When the book is selected for film adaptation, she quits her day job and is installed in a charmless hotel in LA so she can keep an eye on the two bros hired to write the script. But as she attempts to lure the screenwriters away from cliché, strange things start to happen. The script appears to write itself, prophesying the demise of the screenwriters, who meet with a series of unfortunate events.

When I read the synopsis I thought, "this could be brilliant, or it could be terrible". Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter.

Firstly, we're dealing with the hackneyed book-within-a-book scenario, in which the narrative focusing on Penny's experiences is interspersed with chapters from her fictional novel. Langbein conflates truth and fiction as far as she can, but adds another layer of cringeworthiness through the script taking on a life of its own - and none of these three texts are written well.

Secondly, it is a confused mishmash of folklore and mythology. The childless couple stealing a mermaid is a variation on the Celtic and Norse myth of the selkie, a creature which can shapeshift between seal and human form.

Tales involving selkies inject longing into the age-old cautionary tale about desiring something (or someone) out of reach. This complexity is absent from the story of Langbein's mermaid, whose vapid journey through corrupted society reads as a poorly executed parody.

Penny is short for Penelope, which of course harks back to Homer's Odyssey. Like Odysseus's wife, Langbein's character spends a lot of time waiting: waiting for her life to start, waiting for her film to be made, waiting for the writer bros to take her suggestions seriously. But most of all, she is waiting to get rich.

This aspect of the story drags it down more than any of its other ill-conceived elements. Penny yearns for the high life but then finds hanging around with LA's rich and famous an empty experience. But Penny excuses herself from self-reflection by reverting to her well-honed demeanour of ironic nonchalance, in which she can pass off all experience as meaningless.

The book is sold as a comedy, but I cannot remember laughing once. I did however groan out loud several times. Female characters don't have to be likeable -indeed, I suspect this is the message Langbein is confusedly trying to impart.

But it is hard to see the point of a novel, particularly one purporting to be feminist, when it suggests that nothing is ever at stake.