[Review] Breakwater - Catherine Jones Payne

Titel: Breakwater

Series: ?

Author/Autor: Catherine Jones Payne

Publisher/Verlag: Fathom Ink Press

First Published/Erstveröffentlichung: 30.05.2017
Format: Kindle

Synopsis/Inhalt: GoodReads

Review: 3*

TBR/Leseliste: x

Diese Rezension gibt es leider nur auf englisch.

 A red tide is rising.

As the daughter of one of the mer-king’s trusted advisors, seventeen-year-old Jade has great responsibilities. When her fiancé murders a naiad, plunging the underwater city of Thessalonike into uproar, tensions surge between the mer and the naiads. Jade learns too late that the choices she makes ripple further than she'd ever imagined. And as she fights against the tide of anger in a city that lives for scandal, she discovers danger lurking in every canal, imperiling her family and shattering the ocean's fragile peace.

Can the city's divisions be mended before the upwelling of hate rips apart everything Jade loves?

-->GoodReads

[Overview]

I found this book while browsing on NetGalley and I thought the synopsis sounded quite interesting so I requested it. I hadn't read anything about or involving mermaids before, so I was really excited to start this book. It's about a young mermaid who is part of the high society and end up in the middle of a social uprising.

[My Opinion]

While this book is set in an underwater world it is still very similar to our world. Besides the fact that people, aka mer and naiads, swim rather than walk and there are dolphins instead of dogs, this story could be set over instead of underwater. This really surprised me. As I said, I haven't read anything similar yet, but I still kinda expected something else, not that I knew what to expect. 

All in all I liked Catherines writing style and what little worldbulding was going on.

As for the plot, there is nothing much I feel I have to say about it. It was quite interesting, but by no means anything new. It did however deal with some issues that are very current and I liked the way they were brought into the story.

The first thing I really liked was, that the girls in this city are strongly encouraged and expected to start an apprenticeship within a year of leaving school. While this seems quite normal, it did stand out, especially in combination with the fact, that both boys and girls are alo expected to get married or at least engaged in the same timespan. While I don't understand the need for everyone to be married of so soon I liked it in this story because it fit in with the world Catherine built here, and as it is equally important for boys and girls, it also shows that in terms of gender roles this world is a lot farther ahead than ours. Both boys and girls are supposed to try and elevate their satus by marrying 'up' and it is normal, that the partner with the 'better' career is the one who focuses on it, while the other partner focuses more on the homelife, although both still persue their career.

But while gender doesn't seem so important, class and race are. This story deals with heavy prejudice, as our heroine is amongst those of highest social rank, but she is /falls in love with someone from a significantly lower class and makes friends with people from a subjugated race. Her dealing with those issues and coming to terms with her own position in all this is what makes this book so interesting. I can't really say whether this is a good or bad portrayal of these issues, but it is a honest one. The heroine struggles with the realization that what she has always just accepted isn't right, and it isn't easy with a clear right or wrong outcome. While she quickly knew what the right thing was, she still occasionally stopped to reconsider and entertained the idea that, maybe, the way things were wasn't so bad. This might not be what we know of a lot of ya-fantasy-heroines, but it seems more real for it.

[Overall]

I really did enjoy this book, but, even with all the important issues, it seemed somewhat forgettable. I do hope there will be a sequel but I still only rated this book 3 stars.