Tides

by Betsy Cornwell

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I was very excited to read Tides because it focuses on one type of mythology that I don’t see often at all: selkies. I was familiar with selkie lore from one other novel I had read, but I really liked how the author described them in her debut. Noah and Lo are staying with grandmother for the summer, and it’s certainly one they’ll never forget. Grandma Gemm tells them the local selkie tales, knowing just how true they really are, and soon enough Noah and Lo find out also. Tides is a very laid back novel for the most part. It has this very tranquil, fairytale quality about it which I really enjoyed. It is a bit slow, and I felt like it jumped around a lot, but it was a very enjoyable read.

The plot of Tides doesn’t really make an appearance until about halfway in. Before that it was mainly Noah feeling upset that his internship wasn’t quite what he was expecting, while his sister Lo tries to lose herself in her art while dealing with some health issues. Even once Noah meets Mara, the selkie, the story didn’t have a focus yet. However, the turning point really grabbed me. Someone is kidnapping the children from Mara’s pod, and once the culprit was revealed, I was shocked. I couldn’t stop reading, since I just had to know why they were doing this and how they were going to get stopped. The end takes on a darker tone than the rest of the novel, but it works, since horrible things have been done to these children.

My only real problem with Tides was that I felt like the author was trying to cover too much within this one story. In addition to the selkie mystery, Tides also touches on LGBT themes, bulimia, interracial adoption, and a myriad of smaller family themes. I actually loved that Gemm was gay and it wasn’t made into a big deal. She and Maebh were very sweet together and their story was a big tragic in places. I also liked Lo’s bulimia plot thread in the beginning, but it kind of just vanished. She’s struggling within her family because not only is she adopted and a different race, but she feels fat and develops an eating disorder after jokes their father makes about her. I did appreciate this glimpse of the disease in a non-issues book, but I also felt like it was just thrown in to have a deeper issue involved. Lo doesn’t show much growth and healing with her disease, since it all but disappears for the majority of the novel. I think it could have been handled better, or not included at all.

In the end, I enjoyed reading Tides. It’s not my favorite story that I’ve read, but I felt happy and relaxed while reading it. I definitely think the author had some great ideas, especially when it came to the selkie lore, but I feel like she took on too much for Tides‘ 300 pages. I would still recommend this to someone who is looking for a relatively light read without much action or drama. Tides would probably be great to lay on the beach with.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.