Priddy’s Tale: book review

Priddy’s Tale is another gorgeous love story from Harper Fox. It’s a fantastical tale about a lost young guy who lives in a Cornish lighthouse and falls in love with a merman.

I love this story so much. It’s told in a fairy tale style — which isn’t usually my thing, because I prefer a closer relationship with the characters. But Harper Fox managed to weave her magical words around me until I felt every bit of Jem Priddy’s confusion and uncertainty about his life’s direction, his yearning for Merou (the mysterious guy he ‘rescues’ from the waters), his growing conviction that his future lies somewhere else entirely.

Priddy is adorable — blond curls and blue eyes, just out of high school, and recovering from an almost fatal experience with a party drug that has left him prone to wild dreamings. His best friend Kit has gone to college without him, leaving Priddy caretaking a fully automated lighthouse for the winter. After he calls in the rescue chopper for a boat about to be wrecked on a stormy night (and where was Flynn Summers, where?), Priddy dives in to help the man swimming beside the boat, and changes his own life forever.

The beautiful man in the water is Merou, who doesn’t of course need rescuing at all, until Priddy touches him and he’s transformed… The magic of this story doesn’t lie in the mystery, though, and it’s pretty damn obvious from the start (to the reader at least) that Merou is one of the mer people.

Merou is charismatic and charming, an ancient traveller of the oceans and time. To Priddy, he’s like a prince — worldly, confident, fascinating, even if at first he seems a bit of a nutcase. (Or possibly a hallucination.) And Merou clearly desires Priddy, calling him such sweet names as ‘daisy-brained sweetheart’ (my favourite) and ‘king of the mountain’, based on the Welsh derivation of his name, ap-Ridih.

I’m trying not to re-tell the story here, but it’s hard, because it’s such a sweet gender-flip of traditional mermaid stories. Merou romances Priddy without artifice, and Priddy is swept away (at times quite literally) by his man of the sea. There’s a glorious sexy scene down at the bottom of the ocean, where we learn a little about the physiology of mermen, and Priddy learns what it would take to be with Merou forever.

There are some tense moments, mainly surrounding the introduction of a genetic scientist who wants to capture one of the mer for research purposes. But the resolution of this — and the afterward, written by a fictitious academic who also presents a foreward — is just perfect. I finished reading this long novella (short novel?) with my heart full and a smile on my face.

It’s the way this relatively simple tale is told that makes it so wonderful. It’s filled with magical and impossible things — like horses and apples from the sea, and a stranger who mysteriously knows about Priddy’s penchant for pastries — and infused with beautiful language and an abundance of ocean-themed imagery.

Like all the author’s work, Priddy’s Tale is also evocative of place — in this instance the wild and exciting south-western tip of Cornwall, where several of her books have been based. Inspired by the old Cornish folk tales, Priddy’s Tale is Harper Fox at her lyrical and beautiful best.

Here’s the Amazon link. You won’t be disappointed. I’m reading it again… and maybe re-reading some of her others as well. I just can’t get enough Harper Fox books in my life!