Ripple by Mandy Hubbard

Title: Ripple
Author: Mandy Hubbard
Pages:  260
Genre:  YA/ Paranormal
Source: Purchased

Lexi is cursed with a dark secret. The water calls to her, draws her in, forces her to sing her deadly song to unsuspecting victims. If she succumbs, she kills. If she doesn't, the pain is unbearable. To keep herself and those she cares about safe, she shuts herself off, refusing to make friends or fall in love-again. Because the last time she fell in love with a boy, he ended up dead.

Then Lexi finds herself torn. Against her better judgement, she's opening up again, falling in love with someone new when she knows she shouldn't. But when she's offered the chance to finally live a normal life, she learns that the price she must pay to be free or her curse is giving him up. [via GoodReads]

Lexi is cursed to kill anyone near her when she's swimming in her true form as a siren.  Oh yea, did you think this was a mermaid book too?  Nope, and I promise you'll figure that out a few pages into the book so I'm not giving anything away.  After accidentally killing her first love, Lexi refuses to swim in the ocean, instead she's exiled herself to swim every night in a tiny lake far away from home and from anyone finding her - causing their accidental murder.  Not only has she exiled herself to swim so far from home but she has also alienated herself from her friends and even her grandmother. 

As an outcast, she's found a daily routine - she goes to school, spends the day ignoring her old friends or being ignored or mocked by them, after school she goes home to her grandmother, then when everyone is asleep, she makes her way to her lake where she either swims the night away, or not, and instead wakes up the next morning suffering the consequences.  Everything is uneventful, until the day that Cole makes ripples in her life with promises of renewed friendships and love.  But how can someone cursed find happiness?

Ripple was not what I expected it to be... and that's a good thing.  Ms. Hubbard's tale was much darker than I thought it would be.  As crazy as it may sound, Lexi was a relateable character (you know, aside from the whole siren thing).  Her struggles and turmoils were believable and her need to just be normal was strongly felt.  

Cole comes across as a sweet young man - one, with no ulterior motive in befriending Lexi other than to be nice.  I wish we would've gotten to know him a little better.  He didn't feel as fleshed out as Lexi did... nor, for that matter, did any other character in the novel.  I wish I would've fallen for him as I do for other characters but, nonetheless, their love story was a sweet one.   

I'm really enjoying these different sides of paranormal - for sirens aren't part of the normal stories I tend to read about. All in all, a simple and quick read, with some suspense and a light romance.

My Rating: