Sea Change by Aimee Friedman

Sea Change:
Sixteen-year-old Miranda Merchant is great at science...and not so great with boys. After major drama with her (now ex) boyfriend, she's happy to be spending the summer on small, mysterious Selkie Island, helping her mother sort out her late grandmother's estate.

On the lush, beautiful island, Miranda finds new friends and a community with a mystical history, presenting her with facts her logical, scientific mind can't make sense of. She also meets Leo, who challenges everything she thought she knew about boys, romance...and reality.

Is Leo hiding something? Or is he something that she never could have imagined?


After reading this story by Aimee Friedman, I can understand why this book was nominated for "Best Lip Lock" in the Teen Read Awards hosted by Indigo Canada. The kisses Miranda and Leo share are passionate and knee weakening. Miranda comes to Selkie Island to help her mother organize and get ready to sell the summer home Miranda has never visited because of her mother's estranged relationship with Miranda's recently deceased grandmother. When she arrives on the island, her logical mind quickly dismisses the local lore and history. But things start to change when she meets Leo, a boy who lives on the island year round, not just visiting for the summers. Late one night she finds a book in her grandmother's study that describes the legends of mermen and their lineage on Selkie Island, and some of the things she reads sound a little like Leo. In her determination to discover the truth about Leo, she falls deeper and deeper in love with him, until her quest for knowledge is left behind and all she cares about is being with him. On their last night together before Miranda is to return to New York, she is caught in a riptide and almost drowns. She could swear that something had grabbed her legs and pulled her down, half unconscious when Leo rescues her, Miranda sees something in the water and she truly believes that Leo is different from anyone she knows.

The book fell a little short for me because it felt incomplete, many of the questions you find yourself asking throughout the book don't get answers, and what little does get answered is rushed without proper conclusion. While I truly enjoyed the story and the characters, watching Miranda change into a more light-hearted person from her original introverted personality was wonderful to see, but in the end we are left with the mystery of who Leo truly is and what is to become of their relationship.