The jewel-toned jacket art and ink-wash illustrations sprinkled throughout add girlish charm to an imaginative story. Coincidences drive the plot-Shona has recently studied illegal mermaid-human marriages in school a creepy lightkeeper drops a key that unlocks a treasure chest containing a file spelling out the entire backstory. Newcomer Kessler anchors her fantasy in the nitty-gritty of adolescence: Emily bests a bully who comes close to guessing her secret, and she finds a best friend in Shona, a mermaid she meets during her nightly swims. A young girl learns she’s half mermaid and plunges into a scheme to reunite. At night, she sneaks from the boat where she lives with her mother to explore the undersea world, and unravel the mystery of her genetics-which involves her long-missing, never-discussed father. by Liz Kessler and Sarah Gibb Book 1 of the Emily Windsnap Series. She hops out of the water before she can be branded a freak, but she's hooked. Before Emily's first kick turn she feels her legs melding into a tail. Despite never having had a lesson, she takes to the water like, well, a fish. Pre-teen girls will likely bite at this novel's tempting bait, offered in the opening lines: "Can you keep a secret? Everybody has secrets, of course, but mine's different." Emily Windsnap, who narrates, is half-mermaid, as she discovers, inconveniently, in her seventh-grade swim class.
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