Review #70 - September Girls by Bennett Madison

September Girls is essentially a male coming of age book about a boy who travels to a town for the summer when his mother has left the family. In this beach town there are all these attractive, blonde girls and they're everywhere. And they're all flirty and obsessed with our main character.

This is a fairly odd book because it is about mermaids and romance, but 12 year olds I warn you while you rush to Amazon to read this, this book is fairly adult. The demographic is not that of the demographic of Emily Windsnap. I was suprised at the contrast between the set up of this mermaid book and these adult (sexual) themes. It does add something very new to the mermaid genre but does adding new dimensions to a genre make you a great author? I think these adult themes of sex and loss are really interesting in what could easily be a book for young teens. By adding this element of fantasy it makes all the contemporary elements have more weight due to the juxtaposition.

The male characters in this book were fairly annoying but the female ones were very interesting. They're flawed and that was really great to read. The girls are very similar physically and it can give you the impression that they are the same. However, their temperaments are all extremely different and I really enjoyed that contrast between how the reader thinks of them very much as a collective and how they are all different once you get to know them. When the girls get the narrative it's very interesting because they use the fourth (is it called fourth) person which again, makes you think of them as one.

I found it odd because even though this book contains great female characters it felt very much like a book for boys. The coming of age element didn't really make me feel like I could relate and that felt like it was because of my genre.

I would recommend this if:
You want a male coming of age book
A book about mermaids for older teens
A slightly odd romance

I gave this three stars