Captivate by Vanessa Garden

TL;DR not the mermaid story I was hoping for

TBR #840, added May 8, 2014

finished 1/17/17

Captivate was a solid two-stars for most of the book -- I wasn't enjoying it, but I was at least curious enough to keep reading once the plot got going. (I nearly DNFed this before Miranda even got kidnapped, to be honest, but it got marginally better after that.) I was pretty "meh, it's alright" until the climax started, and then I quickly lost interest in what was going on.

There was enough potential that I held out hope until about the 70% mark, at which point I realized the plot was steadily progressing to a cop-out ending. The climax felt like an arranged order of events (rather than a natural progression) that focused on the wrong problems just to create more ~tension~ and drag out the story.

I was kind of hoping this story would have something about mermaids, but that concept was under-utilized in this book, and I'm certainly not going to go chasing after it in subsequent books. Obviously it doesn't have as much weight to the plot as I was hoping. It's such a good concept, too -- if there was a book focusing on the stuff before Miranda's story, I'd actually read it. I'm much more interested in the mermaids in this story than her or Marko. Or their relationship.

I didn't feel like the two of them had any chemistry, so this was Stockholm Syndrome 100%. And she even admitted that! There wasn't nearly enough evidence to prove why they should like each other, especially considering Miranda was being held against her will and Marko caught her lying more than once. This whole ~compulsion~ thing from the light-crystals only made it worse, because that's confirming that she has no other reason to like him.

All the worldbuilding / aspects of Marin (their city-state) were shaky, actually. None of the science-y stuff is explained in any detail that makes it realistic -- like, how are they surviving the pressure of being so far underwater with no side effects? How is this big city surviving if Marko is the only person trading with the surface, and only once a month at that? How have they not tracked down Damir and killed him already? Is there an actual scientific reason the women are infertile, or is the "lack of a moon" really the cause we're going with here? Because that's not how that works.

Also, if Marin was having such an issue with reproduction, shouldn't they have kidnapped more women? It's hinted in the first few chapters that Miranda isn't the first girl they've kidnapped, but shouldn't they be worrying about more than just the king having a child? I mean, I guess they've got enough "immigration" to sustain their population, but obviously all these women in the city are sad they can't have children. It sounds like they have enough science for artificial means of reproduction for the rest of the city as well.

Side note: there are two instances of attempted sexual assault literally for the ~dramatics~ of the scene and it really irked me. The premise of this story could have used that so much more tactfully, but no, it was just used to add temporary stakes. The only repercussions it has was Miranda getting flak for one of the attackers' punishment, which is a horrible thing to normalize.

I think the book could have used some more rounds of revisions to re-focus the goals and the stakes of the story. There were a little too many things going on -- including the subplot with Aiden that was basically just thrown in for the sad factor -- and most of these subplots got pushed aside in order to raise the romantic stakes. Removing the love triangle and making Damir an actual threat vs a scary bad guy that shows up for literally one scene would've been nice.

TL;DR there were some good concepts in this book, but they were under-utilized in my opinion and way in the shadow of Miranda and Marko's Stockholm relationship, which killed the climax's potential and my willingness to continue with the series.