‘When Oceans Rise’ by Robin Alvarez is a Filipino retelling of the Little Mermaid myth. It follows Malaya, a Filipina teenager in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her home life is not great. She fights and fails to communicate with her mom, who compares her to her ‘perfect’ younger sister. 

She and her family are subject to a curse, one that makes her fall in love with a horrible man; Ian Decker. She’s sucked into his toxic orbit, and is pushed to the brink. She goes to the ‘Sea Witch’, Maguyaen, Goddess of the winds and sea. She bargains for a life where she never met Ian in exchange for her voice – but that is not how it goes down. She’s swapped with a Malaya who aches under the pressure of being ‘perfect’, who never made the horrific mistakes she made. Malaya, her alternate universe sister Gabrielle, Anita, and a new-found potential lover, Salvador, fight off the incursion of Filipino monsters and myths. Malaya fights to fix her mistakes, and restart again, but can she do it?

It is approximately 108,000 words long, and would take the average reader about 6 hours to finish. It has an average GoodReads rating of 4.06 stars.

Trigger warnings: Emotional abuse, mental abuse, abuse trauma, gaslighting, physical abuse, toxic and abusive relationships.

Content warnings: Anti-Asian (Filipino specifically) racism (mentioned).

If any of these things trigger you, then please exercise caution. Remember, this is a fictional book – you can always put the book down.

Like I said previously, I was not expecting to like this. I don’t typically like retellings, especially of popular stories like the Little Mermaid. The abusive relationship didn’t have much depth. Other than the curse forcing them together, I never got why Malaya would have liked him in the first place. Malaya’s relationship with her mom is also poorly explained in the beginning. Before getting deeper into the story I had interpreted their relationship as a concerned mom showing her concern poorly, with Malaya biting back because of the curse. It’s later revealed that Malaya and her mom have always had poor communication skills, and that Malaya’s relationship only added fuel to a burning bonfire.

Narratively, this doesn’t make much sense to me. Revealing important information mid-way through the book, when it would have been more pertinent in the first half, doesn’t make sense. I would have understood why Malaya felt she only had Ian to turn to if we already knew that her relationship with her family was strained. It would have made more sense for Malaya to shun away from her family, and be willing to give her family up, if we knew how bad the relationship was. It would have been better if we knew Malaya as a character before the curse took hold. The first seven chapters felt awkward, and lacking in depth. I have read a few other reviews on GoodReads, they say it felt rushed and/or poorly paced, and I have to agree.

Chapters five and six confused me severely. We jump from Malaya driving her car off a cliff and being terrified, to her casually ditching school and going surfing with her sister. What is this supposed to mean? It’s never mentioned again, and it’s like the ending of chapter five just never happened? Her car is completely fine, no bashed in windows the next time we see her sister drive it. What was the point of that? Did it just get left in by accident?

The confusion and lacking in depth doesn’t stick around for long though. The book picks up steam after she swaps places with the other Malaya. The Filipino creature hunt, the complicated feelings Malaya has for Salvador, and her complicated dynamic with the other-family is pretty neat to read. I loved the complicated mess the family dynamics became when Malaya replaced Mal. I found myself touched by how the other-mom was so kind and loving towards Malaya, accepting her as her daughter and hoping she could keep both Mal and Malaya. 

Salvador is fine as a romantic partner, I guess. I’m Aromantic and Asexual, so It might just be something I’m missing, but I think he’s only better in that he’s not Ian. I also didn’t like how Salvador was in college, and Malaya in High School. Sure, it’s only a year difference in age, but it’s still weird to me. College students, no matter the age, have more free-time, responsibilities, and immediate plans than High School students, something Malaya comments on a few times. 

Overall, it was a good book, and I gave it a solid 3 stars on GoodReads, as well as StoryGraph. Its problems are clear as day, but I always give a book 100 pages to convince me to finish – and this book convinced me to finish.

For June the Book Club will read ‘Fat and Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives’. It’s a poetry collection about the intersection of queerness and fatness in society. 

If you’d like to join next month’s book club interests you, then come upstairs to the front desk at Building 27 and pick it up as early as May 20th!