Review: The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is set in 1785 when a merchant Mr Hancock is handed into his possession a shrivelled body of a mermaid in lieu of a ship he was expecting to return. This starts an event of trying to recoup his losses by displaying the oddity to those of interest at a sum.

Angelica Neal is a women used to being kept but has fallen on hard times, her previous lover has passed away and she finds herself fighting for survival and recognition to keep herself out of the high paid establishments and prostitution that will be her plight. Instead Angelica seeks a new lover and a higher status than that previously achieved.

Despite the high acclaim from my fellow Book Tuber's unfortunately this book did not quite meet my expectation. I found this book to read in a very slow and dry manner which left me unable to connect either with the content of the story or unfortunately the characters. This lead me to unfortunately put this book down 22% of the way through.

As a lover of historical fiction I am uncertain what it was that deterred me from being drawn into this promising tale and will definitely consider other books by this author despite our rocky start.

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