Daughters of the Sea: Hannah [Hardcover]

Hannah (Daughters of the Sea, Book 1) could be summarized thus: Hannah Albury, a 15 year old orphaned girl with an inexplicable attraction to the sea, becomes the scullery maid for a prestigious Bostonian family and through her travels with them, discovers that she's a mermaid.

The writing was good and the book was a quick read, but nothing substantial happens. Hannah borders on being a Mary Sue and her problems are all resolved too easily. For instance, in the first two chapters, Hannah is sent to Kansas by a headmistress that finds her unsuitable for societal work. In Kansas she becomes gravely ill and is sent back to Boston, where the original headmistress is gone, replaced by a kinder headmistress who sees the potential in Hannah and sets her up with a prominent Bostonian family. A tad too convenient, and dare I say unnecessary.

Also, the introduction of Lila, the eldest Hawley daughter, and her vicious feline Jade was great. In fact, I found Lila to be more interesting than Hannah. She and her cat added a creepy element that kept me on edge, but when they became too problematic, rather than having Hannah resolve the problem or learn to cope on her own, they were disappeared just like the original headmistress, and so on it went.

Aside from the deus ex machinas throughout the story, the relationship with Stannish Wheeler, the handsome portraitist, came across as melodramatic. After a couple flirtatious glances and clandestine two-sentence conversations, Hannah fell into his arms like they were longtime lovers torn asunder by feuding families or something. She was willing to risk her entire existence to be with him--despite knowing next to nothing about him, except that he knew more about her than she did. Nothing about it rang true, and I wanted something more consequential to develop between them, mainly to redeem Hannah and cement their relationship.

These two aspects of the story (crazy Lila and handsome Stannish) gave the impression that they would be revisited in future installments of the series. But while those elements were placed on the back-burner of the story, I kept waiting for something exciting to happen, and the most exciting thing was Hannah discovering she was a mermaid. I relied on Hannah to draw me into her quest on an emotional level--make me feel the tension and excitement she felt as the mystery unraveled, but she didn't.

On a more positive note, it was an interesting and educational look at nineteenth century aristocracy--it made me wish that I lived in a mansion with a fleet of servants while summering on the Maine coast. Plus, I enjoyed learning how servants had their own autonomous government to keep the house running smoothly. Other than that, it was just an easy read to pass an afternoon with.

I would say this book is for young readers (age 9-12), but some of the vocabulary words might be on the advanced side, and I'm not certain too many older teens would get into this story because of its simplicity. Also, this is more "historical fiction with a few fantasy elements" than "fantasy fiction with historical elements".

I gifted a copy of Hannah to my friend's twelve year old daughter. She's an insatiable reader who enjoys everything, but leans toward the mystical, supernatural, preternatural or otherwise unexplainable, which is why I thought Hannah would be a good fit for her. After she finished, I asked if she'd mind answering a few questions for review and she was game. So, here are her answers.
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1. In a sentence or two, tell me about the storyline: A girl named Hannah finds out that she's a mermaid.

2. On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being "hated it" and 5 being "loved it", how would you rate this book? 3. It's OK.

3. In a few sentences, explain why you liked or disliked the story: Just to set the record straight, I didn't hate the book. It was OK and I don't regret reading it. I don't think I can find the right words to describe why, but it felt like there was too much missing from it. In the books I like, the characters make mistakes and learn from them and they grow, but Hannah was too straight. She made mistakes, she broke the rules, but she didn't seem to learn or grow from them because her problems were taken care of for her. The only big thing that happened was discovering she was a mermaid and that didn't even make a splash for me because I knew what she was just by looking at the cover and reading the first two chapters. Then when the story, the *real* story is about to start, the book ends. It just didn't *feel* right.

4. What lessons did you learn from reading the book? Nothing really, except maybe that it's OK to break the rules as long as you don't get caught and that it's OK to sneak around with creepy older guys. (Just kidding.)

5. Would you recommend this book to your friends? Why or why not? Probably not. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't that great either. Most of my friends would think it's superficial and boring.

* After reading her answer to question 4, I was a bit put off and asked her to elaborate. This is her response [Her answer contains SPOILERS]:

When Hannah's working, she's told that she's not to go upstairs unless specifically told to, but she sneaks around at night to check out the large vases with mysterious paintings on them. She never gets caught or gets in trouble for it though. Then she meets this guy who's painting the picture of the three daughters and suddenly she's in love. Just like that. To make it worse, he's creepy. He doesn't tell Hannah who he is or explains his attraction to her. They really don't say much of anything to each other. Again she doesn't get caught or in trouble for that either. It's like everything is handed to Hannah without her having to try or work for it. Her only problem is Lila and Jade, but Lila's shipped away to a mental institution and Jade is killed by Lila's kid sister. I said I was just kidding because I know that this is fiction and breaking the rules will get you in trouble and that you shouldn't talk to creepy strange men, but as far as lessons go there were none that jumped out at me.

THREE QUICK POINTS
*Point 1: There's a happy coincidence around every corner. At least, that's the case for Hannah Albury.

*Point 2: The intended audience must be precocious children or idyllic teens. It was, in general, too superficial for an audience over 12 with words too laborious for an audience under 15.

*Point 3: It's the book equivalent of Chinese food.

SHORT SYNOPSIS
After becoming a scullery made for a prominent Bostonian family, Hannah Albury discovers a secret about herself: she's a mermaid.

MY THOUGHTS
I wanted very much to love this book, but I couldn't help noticing a few gaping problems. The main ones being all the happy coincidences that seemed to happen to Hannah, deciphering who the intended audience is, and that this book is an incomplete story.

First, all the challenges that Hannah faces are handled for her, from the headmistress at her orphanage to the Hawley daughter who's trying to make her life miserable. It would have been nice to see Hannah work her way out of these problems or simply deal with them instead of having them--poof--disappear. Or when Hannah broke a couple of rules, it would have been nice to see her get caught and watch how she handled the situation and learned from it.

Then, there was the audacious use of vocabulary--words such as lugubrious, conflagration, chiaroscuro, and gewgaw to name only a few--which gave me some pause. These are words one is more likely to find handed out to high school sophomores and juniors; it felt incongruous with the simple storyline. This was another reason that I had a difficult time pinning down the intended audience.

I'd have believed the older teen/young adult target audience if the story had more depth of emotion and more developed sub-plots. For instance, the profound affection that Hannah and Stannish Wheeler have for one another stretches the imagination when all they've shared were a few flirtatious glances and even fewer full-blown discussions. It hinted that Hannah and Stannish were possibly connected in another life together, but it was never elaborated in the story and resulted in the emotional impact falling flat.

Finally, the story ended at the high point. It seems to be a trend with some series that are coming out--the first book amounting to a prequel, devoid of a fully fleshed out story, serving to drive readers into the subsequent books. A trend possibly due to the success of Harry Potter, Twilight, Percy Jackson, and others.

With those particular series, however, each book was a complete self-contained story with a strong plot set up, climax, and conclusion with a lead in to the next story. I didn't get that with Hannah. The main storyline of this book (Hannah learning that she's a mermaid) simply wasn't strong enough to stand on its own. Even pegging it as a coming of age story is difficult because Hannah doesn't seem to grow much.

Overall though, the writing is good and gave a nice overview of nineteenth century aristocracy, but was the book equivalent of Chinese food--tastes good going down, but an hour later, you're hungry again.

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