Daughters of the Sea: May

Author: Kathryn Lasky
Publisher: Scholastic
Release Date: March 1, 2011
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Summary from Amazon:
May feels her life drying up. The sea calls to her, but her parents forbid her from swimming. She longs for books, but her mother finds her passion for learning strange. She yearns for independence, but a persistent suitor, Rudd, wants to tame her spirited ways. Yet after her fifteenth birthday, the urge to break free becomes overpowering and May makes a life-changing discovery. She does not belong on land where girls are meant to be obedient. She is a mermaid-a creature of the sea.

For the first time, May learns what freedom feels like-the thrill of exploring both the vast ocean and the previously forbidden books. She even catches the eye of Hugh, an astronomy student who, unlike the townspeople, finds May anything but strange. But not everyone is pleased with May's transformation. Rudd decides that if can't have May, no one will. He knows how to destroy her happiness and goes to drastic measures to ensure that May loses everything: her freedom and the only boy she's ever loved.

 I found it very difficult to "get into" the book and to care about the characters. The bad characters, like May's mother and Rudd, are confusing in their badness. They seem like normal people until there's a flash of hatred or evil. The good characters like May and Hugh are slightly better at being consistent, but they also seem pretty flat and undeveloped. The story itself is a good one, but because of my lack of interest and confusion over the characters, I just couldn't get emotionally connected to the story.