exactly like humans with tails — just little things like the gills, and the eyes, and the skin…and the extra fins. It didn’t make them creepy, just more realistic. I also appreciated the way the folklore surrounding Mer was explained — ie that humans used to know about them and interact with them, but they broke off and were happy to be thought of as myth.
The way Lir’s appearance was described sounded beautiful and enchanting. I loved how free-spirited he was, and how he wasn’t obsessed with the land folk, but rather he just came upon Colin and became enchanted with him.
I LOVED the connection between Lir and Colin, it felt so real, and I loved seeing them get to know each other over the summer. It really made their relationship more solid. I ached for what Colin lived with with his homophobic family. It was an interesting twist on not belonging in the world in which they were born.
I loved all the little nods to the original story, but at the same time it wasn’t overwhelming and had its own take. I especially loved the take on the sea witch.
I definitely anticipated the way the story would end up, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the journey.
About the only thing that bummed me out (in a weird way) is not getting more description of the Mer, in particular how they “couple” as Lir put it. I don’t want to use my imagination. *snort*
So yeah, definitely a fun escape with enough depth to have my tears flowing at times.
You had me at queer re-telling.