The Mermaid’s Child

The Mermaid’s Child by Jo Baker

290 Pages

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Vintage

Release Date: March 17, 2015

Fiction (Adult), General Fiction (Adult), Sci Fi, Fantasy

Malin Reed lives with her father and grandmother. She is the focus of bullying at school because she does not have a mother. Her father said her mother was a mermaid and returned to the water. One day a circus comes to town and Malin sees a live mermaid. After her father died, her grandmother sent her to work with Uncle George at the pub. A mysterious stranger comes to town, and everyone is mesmerized by him. He promises a rainmaker machine to the drought affected area. The day he leaves, Malin goes too. She finds out life outside the town is harder than she thought.

The book had a steady pace, the characters were developed, and it was written in the first-person point of view. How much tragedy can one person handle? I felt sorry for Malin and the positions she was placed in by others. A book about survival. The ending was abrupt. At times, I found similarities with the book Things in Jars by Jess Kidd.