Seal Girl by Magda Knight-a review
ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date April 29, 2013
Ondine is the new girl at school, and with her flaming red hair, Irish accent and deformed hands, she’s used to being the odd girl out. She tells herself that she simply doesn’t care. But like the mythical selkies who swim in the cold Atlantic, Ondine swims to championships in high school pools, where she feels free. She chooses to be a free spirit, but when someone close starts to play dirty, it seems she runs out of choices …
Seal Girl is another contemporary take on a classical myth. Meet more brave teens tackling real-life issues in the entire Mythology High series. Knight’s next stories, “Geek Girl,” and “Glee Girl,” will be released in June and July. Jammie Kern’s stories, “Ryann in the Sky,” and “Taylor on Lockdown,” are available now.
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REVIEW: I found this to be a cute yet odd story. So this story introduces an interesting tidbit about Selkies in which stem from Celtic folklore as mermaids but not as they take the form of seals in water but humans on land. There is a crazy catch to all this as these Selkies shed their seal skins to go to land which can cause people to steal their skins to keep them trapped on land. Sounds like a messed up joke if you ask me.
You meet Ondine in detention in which she meets Mitch who is a football jock who she believes is a man who wouldn’t give her the time of day. Upon meeting Ondine, you do feel for her as she describes herself as awkward with having type IV syndactyly which give her oddly shaped hands and being a swimmer; her classmates all call her Flipper with her odd hands and affinity in the water. Sadly, there are even girls who do pick on her because of her differences. Despite all that though it seems as though Ondine actually does make a friend with Candy and Mitch actually seems to have a crush on her.
I find it very sudden on how Mitch comes on to Ondine as strongly as he does but then again this was a very short story along with how well Ondine and Candy do click at Mitch’s party.
I wanted to like this story but in all honesty it just felt a little incomplete and a tad flat for me. I really did like the whole Selkie concept in the story but I felt like they could have gone into it just a little more in the story. The characters are likeable but I wanted just a little more from them. The end left me hanging leaving me wondering what happened next, did she and Mitch get together or not. Don’t get me wrong there was still a lot to like from the book. Overall this was an okay story.
Reviewed by Xtina
Copy supplied by the author
Magda Knight tells lies for money, and if she likes you and you like her she’ll do it for free.
She is, of course, referring to the writing of fiction. She’d never tell a lie. If you *like* lies, she has written a number of them in her dystopian steampunk YA novel, JABBERWACK. You should check it out.
Believing in a topsy-turvy world full of fractured truths, Magda Knight writes primarily speculative YA, steampunk, Lovecraftian mythos, fantasy, sci-fi and horror. That’s quite a long list, and has probably just made the word ‘primarily’ a bit redundant.
Magda Knight is a feminist, and all these things she writes probably have a bit of feminism in them.
She is the co-founder and editor of the rather amazing and quite popular alternative feminist website Mookychick.co.uk. The sum of the whole is stronger than its parts. You can contact her about Mookychick and all manner of things at editor@mookychick.co.uk.
When Magda grows up she would like to be either a sword or a bear.
