Monstrous Beauty
Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences. Almost one hundred forty years later, seventeen-year-old Hester...
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Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences. Almost one hundred forty years later, seventeen-year-old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly, inexplicably drawn to him. For generations, love has resulted in death for the women in her family. Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect . . . or a curse? With Ezra’s help, Hester investigates her family’s strange, sad history. The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard, the crypt, and at the bottom of the ocean - but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago.
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780374373665 (0374373663)
ASIN: 374373663
Publish date: September 4th 2012
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages no: 295
Edition language: English
3 things about this book:1.The audiobook is really really good! And it includes an interview between the author and the narrator! Just great.2. All the characters are super mysterious and I quite enjoyed getting to know them as the story progressed. Even the minor characters.3. The story has two plo...
TW: Rape. It’s a hard to read myth perpetuating depiction (stranger overcome with uncontrollable lust with lots of victim blaming), which permeates the entire story. It’s necessary to the plot as surprise twist, to make other attractions non-icky and show how the victim suffered then sacrificed to g...
For a mermaid novel this is quite a ghost story. When you pick up a YA novel about a love between a human and a mermaid you expect something a bit twee, but this is a brutal story with some real gut wrenching scenes of violence and sacrifice. I hesitate to describe much of the plot because I knew no...
This review can also be found at LostBetweenThePages & Goodreads. "It was a woman--as pale and luminescent as a ghost, with swirling white hair. Ezra startled, dropping his pencil into the water. Her face snapped toward him. Her eyes were too large, clear green, and had horizontal, slit-shaped...
Book Review Monstrous Beauty is a dark and twisted concoction of myth, curses, history, and murder. It is a piercing story about a mermaid who longs to love and a young girl who has discarded any hope of it. Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she ab...
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