Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis

I often request books from NetGalley based on the positive buzz I see on blue sky. So when a number of authors that I like started talking about this book, I thought to myself: hey, I should check this out. I enjoy a good fairytale retelling and I enjoy mermaids so why not? Sadly, after finishing this book, I failed to see what all of the hype was about. I found this book profoundly boring. The book is told from the perspective of a princess who is the granddaughter of Ariel (you know, the little mermaid) and her bodyguard/love interest. The fact that both are women is practically meaningless because neither of them has any character to speak of. It’s hard to imagine how the book would’ve been different if either or Both of them had been men (or cardboard boxes). The visit to the underwater realm was not interesting. The Struggle for power made me question why I cared whether the protagonist succeeded or failed. The answer ended up being that I did not care in the slightest. I wish I knew what everyone else kept seeing in this book. It was well written on a sentence and paragraph level, don’t get me wrong. But I just did not like the story.