Sprite by Leigh Michael

Title: Sprite
Series: Annabelle’s Story
Author: Leigh Michael
Length: 3547 Kindle units
Rating: 3 stars

The Plot

Annabelle is having a fantastic senior year. She gets to spend lots of time with her family and her boyfriend Blake, and her future looks even brighter, because she’s been accepted to the best pre-med program in the country. Then one night when she is on the way home from a swim meet, she is kidnapped and brought to the underwater city of Tritonis. There she learns that her ancestors were once part of an underwater culture of sprites and that she is destined to fulfill an ancient prophesy and become the next leader of the oceanic world.

The Good

I really loved the energy of Sprite. From the first page, we’re transported into Annabelle’s head, which is a bubbly and buoyant place, even under dire circumstances. She’s cheerful and friendly to everyone she meets, and she’s always ready to try something new, even if it’s totally outside her experience.

The mythology was also creative and unique. I enjoyed learning about the different species of water beings – the titular sprites. There were pockets of different species in various bodies of water all over the globe, but the sprites could travel between them relatively easily via jet streams. The meat of the story was based around some lesser-known Greek myths regarding the descendants of Poseidon and a prophesied leader that the sprites have been waiting for. All of these elements combine to make the world in which Annabelle finds herself interesting and compelling.

The Bad

I have mentioned before my desire to implement a three day rule for relationships, which basically states that if the heroine has only known the boy for three days, she should not be making any major life decisions that involve him. Sprite and a few other books I have read have persuaded me that I might need to expand this rule to include major life changes as well as relationships. Annabelle is given three days to come to terms with being a sprite and train in the mystical ways of water fighting before she must fulfill her prophesied role. Now, if she had been training in water combat for many years prior to this, I might believe she is prepared for such an undertaking. But since I don’t think her swim team practiced fighting each other or wrangling hippocampi, I was not convinced that Annabelle shouldn’t have waited until the next New Year before attempting to save the water world.

Other than that, the story lacked any kind of emotional depth. This was good in that it kept things moving along, but I felt as if Annabelle took being taken away from her family a little bit too much in stride. The side characters also didn’t have that much development, which I think prevented some of the potential emotional impact, especially of the cliffhanger at the end.

The Romance

In the first chapter, we meet Annabelle’s boyfriend Blake and learn that he is super-awesome on every domain, but we don’t get to spend much time with him. All too soon Annabelle is dragged underwater where she spends all her time with a merman named Adrian. Not only is he friendly and attractive, but he is also a prince of the city of Tritonis. Annabelle wants to remain faithful to Blake, but it’s hard to resist someone who is nice, handsome, and royalty, especially when his grandmother the queen hopes that they will get married someday. But, really, Annabelle has a lot to focus on with this prophesy and doesn’t really have time to be worrying too much about romance.

Will I read more?

I really did enjoy Sprite for the most part. There were only a few times that I had to shake my head because of a plot element that really didn’t work. There’s going to be one other book in the series, and the ending of this first book was enough in the middle of everything that I wondered whether it might not have been better as a single story. But there is a sudden revelation at the end of the book that makes me curious to see where the story goes. So while I’m not adding the author’s web page to my list of blogs to stalk, I will probably pick up the next installment at some point in time.

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