The Brighton Mermaid Book Review

Book: The Brighton Mermaid 
Author: Dorothy Koomson 
Pages: 490
Start Reading Date: 1st July 2018
End Reading Date: 7th July 2018
Good reads Rating: 5*

The Brighton Mermaid is about Nell, a woman who as a teenager found a murdered woman on Brighton Beach along with her best friend Jude. Whom herself went missing a few weeks later.

The police believed that Nell’s father had been responsible, and he’d been arrested by the racist police officer in charge countless of times, even when more bodies were found on other beaches.

25 years later, Nell leaves her job for a year to discover who the Brighton Mermaid is, and what happened to her best friend.

I am not someone who loves short chapters. I think it has to work really well, and that the book is not a YA book and all that comes with a typical YA book. But with the Brighton Mermaid it works so well. The choppiness of it, going back and forth through the years, it works so well.  


It would have been so easy for Dorothy Koomson to complicate the whole story with adding in all of the Mermaid Murders, but I’m glad that she didn’t because Jude’s disappearance was related to just the Brighton Mermaid case. Ok so I am re reading this post before I post it, and add anything that I feel is needed, like I said, it would have been so easy to complicate the whole story adding the other murders into it, but I’m glad that even those murders were covered in the later/current days but not as much as the Brighton Mermaid Murder. 

With about 100 pages left omg omg omg. The twist and turns in the book is literally making my jaw drop. I kind of knew that there would be something that would make the book super interesting but what’s happening never crossed my mind.  

Nell is a massive part of the book for obvious reasons, but so is her sister Macy, who is a very anxious person, and wants to tell Nell something. Did she already know what Nell found out late in the book? When it came out what Macy knew, it was a shock but not something that I’d ever imagine she’d seen what she saw. Or what happened happened. 


I can never say what Dorothy Koomson book is my favorite because of how brilliant and different they are. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a curse. 

The Brighton Mermaid is another example of that.  

I never want Dorothy’s books to end. If she wrote a book with a million pages in it I’d still love it.  

I am not a massive fan of suspense books but with The Brighton Mermaid I didn’t want it to end.  

With the Brighton Mermaid, you want to like all the characters, there are some that you won’t like, but some your opinion changes about. And I liked who it was because you had no idea about who it is, literally when I found out about a particular charter had done something my mouth dropped open. 

Every DK book that I’ve read I’ve always wanted another book to follow it up. And The Brighton Mermaid is no different. 

I am forever grateful for Dorothy Koomson.