At the beginning of this month, I only expected to undergo one ocean-themed adventure book for a review collaboration but surprisingly it turns out that the amount has been multiplying by itself. As a starter, I had been busying myself with Fable by Adrienne Young as my first book with a sea setting after what felt like years and managed to finish it in merely two days. The journey was surely addicting thus I’m thrilled to announce that this afternoon I'm going to start another local ocean-themed book before continuing Namesake.
Fable tells the story of a seventeen-year-old Fable who has been abandoned by her father for four years on an island full of thieves after watching her mother drown in an unforgiving storm. As the daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows, Fable determines to survive in the world built for men and get off the island in order to demand a place in his crew.
Surviving Jeval is not an easy task though. Fable has to dredge and sell as many pyres as she can to collect enough coins to get herself on a boat and cross the Narrows. She finally gets the help she needs from a young trader named West in his boat called Marigold and soon finds out that after all these years, her father's enterprise is getting bigger and bigger and so is the amount of his rivalries, while West and his small crew are not exactly like what they seem either.
Before starting this book, I didn't have any clue regarding what the story would be about. I've been growing this habit of jumping into a book without thoroughly reading the blurb and so after making sure that it was labeled as fantasy by many, my first guess about Fable was that it would probably be about mermaids or any other fictional sea creature. It turned out that my guess couldn't be any more wrong. Fable might take place on a fantasy island, but there was no magical creature as far as I was aware. This book was more about pirates masked as traders and how the main character survived the hardship in the sea.
Maybe, not knowing what this book was all about had made my reading journey more interesting. I remember being bored in the first four chapters of this book, but bearing no expectation that I was, I decided to take it slow and see whether or not I would like it once the real conflict started. I personally found it a little hard to adjust to the world-building but starting chapter five, I was thankfully able to enjoy this book more, and more as the storm brewed in the Narrows and the pages turned.
As a character, Fable was strong and badass and because of that very easily liked. Even though I didn't see any distinguishable development, she was still an interesting character to go through the story from. Now that I have read the blurb fully, I don't think it is quite fitting to put the label filled-with-romance in the first order since the romance was barely there though fortunately that is exactly the amount that I love. And I did love the brooding West and his romance with Fable. But I do understand if some people find it hard to believe with almost little to no progression between them.
Overall, Fable was an enjoyable sea-setting book that I couldn't wait to get my hands on the next installment of. The adventure was intriguing enough that I admittedly half-forced myself to finish almost every part of it in a day. If you want to read a pirate-themed young adult book, this book may be for you. But please remember that sometimes expecting nothing is the key. You will likely end up enjoying it more than if you have expected too highly of it.
Actual rating: 4.1★
