Title: Updrift

Author: Errin Stevens

Rating: 4/5

Synopsis:

Since her father died, Kate Sweeting’s home life has been in the pits, her well-being on life support. Her future looks desolate until she and her mother, Cara, make another plan: abandon their shriveled existence for more promising prospects on the coast, where Cara can play small-town librarian-bachelorette and Kate can figure out what’s up with that secretive Blake family from the beach.

Everyone is eerily captivated with Kate and her mother, and Cara is the first to figure out why when the man of her dreams arrives all dripping and devoted and closed-mouthed about what he intends. Kate is willing to go along with their subterfuge for a while, but eventually makes a charge for the water to learn what her mother is hiding. Gabe Blake is there waiting for her…and so is someone considerably less friendly. By the time Kate navigates her way home, everything will have changed for her—what she feels, what she wants, and what she’ll risk to be with the man she loves.

Updrift is a beautifully crafted romance novel that involves fantasy and a wider scope of events.  One of my favorite things about this romance was that it wasn’t just merely a romance; instead, it was a fantasy adventure as well as a mystery, and that added tantalizing substance to the story.

It is not often that I read a book that captures such a beautiful perspective of a child, and this novel achieved that perspective from the beginning.  Errin Stevens also made Kate’s growth appear so effortless, and I felt like a mother not wanting to let go of my growing child as the novel went on; however, I loved watching her come into confidence as she became a young woman and I even felt proud.  Through love she was able to grow, and I admired the love and care she had for her mother.  That mother/daughter bond is very important, and I enjoyed seeing it so clearly presented in this contemporary literature.  Stevens knows how to create a story that is not one – dimensional, while also satisfying that need for romance that many readers hold high.  Her writing was believable but outlandish at the same time, and I couldn’t help but believe every word that she wrote.  Watching a young woman come into love and find out secrets that change the way she views those around her was breath taking, and so relatable to contemporary life.

Now, I have read multiple mermaid themed novels, but this one stood out to me more than anything else I have read.  This is because Stevens averted from all stereotypes surrounding mermaid based literature, and wrote her own rules.  I didn’t feel like I had read this story before and I didn’t think that it was just a redo of an exhausted story line.  Her characters were vibrant and flawed, just as human as we are, and even now I have a hard time admitting that they were fictional.  Stevens knows how to make myth real, and I am desperately waiting for Fall 2016 to come so that I can grab the sequel and continue this beautiful story.  Updrift is a novel for multiple age groups, and I feel better off emotionally and mentally now that I have read it.  That is not something I can say about a lot of literature, and Stevens is a treasure to be found in today’s cluttered literary market.
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