Of Poseidon

I had such high hopes for this book. This is the second book in a couple of days that disappointed me due to the love story. Of Poseidon is about a girl named Emma who has the Gift of Poseidon which means that she can talk to underwater mammals in order to feed her people. Which is awkward because Emma hates seafood.

The story started off kind of boring so I skimmed the first few pages describing Emma's encounter with a boy and his sister who happen to have the same purple eyes that she does while on vacation with her best friend who happens to be black (yay!) but dies in the cruel and vicious attack of a shark that Emma later describes as not hungry but playing a game with her (how sadistic). The guy, Galen, and his sister, Rayna try to help Emma out but fails. The shark only stops when Emma screams for it to stop while underwater, not realizing that her best friend has already bled to death.

In the first moments of this novel, I mentally wept for Emma. But then the book took a turn. Suddenly, a few months later I'm in a flipped mermaids-not-vampires version of Twilight. Galen is Edward in personality but Bella in that he's the new student and Emma tries to change her schedule to get away from him because he reminds her of her deceased best friend. However, instead of Emma fainting from classroom blood testing, she hits her head and passes out during a argument with Galen.

This next part was so unrealistic to me. Emma's mother starts yelling at her demanding to know who Galen is and talking about how the principal saw how "intimate" they were with each other and how Galen "never left her side or let go of her hand". What kind of principal notices things like that then mentions them to her mother. And why was the principal observing all this when she should've been helping Emma, or getting the nurse. That's who should've been there. Not her. Emma's mother bothered me from the start, like she really pissed me off. Usually I have a talent of guessing plots and I was pretty sure that her mother was Galen's brother's long lost-fiance who disappeared after they had a fight in a human mine that blew up. What I couldn't understand though, was Emma had this early memory of nearly drowning in a pond and the fish saved her life and her mother of all people didn't believe her. She didn't even bother wondering if her daughter was going to have a fin or have any of traits from her Syrenan heritage. Or I guess she was just stupid as what and expected Emma to tell her. But after that denial of the fish, I can understand why Emma didn't talk to her. That woman is hard to talk to. In ways, she's worse than Bella's dad.

However, she's not the only one who has issues to me. Galen has issues. I guess his mission originally made sense to me. He came to Emma's vacation spot to see if she was one of them and quickly got a bunch of yes' and a bunch of no's and obviously confused, he followed her home and enrolled in her school. Quickly, all the girls want him (is that what every woman/girl wants because this is something common in movies and YA. The guy who every girl wants, happens to want the protagonist which she, of course, finds hard to believe due to her self-esteem issues) and he wants Emma.

At some point I started skimming over the book because the plot got so cliche. Emma and Galen want each other, she doesn't believe he wants her though, his best friend kisses her to make Galen's sister, his "mate" jealous and Galen nearly kills him. Blah, blah, blah. I don't like Galen. Emma seems to have forgotten Chloe...in the end, the novel ends with a cliffhanger. Galen finally realizes the obvious: Emma's mother is the Poseidon heir, Nalia who was supposed to marry his brother but disappeared. And confronts her about it.

Sigh, this book could have been soooo much. But really, it just turned out as a disappointment. I'm wondering if every time I try to read YA or magical/paranormal books, the thing that ruins them for me is the boring romance.