I had so many high hopes for Coral by Sara Ella and I feel like I need to say that before I continue with my review. I did end up finishing this book but it was a constant struggle to do so. This is a definitely a book you have to read from start to finish to get the full story. For me the ending did redeem itself slightly after discovering the MAJOR plot twist but I still think the whole story just fell flat.
I was expecting a dark and twisty take on The Little Mermaid like the tale Hans Christian Andersen built and although I saw the connections Ella drew on, it just didn’t have the same feel to it. This was a contemporary novel masquerading as a fairy tale and I just don’t think it worked.
I am glad that I was able to read this book and I want to thank Netgalley and the publishers at Thomas Nelson for giving me this opportunity to read an early copy.
The writing was excellent and the amount of planning that must have gone into this book is impressive. It was a complex story but unfortunately for me I couldn’t appreciate it fully. The very structure confused me to the point where I couldn’t enjoy the story because I was too busy worrying I didn’t know who was who or what was going on. It took a little too much thinking for me to understand it and I like my reads to be a little more straight forward than this one was.
I also didn’t like all the suicide talk and how much it played into the story. It’s heavily incorporated into the theme of the novel and it is very emotionally charged. There will be times where Ella describes the acts and consequences of suicide so just be mindful of those triggers before digging into Coral. I also think the use of the term ‘Red Tide’ was strange and the whole phrasing just seemed off. I also disliked the use of ‘disease’ when they talked about having emotions and how that makes a person weak. The idea that only women could be affected by that was an off putting idea that was hard to wrap my head around. I know it went with the story but for me I just thought it was weird phrasing that is too easily misconstrued.
I do think she did an amazing job on the romance between her main character (MC) and Merrick. I especially loved Merrick and he definitely was a Prince in my opinion. I also like her clever use of colour symbolism to create moods, tones and description. I found it a poetically different way to describe and evoke emotions and she executed it with perfection. The associations and connections she made were brilliant and reasonably justified.
In all I can only give this book 3 stars because despite the romance and the writing, this plot just didn’t hit the mark in terms of readability and concept. It was too hard to follow and I think it strayed too far from its inspiration of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen.