Between The Sea And The Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore (Review)

I started my awesome Merbooks challenge this year with this book. If you haven't started yours yet, get going! It's going to be fantastic!

Here's the synopsis of the book from Goodreads before I start.

For as long as Esmerine can remember, she has longed to join her older sister, Dosinia, as a siren--the highest calling a mermaid can have. When Dosinia runs away to the mainland, Esmerine is sent to retrieve her. Using magic to transform her tail into legs, she makes her way unsteadily to the capital city. There she comes upon a friend she hasn't seen since childhood--a dashing young man named Alander, who belongs to a winged race of people. As Esmerine and Alander band together to search for Dosinia, they rekindle a friendship . . . and ignite the emotions for a love so great, it cannot be bound by sea, land, or air.

I had a lot of really high expectations for this book, and sad to say, a lot of them didn't come true.

1. There's no real danger in the story, besides losing their sire belt *coughcoughvirginitycoughcough*. Sure, it hurts to walk on land. But there is no driving danger for the mermaids or the winged people, which puts little drive into the plot.
2.Esmerine is hopelessly boring. And so is everyone else in the story. I connected with none of the characters and none of them even felt the slightest bit real.
3. The book wasn't intricate and felt more aimed at middle grade readers, save for a lot of sexual references (which were annoying and ugly). There was no pizzazz.
4.The Mermaids eat fish. I hate to say this, because I know a lot of fish eat other fish (insert Social  Network references here) but this seemed a bit like cannibalism to me. And on a similar note, and this is a really small nitpick, but the food is all human stuff and not magical :(
5. The winged/finned romance is....well pointless. I didn't feel any sparks, and it certainly wasn't very fun to read about ALL THE TIME. This is where a lot of Young Adult authors start to lose me. They concentrate way too much on the romance of it all.
But despite a lot of flaws, I still managed to enjoy bits and pieces of the book. It referenced some of the original mermaid myths. But altogether, it's pretty skip-able.