The Little Selkie by K.M. Shea
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m a big fan of KM Shea and her timeless fairytale series. Each book re tells one of the classic fairytales but has a little bit of a twist. They always have great female characters and this one is no exception.

This time the story is based on the little mermaid, however rather than a mermaid, who are apparently silly and vain, we have a selkie, Dylan. A selkie is a magical creature which has the form of a seal (or in Dylan’s case a Sea lion) in water but which can become human on land by shedding their pelt. Their role is to use water magic to protect the seas and rescue silly humans who go sailing in storms and get in trouble.

When Dylan goes chasing after the sea witch who has been terrorising their territories she gets captured and her pelt stolen meaning she is unable to return to the sea. Afraid the sea witch will force her to use her magic she asks a passing enchantress to seal her voice. When the bandits holding her take her to the palace she has to figure out what their plan is, recover her pelt and get her voice and power back to defeat the witch and return to the sea.

I did enjoy this book but I felt it was one of the weaker books in the series. The story seemed a little uneven. Parts such as the start seemed rushed whereas others were overly long. There were a few characters who seemed to pop up out of nowhere and disappear after a few pages with little explanation.

I did however really like Dylan as a character. I loved the fact that she really didn’t care about how she looked or whether people were talking about her. She let people dress her in whatever and only really reacted to comments if they hurt those she cared about. Some of her reactions to the bullying popular girls were priceless. She was a little reckless and didn’t back down from a fight. The best bits for me though were where she was obsessing about food. I think she spent most of the story thinking about, talking about or eating food.

Her interactions with the Prince made me laugh a lot and there were a lot of funny incidents however I think it was probably meant for a younger audience than me as some of it was a little silly.

Overall therefore I enjoyed it but it wasn’t as good as some of the others in the series such as Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. Definitely a great book for young adults and I think it should be suitable for young readers.