My Salty Mary

Mary #3

by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows

Perfect for fans of The Princess Bride and A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, New York Times bestselling authors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows are back with a fantastical, romantical, and piratical historical fantasy remix that marries the story of The Little Mermaid with the life and times of infamous lady pirate Mary Read.

Don't call this mermaid "little"—call her "captain," unless you want to walk the plank.

Mary is in love with the so-called prince of Charles Town, except he doesn't love her back. Which is inconvenient. Since she's a mermaid, being brokenhearted means she'll—poof!—turn into sea-foam.

But instead, Mary finds herself pulled out of the sea and up onto a pirate ship. To survive, she joins them. But Mary isn't willing to just sing the yo-ho-hos. She wants the pirate life, all of it, and she's ready to make a splash . . . by becoming captain. But when Blackbeard dies suddenly, Mary has a chance to become so much more: Pirate King . . . or Queen. She won't let anyone stop her—not Blackbeard's cute son, not her best friend from back under the sea who's having a bit too much fun with his new legs, and certainly not everyone who says she can't be a pirate just because she's a girl.

She may not be the best man for the job, but she'll definitely prove that she's worth her salt.

Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Romance, Historical, Audiobook, Retellings

448 pages, Hardcover

First published August 20, 2024

About the author

Cynthia Hand is the New York Times bestselling author of several books for teens, including the UNEARTHLY trilogy, THE LAST TIME WE SAY GOODBYE, MY LADY JANE, MY PLAIN JANE, MY CALAMITY JANE, MY CONTRARY MARY, and MY IMAGINARY MARY (with fellow authors Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows), THE AFTERLIFE OF HOLLY CHASE, THE HOW AND THE WHY, WITH YOU ALL THE WAY, and the upcoming TIMELESS and MY SALTY MARY (also with Ashton and Meadows). Before turning to writing for young adults, she studied literary fiction and earned both an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. in fiction writing. She currently resides in Boise, Idaho, with her husband, two cats, one crazy dog, two kids, and mountain of books.

Reviews

[Jodi Meadows]

October 15, 2023

Want a cover? Keep an eye out on our IG pages (ladyjanies is our group account; my solo account is unicornwarlord), and I'll also be sharing on my newsletter: https://jodimeadows.substack.com

--

August 19, 2023

Coming summer 2024! I think you're going to like it. :D

And yes, the title is correct and the X meets Y is correct.

--

March 7, 2022

It's not Typhoid Mary.

--

March 2, 2022

Guess which authors just turned in this book.

--

MARY 3 will be about a Mary, but probably not Typhoid Mary/Mary Mallon, because of pandemic reasons.

Wear a mask!

[Eva B.]

Apparently people are saying this is listed as "My Salty Mary" in the back of My Imaginary Mary so I'm guessing it'll be about Mary Read? The whole "died in prison from a fever" thing sure seems like a fate which should be redone, and the other POV characters would probably be Anne Bonny and Calico Jack.
(There is a very large part of me that hopes we'll get a Lady Janies book about the Barrow Gang but I know the odds of that are so low. I'd still love to see it though lol)

[Sylvie {Semi-Hiatus} · Rating 4 out of 5]

They should’ve continued adapting every single of these Janies & Maries books into a tv series.

Why doesn't this edition have a synopsis yet? I really hope this book won't get postponed. T_T

I love the blue aesthetic of this book's cover, especially since it is going to be Pirates of the Caribbean meets The Little Mermaid. I think it's very fitting.

[Janssen]

I really wanted to love this but mostly it felt long to me. Probably just going to pretend My Lady Jane is the only one.

[Isabelle (the Book Dutchesses)]

I guess I have a 2023 release shelf now...

BLOG INSTAGRAM TWITTER YOUTUBE PINTEREST

[Leah]

tYPHOID MARY.

I. Am. Dead.

[m]

So she is the pioneer asymptomatic virus carrier, spreading the diseases without realising it.

Watch out, Coronavirus.

----

So now it's about Little Mermaid?! I am not mad, just confused.

[Lindsay (pawsomereads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️
This was a really fun retelling of The Little Mermaid! The authors served up charm, wit, and a touch of sadness with a smile.
The book didn't always dive deep. Some character arcs felt a bit rushed and the plot occasionally meandered but the vibes were strong. It was all in good fun, with clever nods to fairytale lore and historical hijinks. Mary and her group of friends were an absolute riot, and her ambition to be Pirate Queen gave the story a refreshing edge.
The humor was cheeky, the friendships were heartfelt, and the romance was more of a fun garnish than the main dish. If you're looking for a seafaring adventure with girl power, glitter, and giggles, My Salty Mary was worth climbing aboard.

[Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it's gonna be on Pirate Mary Read!!! 🏴‍☠️

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook narrated by Nneka Okoye 10hrs 54 minutes

Next to My Lady Jane, this may be one of my favourite installments in the three-author collaboration of Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows, as they take on The Little Mermaid and the Age of Piracy.

Mary, a mermaid, has fallen in love with a human. Unfortunately, he loves someone else so it looks like she is about to become sea foam since she couldn't make him love her. Lucky, for Mary, she gets rescued and goes to work for the pirate Charles Vane. Mary takes to the pirates' life and when her friend Tobias's father, Blackbeard dies, she hopes to be the next pirate king...or queen. Unfortunately, Mary isn't the only one who is seeking the crown.

Downright enjoyable. I enjoyed my listening experience and just couldn't put this audio down. I listened to it every chance I got.

Goodreads review published 22/02/25

[Erin Mendoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the Lady Janies and the Mary series. They take a sad tale and make it better.
I know that these books are historical fantasy, but they also make me go look up all the real deets, so I end up learning real history too.

My Salty Mary has pirates, mermaids, and bad*ss women- who wouldn't want to read it?
This story is fun and fast paced and definitely satisfying!
Highly recommend. It'll be a great book to read by the pool this summer.

Thanks to Netgalley and Harper Collins Children's Books for an early copy for review

[Sierra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for my ARC copy of this novel.

Ugh, I love pirates. I was so ungodly excited for this story, and it delivered. It was a delight to see all of the famous names I'm familiar with from the time period. My familiarity with the names and places, I think, really aided in my reading experience because if I weren't already so invested in pirates, I may not have enjoyed the story as much. These books are notoriously humorous. They don't strive for historical accuracy, but for a fun, fantastical jaunt through recognizable history. That's exactly what this story delivered, but sometimes to a fault. The humor and the shoehorning of modern pop culture references took me out of the story every now and again. I don't know whether the authors thought those were needed to keep the teen audience engaged, but they got a bit obnoxious. That said, my love for pirates and the Golden Age of Piracy won out, and I enjoyed this story regardless.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars for My Salty Mary: Mary 3 (audiobook) by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows read by Nneka Okoye.

The young mermaid Mary has grand dreams of sailing the seas and becoming a pirate. And not just any pirate but the king of pirates. And when Mary puts her mind to it nothing can stop her. This was so much fun, I just love all of the witty banter.

[Cassandra Hamm · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up for Calico Jack Rackham, the adorable himbo merman who adores his lady. Definitely not as good as My Lady Jane or My Plain Jane and definitely on the nose sometimes, but I enjoyed myself. The audiobook narrator was great.

[Telthor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh fun! I think that was the best one they’ve done since Lady Jane! Just a joy and a half from start to finish.

~*~

Better review, probably: I like pirates. Well, no, I like the pop culture of pirates. I dig my Pirates of the Caribbean, my Monkey Island, my Assassin's Creed Black Flag. The lighthearted stuff. I know a smidge of the real life history, not a ton, but I love the silly pop culture stuff. And this book has it in spades and spades.

The Janeies and Mary series have always been about Disney and Princess Bride jokes, and this one is no exception. I was absolutely groaning out loud, and then laughing out loud--on some pages there's a joke every other sentence. Maybe it's because I'm decently familiar with the subject matter, but most of the jokes landed just perfectly. I'm sure a lot more went over my head, but I got most of them, I feel, and I laughed out loud multiple times. An intense rarity. At one point there's an extended I'll Just Have To Find Myself a New Giant joke that just had me in stitches, I had to put the book down.

But it's not all about the jokes. I also desperately loved the setting, the freedom of a ship, the exploration and quest for gold. The National Treasure style booby traps, the drama of a prison escape, even just how fight scenes are written in this bombastic movie style.

No, I'm not going to say the characters are deep. The villains are as thin as tissue paper, and the stakes not as high as they want to pretend they are. And yet, I find there to be depth there. Mary is perhaps a little too perfect, but that one scene of her comforting Jack at the end really hit. The strength she had to push forward when she was so frightened really got me. And resisting who her family made her out to be, being called Littlest as a mermaid and yet fighting to find her place. Little glimmers within the jokes.

Every story is written for a reason. Every story has some value and meaning. This one makes you laugh, and makes you yearn for adventure and friends, and helps you know you're more than just what others perceive you to be.

Mary doesn't let Vane reveal she's a woman. She takes charge of the moment and reveals herself. I love that.

(It does have a You Lied To Me line, though, I should knock a star for that, I can't bear those. Even if he sort of didn't, she just sort of didn't really ask.)

The Mary series and the Jane series in general are a hard sell for me. Normally I find them perfectly average books. Lighthearted and fun, but often I want something More from them, and I get impatient in the twee whatever. I didn't care much for the Mary Shelley one, nor Calamity Jane, or even Contrary Mary. I don't remember what happened in Jane Eyre. But maybe it's my book slump right now and my distaste for everything, but this hit Just right, broke through the sludge and the slime of a slump, and made me feel warm and happy about reading again. For that alone, a full five stars.

It feels exactly like when I read My Lady Jane for the first time. The surprise and the joy and the eagerness to see what zany joke they'd make next, what fun surprise was around the corner.

[Patty (IheartYA311) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this series as a whole. My Salty Mary was full of action but I couldn't connect with it like I did My Lady Jane. The story felt too over the top, and some of the characters were felt unrealistically dramatic just to add flare to the story. Definitely a unique twist on history, and I'll recommend the series.

[Caprice · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took all my power to finish this book. The constant modern culture references made me want to DIE. Also the romance was horrible, storyline boring, characters unbelievable, & the lack of MERMAIDS???? Sad.

[Detroit]

Cooking in the time of typhoid.

So umm, the next book after the Mary series ends, could it be crossovers on Mary and Jane? That just makes it Mary Jane. Spiderman??

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up

This book was very disappointing. It either was very poor quality (okay, I know it was) and an oddity among the others, or I am just now growing aware of how poorly written this series is because I am growing up, and possibly growing out of YA. I also think this book is more immature than all the others, and most of the jokes didn't land. It's immature in an elementary school sort of way, not even middle school. I told my seven-year-old brother some of the jokes, and he found them hilarious. I did not.

Part of my disappointment also stems from the fact I had anticipated this book for a long, long time. I also thought it would be the one I possibly loved the most. I love underwater books and pirates. I rewrote my own pirate book FIVE TIMES! Surely, that would give this book points, right? And I guess it did since I'm not rating this a two star, but it also just was surrounded with so much unfunny humor that the seriousness and emotional parts of the situations weren't taken into account to make the novel land as a whole. Humor is born of surprise, and because all of this was "funny," none of it was actually funny. I mean, the main character is literally named Littlest and her sister is named Big Deal. It reminded me of Pilgrims Progress. That is not a comparison I would've ever thought I'd make before reading.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first book in this series, My Lady Jane. I thought it was a clever twist on a historical tale and I appreciated Jane getting a happy ending instead of decapitation.

This book, however, had none of the charm and fun of the original. It tried WAY TOO HARD to make contemporary references (a shell phone, seriously?!?!), used far too many lyrics to 2010s pop songs as dialogue (and not good songs, just the cliche ones), and beat the reader over the head with how much the Caribbean lacked diversity in the Golden Age of Piracy (no respect for minorities in the 1600 and 1700s?? You shock me, sir!!)

Also, the author’s side notes were not funny despite desperately trying to be and the plot was superficial at best.

[Taz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was like... Not that good tbh It definitely felt like the writers were out of ideas and just wrote this to finish the trilogy :/

The fandom references are usually entertaining but even they were falling flat this time, and the reveal about Mary's crew toward the end (iykyk) seemed really unnecessary?

But whatever! It's done, and I'll probably end up donating this one because the dust jacket doesn't match the rest of the series anyway!!!!! (Why would they only change the last one, please tell me!)

2 stars.

[Allison Riding Larsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the Lady Janies, but this one felt a bit middle grade

[Rosemarie · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I heard about this book, I knew I had to read it. I have also read two others in this series: My Plain Jane and My Contrary Mary. I enjoyed both of those very much.

In the original story, the little mermaid did not get her prince and "turned into seafoam" at the end. I can remember being a kid and watching an animated adaptation of that story. I remember turning to my mother and asking, "What does that mean?" Did she die? I wasn't even sure. What a horrible - not to mention vague - ending to a fairy tale! That story just stuck in my mind as being one of the worst stories I had ever heard in my young life.

So, you can imagine my joy in 1989, when Disney did what they do best, and gave her a much happier ending! I will always love Disney for that, and The Little Mermaid will always be one of my favorite Disney movies.

This Little Mermaid is not Ariel, btw, there are differences to her story, her family and even her hair color - but in many ways she has the same spunk that you expect from the character and you are immediately routing for her.

In "My Salty Mary," it turns out that The Little Mermaid actually did not "turn in to seafoam" at the end of the story. No, after the prince married someone else, she went off and became the pirate Mary Read, who becomes Captain of her ship, and then enters a contest to become Pirate Queen! I'd much rather be a pirate than seafoam. There are lots of jokes about seafoam in this book and I enjoyed those a lot. It's good to know I'm not the only one to find that ridiculous.

I will admit that I don't know much about the pirates Mary Read, Anne Bonny and Grace O'Malley. Maybe that's why, overall, I didn't find this book as laugh-out-loud funny as I did the previous two that I mentioned. But that's okay. I was happy to learn about these amazing female pirates here. Hey, you go, girls!

I did get some of the pirate jokes - Hook, Penzance, Obvious, etc. and there were even some Taylor Swift jokes, not sure why, but okay.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. The authors have a great writing style - it's very entertaining. It's funny, but with a good story behind the comedy. And anyone who wishes to give the original Little Mermaid a rewrite can be my guest. I mean, you can't really do any worse, can you?? :) Highly recommended to all!

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

In theory I should love this book…. But it crosses from campy to silly too much

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cynthia Hand is one of my favorite authors, so of course I pre-ordered this gem and was so excited to find it on my doorstep this week. It did not disappoint. Told in the tongue-in-cheek way so familiar with the Lady Janies, this latest book of theirs is a cross between the Little Mermaid and the historical pirate Mary Read. Such a fun, swashbuckling adventure! 4.5 stars.

[Breana · Rating 3 out of 5]

WE HAVE A TITLE!! At the end of “My Imaginary Mary,” it’s listed as “My Salty Mary.”

I wonder who it could be about.

[Wren (fablesandwren)]

eeeeek!

[Louisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved reading this book, it was so fantastic, I loved these characters and their story, it was so much fun to read!

[Sophie Yerxa-Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️
This book was amazing I just don’t really like pirate books (this is an exception).

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

MY SALVATION ON VACATION

The last book read with my PCcino (RIP, wherever you are in Valencia) 😭 It has truly been my salvation, during three mornings in which I woke up awful early because of anxiety (even though I were on vacation in Spain). It managed to get my mind off all of my problems, carrying me directly into a world made of pirates and mermaids.
The reasons why I enjoyed "My salty Mary" so much were its wonderful protagonists (Mary and Tobias, Jack and Bonn) and the witty style used by the authors, which felt anachronistic and extremely hilarious at the same time. As regards the plot, it was undoubtedly engaging and adventurous, although I would have preferred that more twists took place (but there was the discovery that part of the crew was made up by female pirates, so let's not complain too much).
Can't wait for this series to go on!