Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. Unfortunately I have been unable to get into it. DNF @ 16%.

A dark mermaid story for kids? Yes please! I really enjoyed this one and will definitely lick up another book from this author!

What a fantastic book. They subject, how everyone deals with grief in their own way, was handled wonderfully. I would recommend it for any age group as it is so well written.

A wonderfully sweet yet sad story. A story about friendship, love, grief and the ocean all rolled into one. But don't worry, there's a happy ending!

This book was a surprising one for me, aimed at the middle grade age group, I was still able to completely engage with 10 year-old Stella. This book had some really beautiful lines in it, especially when Stella describes her gramma who has dementia.

"Her grandmother was a time traveller, Stella thought. She was always arriving - with great delight and surprise - into her own future."

I found this to be such a beautiful way of describing her and it stayed with me throughout the book.

I felt so much empathy for Stella and the way she felt different and had no friends and it was happiness I felt when new girl Cam becomes her friend.

"“There’s nothing to laugh about, Stella Martin!” the teacher scolded. Stella didn’t care. She’d never had someone to laugh with at the back of English class before. Or any class, for that matter."

Stella has it in her mind her mother was a mermaid and through small clues and things her Gramma says, she decides she needs to find out for sure. Stella sets out on an adventure which gives her more than she bargained for.

This book had a feeling of poetry about it for me and it was an interesting and different read going places I didn't expect.

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for a copy in return for an honest review.

Stella is coping with the death of her mother, while trying to find her place in the world. At school her peers think she's weird, but she finds a great friend in Cam. Her father is dealing with his grief in his own way, making him go on the road for business often.

Stella's grandmother is living with them and does a lot of time travelling, as Stella calls it. Grandma is living with dementia, and mixes up stories sometimes. When she tells Stella her mother is a mermaid, Stella finds clues on the back of a photo and runs away.

What follows is an adventure of travelling on board a moving truck, a trip on a ferry and getting kidnapped by a woman who knows the truth.

I loved this book! It would be something I would recommend it to the children in years 5 and 6 in my school.

This little book was such a light and fluffy read, I basically finished it in one sitting. It's a beautiful story about family, love and loss. The main character Stella loses her mother at a very young age and finds solace in the thought that her weirdness doesn't come from herself, but from the fact that her mother was an actual mermaid.

I really enjoyed all the characters in this story. The relationship between Stella and her grandmother, who is suffering from some kind of dementia, is so beautiful and hopeful, although there are good and bad days. Stellas Father is quite distant, but the way their relationship develops was very realistic and felt natural. I also loved the truthful friendship between Stella And Cam. Just a very soft kids friendship, that got the exact right amount to develop.

Overall I really enjoyed the plot of this book. When I started reading and at the first big turning point, I wasn't sure where the story would go, but with each plot-twist I grew more intrigued. This story kept me interested and while it did go to some white dark places for middle-grade fiction, I did enjoy it and I don't think it would be too dark for children.

Overall this was a very beautiful story about a young girl finding her place in the world and discovering the secrets of her mothers past and I would recommend it to anyone, no matter how old they are.

Stella's father is distant, lost in grief after the death of his wife, and Stella's refuge is her eccentric grandmother, who, although she may have a shaky grip on the present, is usually right. Stella wonders about her mother - what was her connection to the sea? maybe she was really a mermaid? So a fight with her best friend Cam, and then her grandmother's failure to recognise her when she arrives home from school, leads her to run away, following clues that lead her into danger.
The novel deftly balances real life with the tantalising hint that mermaids might just exist, and is underpinned with strong and likeable characters. The sense of menace when Stella is held captive is nicely balance by the comic arrival of Cam, who has only partially understood Stella's coded phone-call. This was a real page-turner, and held me gripped right to the end.