Aquamarine

Today I read the "magical tale" Aquamarine by the New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman. Before reading this book I expected it to be a little corny and kiddish. I felt this way after remembering seeing previews for the movie that was based off of this book. But, surprisingly, I enjoyed this book. It was a simple, short and sweet story, but it had a good plot and great aspects to it. One thing I liked about this story was how close the two main characters Hailey and Claire were and how they would spend every last moment with eachother, just knowing that it wouldn't be long till Claire had to move away to Florida at the end of the summer. I also liked the fact that this story could be considered a sort of "fairy tale" in a way because it involved a cute boy and beautiful girl (well mermaid in this case) falling in love, a sad but at the same time a happy ending, a character overcoming her fear in the end, and also magic so to say involving the mermaid. In fact, when I read the "About the Author" section at the end of the book it said that Hoffman loved fairy tales as a child, especially from the Brothers Grimm to the folk stories she heard from her Russian grandmother, which just so happens to be what we have been reading this semester. It even said that "Many of the books Alice has written as an adult contain doses of fairy-tale magic. She is known for writing stories that weave the wondrous and unexpected with the commonplace." And I believe that is exactly what she did in Aquamarine.