Waterfell
Istyria book blog - B's world of enchanted books
*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley for review. Thanks!*
3.5 stars
Oh my god this is such a difficult book to rate. It was a cool, original story with fun characters, written pretty great… But despite that, I couldn’t connect with the story or the characters. Hence the lower rating. And I feel so bad for that, but I can’t help it.Nerissa is the main character in Waterfell and she’s not just a normal girl. Nerissa is to be the queen of Waterfell, the undersea kingdom stolen from her the day her father was murdered. So she hides in a human form until the day she comes of age and can claim her birthright. It’s only logic that falling in love with a boy is the last thing she should do, but somehow Lo sneaks past her defenses and she can’t help but falling for him. But will he hold her back when it comes to getting her thrown back, or will he help her win?
This is a cool story, let me say that first. It’s original and exciting and pretty awesome. And even though it was kind of slow in the beginning, it’s really engaging. And I loved the background information and the history of the Aquarathi. But I would have liked more mermaid-ish action and like I mentioned in the beginning, I couldn’t connect to it. The writing is very good, that’s not it. I don’t know why I couldn’t connect with the story. Maybe because of the way the romance started? You know, it’s kind of typical, a sort of insta-love. And afterwards you get it, sort of. But when you’re reading it, it annoys the hell of you. Nerissa acts like she hates Lo and can’t stand him, but actually she does and actually she likes him a lot. I really didn’t like that.You know, a soon-to-be Aquarathi queen of an underwater kingdom called Waterfell isn’t easy to relate to. I think that’s one of the other reasons I couldn’t connect to the story.
I didn’t really like Nerissa and she’s not really relatable. I liked Jenna, her best friend. She was fun and sweet and a normal teen, thus pretty relatable. (Except for the having-a-mermaid-as-best-friend part.) And I liked Lo, but I didn’t trust him. And I had a reason for that too. Always knew there was something fishy about him. And yeah Speio was okay too, but he acted like the jealous boyfriend the whole time, which was irritating. And then he betrays Nerissa, which didn’t make sense at all.
So this is a really good book and I definitely recommend it to fans of mermaid stories. It’s a shame I couldn’t connect to it as much as I wanted too, but that doesn’t mean the story is bad. So give it a shot! It’s definitely worth it.
