Monstrous Beauty
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4.2 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences. Almost one hundred forty years later, seventeen-year-old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly, inexplicably drawn to him. For generations, love has resulted in death for the women in her family. Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect . . . or a curse? With Ezra's help, Hester investigates her family's strange, sad history. The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard, the crypt, and at the bottom of the ocean - but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Seventeen-year-old Hester Goodwin has already decided to be celibate: "Love. Sex. Loss. It was safest to avert the whole sequence." Her mind is on the deaths in her family new mothers withering within days of childbirth, generation after generation. She is determined not to add to this macabre pattern, but she can't stop wondering about it. When an apparent coincidence brings an old murder-suicide to her attention, Hester soon finds it's connected with her family history, and the deeper she delves, the eerier the echoes with her own life become. In a chilling and original story, Fama (Overboard) alternates chapters between Hester and Syrenka, an ancient mermaid with a penchant for human men. Syrenka is no Ariel to gain human lungs, she eats a pair but her plight tugs at the same heartstrings as that of another monster, Frankenstein's. The alternating narrative device can make for stutters in the momentum, and there are stretches (notably when genealogy is rehearsed) where the plot trudges. The horror and humanity are adroitly handled, however, and Fama never lapses into clich . Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Engulfed by Monstrous Beauty
For reasons beyond my control, this book seemed to take forever for me to read. I don’t even understand why because every time I picked this book up, I couldn’t put it down. Regardless, I absolutely devoured this book and was just blown away by the writing. I had read the novella “Men Who Wish to Drown” on my iBooks before starting Monstrous Beauty and it drew me in.
This book meets all your paranormal needs. Mermaids, check. Ghosts, check. Curses, check. Revenge, check. The story that Elizabeth Fama tells is one that fluidly moves along. There is rich backstory into the lives of Syrenka, Ezra and the people from the 1800s, and also Hester’s discovery of the past. Two stories are told side by side, and it’s easy for the reader to make the parallels between them.
Hester is a strong female lead, extremely independent until she encounters Ezra. It is as if once she finds him, all her logic disappears. What makes it work though, is that later on, she realizes that she threw all her logic to the wind. Hester is a straight laced type of girl, and by the end of the book, you begin questioning her intentions because she gets a bit hysterical.
The plot thickens even more though when Hester is taken to an underwater world. I won’t give any spoilers away, but the details and characters there are disgusting. While she makes an escape, she finally realizes that she is the key to make things right in the world.
I give this book a 5/5 stars. The story never dulled, weaves together several different paranormal creatures, provides strong primary characters, and while there is a love story, it transcends even deeper. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story with mermaids and ghosts. I don’t think I’ll ever find a mermaid book that will top this one.