Forgive My Fins - Tera Lynn Childs

The Gist

Forgive My Fins
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 Lily Sanderson never thought that going to the surface would cause such trouble. But when she realized that her dead mother had been a surface-dweller Lily feels as though she has to try out life on land, for both her and her mother’s sake. After being on land for three years (living with her Aunt Lauren) three things have happened. One: she fell in love with the swimmer/news anchor/most-popular-guy-at-school, Brody. Two: gets a new best friend, who she trusts with everything…except her mermaid secret. And three: makes an enemy of her next door neighbor, Quince. With her eighteenth birthday looming over her head, Lily knows that she needs to choose someone to bond with soon, or risk losing the throne to her underwater kingdom Thalassinia. Bond: the first time a mermaid kisses someone they form a magical bond. Thalassinia: a magical underwater mermaid kingdom ruled by King Whelk, a.k.a. Lily’s father. In order to keep her position as princess of Thalassinia she must bond before her eighteenth birthday. And she already has some one picked out. Brody Bennett. And the only thing keeping her from her perfect mermate? Quince Fletcher. Instead of Brody kissing her and forming the bond – like he was supposed to – Quince does. Little does he know that because of the kiss he has to go with her to Thalassinia to perform a separation ritual. Separation ritual: cutting the bond between two mermates. The separation is irreversible. Lily doesn’t know why Quince kissed her or why he doesn’t want to go through with the separation, but the one thing she’s certain of is that they have to separate as soon as possible. So she can forget all about Quince and bond with the person she actually wants to bond with – Brody.


What We Think

Reviewed by Dream Catcher

Number of Pages: 293

This was quite the interesting book. Let me tell you this first: I only read this book in the first place because I thought it would be so bad it would be hilarious. In a way, it was. Some things were so corny I was laughing hysterically (earning many stares from various family members and friends). But, actually, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I thought it’d be a pathetic excuse of writing, but I kind of liked it. First things first: I have to complain about something for the North Star’s sake. The name BRODY. She hates this name beyond belief – one of the reasons why she refuses to read this book – and I’m not crazy about it either. But after reading about it for 293 pages you get used to it.  Now that that’s out there I can move on. To plot. There was some plot but not much. But for this book that was okay. It’s a romance. And for a romance (I find that the majority of romances are mostly fluff) it had enough of a plot for me. To make up for the small-ish plot, the whole idea of bonding mermaids was certainly original. I mean, who’s ever heard of something like that before? It’s unique. And I respect that. Points for that. The characters were both good and bad. Lily was a little dim and very obsessive (of Brody) but other than that she wasn’t that bad. Brody was awkward and…I dunno…annoying? He was the character I liked the least out of all of them. He’s not the sharpest tack if you know what I mean. He’s all brawn no brain. So it was annoying that Lily was so infatuated with him. But I suppose that was exactly what Tera Lynn Childs was going for. Good job there. Quince was awkward at times but also a really great character the other times. He certainly made the story interesting.  Lily’s best friend Shannen was an interesting character. She seemed sensible and smart, but I was never really sure with her. Overall, the characters were pretty good.  I liked the style of writing in this book. There was detail but there wasn’t too much. So that was good for me. DIALOGUE: one of the most important parts of a book. Most of the time the dialogue wasn’t half bad. But other times it was stiff. Something no living breathing person would say. Most of the awkward, stiff dialogue bits came out of Quince’s mouth. It was Tera Lynn Child’s attempt to make Quince the sweet, adorable boy everyone wants to date. But it just ended up making things the opposite of realistic. But the occasional flawed dialogue didn’t ruin the entire book for me. I really didn’t mind it all that much. I mean dialogue is hard to get exactly right. And mostly her’s was pretty good. So I’ll cut her some slack. All in all I didn’t think the book was all that bad. To tell you the truth I actually enjoyed reading it. It wasn’t some great literary genius but it wasn’t bad. I wouldn’t recommend it to people but if someone told me they were thinking about reading it I wouldn’t try to talk them out of it (I’d probably tell them to go ahead and read it, actually). So does that make it anehh book? Maybe…but I’m thinking of more of a just-above-ehh book. Mostly it gets such a high grade for entertainment value.

