Rani is a mermaid girl who lives in Tingle Reef with her adopted parents Miriam and Murdoch, her sisters Kai and Pearl, and her sea-horse Roscoe. She discovers she has magic powers, befriends Morva the sea-witch, and searches for her birth family.
The books in the series:
- Mermaid Magic
- Rani's Sea Spell
- The Shell Princess
Mermaids contains examples of:
- Doorstop Baby: Rani was found in a clam-shell at the edge of the reef when she was a baby. It turns out her parents put her there to protect her during a sea-quake, and put her twin brother Peri in a different shell. Her parents were both killed in the quake, and Peri was found by servants of the Mer-King and brought back to his birthplace, but Rani was presumed dead by her surviving family for ten years.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: It's downplayed as it occurred off-page in the backstory and it's not described in detail, but the part where a mermaid poisoned a sick baby to frame Morva out of romantic jealousy is pretty dark for a children’s book, and definitely one of the darkest things in the trilogy.
- Frame-Up: Long ago, Morva prepared a potion to cure a sick baby. Her romantic rival replaced the potion with salt so that the baby died, and accused Morva of using bad magic. Morva was exiled from Tingle Reef. She's only allowed back in after she makes a potion to cure Murdoch of Yellow-back jellyfish venom, which is always fatal otherwise.
- Gene Hunting: In The Shell Princess, Morva agrees to take Rani to her old home, where mermaids look like her and Rani and have the same powers, so they can look for Rani's family.
- Happily Adopted: Rani thinks that her adopted family - consisting of Murdoch, Miriam, Pearl and Kai - are the best family she could wish for.
- Healing Factor: One of the early signs that Rani has magic powers is that, when she scrapes her hand on a rock, it heals within minutes.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: When Morva was exiled, the merman she loved offered to go with her, but she refused because she knew he couldn't be happy outside of Tingle Reef. He fell in love with someone else, had a family, and became Murdoch's grandfather.
- Multi-Armed Multitasking: Octavius the octopus can do this. When Rani and Roscoe visit him to ask for help with Rani's powers, he uses two arms to push aside the curtain to his cave while using two arms to wash his cooking pots, one arm to hold a plate of food, and the other three to eat. In Rani's Sea Spell, Rani and Kai meet Octavius's sister Flora, who styles the sisters' hair, using some of her arms as curlers.
- Older Than They Look: Morva is extremely old, but looks young and beautiful.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Merfolk generally don’t go to the surface in this trilogy because they get dizzy if they go too close to the surface. The merfolk that Morva and Rani are descended from are born with an innate ability to do magic, although merfolk from other places lack powers (with the exception of twin merfolk, who are born with the ability to hear each other’s thoughts).
- People of Hair Colour: Nearly all the merfolk of Tingle Reef have blond hair, blue eyes, and green tails. Only Rani and Morva have red hair, brown eyes, and orange tails. In The Shell Princess, Morva takes Rani to her hometown, where everyone looks like the two of them.
- Shipshape Shipwreck: In Rani's Sea Spell, Rani's family goes to visit Miriam's mother, who still lives in the same shipwreck where Miriam grew up. After decades at the bottom of the sea, the ship is still intact, besides holes the merfolk use as doors. The roof finally caves in during a party, but Rani uses the sea-spell to repair the damage, making the shipwreck shipshape again.
- Threatening Shark: In Rani's Sea Spell, Rani and her family, along with Octavius, are traveling through the open ocean when they're attacked by a shark. Rani tells Octavius to throw the bags of stew he's carrying away. The shark dives after the stew while the group swims to safety.
- Twin Telepathy: Identical mermaid twins can communicate telepathically. Rani and Kai's schoolmates Marissa and Marina use their ability to play tricks on people. Rani discovers that she can hear their thoughts, too.
- Underground City: Both Morva and Rani's biological family come from a vast network of caverns beneath the seafloor that only merfolk with magic powers can get into.
