Badoe's sharp and engaging prose unfolds the story with spryness, deftly navigating readers through heady social issues. Each must confront class stereotypes and re-examine the meaning of family. But when the temptations of her new life-brand-name clothes and handsome doctors-prove hard to resist, a misunderstanding cuts a rift between Gloria and Christine. Gloria adjusts easily, studies hard and explores her newfound freedom. Her father is quick to assent, with one condition: In lieu of payment, Christine must take responsibility for Gloria's future and adopt her as a sister. Gloria is offered a job in a distant city with Christine, a doctor who needs househelp. Her one consolation, her older sister Effie, has discovered boys and all but disappeared. She failed most of her school exams, her long-unemployed father has lost himself to religion and her mother is ravaged by a mysterious sickness. Ghanaian teenager Gloria Bampo has hit a rough patch. A sequel appears probable.Įntertaining for readers riding the wave of mermaid fantasies. The narrative shifts between Emma's first-person and Galen's third-person perspectives, a mixture that doesn’t quite jell.
The author juxtaposes her brisk comedy against more serious, but still mild suspense that tends to fade into the background. Emma overcomes her shock when she learns that Galen is a sea creature but must then learn that she, too, has paranormal powers in the sea. Both appealing characters, they find themselves irresistibly attracted to each other, although they often argue. Emma literally crashes into Syrena royal Galen, with whom she will become romantically entangled, and then not, in standard oh-no-will-they-ever-get-together style. Banks works out some of the kinks in the humor as the book proceeds, and readers should get a kick out of it. After the realistically bloody death, the book doesn’t wait long to plunge into comedy, complete with sitcom-style dialogue, that falls awkwardly flat at first. Heroine Emma begins the book by failing to save her best friend from a shark attack.
However, the word “mermaid” just isn’t allowed call them “Syrena,” instead. Another twist on the mermaid theme comes with a hefty dose of romance and a heavier dollop of comedy in this debut.
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