Review: The Summer of Chasing Mermaids by Sarah Ockler

★★★★½
source: e-galley from Simon & Schuster
publication: June 2, 2015, Simon Pulse

Synopsis: Elyse d'Abreau was on the verge of stardom with her twin sister, Natalie, when a boating accident took her voice and sent Elyse fleeing her home of Tobago to live with her aunt and cousin in Atargatis Cove, Oregon. There she meets Christian Kane, infamous playboy and world-class charmer, who invites her to be first mate on his boat—which Elyse had been using as her hideout before he came back. He and his little brother, Sebastian, listen to Elyse more than anyone has since she lost her voice, and her relationship with Christian challenges her to get her voice back in whatever way she can.

Review: Okay, y'all, I'm gonna lay it down for you: this is Sarah Ockler's best book.

I don't know how I feel about that cover, frankly, because it doesn't do the book justice. Yes, this is a summer romance, but it is so much more than that. I appreciate that the cover did no whitewashing and that somehow it seems to reflect Elyse and Christian's silent communication, but when all is said and done it still looks like just another summer romance destined for the Pop Culture or Teen Romance section of your local Barnes & Noble.

And this book is way too important for that.

I've been a fan of Sarah Ockler for years; she is an auto-buy for me, but somehow I've never really read one of her books and thought, "This book is why I read contemporary." Twenty Boy Summer made me cry, sure, but I haven't picked it up since I finished reading it 3.5 years ago. Fixing Delilah was always my favorite of her books, but I still only gave it 4 stars. Bittersweet was the weakest for me, The Book of Broken Hearts didn't leave an impression, and #scandal was a solid comedic effort (not to sell it short, I laughed a lot reading that book, and swooned pretty hard too). 

The writing in The Summer of Chasing Mermaids so far surpasses any of the others that I found myself wondering where Ockler had been hiding it for so long. Poetic, lyrical, metaphorical, figurative: Lauren Oliver meets Deb Caletti meets freaking F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Yeah, I went there.

Elyse is a strong female character, but not in the Strong Female Character kind of way. She's vulnerable and weak and we find her in the midst of her greatest tragedy: losing her ability to sing. Not being able to sing has led Elyse to recede into herself, to stop being the Elyse she was before, to stop using her inner voice as well as the outer voice she's lost. The sea is part of her and the sea broke her, and she's left trying to reconcile those two facts in a way that will let her become whole again.

Aside from the writing, what I loved most about this book was the fact that a boy does not come along to make her whole again. Her relationship with him, it says right there in the book, isn't what saves her; it's what challenges her to save herself. She and she alone realizes that she's trapped herself by not letting go of the accident, by not even admitting to herself that she will never speak again. To paraphrase Queen Elsa, only once she lets it go can she rise like the break of dawn.

Er, you know. From the sea. Where she's been drowning.

The mythology in this book is so well crafted and well-researched and almost makes the book feel like magical realism, like maybe the Queen of Mermaids is real and she has taken Elyse's voice. Maybe she will take Elyse, too, and our heroine will become Christian's siren and it will all be very tragic and beautiful. Thankfully, no, it's just mythology, but I love that it made me think that way.

What makes this novel important? Not only does it sympathize with and empower people who have been silenced in general, but it addresses gender roles specifically. Elyse faces a lot of misogyny from powerful men about her being first mate on Christian's boat, but she does it anyway. Christian himself, bless him, makes a lovely joke about hitting his head on the way out of the time machine and not realizing he was back in the 1850s. His brother, Sebastian, loves mermaids and wants to walk in the mermaid festival, but those same powerful men tell him he can't because he's a boy. The patriarchy is good for no one, you guys. [ALSO, I've been saying for years that "What Would Tami Taylor Do?" should be everyone's life motto, so thank you, Sarah, for Vanessa's mom.]

It addresses parental expectations and the very YA themes of living within the limits your parents have given you, even when they're telling you to grow up and be independent. It's that uncertain middle area when your life is still ultimately decided by the people who raised you but you're starting to break free of the mold they've created for you. Christian doesn't agree with or even like his parents, but at the same time he understands and respects them. His father tells him to prove himself and then takes away all the resources he needs to do so. It's one of the most direct approaches to this theme that I've ever read, but it works because it feels so real. A signature of being a young adult these days is that you're expected to leave home by a certain age but a college education doesn't guarantee you a job anymore, and it's nearly impossible to live on your own, and so many parents think that it's a reasonable expectation because they did it way back when. "Climb that mountain," the world demands, as it locks our climbing equipment behind a door whose key is at the top of the mountain.

My only issue with the book is that it may have dragged on a bit just before the regatta race; it felt like Elyse's hesitations and questions were starting to be so repeated that she herself should have been asking why she hadn't done something about it. I have felt this way about Ockler's books before, though, and it's really not a big deal in comparison to how much I loved this book overall.

Elyse might not have a singing voice anymore, but her poetry and her bond with the sea and her resilience were like music, a song that will speak to something in everyone.

"When one dream burns to ash, you don't crumble beneath it. You get on your hands and knees, and you sift through those ashes until you find the very last ember, the very last spark.
Then you breathe.
You fucking breathe."

God. I'm just gonna leave that there.