The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh is a retelling of the Korean legend “The Tale of Shim Cheong.” Reading this novel about fate is like walking in a sometimes terrifying, sometimes sad, sometimes confusing but overall mesmerizing dream.
Every year, a young girl is sacrificed to become the Sea God’s bride in order to calm the deadly storms. In its one hundredth year, everyone believes Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village, would be the final bride, the one to end all their suffering. But instead, sixteen-year-old Mina, to save her brother Joon, who has interfered in the sacrifice of his beloved Shim Cheong, jumps into the sea in Shim Cheong’s place and into a whole new world beneath.
In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, Mina encounters a dragon, gods and goddesses, spirits and beasts of myth and travels to enchanting places I would love to see on screen. In addition to figuring out why the Sea God has abandoned her homeland and the reason for his anger, Mina deals with both fate and freedom of choice. Of all the quotes in the book about fate, I liked this the most: “What if someone told you your fate was to sit around all day and eat dumplings?” Would you do it, eat dumplings all day? Would you yield to your fate and do nothing else? Or would you defy it? What if your fate was “to climb up the highest waterfall and jump off? Or to hurt the person you love most in the world? Or worse, to hurt the person who loves you most in the world?”
“I was angry at the fate I’d been given. Because I realized that in order for you to have what you want, I’d have to lose the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea reminded me of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and helped me discover the theme I like the most in stories—making your own choices. In The Midnight Library, the protagonist, after attempting suicide, is sent to a place between life and death, while in The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, Mina falls into the Spirit Realm, a place between heaven and earth, where the dead are welcome to stay if they choose to. And in both novels, the protagonists have to make an important decision, a decision that will greatly affect their lives and the lives of others. To me, both novels effectively show a balance between accepting life as it is and going for a life that you want.
This book tackled many more themes, aside from fate and free will, that made me reflect, such as purpose, hope, grief, forgiveness, trying your hardest, choosing to love someone out of necessity, longing for something, letting someone go and patience in waiting. Encouraged to “have a life beyond the one that was expected of me,” The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea is definitely a tale I’d love to read again and again and again.
Sunny Day Reads 
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