TITLE: Wrecked
AUTHOR: Anna Davies
PUBLICATION DATE: May 1, 2012
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, a division of Simon & Schuster
PAGES: 336 pages
FORMAT: Ebook
SOURCE: PulseIt
RATING: 1 star
***WILL DEFINITELY CONTAIN FUCKING SPOILERS***
This whole ranty review is written on the presumption that this novel is a standalone. If I find out that it has a sequel, I **might*** bump the star rating up one, but that won’t be much improvement. On the whole, I was disappointed in this novel. The gorgeous cover promised a good mermaid story and it just didn’t deliver. Miranda has a wonderful life on the island of Whym until a tragic boating accident kills four of her friends and leaves her boyfriend in a coma. After this accident, everyone turns against her. They all blame her because it was her boat and she was driving. This was hard to believe. When I say everyone, I do mean the entire town save her grandmother and her little brother. It’s like they had secret town meetings on how best to humiliate her. I just find it hard to believe that so many rational adults would shun a teenager who is by all rights recovering from her own injuries and grieving the loss of her friends.
Putting that aside, Miranda is saved during the accident by Christian, a betwixted man (a form of merman), who sees her drowning and is so drawn to her that he can’t let her die. After this, the ruler of the merpeople, Sephie, claims that she wanted all the souls and demands Christian kill Miranda and bring back her soul. As you can guess, enter the starcrossed lovers scenario. Christian goes Up Above to attempt to kill Miranda, but just can’t bring himself to do it. The two are instantly attracted to one another and Miranda spends every possible moment with him. This whole thing culminates with Sephie luring the town to her boat for a gala where she plans on killing Miranda and Christian as well as the other survivors from the wreck. Somehow Miranda manages to light Sephie’s boat on fire and the sea witch supposedly burns to death.
This all powerful sea witch is taken down by a miniscule teenager? I don’t buy it. Beyond that, Miranda’s grandmother has staged an intervention where they basically tell her that she has gotten out of control and they are shipping her to boarding school. Seriously? Give the girl some time to breathe and heal! All the relationships just seem twisted and unrealistic to me. I was very disappointed.
To make matters worse, it has a terrible ending. Christian was only allowed to roam freely on land to claim Miranda’s soul for Sephie and now must return to the ocean or die. So that’s how it ends, Christian returns to the water and Miranda is off to boarding school in Arizona…far away from the ocean. The fucking end. Yeah, see this face? It’s not a happy gnome face!
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