Review: Of Poseidon by Anna Banks

Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Pages: 324

Received: Received from Raincoast Books in exchange for an honest review

Release Date: May 22, 2012
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Goodreads Synopsis:

Galen, a Syrena prince, searches land for a girl he's heard can communicate with fish. It’s while Emma is on vacation at the beach that she meets Galen. Although their connection is immediate and powerful, Galen's not fully convinced that Emma's the one he's been looking for. That is, until a deadly encounter with a shark proves  that Emma and her Gift may be the only thing that can save his kingdom. He needs her help--no matter what the risk.

My Review:

The cover of this book really caught my eye, I absolutely love the colour and the writing of the title. This is one that just caught my attention. I haven't read any mermaid books and I was really taken with the idea of this story, a girl who can communicate with fish, it sounds so interesting.

This book opened up showing that Anna writes with a great amount of humour. I found that Emma was a great character, and I loved her sarcasm throughout the book. Anna does a great job with her characters, I instantly felt connected with them (especially Emma). Throughout many of the situations I found myself feeling embarrassed for Emma.

I did find there was a few inconsistencies throughout the book. The biggest one that bothered me was that Emma describes herself as being the sweet girl but then throughout the book she has an attitude towards Galena and his family, and at one point actually throws a character through a window. I just felt that Emma should not be described as sweet and be able to pull off a lot of the things she does in the book.

The one other thing that made this book a little difficult for me to read was the change of writing style when the POV changed from Emma to Galen. I am a big fan of different POV's in stories because you get to see a lot more that you wouldn't see from one person's (especially in a story like this where Galen travels back to his family at times). But I found that when the story was in Galen's POV it seemed like the writing changed to third person and Emma's POV was in a first person narrative. It made for a few difficulties in reading.

Other than that, I did enjoy this book, there were a lot of great moments throughout. And I absolutely love Emma and Galen, the chemistry between the two is adorable. I also really enjoyed that Anna incorporated the history of Triton and Poseidon into the story as well. This was definitely a great story with an ending I did not see coming. I'm excited for what Anna comes out with next.