ARC Review--Part of Your World by Liz Braswell

What if Ariel had never defeated Ursula? 

It's been five years since the infamous sea witch defeated the little mermaid... and took King Triton's life in the process. Ariel is now the voiceless queen of Atlantica, while Ursula runs Prince Eric's kingdom on land. But when Ariel discovers that her father might still be alive, she finds herself returning to a world--and a prince--she never imagined she would see again. 

Ariel soon learns that Ursula has been making the most of her role as princess: plotting, scheming, and waging outright war with neighboring kingdoms. And after the disguised sea witch catches wind of Ariel's resurfacing, she threatens to obliterate both land sea. Will Ariel be able to overthrow the murderous villain bent on destroying her home--along with the world she once longed to be a part of?

Follow this tale of power, love, and a mermaid's quest to reclaim her voice.

I received this ARC from a blogger friend in a fair trade. My review is completely honest and voluntary; I was in no way compensated for this review.

Liz Braswell has done it again! She’s taken a favorite Disney movie of mine and gave it a nice good twist to see what could’ve happened had things gone wrong in The Little Mermaid. In Part of Your World, we learn how things would’ve been had Ursula won and Ariel lost everything. What’s so fun with these stories is how much could’ve changed with one little moment, though it wasn’t entirely clear why things didn’t play out like in the movie, I figure it was best not to think too hard on that because the point of this series is to give new endings!

The book opens up five years after Ursula had won. Ariel was a voiceless mermaid trying to rule Atlantica while Ursula continued to be Vanessa with Ariel’s voice and Eric was kept in a hypnotized daze. This was how five years were spent. Then one day Scuttle and his great-granddaughter were watching a play that Eric wrote, one that had a very familiar story with a somewhat different ending. And it basically leads to Ariel returning to land once again in order to find her father who Scuttle discovered was still alive…in his polyp form.

It becomes Ariel’s mission to find and rescue her father and return him to his throne under the sea, but she’s going to need some help in order to accomplish this and naturally, that help comes in many familiar faces.

It was so much fun to read this one! I loved seeing what things could’ve been like had Ursula initially won. Things were definitely different in this scenario and it becomes clear who the real ruler of the castle is and sadly, it wasn’t Eric. Vanessa, as Ursula, had her own plans for the kingdom and surrounding kingdoms. Having not been allowed to rule under the sea, she decides she’ll take the next best thing and rule on land.

For the first part of the book, Ariel has no voice and communicates with her friends with a form of sign language. It made me wonder how the story would progress without her talking, much like in the movie. But that gets cleared up rather quickly when Ursula’s spell breaks, but that was only a small step in her battle to come. It would be too hard to communicate with Eric and everyone else on land if she had no voice, so I was glad that Liz gave her her voice back early on.

The story was told in many points of view from all the characters we already knew and love! For the most part though, the story was told from Ariel and Eric’s point of view and Ursula coming in at third. It was interesting getting all the different perspectives and made the ease of story-telling that much clearer.

Another part that the Disney fan in me loved was how the title song gets mentioned! They don’t outright show you the lyrics but when Eric mentioned to Ariel, the song she sang when she rescued him and she sings is…totally was singing along! Another little bit that honestly had me grinning when it was mentioned, Ariel asked Eric how he couldn’t recognize her as the one who saved him and then when Ursula as Vanessa started singing, just fell for entirely! I won’t mention the outcome from that, but just that it gets said, had me grinning from ear to ear, because honestly Eric?!

I felt like this was a well-paced novel too! Don’t let the near 500 pages alarm you! In the first day, which was slightly busy for me, I read over 100 pages and by the next I read over 200 leaving just another 100 for the last day. It’s a fairly quick read in a sense, one that had me turning the pages as fast as I could read them! It was so much fun being back in this world and seeing more of the world above Ariel, though I kind of want to see more under the sea now too! Lol!

The ending was positively wonderful! It’s not quite the ending you would expect and yet, it totally works for the story! I feel like you can see what would happen down the line at some point, its open-endedness was something I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did. Part of Your World was a most magical read indeed! This is a book that Disney lovers are bound to enjoy!


Overall Rating 5/5 stars


Part of Your World releases September 4, 2018