Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2012
304 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
Fierce, seductive mermaid Syrenka falls in love with Ezra, a young naturalist. When she abandons her life underwater for a chance at happiness on land, she is unaware that this decision comes with horrific and deadly consequences. Almost one hundred forty years later, seventeen-year-old Hester meets a mysterious stranger named Ezra and feels overwhelmingly, inexplicably drawn to him. For generations, love has resulted in death for the women in her family. Is it an undiagnosed genetic defect ... or a curse? With Ezra's help, Hester investigates her family's strange, sad history. The answers she seeks are waiting in the graveyard, the crypt, and at the bottom of the ocean - but powerful forces will do anything to keep her from uncovering her connection to Syrenka and to the tragedy of so long ago.
"Dilemmas and choices are complex, providing much food for thought. Not so much romance as suspense, this stylish fantasy mesmerizes." - Kirkus Reviews
"[One of] of the most compelling (and gory) mermaid offerings....Elizabeth Fama's Monstrous Beauty...is by far the most sophisticated but also the most mature in its treatment of the consuming loves and violent deaths wrought by mer-folk." Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal
"The alternating narrative device can make for stutters in the momentum, and there are stretches ... where the plot trudges. The horror and humanity are adroitly handled, however, and Fama never lapses into cliché." - Publishers Weekly
This information about Monstrous Beauty was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Elizabeth Fama is the author of Overboard, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, which appeared on five state lists. She lives with her family in Chicago, Illinois.
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