Mermaid Park - Dark Publications

Location: Home » body art - tattoo » General » Mermaid Park

Similar Items:

•	The Secret of Mermaid Island
•	Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist (Emily Windsnap)
•	The Perfect Boy
•	Waking Up to Boys
•	Teenage Mermaid

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Sixteen-year-old Amy rush doesnt expect much from her summer at the Jersey shore, until she stumbles on Mermaid park, an old tourist spot where girls dress in fabulous costumes and put on underwater shows. working at the park changes Amys life in more ways than she could have imagined. she finds romance, a newfound self-confidence, and discovers breathtaking revelations about long-buried family secrets.

Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Delightful! August 9, 2005
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

I bought this book for my teenage neice and decided to read it myself before giving it to her. I found it well written and fun reading. Any teenager will find themselves somewhere in this book. It expresses very well the range of teenage emotions and feelings. Although I am far from being a teenager I had to read it since I spent five summers working at the seashore as a teenager. The book just took me right back in time. It's not only a good summer read but I could just see someone cuddled up in a comfortable chair on a cold day reliving their summer experiences. It's really a very delightful book. I'll be giving it to the teens in my life for Birthdays and Christmas. I hope Beth Mayall decides to write some more. She has talent.

5 out of 5 stars

Great book! August 30, 2005
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

What a wonderful book. It was an easy read, but the characters were well developed. Beth really captured the pain and delight of adolescence. Amy, the main character, tries to deal with growing up in a house a dysfunctional family. Most of her troubles center around her verbally abusive stepfather. A trip to the beach allows her to gain some personal space and discover herself without the roadblocks she faces at home. On this road to self discovery, she finds more than she bargained for.

I hope there is a sequel!

3 out of 5 stars

A summer in "Wildwood, NJ" December 11, 2005
6 out of 15 found this review helpful

I picked up Mermaid Park because it claims to be set at the Jersey shore. It tells of 16-year-old Amy, trying to survive a family that consists of an immature, petty, and verbally abusive stepfather, a younger sister who is learning to emulate him, and a mother who seems oddly detached, as if she is drifting along in an air-headed haze, not noticing her family disintegrating around her. Amy's father lives in another city, too involved in his hobbies to connect with his daughters.

A weekend trip to the Jersey shore motel of an old family friend ends in a fight and the insistance that Amy stay behind, as her mother & stepfather place all blame for the family's troubles on her. Amy moves into the motel apartment with owner Lynne, with the understanding that she will stay out of trouble and get a job. She finds work at the Mermaid Park of the title, an old-fashioned amusement where girls in sequinned tails perform in a huge water tank. Eventually her job leads to the uncovering of old family secrets and lies.

It's a decent book for the most part, capturing the anger & frustration of a girl being unfairly blamed as the troublemaker in an already troubled family, touching on the loss she feels at being distanced from her sister and father, and at losing the former closeness shared with her divorced mother when she re-marries a cruel man.

Scattered inconsistancies jump out at a reader deeply familiar with the Wildwood, NJ setting, however: Amy's family arrives in Wildwood via a "tired whitewashed two-lane bridge" with a rattling wooden deck. In reality, the main road into Wildwood crosses a tall, arching four-lane bridge constructed of concrete and asphalt; even the smaller two-lane bridges north and south of the city, along the ocean drive, are sturdy paved structures, and have been for years.

Amy, a strong, competetive swimmer, goes swimming in the ocean, entering near a lifeguard stand and then swimming without turning down the beach. In reality, as soon as she got too far from the lifeguard stand, she would have been whistled back. Swimmers are not allowed to take off for mile-long swims.

No mention is made of Wildwood's incredibly wide beaches, so wide that some locations have trams to ferry beachgoers across the quarter-to-half-mile of sand to the water's edge.

Lynne's motel swimming pool has a sign stating "No lifeguard on duty", something most assuredly not permitted in New Jersey.

Lynne seems to run the motel alone, yet no mention is made of the difficulties of doing so; she has an amazing amount of spare time, and there isn't even a throwaway line about the rigors of cleaning dozens of motel rooms daily, of late linen deliveries, of mechanical breakdowns or any of the myriad problems that face a small independant motel owner.

North Wildwood purports to end at "First Street" and a dark, rural highway bordered by heavy woods. In reality, the city ends at Spruce Avenue and Anglesea Drive, a curving road lined by a huge stone jetty, Hereford Inlet, condos, and a commercial district, followed by Route 147 lined by the wetlands that leads to the Garden State Parkway.

The lighthouse is described as a small conical structure at the end of a jetty. In reality, it is a square-towered Victorian-style house set near the inlet by the State Police marine unit station.

Only scant mention is made of the teeming boardwalk and vibrant nightlife in Wildwood; Amy never visits, nor even mentions, the huge amusement piers and waterparks that dominate the skyline of Wildwood.

The "natives" refer to the backbay area as "swamps"; however, no one in South Jersey calls these saltwater marshes "swamps"-- they use the terms wetlands, marshes, and backbay.

The event that most raises eyebrows is when a manatee swims up the drainpipe of the mermaid park water tank, peeking out at Amy and a friend as they take a forbidden, middle-of-the-night swim. A manatee. In New Jersey. Yes, it's supposed to emphasize the mermaid theme of the book, but belief just can't be suspended that far. Not only is this manatee incredibly far north, but it also leaves the saltwater ocean to find its way to a freshwater creek, and from there to the drainpipe, and then to the watertank-- a watertank that is fed by an extremely cold, freshwater spring, lending to the unbelievability of the scene.

