The first thing that I noticed about Suzanne Kamata’s The Mermaids of Lake Michigan was the cover. It’s so hauntingly beautiful, and the woman’s underwater face with the sunlight softly streaming through the water fits in perfectly with the title of the book. When I dove into this book on my Kindle, I certainly didn’t expect to find a book so engrossing that I devoured the entire thing in a few hours, getting to know Elise Faulkner both as a little girl in the stifling small Michigan town and as a senior in high school on the cusp of adulthood and freedom.
Elise would rather stay inside and read books than make friends in her neighborhood, even though her younger sister is a popular social butterfly. Caught up in the fantasy life that she’s built for herself in the letters that she’s written to her various pen pals around the world over the years, Elise is satisfied with this life on paper–until she’s forced to meet her elderly neighbor’s granddaughter Chiara. Once exotic and wild Chiara has entered Elise’s life, Elise can’t help but wonder about everything that she has been missing: from friends, to parties, to bars, to boys. On one such adventure with Chiara to the annual Coast Guard carnival, Elise meets Miguel, a gypsy carnival worker who proclaims that his mother has foreseen that they’re meant to be. Elise is smitten by the handsome and mysterious man, and she’s crushed when she doesn’t see him again until another change encounter with Chiara and her boyfriend. Elise’s life is changed after this encounter, and she definitely goes down a different path than everyone expected for the rest of the book.
I give The Mermaids of Lake Michigan a 3.5 out of 5. This is an engaging coming of age story with a bit of magical realism set in the 1970s, but it’s a bit on the shorter side with an ending that felt rushed. I really connected with Elise’s character and her need to find someone that was just hers. The novel really read more like Elise’s journal, but was descriptive and the narrative flowed smoothly back and forth from her childhood and her eighteenth year. All of the secondary characters had depth and uniqueness, and I really enjoyed her mother’s character as well. I just wish that there was a bit more to this novel since it came in at under 200 pages, and it felt like there was more to explore with Elise’s story once she returned to Michigan.
Find THE MERMAIDS OF LAKE MICHIGAN
Amazon | Books A Million| Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
About Suzanne Kamata
Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She is most recently from Lexington, South Carolina, and now lives in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications including Real Simple, Brain, Child, Crab Orchard Review, and The Japan Times. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/ Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival Award, and winner of the Half the World Global Literati Award for the novel.
Connect with Suzanne Kamata
Website | Twitter | Goodreads
Giveaway
Enter the Rafflecopter widget below for you chance to win a copy of THE MERMAIDS OF LAKE MICHIGAN. Open to US/Canada residents only.
Suzanne Kamata’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS for THE MERMAIDS OF LAKE MICHIGAN:
Latest posts by Heather (see all)
- Time Hop Coffee Shop by Phaedra Patrick - December 13, 2025
- How To Grieve Like a Victorian by Amy Carol Reeves - December 13, 2025
- Dawn of the Firebird by Sarah Mughal Rana - December 6, 2025
Magical realism is one of those things that I like in a story – just a hint of something otherwordly really captures my attention.
Thanks for being a part of the tour!
Reply »