According to USA Today...

...mermaids are going to be The Next Big Thing.

I've never taken to mermaid stories. I never even read Aquamarine or that other one, and (this is embarrassing) I've never even seen Splash all the way through. I know that some people love 'em, though.

Mermaid stories make me too tense for enjoyable reading. I'm always worried that at worst, scientists will catch her and there'll be some horrible vivisection scene, and at best, she'll get discovered and subsequently abandoned/cast out/rejected/star-crossed-different-worlds-ed.

And now it occurs to me exactly why mermaids would work well in YA lit.

But, still. Not so much for me. Because, assuming it's a romance, even if things DO work out, someone's got to make a Big Sacrifice and Give Up Part of Who S/he is For the Couple to Be Together, and that's just a little too Rainbow Fish-y for me.

Or maybe I was just scarred by the original Little Mermaid.

What say you?