Review: Oceansong

Oceansong by C.W. Rose
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

When she was thirteen, she scuba dived to search for mermaids. Now, she was twenty-four and about to go diving for mermaids again. 

Angie's back in her small hometown in Alaska for the summer, working at her father's docks to earn money and get hours in for her graduate degree and towards a PhD to become a marine biologist. Back home though, she discovers that her village that sustains itself on fishing, is slowly starving as their fish have been mysteriously disappearing over the months. When mermaids are discovered to not only be real but the reason the fish are disappearing, Angie finds herself caught in the middle of family and friends on one side and falling in love with a mer-prince on the other. 

This is war. 

Oceansong had a slowly building beginning that introduced us to Angie and her small-town Alaska world. Angie lost her mother a few years ago, her mother had cancer but was thought to be lost to the sea when she disappeared. She's close with her Bàba, sister Mia, and her niece Rosie, but she has never gotten along with her brother-in-law Nick. When she learns about how in danger the town is of starving and how the problem is spreading up and down the Alaskan coast, she's just as scared as everyone else. However, when mermaids are found to be real, which everyone accepted extremely easily, she's the only one calling for calm and understanding. Her brother-in-law Nick wants to start killing the mermaids immediately and the rest of the townspeople are on board. At first, I liked how the author showed how desperation, survival, and protecting one's own could push people to extremes, along with bringing out the worst of people when they get a whiff of power, like sexism and racism. As the story went on though, there just wasn't a feeling of meshing the danger, falling in love, and somewhat of a realistic response to the extremes happening in Angie's world. 

And Kaden was the murderous mer's prince. 

When Angie and Kaden first meet, they both try to kill each other but both would rather talk first to try and understand before committing such a final act. Angie's twenty-four, with Kaden around the same age but this still had a little bit of young adult to it. They meet only a handful of times and not for very long, their love felt rooted in he's good-looking and insta-love. This was all told from Angie's point-of-view, I can't say I ever could really understand or feel where Kaden's feelings were coming from. While they have their occasional meet-ups, there's a very serious war going on between their worlds. We're talking slaughtering, the humans catching and torturing the mermaids and the mermaids drowning and snapping necks of the humans. It's a very serious, dangerous situation, where we're supposed to believe that the remoteness of this village doesn't allow for cell service for them to get the word out and the Coast Guard is helping bigger cities. Angie's seeing all this murdering and still thinks about how in a month she'll leave to go back to college so where could a relationship with Kaden go and upset when her father fires her because she won't get her hours in for school. The situation and Angie's responses just didn't work together for me. 

There was a war. Kaden was a merman. She lived on land; he lived in the sea. 

Angie spends most of the book saying she needs to do something and find a way to get the humans to stop killing mermaids to try and work out a truce, but she doesn't really do anything but talk. There was some interesting elements with the mermaids breath of life that can give humans the power to breath under water and understand their language for twenty-four hours and their underwater world but some cool elements didn't help the mismatched feelings of absolute murder happening on the pages and detached reality feeling from Angie. The ending gave us a final showdown and family drama with Angie's brother-in-law really leaning into his villain era (which we're talking domestic violence and then Angie's sister seems to be mourning him and bestowing honor by naming her baby after him???). A one year later epilogue gives a happily for now ending but obvious room for a continuing story. This had the romantic emotions of a YA couple that tried to make itself sound grown-up by leaning hard into one dimensional villains that thirsted to murder (and did!) with added alluding to rape. I could go along with keeping the existence of mermaids contained but the reality of such murderous carnage happening and Angie worried about hours to get into her PhD program, did not gel for me, ultimately making the story feel off and hard to connect with.

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