Should I let my teenage daughter read Urban Mermaid?

It all depends. How old is your teenage daughter?

Seriously, the adolescent years cover a range of levels with regard to maturity and sophistication. To quote the review of Urban Mermaid by Katie O’Sullivan[1],

“This is not your daughter’s mermaid novel.”

Urban Mermaid does not contain vast undersea cities, bands of warring mermen battling sea dragons[2], or characters with royal titles. This last bit will cause many a young adolescent to immediately lose interest.

Instead, the story deals with grown-up[3] themes of newly found love and overcoming obstacles in order to be together. There are a number of bedroom scenes but there is nothing too graphic or explicit[4].

Indeed, the best approach may be to use a bit of reverse psychology and let them read Urban Mermaid. The first bedroom scene is nine long chapters into the story. If they can remain interested through all the grown-up stuff, then they might be mature enough to read further.

[1] Katie O’Sullivan has excellent  mer-stories for Young Adults in her ongoing Son of a Mermaid series.

[2] A fine example of this type of mermaid story is the Merminia series by Emm Cole.

[3] I am reticent to use the term ‘Adult’ – even with a small ‘a’ – because of the connotations which immediately come to mind.

[4] If you’re looking for hot and messy mermaid stories, I heartily recommend The Fairytail Saga by S.K. Munt.