I love mermaids. I love murderous mermaids even more, but this book fell flat somewhere for me. I read all 3 of Pearce's fairy tale retellings right in a row, and while I genuinely enjoyed all of them, each one left me disappointed and feeling as if something were missing. The fact that I don't know what the missing bit is bothers me a lot. I honestly don't know what would have made it feel more like a fairy tale, feel more.....full? I don't know the best word. Just that something (for me) was lacking. This one more so than the other two, which with my love for mermaids, might have added to my disappointment. I liked this the least of the three, Sweetly was my favorite, Sisters Red next and than this one. I think part of what I didn't enjoy in this one was the way she wrote the triplets. In the other two books, she wrote sibling relationships better, or we saw more of their relationships. In this novel, we only saw Celia and barely saw her interact with her sisters in a way that showed much of substance. The way they grew up really only with each other could have been explored more. I get that it wasn't the crux of the novel, but it made it feel slightly superficial and cliche.

I did enjoy both Nadia and Lo's POVs and liked the differences of their mind working against each other. The ocean girls/mermaids mythology that Pearce created was interesting.

I did like the book, I sped right through it, I was invested in knowing what happened to the characters, but it didn't speak to my soul or whatever. The problem, why I think I feel more disappointed in it than I normally would, is that all the books I've been reading lately have been just that, average. I enjoy them, but I'm not getting wrapped up in them. I need to get wrapped up in a story again. JFC do I ever.

I don't want this to sound too negative, its well written, and an interesting take on mermaids, and a nice quick read. ( )

This was a creepy and cool retelling of The Little Mermaid. I liked the central mystery of how they became ocean girls, and I also really enjoyed the relationship between the triplets. And I loved the friendship between Celia and Lo. I did think the romance was underwhelming, and the ending felt a bit rushed and anti-climatic. Overall, I enjoyed it, and would recommend to anyone who likes fairy tale retellings. ( )

This story had so much potential...
Inspired by 'The Little Mermaid,' but with a contemporary setting, I hoped the book would have something to say about cruelty and love... I felt that it started out promising; but quickly degenerated into an aggravating teen romance.

There are two main characters:
Celia is a human girl, one of an orphaned set of triplets. She and her sisters have psychic powers, which they mainly use to tease and torment local boys. Celia wants to assert her own identity, but her sisters pressure her to think of herself as part of a unit.

Naida, aka Lo, is a mermaid. However, she and the other mermaids in her group are not a natural phenomenon. Although they all seem to suffer from amnesia, it's hinted quite early on that they all used to be human girls, until something happened to them. (Don't hold your breath waiting to find out what exactly happened to them, or why, because you will not find out.) In the very last scene of the book, there's a sort of half-explanation rushed in, which seems to have something to do with EVIL WEREWOLVES(?) creating the mermaids as a sort of transition stage to them becoming shapeshifters? Eh, what? Why? It was very random.

When a teen boy trips and falls into the water, nearly drowning, both Celia and Lo rush to save him (well, with a few complications), and they meet. Celia hopes to help Lo recover her lost memories, and they strike up a sort of friendship.

They also both develop a totally inexplicable fascination with the nearly-drowned boy (who is boring and has nothing I can see going for him to warrant a crush) and a dull teenage love triangle develops.

I wanted more heartless cruelty, more exploration of all the complex issues raised by the original 'Little Mermaid' story, and more logic. ( )

3.75 stars. I would have liked it better with just a little more interaction for the romance. I did like the ending though with how everything worked out. ( )

4.75ish.

This was one of my more highly anticipated books of last year (because hello? Fairy tale freak. This is not news to anyone.), and it's sort of shameful that I am just not posting a written review. (Though yes, I did have a mini vlogged one here: http://youtu.be/D4shoOJPOZs?t=7m4s. But still.) I feel like I've talked about this book a lot, but nothing's all official-like until I write about it. So.

This was my favorite Jackson Pearce book to date. I've enjoyed everything I've read by her, but there's always been something a teensy bit off for me, especially in her endings. As short as her books are, they seem to lose steam a bit at the end, which is disappointing on its own, of course, but more so considering how much I enjoy them up to the steam-loss. But while Fathomless isn't perfect by any means, its come the closest to being exactly what I wanted from it. It has this really good dark streak that is perfectly suited to both the original tale and to the world Pearce has set up in her retellings series. There's this quality of a car crash in remarkably slow motion, a great sense of foreboding over the whole story, that creates excellent tension, and Pearce uses that to get at the unhappiness and emptiness at the core of The Little Mermaid - and is it weird to say I was so very happy to see that? This aspect is one of the things I potentially love most about a fairy tale retelling (especially one as dark as TLM(1)), but it's also often one of the most disappointing and neglected aspects. Modern audiences are so out of touch with original fairy tales that retellings that make use of the actual endings and tones are considered novel and creative, rather than traditional. We've been Disneyfied, and I'm on a tangent, so I'm going to rein myself in and just wrap that up by saying, I love it when a retelling is more traditionally bleak(2)... Fortunately Pearce capitalizes on it, to which I say THANK GOD. This is what I wanted from a TLM retelling. It's a little off. It's a little disturbing. Perfect.

A big part of what makes this work is the characters. The sisters and the romance are means to an end, but the "3" main characters (one of them being a 2-in-1 deal...) are what make this story what it is. How they interact with/react to each other and their colliding worlds, and how they use each other to make sense of their lives - and in a desperate attempt to break away from the things holding them back - is what gives this story that car-crash feeling. It's impossible for them to all get what they want, to all have their HEA(3), but you're made to care for each of them, damaged as they are. And so you know pain is coming, and it's simply a matter of degrees... It leaves you a little conflicted(4) because you both see flaws and feel sympathy for each of them, which makes things excellently ambiguous. Add to this an overall dark tone and sort of desperate, lonely, magical atmosphere with not all of the loose ends tied up, and you've got a book nicely calculated to make for Happy Mistys.(5)

This complements the rest of the series very well, but can also be read completely as a standalone, which is excellent  for readers wanting who've been wanting to pick these up, or even just Fathomless specifically, but weren't sure about making a series committment. Though all of the stories are linked, and they will expand the readers understanding of the rest, they work perfectly as potential companion novels to be read on their own. You don't have to feel tied down by them, or obligated to read them (to know what's going on or to have closure), which is something I really like from a series of this type. So if you've liked Pearce in the past or have been wanting to give her a try, I think you can't really go wrong with Fathomless.

1. Originally, of course. I love me some Alyssa Milano-Ariel as much as the next 80s kid, but in case you didn't know, Disney changed the story a whole lot. Like, it's actually a real bummer...
2. Ok, nothing's going to keep me from sounding weird, so whatever. I like the sad, tortured feels.†


3. Happily Ever After.
4. Unless you don't root for non-humans, maybe?  I'm not always Team Human.
5. 1 out of 1 Mistys agree.
† What's this? A note within a note? Yeah, I only like those feels in fairy tales. Add 'em to some YA PNR and I might have to cut you. ( )