When Penelope Schleeman learns that her debut novel "American Mermaid" is picked up by twin screenwriters in Los Angeles to be adapted into a movie, she packs up her life in Connecticut and jets out to the West Coast for a taste of the new, author-of-a-bestseller life that awaits her. What she finds in California, however, is not only a startling loss of control over her story's integrity, but something else that suggests her book about a wheelchair-bound scientist-turned mermaid might be coming to life.
As the synopsis suggests, "American Mermaid" is a lot of haphazard plot to digest, readers. Personally, I was drawn in by the reviews that hailed this debut as "full of heart" and "laugh out loud funny," but found myself trudging through the story when I had hardly made a dent in it.
While the first few chapters about Penelope, high-school-teacher-turned-feminist-author, did have me in near-tears from laughing, once the laughs subsided (and they did, rather quickly, giving way to total and utter confusion) I found there was no plot or character development of substance for the story to lean on. The entire thing read like a first draft that tried oh-so-hard to be meta; normally I would applaud the efforts of a book-within-a-book, but to say that this didn't work for "American Mermaid" is a drastic understatement. The chapters that reads as "excerpts" from Penelope's book felt like filler and read like a low-budget sci-fi movie, and not in a good way. More weird than witty and woefully-lacking in really anything aside from a few good laughs in the beginning, this is unfortunately a debut I'd encourage readers to skip.
Rating: 2 Stars
Publication Details: Out 3/21/2023, Doubleday Books
*Huge thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for providing my review copy!*
