The Little Selkie by K.M. Shea, 2015

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Dylan—a selkie—makes a terrible mistake when she brashly chases an evil sea witch onto land. Captured and stripped of her pelt—leaving her unable to return to the sea in her sea lion body—Dylan’s only chance of survival is to serve as the sea witch’s tool. Instead of allowing the sea witch to use her selkie ability to control water, Dylan asks a wandering enchantress to seal her voice, rendering her unable to use her selkie magic. Stranded—with no allies and no way to contact her family—Dylan fears she will never successfully steal her pelt back.
Luckily, Dylan is not alone. She is befriended by Prince Callan, a kind, human prince whose country is being pulverized by the sea witch. Combining the strength of humans and the intelligence of the selkies, the pair unites to save their people.
But when the storm is over will Dylan choose to stay with Callan, or return to the sea and leave him behind…forever?

(274 pages)

Despite my love for fairytale retellings, and my penchant for devouring Shea's books, it's taken me a while to get through this series. It's probably because I've read so many retellings by this point that I've gotten pretty picky, and I got frustrated by a couple books feeling a bit too predictable and cheesy. Whatever the reason, I seem to have mostly gotten over it: I downloaded a bunch of these books onto my phone with Kindle Unlimited and have been gobbling them up like potato chips all week.

Why am I reviewing The Little Selkie, out of all of the books in this series? Simple: because I love Dylan. I love how foreign she feels throughout the book, the way it's impossible to ever forget that she's a magical, inhuman sea being. She has no frame of reference for human behaviour, and even when she's been on land for a while she still holds onto this unique essence. I loved the way she genuinely didn't care about fancy clothes, and completely ignored the catty remarks from the mean girls at court. Her obsession with food is endearing, and I chuckled every time Callan held his hand out to her and she frantically searched her surroundings for a present to put into it. Overall, she's just a really fun character to follow around.

As for Callan, he's a pretty bog-standard fairytale prince. I liked his sense of humour, and the way he delights in Dylan exactly the way she is. It was cute watching him trick her into wardrobe fittings by feeding her a steady stream of new human foods which kept her utterly distracted. I didn't get much out of the scenes told from his point of view, though, and to be honest I kind of felt like most of his feelings and decisions were just whatever was best from a plot perspective.

The other two main characters are Callan's best friends: a flamboyant member of the nobility and his very beleaguered assistant. I already returned the book so I can't look up their names, which is a shame because they were a really fun part of the story. They're not-so-secretly in love with each other, but class differences make the assistant hesitant to admit her feelings for him. So he spends the entire story making over-dramatic romantic gestures, which are invariably met with an admonishment about his irresponsible spending habits. They make a cute couple and I hope I get to see more of them in another book.

All in all, it's a cute book which definitely has its flaws but is a fun read nonetheless. I'm a sucker for Little Mermaid retellings, and this one is no exception. What is your favourite retelling of The Little Mermaid?