Review: Fathomless by Jackson Pearce

Fathomless (Fairytale Retellings #3)
Jackson Pearce
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: September 4, 2012

Celia Reynolds is the youngest in a set of triplets and the one with the least valuable power. Anne can see the future, an Jane can see the present, but all Celia can see is the past. And the past seems so insignificant--until Celia meets Lo.
Lo doesn't know who she is. Or who she was. Once a human, she is now almost entirely a creature of the sea--a nymph, an ocean girl, a mermaid--all terms too pretty for the soulless monster she knows she's becoming. Lo clings to shreds of her former self, fighting to remember her past, even as she's tempted to embrace her dark immortality.
When a handsome boy name Jude falls off a pier and into the ocean, Celia and Lo work together to rescue him from the waves. The two form a friendship, but soon they find themselves competing for Jude's affection. Lo wants more than that, though. According to the ocean girls, there's only one way for Lo to earn back her humanity. She must persuade a mortal to love her...and steal his soul. 

I love Pearce's retellings. They are really unique and fun. Fathomless was no different. Although I didn't like it as much as the first book, Sisters Red, it was still really unique and I quite enjoyed it. 

One thing that I liked about this book was how it stayed true to the story of The Little Mermaid--and not the Disney version. I definitely could draw parallels between this book and the original Hans Christian Anderson story. However, like the previous books in the series, this novel was still unique and brought it's own twists on the classic tale. 

These were not my favorite characters in the series. They were interesting, but a bit lacking. Out of the two (or three) main characters, Celia was definitely my favorite. She felt inferior to her two older (by a few minutes) sisters. I loved how she finally broke out on her own in this book. While Naida and Lo were still interesting characters, I just did not like them as much. I did, however, like learning about their history and how they became who they are.

The common trend between the first two books (besides that they were both retellings) were the Fenris (werewolves). I was really intrigued to see how they would fit into this book. How can you combine mermaids and werewolves? That's bound to be interesting. However, I felt that they were just thrown into the story and really did not have much of a place in this novel. I was disappointed on that end. 

The writing, per usual, was very simple and easy to read. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It makes for an easy and quick read. This book does not take long at all to read. 

Overall, while it wasn't my favorite book, I still enjoyed it. There were a few things that didn't live up to my expectations, but overall an enjoyable, quick read. 

(3.5 stars)