Seven Tears Into the Sea by Terri Farley

When she was ten, Gwen encountered a strange boy on the beach near her Grandmother’s inn. The boy whispered that he’d return in seven years. Seven years later, she returns to take care of her sick grandmother, has her life saved by a seal, and meets a mysterious boy she feels a connection to.

I like selkie stories, and this is a fairly traditional one, but I don’t think it quite works. There’s a setup for both Gwen (big city girl in “old timey” town) and Jesse (sea vs. land) to work through adjusting to a world different from the one they’re respectively used to, but neither seems to really have any problems with a culture clash, or any difficulty adjusting to changes. It also plays out very much as a traditional selkie tale, with no real deviations. Strangely, I think that in a more traditional setting this wouldn’t have bothered me, but set in modern America, I just expected something new and different to be done with the template.

It’s not a bad read by any means, it’s not a bad read by any means, it’s just also not a particularly original or refreshing one either.