Inland by Kat Rosenfield Series: Stand Alone
Published by Dutton Juvenile on June 12th, 2014
Genres: Mythology, YA
Goodreads
The psychological labyrinth of a young woman’s insidious connection to the sea, from the Edgar Award nominated author of Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone.
Callie Morgan has long lived choked by the failure of her own lungs, the result of an elusive pulmonary illness that has plagued her since childhood. A childhood marked early by the drowning death of her mother—a death to which Callie was the sole witness. Her father has moved them inland, away from the memories of the California coast her mother loved so much and toward promises of recovery—and the escape of denial—in arid, landlocked air.
But after years of running away, the promise of a life-changing job for her father brings Callie and him back to the coast, to Florida, where Callie’s symptoms miraculously disappear. For once, life seems delightfully normal. But the ocean’s edge offers more than healing air … it holds a magnetic pull, drawing Callie closer and closer to the chilly, watery embrace that claimed her mother. Returned to the ocean, Callie comes of age and comes into a family destiny that holds generations of secrets and very few happy endings.
I was really excited for Inland. I thought the concept sounded cool, it was going to be my first mermaid story and of course I fell head over hells in lust with the cover. I mean LOOK AT IT!!! A girl who looks so panicked, yet hiddenly powerful, trapped in a room with the ocean bearing down on her.
I expected this girl who comes into her own realizing what she is, where she’s from and where she’s going. I expected too much apparently. My biggest complaint about Inland is the plot. The characters were decent, the writing was actually quite lovely but the plot just…DRAGGED! I felt like the entire story was this constant monologue. Just a person talking in the voice from that guy in the clear eye dry eye commercials, for 300+ pages. If not for the beautiful writing I would have given up way before the halfway point, but that and my desire to truly know what she was, compelled me to go further.
I wish I could say my curiosity was satisfied, or that there were some points in the book that made me feel something! But at the end of the day I feel so meh about it all I can’t even gather up enough brain cells to write a fuller review. The writing was it’s only memorable feature.
