Poppy Mercury - Berpisah

Catch of a Lifetime
By Jui Fennell
Sourcebooks Casablanca
January 2010


When Harry the Hammerhead catches Angel Tritone spying on the humans, he figures he’s due a sweet tasting Tritone snack. Angel, on the other hand, isn’t too keen on being shark food so she leaps aboard the nearest boat. Luckily for her, it’s crewed by a cute little boy and his equally cute not-so-little father Logan Hardington.

What she doesn’t realize is that Logan needs a babysitter for his newly arrived son, a boy he didn’t know he had from an old girlfriend who never told him the truth. Michael is a surprise but Logan is ready to be a good father which is why he’s not sure Angel is the best babysitter. She’s a stranger and he finds her naked on his boat. But Michael is dead set on having Angel stick around and that suits her plans perfectly. She’s sure it will enable her to learn more about humans and their culture. And that will help her come up with some way to save the planet’s ecology.

She doesn’t plan on falling in love with the little boy…or his father. She doesn’t plan on having her heart broken when Logan discovers the truth about her, that she’s a Mer and not human. He isn’t able to deal with the shock or the fact that she kept the truth from him. Michael, however, knows what adults fail to recognize…love is all that matters. And in the end, it’s love that saves them all.

In this third book about the Tritone family, Ms Fennell has done a wonderful job of characterization. Angel’s innocence about humans shines through clearly from the very first page as does Logan’s determination to be the kind of father and to create the kind of family that his new son needs. We ache with Angel when Logan tells her to leave but we feel his pain at the same time. And as the story draws to its exciting conclusion, we can’t put the book down. It’s a page turner that’s hooked us right from page one.

Catch of a Lifetime is a fun read but has a deeper message swimming just below the surface. It asks us to be good neighbors to our planetary friends and to live ‘green’ but without hitting us over the head with it. That’s what makes this a wonderful read.

Ms Fennell is also the author of In Over Her Head and Wild Blue Under.