I read this a few weeks ago, and have just now had a chance to review it. I struggled to remember how I felt about it, which indicates that I wasn’t ‘wowed’ by this book. I was also confused: it’s packaged for a YA audience, but I feel they would find the old-fashioned writing style off-putting. I also found the bouncing between dates unnecessarily confusing.

I was attracted by the fabulous cover, the setting of Prince Edward Island and the mining of traditional maritime myths and folk tales. However, in my opinion, writing a book in the twenty-first century based on the traditional tale of a female shapeshifter who has lured men to their watery deaths for centuries is treading a dangerous path and reinforces the age-old stereotype of a woman leading a man astray. What a missed opportunity to retell this myth without its gender bias! However, Beet MacNeill, our young heroine, is plucky and fights against the constraints and expectations of life as a girl in the 1950s.