The story is nice enough, though ultimately it leaves a bothersome amount of questions unanswered. How was Amy and her mother's relationship affected by the 16-year lie? How did Amy's father feel when told she wasn't his biological daughter, and that he had been paying child support for a child not his? How did her stepfather react to finding out his wife had been keeping such a major secret? Did they ever tell Amy's biological grandfather that his son had fathered a child before his death? What was the relationship between Amy & her sister like after Amy exposed her sister's fake penpal and they learned they have different fathers?

The whole subplot of Amy's co-worker with the autistic brother was odd, too-- too detailed to be merely a throw-away plot device of getting the lead mermaid out of the way so Amy could save the day & perform as Queen in the last show of the season, yet the girls' friendship was too stilted and stand-offish to be real. What did Amy learn from the relationship, that autistic doesn't equal retarded, that people can be cruel about disabilities? That loving someone means giving up a job you enjoy to rush off & solve his problems when he hits a difficult patch?

And the family friend who owns the motel, Lynne, was strange without explanation: willing to see her old, old friend, Amy's mother, in a bad marriage, to see the daughters suffer because of it, and quick to jump on the blame-Amy bandwagon. She seemed strangely unmoved when Amy's sister ran away, unable to put up with the stepfather's verbal abuse: her dear friend's daughters were suffering, and she seemed above it all, some sort of blind trust that Amy's mother had made the right choice to marry a cruel man since the true love of her life was dead anyway. She never stepped in when the stepfather was making vicious remarks in her home-- it's not interfering to say "This is my home and you may not talk that way in it." She even joined in with lies to keep Amy from finding out about her mother's past as a mermaid park swimmer and her love affair with her biological father, saying that North Wildwood was a dangerous ghetto & should be avoided, to keep Amy away from the park.

Lies were a recurring theme in the story: Amy's mother lied to her first husband about loving him & being pregnant with his child, she lied by omission to her dead lover's parents that their son had fathered a child before his death, Amy's sister lies about having a cancer-stricken penpal, Amy lies about her summer job, Lynne lies about North Wildwood and Amy's mother's past.

A little effort to address the issues raised above would have resulted in a much improved book. Perhaps a sequel will deal with the fallout of the secrets exposed.

5 out of 5 stars

Lively, engaging adventure for readers of all ages December 22, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

At first I was concerned about the geographical inconsistencies stated by another reviewer. Wildwood's bridge is actually a four-lane affair instead of two? The veracity of every book on my shelf was called into question. Can anything be real? Does this mean there's no Narnia? No Swiss Family Robinson? No -- gulp -- Winnie the Pooh?

Then I realized it's just a novel - this kind of gaffe would be notable in a AAA guide, but in a fiction story? Please.

"Mermaid Park" is a fast and pleasant read, full of fun characters and delightful twists. The lead character, Amy, is an excellent model for girls her age, struggling with romance, family issues, and her sense of self - and learning along the way that she's not perfect. Her time with the mermaids goes from fantasy to reality and back again, providing a fun journey for the reader while it propels the story forward. Girls in their tween to teen years will enjoy Amy's story and learn some valuable lessons. Readers of all ages will have a fun time visiting Mermaid Park.

2 out of 5 stars

Weeki Washout December 14, 2005
4 out of 8 found this review helpful

I like novels with a mermaid theme and I haven't read anything for a while, so I thought I'd give this book a shot. The story is about sixteen year old Amy Rush who is on vacation in New Jersey with her somewhat backbiting family, who finds a mermaid park and ends up working there and later on, starring in the show. The story itself wasn't too badly written and the author certainly shows promise, but there are many things that put me off recommending this book.

Throughout this novel, it felt rather unpleasantly like I was being led through someone else's teenage fantasy and what's more, it felt like a 'Mills and Boon' fantasy. I groaned every time I read the description of Amy's latest love interest, about his gorgeous eyelashes and- well, I'm sure I don't need to go any further.

That's not all though. As other reviewers have commented, there were certain scenes that made little sense and at times even stretched beyond the boundaries of belief. For instance, have you ever seen the mermaids at Weeki Wachee, where they breathe through those air hoses during their act? Well the protagonist was watching a similar show and didn't notice these hoses. Oh no. Not until someone told her about them. So this supposedly champion swimmer spends the following few nights looking for these hoses at the bottom of the tank without success, displaying an unlikely ignorance of knowing how to dive without her ears hurting (this is after we've seen her picking up pennies from the bottom of a swiming pool earlier in the book). But it was as I feared; the hose-hunt was merely a McGuffin intended to lead us into yet another romantic encounter with the aformentioned hunk of the novel. Ouch. And if this wasn't bad enough, a few pages later, she's swapping spit with *another* local boy named Curt (who she's known for all of ten minutes).
Anyway, a series of bizzare events leads to Amy starring in this mermaid show, namely the former mermaid having to back out at the last minute because her autistic brother beat up his room mate who he didn't recognise, despite having lived with him for two weeks. Rather convenient, especially considering that that many autistic people have photographic memories. And when the revelation came at the end concerning Amy's parentage, I lost all interest in the book. Luckily, there were only a few dozen pages left, so it was no real loss.

Powered by Associate-O-Matic

T-shirts, Posters

Pentagram T-shirts, bags, etc...

Gothic Posters