When Emily Windsnap and her parents arrive at their new home in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, she hopes she can fit in with the mermaids there better than she did with her classmates at Brightport High. Half-human, half-mermaid herself, she wants to make an impression on her new friends, but instead awakens a deadly kraken, angers King Neptune and endangers them all. Neptune hopes to put the kraken back to work sinking human ships; his first target carries Emily’s long-time enemy, Mandy Rushton. Occasionally, Mandy interrupts Emily’s story; the change of narrator is indicated by a new typeface, and a jarring shift to present tense. Neither Emily nor Mandy are developed enough to account for their change of heart at the end, but the action moves briskly, with a satisfying amount of underwater description and much attention to varied tail styles. The imaginative premise will intrigue readers and the suspense will be enough to keep them reading to the happy ending and perhaps send them back to Emily’s first story, The Tail of Emily Windsnap (2004). (Fiction. 9-12)
