Skin of the Sea Review: Gorgeous Myth, Rushed Heart

The Little Mermaid Retelling That Finally Centers West African Myth

I have wanted a mermaid book that wasn’t secretly just Denmark in a shell bra for years, and Natasha Bowen handed me one that pulls from Mami Wata folklore, orisa mythology, and the horror of the transatlantic slave trade instead. Simidele is a mami wata whose entire job is collecting the souls of people who die at sea and guiding them home. Then a living boy gets thrown overboard a slave ship, she saves him instead of letting him drown like she’s supposed to, and she breaks a law that could unmake every mami wata in existence. That premise alone had me sitting up straight before chapter two was over.

Simi, Kola, and a Refreshing Lack of Romantic Chaos

Simi is the kind of protagonist I want more of in YA fantasy: driven by duty and guilt in equal measure, quietly rebellious, and never once defined only by who she’s falling for. Kola, the boy she saves, becomes her human anchor on a quest that sends them across land and sea to find the Supreme Creator, and their dynamic builds on trust and shared history rather than instalove fireworks. I went in braced for a love triangle between Simi and her fellow mami wata Yinka, because that’s the genre’s laziest reflex, and I was genuinely relieved when the book chose sisterhood over rivalry instead. Yinka and Simi’s friendship is one of the book’s quiet strengths, and it’s the kind of found-family warmth that makes the emotional stakes land even when the romance itself stays fairly restrained.

Where the Mythology Outpaces the Page Count

The worldbuilding is the whole draw here, and it mostly earns the hype. Orisa, Yumboes, a river dragon called the Ninki Nanka, shapeshifting hyenas — Bowen is clearly working from a deep well of research and love for this material, and it shows in every description of the water and the coastline. My honest issue is pacing. This is a slim book asked to carry an enormous amount of mythology, a quest structure, a slavery narrative, and a slow-building romance all at once, and something has to give. Characters bond and trust each other after suspiciously little time together, and a few of the most fascinating creatures get a page or two before the plot yanks everyone along to the next set piece. I wanted to live in this world longer than the book let me.

What Actually Works

None of that pacing frustration erases what Bowen pulls off. This is a book that treats the slave trade with real weight instead of using it as set dressing, and it does that inside a fantasy adventure that still feels propulsive and hopeful rather than punishing to read. Simi’s arc, from rule-follower to a girl willing to risk everything for one boy’s life, is genuinely moving, and the ending sets up the sequel, Soul of the Deep, in a way that made me want it immediately. This is a debut, and it reads like one: ambitious, a little overstuffed, absolutely worth your time anyway.