Blog Tour Stop: Undertow by Kiri R. Newton- Review

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About the Author:

Its weird right but as an author I could tell you about my characters inside out and yet when people ask me to talk about myself I go all quiet. Anyways, here I go.

I am a child of ‘91 born in Jandowae, a tiny little town out past Dalby. When I was five my parents decided to pack everything up and move to Tonga in the South Pacific after Dad visited there and mum fell in love with the place after reading a book about it. So I grew up in a third world country, fluent in a second language by the time I was eight and lived amongst the locals who I was friends with.

When I was thirteen my father passed away and due to the fact that the government refused to pay my mum a pension over there like they did my father, we were forced to move back to Australia.

As for my writing career, I started writing progressively longer short stories in Grade 5 where one teacher noted on my report card that ‘I had unique ideas and an unusual talent’. By Grade 7 I had completed my first novel a post-apocalyptic fiction where cats are the highest life form and live basically as we do and follows the lives of a litter of cats, the characters based on a litter of cats belonging to my neighbour. I continued writing different things from horsey stories to Phantom of the Opera fan-fiction right through my teenage years, nothing serious, mostly just a lot of scribbling.

In Grade 12 I realized that if I was going to be serious about being a writer I needed to finish stories, not just have a lot of random scribbles to my name. So forgoing all my assignments I finished my second book called Dynamite which is an Australian tale about a racehorse. Two years later I went on holidays to Fiji, came home and three months later Undertow was completed. In the middle there I wrote a Tolkien-esque fantasy epic called The Dark Assassin with my now ex-boyfriend. The year after that I completed Hazardous, which will be my next published title.

My Thoughts:

I've got to say... A story about a vampire-like mermaid (that does not drink blood) is a new one for me. I pretty sure it would be new to you, my readers, too.

In my opinion, the very, very beginning  of this book immediately caught my attention.

Zoe is on a plane, and then that horrible thing that absolutely nobody wants to happen on a plane, happens. The situation after that put Zoe in a life or death situation, and her savior caught on to the life part of it. Years later, after she is rescued, her savior has come calling for her help to fix something that has been happening (even in real-life our world): oil-rig and other companies polluting the world's waters and therefore damaging the sea life-- including the mermaids-- irreparably. Many of the mermaids have died from some sort of illness that the mermaids have no clue what is, so now they need Zoe's help to put a stop to the water pollution caused by the humans.

Like I said, the beginning immediately caught my attention, and so did the summary. I mean, mermaids? Who doesn't love a good mermaid story, especially when they're called sea sirens in the summary?

After that beginning, though, I got very confused. At some points in the first few chapters, the story became somewhat convoluted to where I was just plain confuzzled (confused + puzzled; don't knock my slang.) I had no clue as to what was going on, and then I kind of figured it out on my own from reading on in the book and context clues.

What made me really mad (not at the author, just the characters) is the whole romance thing between Josiah and Zoe. I routed for Daniel the whole time, and that did not bode well Josiah (especially since I was sort of made at him for letting her leave at the beginning). And then not to mention that other one guy... (read the book to find out who I'm talking about).

At a point I found myself absolutely not liking Josiah, and then the end with him and Zoe supposedly having to be together? Pffhhh. If I could, I would go into the book and tell them my two-cents. Errr.

Any who, I thought this book was okay, other than me being confused through a lot of it... And the whole Josiah-being-a-jerk-loserwad.

I give this book a solid three hearts, as its score.