Shorelines

By Author / Illustrator

Ruth Ennis

Genre

Fairy Tales & Folk Tales

Age range(s)

11+

Publisher

Little Island

ISBN

9781915071989

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

05-02-2026

Synopsis

When proud mermaid Muireann flees her climate-ravaged ocean in search of hope on land, she confronts human cruelty and body-shaming as she struggles to find her true home and voice. Caught between a dying ocean and a divided world, she must grapple between the sea that made her and the surface that might break her - in this stunning verse novel that reimagines The Little Mermaid.

Muireann is a mermaid - fierce, curious and proud of the body that keeps her warm beneath the waves. But life in the ocean is becoming impossible. The merfolk are at war with the human ramifications of climate change: food is scarce, and her twin sister has been killed in a mass-fishing net. With her mother lost in grief and her world falling apart, Muireann longs to escape to the surface to find some answers. But the human world isn't the haven she hoped for. It's colder, crueller - and here, her large body is seen not as strength, but as something to be ashamed of.

In this beautiful novel-in-verse, Muireann must find her voice and fight for where she belongs – whether that be beneath the waves, or above them.

Reviews

Louisa

Shorelines, a melancholy and thought-provoking verse novel, follows the story of Muireann, the mermaid, grieving for her lost twin and full of naïve curiosity about humans. To save her ocean home where fish stocks are dwindling and the merfolk are beginning to starve, she makes a journey to a human kingdom. Hope of reconciliation and collaboration spurs her through the painful transformation of her tail. In the prince's castle, her dreams are dashed and she is imprisoned. The big, beautiful body she has always been so proud of is ridiculed. The air is laced with spite and escape seems impossible.

This is a story that addresses big themes, a poetic allegory rather than a page-turner. The grand innocence of the mermaids, at one with their element, is contrasted with the cruelty of humans. The reader is invited to interrogate what it means to be beautiful and to confront human destruction of the natural world through greed.

What happens when cultures clash but refuse dialogue? What happens when the needs of one group conflict with the desires of another? What does what you value say about you? I found myself pondering questions like this for some time after I finished reading.

Shorelines would provide a good way into meaningful discussions with older children who have the appetite for a book that requires thoughtful engagement.

304 pages / Reviewed by Louisa Farrow, teacher