If you’re on the hunt for a super-quick read, you can’t go too wrong with my fellow Drollerie author ‘s Over Her Head. I’m a sucker for stories involving intellectual women, and so this little tale of a young woman in the early 1900’s striving to pull off doing a dissertation on mermaids was quite a bit of fun.

Frances Schmidt has discovered that Garrett Hathaway has the most definitive collection of works on mermaid myths she’s ever seen, and so she’ll stop at nothing to get his permission to study his library–even if it means showing up at his front door on a bicycle, armed with tasty cookies. That she and Garrett eventually fall in love is not at all a surprise, nor is the fact that Frances discovers that he has an Astonishing Secret or that Frances gets a lot of flak for pursuing “unseemly” intellectual pursuits.

What makes this read fun and unusual is a nice little take on mermaid myths as well as a cast of vividly portrayed characters which benefit from the short length of the story; there are no extra words here, and extra words aren’t really needed. Four stars.

(P.S. Special side note to : the description of Frances totally reminds me of you!)