I received this book for free from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
My Salty Mary by Jodi Meadows, Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton Series: Mary #3
Published by HarperTeen on 2024 August 20
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Pages: 291
Format: E-Arc
Source: Edelweiss
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Perfect for fans of The Princess Bride and A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, New York Times bestselling authors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows are back with a fantastical, romantical, and piratical historical fantasy remix that marries the story of The Little Mermaid with the life and times of infamous lady pirate Mary Read.
Don't call this mermaid "little"—call her "captain," unless you want to walk the plank.
Mary is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn't love her back. Which is inconvenient. Since she's a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she'll—poof!—turn into sea-foam.
But instead, Mary finds herself pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins them. But Mary isn't willing to just sing the yo-ho-hos. She wants the pirate life, all of it, and she's ready to make a splash . . . by becoming captain. But when Blackbeard dies suddenly, Mary has a chance to become so much more: Pirate King . . . or Queen. She won't let anyone stop her—not Blackbeard's cute son, not her best friend from back under the sea who's having a bit too much fun with his new legs, and certainly not everyone who says she can't be a pirate just because she's a girl.
She may not be the best man for the job, but she'll definitely prove that she's worth her salt.
After falling in love with My Lady Jane, there’s just no way that I’d let My Salty Mary pass my grabby hands. It has Little Mermaid in it, piracy, and all that crazy stuff that I love so what more can I ask for? Right off the bat, we’re immediately introduced to our plucky heroine, Mary, who already had survived her transformation from mermaid to human and was trying her best to make the Prince, the one she assumed was her true love, fall in love with her. Unfortunately, exploding into a sea foam instead of getting married was more probable for our heroine for the Prince had already fallen in love with another woman.
Heartbroken and depressed, Mary willingly drowned (which is ironic) herself just to end everything. But alas, she even failed at dying for she found herself getting saved by a pirate ship. And this is where our story really picked up. With lots of shades thrown at the manga-turned-anime, One Piece, Mary became a competent pirate a year later after her horrendous attempt at suicide. While suicide is a dark and heavy theme, the authors made it somewhat lighter in this book with the story highly centering on Mary becoming her own person. Regardless of how we view piracy, what we can appreciate in My Salty Mary is that our heroine forged her own destiny and relied on her strengths to conquer the patriarchal world of piracy.
My Salty Mary maybe an easy, lighthearted, and somewhat familiar (esp. for those who are One Piece fans like me) read but it surely is an eye opener and a moving and a more acceptable rendition of our beloved yet tragic story of Little Mermaid. It does away with damsels-in-distress while teaching us a lesson that there’s more to life than wallowing in eternal sadness and breaking into a sea foam. The bunch of other characters were also lovable and adorable even if some of them feel like they’re just there as a comedic relief. But hey, I think the authors really intended to write this book like all the others in the series with lots of crazy and quirky stuff.
Another thing that endeared this book to me was that despite that this a romantic fairy tale retelling, the romance in My Salty Mary was just in the background, slowly simmering without interrupting story’s main mission, which is showing us how Mary dominated a game where only men were expected to play and win.
Kudos to the authors for crafting something hilarious and witty but uplifts women from all walks of life at its very core.