Real Teen Rating~ B- : Check it out from the library.


Reviewed by Living Destiny

So Dream Catcher and I made this deal where we traded silly, cheesy books.  I gave her The Ghost and The Goth to read, and she gave me Forgive My Fins.  It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t wonderful either.  In fact, it was surprisingly like The Ghost and The Goth.  Not in plot or anything, but just in how good it was.

So the characters themselves were not very good.  In fact, I really only liked Quince.  Lily was not horrible, but she was pretty shallow sometimes, and that’s really irritating.  Brody is a gross name, and he was super shallow all the time.  Quince was tough and bad boy-ish, but he was sweet too.  He was my favorite character, of them all.

The idea for the story wasn’t too bad.  I liked the idea of ‘mermates’, although it would really worry me to have to find one.  Imagine if you picked wrong!  Or if you fell into a situation like Lily’s.  I also liked the thought that there’s another world underneath the water.  The idea of mermaids is really interesting to think about.  It was written in a weird way though.  It really bothered me that Lily made all these water references instead of regular references.  It’s just bizarre and it doesn’t flow well in sentences.  Some of the descriptions are a little too long and over done.  Like at one point she’s describing eating food, and it takes up half a page.  To eat one bite.  Serious overkill.  I found the dialogue to be, for the most part, ok, but some of the conversations were a little awkward.  But overall, it was much better than I thought it was going to be.  Just like The Ghost and The Goth.

Real Teen Rating~ B- : Check it out from the library.

Reviewed by ShoreWhisperer
So I finished this book an hour ago and loved the ending. I had been talking about the book all day, on a positive note I loved the concept of this book. The alternate mer-world is really fascinating. On the other hand I didn't like the other stuff. I strongly disliked Lily. Half the time I was yelling at the book. There were too many flaws in her character. First off, she is WAY to oblivious to everything. I am oblivious to things like her but there is a point where even I can notice things as obvious as Quince Fletcher. She was also really shallow and I know that was her character but it was unbearable to me. Her constant crying and whiny tone throughout the book and not to mention her violent outbursts peeved me to no end. Let's just say if Lily was real, we WOULD NOT be friends. Then there was Brody. Brody is maybe the most awkward love interest ever. He is never in the book, and the times that he is it's just weird. He came off as awkward rather than the Mr. Perfect Prince Charming kind of guy. I didn't like him (which was probably the intention) but I would have been content with that if he was more present in the book. My favorite character was Quince, that is probably because i am a teenage girl but who wouldn't love the sensitive biker guy? Sadly, Quince is not realistic at all but he had the most logic out of all the characters. He thought things through, and didn't come off as a love sick teenager, he sounded like a guy who genuinly loved this girl. His sweetness got to a point sometimes that was unbelievable. The descriptions of the mer-world were fantastic. The way that I pictured Thalassinia was just amazing, all the colors, I wanted to live there! The author painted beautiful pictures that made you love the sea, even if you are a land-lover. The only complaint I would have is that some of the descriptions were weird and almost quirky. At one point she says "The smell of Quince" that was extremly cheesy and almost swoon-like. At another time she described Brody's arm hair and that kind of just really creeped me out. That was another thing, this author REALLY liked hair. I don't know what it was but whether it was Lily or Quince or Peri, we always got a description of hair and multiple times too. I just thought that was odd. The whole concept of a mer-mate was original and I enjoyed the concept, I love fantasy stuff like that and this is the epitome of fantasy romance novels. So, I enjoyed the book overall, it made me very emotional because I "strongly disliked" Lily but I found myself laughing and feeling upset like any good book makes you feel.
Real Teen Rating~ C+: Well I guess it was good.