I don’t remember exactly how I first heard about The Oyster Thief by Sonia Faruqi but I thought it might be a book that I would appreciate given its interest in raising concern for the conservation of the ocean and the animals living in it. But this book was not what I expected.
Coralline is a young mermaid engaged to the merman of her dreams, but on the night of her engagement party an oil spill wreaks havoc on her village and her little brother falls gravely ill. Blaming herself for his condition, Coralline decides to leave home and embark on a journey in search of the Elixir, a legendary substance said to have magical healing properties, and save his life; in this quest, she is accompanied by her best friend Pavonis, a whale shark, Nacre, a snail, and Altair, a seahorse.
Izar, a human man, is at the height of his career at Ocean Dominion, his father’s company, and on the brink of making a discovery that will change the game for both of them; an invention that will likely make them both very rich. However, it will also kill merpeople and eventually annihilate the entire race. But when Izar is supposed to supervise a routine oil drill aboard the Dominion Drill I, an attempt on his life causes a spill that poisons and kills thousands of animals in the ocean, among them Naiadum, Coralline’s little brother.
Izar spends the entire book (and I literally mean the entire book) surviving one assassination attempt after another. And it is in one of those attempts that he is thrown overboard into the ocean and left to drown. Instead he becomes a merman and is lying unconscious in the middle of the ocean, neither sinking to the ocean floor (as merpeople do) nor floating to the surface (as humans do), when Coralline and her companions find him.
I have to say I had a really hard time getting into this book. In fact, I struggled with it. And had I not been reading it for one of my book clubs, I probably wouldn’t have finished it. In fact, I am certain I wouldn’t have. Like I said, this book is not what I expected. Ultimately, this book is primarily focused on the (budding) romance between Coralline and Izar throughout their journey in search of the elixir, but even that did not deliver.
Before I talk any more about the romance, I will talk about Coralline and Izar. Coralline was a hard heroine to like. In fact, I didn’t like her, and I didn’t connect with her at all. Most of the time she right out exasperated me. Izar wasn’t any better, and I found it really hard to read his chapters at the beginning of the book. He bored me. I liked Pavonis, Nacre, and Altair a little bit more, but their part in the story is so negligible that they might as well not been in it. It’s true that none of them would have survived the depths of the ocean had they gone into the darkness with Coralline and Izar to look for the elixir, but then how did the two of them survive? I think leaving all three of them behind did them a disservice.
Now, swimming into the depths of the ocean to find the elixir. That was the most disappointing part of the book for me. The whole story builds up to this moment and it was over in four pages? They swam into the darkness for like a minute, found the elixir, “connected” in some deep level, fell in love, and swam right back out all in one chapter? Really? I guess the key words here are for me because this is obviously not the climax of the story. No, that would be the collision between land and water; between humans and merpeople and how humans pollute and destroy the ocean. It is here that the book tries to raise its voice against the dangers and damage that humans cause to the ocean and its ecosystem. The problem is, I found it all a bit anticlimactic that Castor was defeated as easily as taking out its battery. I mean, yes, we all know things don’t work without a battery but still. It all seemed a rather weak solution for something that has been building up since the first page of the book.
Now, the romance. It was disappointing truthfully. From the beginning, we know that Coralline is not going to marry Ecklon (in a way, I felt bad for him because he’s a good guy) but it’s obvious and predictable. But the way Coralline and Izar fall in love… We don’t see it happen. I wasn’t against this couple (though I can’t say I was rooting for them either). But I was hoping that if I saw them fall in love, I would like them better. That didn’t happen. When they come back from the depths of the ocean with the elixir in tow they’re already in love. Pause.
I found the whole murder storyline a little unrealistic. Preposterous even. I don’t want to use that word, but I have to. Coralline’s entire character arc in becoming a healer and apothecary was a thorn on my side. I knew that she was never going to give the elixir to her little brother and that ultimately it would be she who drank it. When she and Izar come back from the Elixir Expedition and he sees her with Ecklon, he leaves and goes back to land. Okay. But when he thinks about her when he’s back at Ocean Dominion, he wonders what she is doing… is she doing whatever it is mermaids do before their weddings? How could he have forgotten that she was being accused of murder!? He was with her when it happened! But he never thinks of it, and this was very unrealistic. Or incredibly obtuse. Did it not click? Coralline also has moments like these, where she says something that makes you realize that she doesn’t connect one and two and make basic deductions. That annoyed me.
Coralline is absolved of both her crimes, of course, and becomes a master apothecary. She saves her brother, and Rhodomela saves her. I think Coralline’s character arc had potential, and had the author shown us how each of Coralline’s trials in her personal journey make her grow up I would have believed her becoming a master apothecary more readily. But as is, I didn’t believe it. She was over her fear of blood in like a second, and then she makes a stunning medical discovery. Again, really? End of pause.
The last part of the book focuses primarily on getting Coralline and Izar together. And predictably, Castor shoots Coralline, she’s dying, Izar and the elixir save her life, both of them defeat Castor, and then it all culminates with “a languorous kiss”. I was expecting that, and that’s what happened. But what I was not expecting was Rhodomela dying. Frankly, I didn’t think Rhodomela deserved to die (but, then again, she was the third wheel…). I was kind of hoping she would get her happy ending too though, Abalone be damned. But Trochid didn’t seem to have it in him to leave his wife, and thus, didn’t deserve Rhodomela (and frankly this would be another book). Rhodomela, in my opinion, deserved better. She was hated upon a lot, especially by Abalone and that mirrored over to Coralline and Rosette’s relationship as well. There’s a lot of girl-hating and rivalries between the female characters in this book, all because of a boy. It took Rhodomela dying for Abalone to like her. Yes, death changes people but I did not think this was what Rhodomela deserved in the end.
I also expected Ecklon to marry Rosette in the end, and that happened too.
Finally, I will say that I didn’t like the narrator’s voice in this book’s audiobook format. Her reading of several passages in higher pitches and intonations than others was very jarring. I know why she does it, but she doesn’t do it well. Also, I was never able to connect with the author’s writing.
I gave this book an I Didn’t Like It rating.
Disclaimer: This review expresses my opinion regarding The Oyster Thief and it is based entirely on my personal experience reading this book.
