The mermaid, the witch, and the sea

by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Recommended if you love: pirates, sea creatures, queer love stories.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s The Mermaid, The Witch, and the Sea is a fun queer pirate love story full of magic and sea creatures. Amidst the classic pirate story lines of people at sea and ship take overs, the book also explores themes of gender and colonialism. The world building is clear and concise; there’s a few kingdoms at play in the story and their relationship to each other is easy to follow. The focus is less on their histories and more on moving the story along to a few key plot twists that keep you engaged as a reader. If you’re not a romantic, the love story might leave you needing a bit more convincing of why they feel so assured in their feelings, but it mostly the love story avoids the saccharine and cliche and serves as a plot line that runs concurrently with power plays and politics in their world.

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