A review by essyem
False Mermaid by Erin Hart

3.0

Not my favorite. Love magical realism in general, but not here so much. As other reviewers pointed out, the library book on the shelf (not touched for five years and later vanishing?) made me roll my eyes. As a St. Paulite, I also didn’t love her descriptions of the city and its different neighborhoods — it felt like she resorted to stereotypes and tropes in places. Plus, I didn’t want to read about Minnesota — I got into the series because of the bog bodies, and I see that I’m not alone in that! Finally, I really disliked the unnecessary details about Peter wearing women’s underwear. It felt like a totally unnecessarily and borderline-transphobic pathologizing of gender identity exploration — completely unrelated to the murders but thrown in to make Peter seem even more evil and twisted. Hart is a skilled writer and, like her previous books, this one was hard to put down, but it just wasn’t as effectively done as the other two. Looking forward to reading the 4th, as I believe she returns to Ireland there!