Shearwater ~ D.S. Murphy (Ocean Depths #1)
★★★☆☆
I received this digital copy from Urban Epics via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book in any way.
Actual rating: 3.5
Obligatory Summary
Clara Clark (whose name makes her sound like a comic book character) is a 15 year old who self describes herself like this:
I have a dark sense of humor that few people get, and a passive-aggressive sarcasm that comes from having an overbearing mother and a fear of any kind of conflict.
TL;DR she is ~so unique~
So Clara's overbearing mother (and her dad) die in a car accident one day as she's singing in a concert and she is sent to live with her Irish grandfather that she didn't know existed in a small town in Ireland. Once there, she tries to discover the mysteries her mother left behind, while also changing in ways she never imagined (like getting hot overnight and reading people's emotions).
She also meets a rude bad boy wiz kid and a blond stalker. She reasonably falls for the stalker.
But then strange things start happening in Ireland and it's up to Clara to save her new home!
The Writing and Worldbuilding
This book had a very interesting idea but a less than satisfactory execution. Honestly, the biggest problem was that it didn't seem to be...edited or proofread or beta read or anything. It felt like I was reading the first draft. There were inconsistencies and redundancies and random name changes. At one point, a character was speaking about themself in third person as if they weren't there. Also...it was painfully obvious that D.S. Murphy doesn't know basic dialogue formatting standards. He had innumerable instances of "...," he nodded. and quotation marks after monologue paragraphs, completely confusing who was speaking. These are dialogue rules I learned in the 6th grade. It's unforgivable to not know them.
The worldbuilding was also very expositiony, sometimes straight up technical info dumps that felt unrealistic and stilted. There were also way too many plotlines, and it felt rushed and slow at the same time because of that. The magic sometimes tried to use scientific explanations and then just went with magical justifications and that felt very inconsistent and annoying.
I did like the mystery though. And I found myself wanting to know how it ended and how it all came together. And some of the funnier lines were chuckle-worthy.
The Characters
Ariel: Clara is honestly so annoying. She claims to be someone who needs answers and won't forget anything important but constantly forgets super important things whenever merboi Sebastian looks at her. It was extremely tropey and cliche and made me feel super distant from her. She literally thinks about how attractive and cool people are like a week after her whole life gets uprooted. She's extremely status conscious but hates girls who act exactly like her (like mean girl Roisin) and that makes her someone I just don't particularly like.
She also has to (spoiler alert though it honestly doesn't amount to anything) "give up" singing 76% through the book despite not singing for three months before then (aka the majority of the book).
Sebastian: He's part mermaid part Wikipedia. Not much of a personality and not much of a sex appeal tbh. And I just couldn't stop seeing Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid. "You've got to pucker your lips like dis!"
Ethan: I couldn't find this guy attractive because he has the same name as my brother, but otherwise, I actually quite liked him. He's a douchebag but at least he has a personality.
The Squad: Jackie was nice but boring, Derry was fun (and gay so there's that), but Patricia was a straight up b a lot of the time and that made her really unlikable. I thought she was going to be the mean girl but then it was Raisin Bran instead.
Conclusion
I liked it enough. It has the skeleton of a good story but lacked any unique writing or characters and suffered from technical problems. With a good editor, it could be something great.
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