Synopses & Reviews
Hailey and Claire are spending their last summer together when they discover something at the bottom of the murky pool at the Capri Beach Club. There, among the seaweed and jellyfish that a storm has blown in from the ocean, is a mysterious and beautiful creature with a sharp tongue and a broken heart a mermaid named Aquamarine.
On the edge of growing up, during a summer that is the hottest on record, Hailey and Claire learn that life can take an unpredictable course, that friendship is forever, and that magic can be found in the most unexpected places.
Review
"Teens enjoy many of Hoffman's adult novels, which often focus on young women. Her first book for middle-graders is about 12-year-old girls, Hailey and Claire, who...find a beautiful mermaid, Aquamarine, huddled in the beach pool. They send her home to her ocean sisters, but first they help her find love and adventure with the handsome guy who works in the snack bar....What's great here is Aquamarine. She's no romantic forsaken damsel: she's a rude, rebellious teenager, as needy as those who help her. In this small, spacious book, Hoffman's spare words reveal the magic and the gritty realism in daily life, 'somewhere between laughter and a wave breaking.'" Hazel Rochman, Booklist
Review
"Believers in magic know that it rarely arrives in the form you might expect. They also know, as Alice Hoffman does, that if magic is the only hope in a desperate situation, it will arrive; you just have to be on the lookout. Claire and Hailey, 12-year-old next-door neighbors and best friends, are already well acquainted with loss. Claire's parents died in a car crash; Hailey's family has been sundered by divorce. At the end of a white-hot summer, Claire and the grandparents she lives with will move to Florida, away from the house so close to Hailey's that the two friends can wave to each other through their open kitchen windows. They are spending a nearly wordless August at the deserted, run-down Capri Beach Club, itself scheduled to be razed at summer's end, wishing with all their might that the calendar will somehow get stuck and September will never come.
"Enter Aquamarine, a spoiled, disagreeable mermaid who is swept into the Capri's pool in a howling storm. A mermaid? Why not? Is that any more magical than a purple snail or a moon jellyfish or a best friend? Aquamarine, as it turns out, is lovesick for Raymond, the handsome, bookish lifeguard who is the only other inhabitant of the Capri in its final days. She refuses to go back to the ocean, even though she will perish if she doesn't. The mermaid's predicament offers the girls one last illuminating adventure and helps them find the courage to step forward into their separate futures. This spare, haunting novella with dreamy blue illustrations is Hoffman's 14th book, her second for young readers. For them, it is a lovely introduction to the author's storytelling genius and matter-of-fact, lyrical style. The plot is familiar; Steven Spielberg's E.T. (and its many literary precursors) comes to mind, but Hoffman makes the tale her own. Adult readers who have fallen under her spell won't want to miss Aquamarine either." Jan Benzel, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
ALICE HOFFMAN is the author of Property Of; The Drowning Season; Angel Landing; White Horses; Fortunes Daughter; Illumination Night; At Risk; Seventh Heaven; Turtle Moon; Second Nature; Practical Magic; Here on Earth; Local Girls; and The River King. She lives near Boston.