Sea Witch by Sarah Henning

 

My Rating ~ Five stars

RELEASED: 31 July 2018

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books

Format: Hardback

Pages: 368

Blurb

Everyone knows what happens in the end. A mermaid, a prince, a true love’s kiss. But before that young siren’s tale, there were three friends. One feared, one royal, and one already dead.

Ever since her best friend, Anna, drowned, Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town. A freak. A curse. A witch.

A girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appears offshore and, though the girl denies it, Evie is convinced that her best friend actually survived. That her own magic wasn’t so powerless after all. And, as the two girls catch the eyes—and hearts—of two charming princes, Evie believes that she might finally have a chance at her own happily ever after.

But her new friend has secrets of her own. She can’t stay in Havnestad, or on two legs, unless Evie finds a way to help her. Now Evie will do anything to save her friend’s humanity, along with her prince’s heart—harnessing the power of her magic, her ocean, and her love until she discovers, too late, the truth of her bargain.

 

Review

We all know the sea witch, who took the mermaid’s voice, in exchange for a few days on land to attract true love’s kiss.  But who was she before she became the witch of the sea?  Sea Witch tells us that story.

Once upon a time there were three best friends, Nik, a prince, Evie, a witch in secret and their friend Anna.  Anna drowned and left Nik and Evie’s lives in pieces.  But four years later, Evie meets someone who looks exactly like Anna.  Someone she’s sure she saw save Nik’s life and disappear back into the ocean with the flick of a fishy tail.  The newcomer, Annemette, denies she is Evie’s long gone friend, but Evie isn’t convinced.  Annemette desperately needs Evie’s help – she admits she is a mermaid and only has days to appease the magic that changed her, before she is lost to both land and sea.  Evie will do anything to keep her new friend, and hopes they will both snare a prince.  But in a place where magic is forbidden, princes are meant to marry highborn girls and Evie is not too popular, in a town who frowns on her friendship with the prince, who is far above her station, helping Annemette won’t be easy.

Told with flashbacks to Anna’s death, with intertwining stories, Sea Witch was an engrossing read I couldn’t put down!  I’d been looking forward to this book for months and the cover is one of my new favourites – a dangerous combination of hype and cover love, which often has me disappointed when I get to the actual reading of the book – luckily, this time the story lived up to it all.  I had originally assumed this would be a straight Little Mermaid retelling from the Sea Witch’s point of view, so I was surprised to realise it was actually a prelude to that story, more the origin story of the Sea Witch.  I loved that aspect of it.  I’ve read so many Little Mermaid retellings, and although I have loved most of them, this one was something different and special.

 

 

Photo via my Instagram account – Bookbookowl

 

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