The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

genre: young adult fantasy

Florian is a pirate The Dove and a crewmember of the Nameless Captain.  While life aboard the Dove is harsh, it's better than life on the street. For Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, her journey on the Dove is most unwanted as she heads to the Forbidden Isles for an arranged marriage.  There are larger plots at play, however, and in a colonized world where the Sea has a memory of her own,  Florian and Lady Eveyln have secrets to uncover - both about the world they live in and who, in their hearts, they really are.

This story moved right along with me.  I liked the Sea as a plot device, how it has a memory and a story.  While I wanted more from the "magic" in the book, I did like how one gets the power to do magic.  I just wanted more of that and I would've liked a few more of the loose ends tied up when it was over.  However, I really liked the exploration of gender, looking at it both as how you feel about your OWN gender as well where the person you love fits on the spectrum of gender and how much relevance gender plays in the love equation.  The colonialism theme was interesting as well - the idea that one group of people believes it deserves land that's not actually there, that one culture's superiority gives it the right to eliminate others.  It's not a perfect book but I always wanted to read it and if it had been longer, I would've been happy to read more :)