Song of the Selkies (Sarah Pennington)

But Deanadair (what they call God) has another plan.

When it’s Ceana’s turn to be betrothed, all Atirse’s current needs have been met, and she is offered a chance to make her own match. There is one last unallied neighbor: the magical and reclusive selkies, who are due for treaty talks anyway. Ceana suggests to her father that this is a way she could serve Atirse after all. But when the king suggests this match to handsome King Fionntan of the selkies, the response is anger, offense, and an immediate termination of further talks, leaving only the newly signed base treaty intact.

Ceana is confused and terrified that she may have made trouble for the kingdom she loves. To find a way to make amends with the selkies, she must disguise herself as a selkie and travel to their underwater home of Emain Ablach. Her only goal is to discover how to set things right, but her plans are complicated by her sudden feelings for the selkie king. Her plan was to serve Atirse, not fall for the man who already rejected her. When he learns who she really is, he’ll reject her for sure.

Won’t he?

This beautiful retelling of The Little Mermaid with a Celtic twist is, in my judgement, an improvement on the original story. I hated the sad ending of the original Danish tale, and many modern versions weren’t much better- they often got around the premise of the story by making the heroine an airhead. In Ceana, Sarah Pennington has created a heroine who is flawed but intelligent, wise and full of good intentions.

I usually don’t read romance, but I was intrigued by the premise of this book and was looking for other books to sell alongside mine at events (because some people just really want romance). The problem is that my standards for “clean romance” are fairly high, and most books can’t meet them. So when Sarah Pennington and I were selling books together at an event, I suggested she swap me a copy of Song of the Selkies for a copy of Gemini’s Key.  No review was offered or requested. I opened the book that night, figuring that I would check it out- and then couldn’t put it down. Two days later I was done with the over 400 page book, and had to explain to my family why I was suddenly so tired.

I especially loved how she depicted Fionntan- also not perfect, but honorable, capable and very conscious of his duty to his people. Even better was how he was not depicted. I was never asked to imagine him in ways that would insult my morals, which I found so refreshing.

I didn’t love everything about it. There were some  things that were described that might be better depicted, especially in the first two chapters. After further conversation with the author, it sounds like some (but not all) of those are due to the author’s style of stand alone books with relationships to each other. Also, I understand that the book needed to be kept a reasonable length or it would be too expensive to print. I’ve been selling Song of The Selkies along my own books this holiday season and am so pleased with it! I even bought a copy to give to my sister as a gift. I hope you like it as much as I did!

Genre: Clean Christian Fantasy Romance

Content Labels:

Heat: Two very chaste kisses at the end is the sum total of the heat in the book. The rest of the romance is pursued through friendship.

Profanity: none

Violence: there is violence that happens in the story, but the reader hears about it rather than seeing it depicted.

Age recommendation: I would recommend this for girls 12 and up. If their parent or guardian is comfortable with them reading books on the topic of romance at all, this book is a great choice. The author also told me that this book has, in fact, the most romance of her stories, so if you like this one you can safely browse her other stories and find similar themes.

This book is available on Amazon