When We Believed in Mermaids: a story of finding answers and healing

When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal is the story of Kit Bianci who is sent on a mission to discover if a woman in New Zealand is her dead sister. Josie Bianci was killed 15 years ago in a terrorist attack on a Paris train. At least that's what Kit believed. Until she sees her on the news. While taking a break, Kit, an ER doctor in Santa Cruz, California, sees live coverage of a club fire in Auckland, New Zealand. There she sees a woman, known locally as Mari Edwards, stumbling in the background that looks like her sister. In fact, the resemblance is almost too unbelievable. At the urging of her mother, Kit travels to Auckland to discover if Mari is her sister and discover why she has hidden herself for so many years. Her journey begins with memories of the past: their childhood days on the beach, the adopted teenage boy who becomes their older protective brother, and the series of tragedies that upend their lives and haunt them today. What secrets will be uncovered? Will the truth haunt her further? One thing is certain, their lives will never be the same again. 

The opening lines of the first chapter hooked me, but by the fourth chapter, I wondered if I would finish it at all. I pushed through, hoping it would get better. The identity of the woman known as Mari is revealed fairly quickly. The real mystery is a bit more murkier that details the series of tragedies that tore them apart. And a side story about a murdered 1930s actress. I did not care for Kit at all. She was cold, unfeeling and just bland. Right off the bat, Kit laments that “it’s hard to be the children of parents who are obsessed with each other.” Ok…..? She describes her father’s passion for her mother as “intense, sexual and possessive” but wasn’t sure she would call it love and her mother’s love for him was “to excess more than she loved her children.” Ummm, ok? I enjoyed Mari’s perspective a bit more but even her story was resolved too neatly and too easily. For the majority of the book, it read like two very different stories, Kit’s and Mari’s, that would eventually merge and very quickly get resolved. Overall, the story was bogged down with too many side stories, flashbacks and a resolution that felt rushed and unrealistic. I do not recommend When We Believed in Mermaids.

When We Believed in Mermaids is available in paperback, eBook and audiobook.