The Llano County Mermaid Club by Kathleen M. Rodgers

The Llano County Mermaid Club by Kathleen M. Rodgers
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Genre: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary, Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Growing up in the desert town of Sandhill, New Mexico, Marigold Hubbard and her friends wanted only one thing: to see the ocean. The community pool and the nearby Santa Rosa Blue Hole are the closest they can get, and they dream of mermaids while swimming these rare waters. When Marigold learns of the affair between her father and the mother of her best friend, Melody Calloway, the betrayal tears the girls apart. Unmoored from both friends and family, Melody meets a tragic and mysterious end on the shores of the Blue Hole, leaving Marigold no chance to ever reconcile the friendship.

Forty years later, Marigold returns to Sandhill to care for her elderly father, but an envelope of old letters and a cryptic message in an abandoned church leads her on a quest to find answers about what really happened to Melody. Threading between past and present, Marigold must piece together the tragic chain of events that led to Melody’s death, pursuing questions that may have no easy answers.

It’s difficult to keep a secret forever.

The character development was excellent. All of the main characters were well-rounded individuals whose flaws made a genuine difference in how not only their own lives but also the plot turned out. They felt like real people to me, especially later on once their personalities and past mistakes began to have an ever bigger influence on what was happening. I loved them in many scenes but was also exasperated with them in others. This is exactly the sort of fiction that makes it impossible for me to stop reading!

I would have liked to see more time developing the mystery elements of the storyline. There were some aspects of Melody’s death that never quite made sense to me, especially given how her personality had been described in the years leading up to that day. Some of the clues we were given felt out of place, and the explanations for them weren’t quite satisfying enough for me to choose a full five-star rating. With that being said, I still deeply enjoyed reading this book and getting to know all of the characters.

The 1960s and 1970s were not always easy eras for women and girls to live in. It was interesting to explore how the female characters reacted to the sexism and racism in their community and how they found ways around those prejudices in order to achieve as many of their dreams as possible. This was not a sugar-coated version of the past by any means, but it also left plenty of space for the characters to find joy in little things like visiting the library or swimming together. I appreciated the fact that the narrator balanced it all out and made this reader feel as thought I truly had stepped into a time machine to see what life was like sixty years ago.

The Llano County Mermaid Club was a heartwarming saga.