Keeper by Kathi Appelt

Book Type: Novel
Author: Kathi Appelt
Pages: 399

Summary(goodreads.com):
To ten-year-old Keeper the moon is her chance to fix all that has gone wrong ... and so much has gone wrong. But she knows who can make things right again: Maggie Marie, her mermaid mother, who swam away when Keeper was just three. A blue moon calls the mermaids to gather at the sandbar, and that's exactly where Keeper is headed - in a small boat. In the middle of the night, with only her dog, BD (Best Dog), and seagull named Captain. When the riptide pulls at the boat, tugging her away from the shore and deep into the rough waters of the Gulf of Mexico, panic sets in and the fairy tales that lured her out there go tumbling into the waves. Maybe the blue moon won't sparkle with mermaids and maybe - Oh, no ... "Maybe" is just too difficult to bear.

My Review:
When I first starting reading this book, I noticed it was quite wordy, and I thought I was going to have to stop reading it because the story would not begin. However, once the story picked up, I couldn't put it down! When you first begin the story, you don't know where the characters are from or what their stories are and there is definetly an element of mystery, but at one point, everything picks up and then you want to know the rest of the characters lives and what's going to happen to Keeper. I must say though, this book was listed as a mermaid book, so I was expecting more elements of fantasy and mermaids, but there were only a few glimpses of merfolk. Even though this book was not full of fantasy, I still recommend reading it, because this book really ties beautifully together at the end and I really enjoyed it. I give this book (***--****)  between 3 and 4 stars.
-Sirenita The Selkie