Review: Between the Sea and Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore

Title: Between the Sea and Sky
Author: Jaclyn Dolamore
Series: No
Book #: 1
Pages: 240
Reading Level: YA
Book Rating: .5
Goodreads Rating: 3.80
Published: Oct 25th, 2011
by Bloomsbury USA

For as long as Esmerine can remember, she has longed to join her older sister, Dosinia, as a siren--the highest calling a mermaid can have. When Dosinia runs away to the mainland, Esmerine is sent to retrieve her. Using magic to transform her tail into legs, she makes her way unsteadily to the capital city.

There she comes upon a friend she hasn't seen since childhood--a dashing young man named Alandare, who belongs to a winged race of people. As Esmerine and Alandare band together to search for Dosinia, they rekindle a friendship . . . and ignite the emotions for a love so great, it cannot be bound by sea, land, or air.

Taschima's POV:

This book was like a fairy tale! It had such a wonderful world, where mermaids and bird people and normal people could live together without having to hide and they all have a purpose in the world... But at the same time I was left wondering about so much more. Like what is the humans position on the subject of everybody living happily? Is there any left over rage? Is there ANYTHING else going under the surface?

The thing about Between the Sea and Sky is that it stays afloat and never goes under to inspect the hard questions. It's a nice fluff read about a mermaid who has lost her sister to the mainland and who has a crush on a bird, but it's not more than that. Even the characters are 2d, they don't have any depth. It's fine and a quick read, but it could have been so much more. The mermaid's lack a strong background, but for that matter every kind of species in this story does as well.

Esmerine is a nice proper kind of girl who lacks spunk. Alandare is a kind of douch bag at the beginning and by the end he might change 10% of his personality when he develops a heart, but it ain't much of an improvement. The whole novel is about the journey to get the lost sister, and the re kindling of two old friends who have change drastically in their years apart. How they even manage to re kindle anything is beyond me (because if I were Esmerine I would have told bird boy to snap out of it long ago).

It has no twists, no turns, nothing to really surprise you. It's just quick, and sort of faerie tale like. It has a lot of potential that wasn't exploited, and that is a damn shame.