“Her heartbeat measurably slowed as she dove deeper, farther into the blue. On the other side she emerged, turned around and repeated, lap after lap, fully immersed, with no thought for time or place or breath. This was joy. This was heaven. This was life.”

Downtown Selkie by Angelika Rust has a really interesting premise-what happens when a selkie is trapped inland in a contemporary city? Unfortunately, the premise didn’t really live up to its promise and I decided to stop reading at 40%.

Xan (short for Alexandra) is a Greek girl living in a modern day, unnamed city (which I am assuming is supposed to be American) with her aunt who runs a diner. The diner is in financial trouble mainly because her aunt has to pay a couple of thugs for protection against rival gangs. Xan escapes her situation every chance she gets to swim in the pools of rich people uptown at night. Xan has syndactyly—webbed fingers–but it’s never occurred to her that she’s anything other than an ordinary girl until the owner of the pool spots her one night and starts doing some research.

This is a very short book, and we’re dropped into the thick of all the characters’ relationships, with 3 POV characters–Xan, Katerina (Xan’s aunt), and Tori, who turns out to be the sister of the man with the pool. Trying to figure out who’s who and how they relate was very confusing, but I liked the idea of following a selkie trapped in a city so I powered through. Xan’s midnight swims were the most interesting parts of what I read, closely followed by her Aunt Katerina’s retellings of Greek mythology. My favorite character, though, was Leo, the old man who hung out at the diner and who may or may not have been a blind prophet.

The title is a little misleading if you’re expecting a selkie, because, as Katerina tells Xan, you can’t be a selkie, selkies are Scottish and you’re Greek. Then Katerina brings up ocean nymphs. I liked this Greek take on a standard fantasy folklore figure, but the story itself was very chaotic. At a sentence level, the writing was good and the dialogue felt natural. Since most of the story development happened through dialogue, this was a plus. Even so, it never felt like we really got a chance to know any of the characters in the first 40% of the book. But we also didn’t really get to see a lot of the big action either. Instead, we only hear about it. There’s a gang war that happens off page and then a kidnapping and a car accident complete with fireball, but everything is related by characters after the fact. So, the characters don’t really do much on the page except argue and talk to each other. Katerina worries about Xan, Xan smells like chlorine in every scene, Tori tries to avoid being assaulted. There really didn’t seem to be a cohesive point, except that parties are dangerous for girls.

The idea had a lot of promise, but ultimately, I felt like the book needed more for that promise to be realized.