Query help! YA historical fantasy

[Adrianne]

I'm trying to whip this thing into shape, and its rough! Any thoughts and advice are appreciated!

Dear agent,

(Personalized info reasons here)

Murron may be a selkie, a mythical creature that can transform from a seal into a human, but that won't save her from raging storms in the human world or capricious faeries in the Otherworld.

All Murron knows is she's in danger, but not why. Her memories are gone. Callum, an 18-year-old fisherman, discovers her collapsed on his beach. He befriends her, despite his family's warnings against sea folk. Murron falls in love with the vast skies and sweeping heather of 18th century Orkney, Scotland, but fears disaster lurks near.

Then the storms come.

Gales batter the fishing village, threatening not only their budding romance but all of Orkney. Callum and Murron discover a magical imbalance in the faerie world causes the storms.

Just as Murron regains her memories, a tempest tears them apart. Callum must find her before the sea becomes too treacherous to sail. Murron must free herself from the faerie lord of winter storms and chaos or be trapped under the sea forever. Together, they must set the imbalance right before the weather destroys everything.

Readers of Juliet Marillier and Robin LaFevers will enjoy GALE.

Told from alternating POV, GALE is a young adult historical fantasy novel complete at 92,000 words.

Thank you for your consideration.

[Cee]

I'll try my best! I'm not too great with reviews, but I'm currently trying to write a query myself... so I figured that I should probably try to help some other people out, too. This is just my personal opinion, and I'm not a professional or anything, but I hope it helps!

Murron may be a selkie, a mythical creature that can transform from a seal into a human, but that won't save her from raging storms in the human world or capricious faeries in the Otherworld.

I'm not sure if you need to explain what a "selkie" is. It's a little more obscure than a mermaid, for example, but... people still know about it. The way the syntax is structured, too, makes me think that the sentence is leading into something else--I think that it's going to be listing some three-prong "may be" reasons (i.e., "she may be a selkie, good-looking, and rich, BUT..."). If I didn't know what a selkie was, I'd be even more muddled by the syntax. It's a little thing, but I wonder if you continue to have the definition of "selkie" in the query, if you could work it in a little more naturally.

All Murron knows is she's in danger, but not why. Her memories are gone. Callum, an 18-year-old fisherman, discovers her collapsed on his beach. He befriends her, despite his family's warnings against sea folk. Murron falls in love with the vast skies and sweeping heather of 18th century Orkney, Scotland, but fears disaster lurks near.

This is a pretty good paragraph, even though "amnesia" in any form makes me kind of sigh to myself. That's a personal thing, though.

Then the storms come.

Gales batter the fishing village, threatening not only their budding romance but all of Orkney. Callum and Murron discover a magical imbalance in the faerie world causes the storms.

If "Then the storms come" was more of a jarring revelation and hadn't already been revealed in the very first line of the query, I could understand the desire to have it as its own separate paragraph. But the appearance of storms, especially those which have already been mentioned, isn't worth halting the flow of your query. I'd recommend squishing the above two paragraphs together.

Also, I'd use "Callum and Murran discover that a magical imbalance is causing the storms." That leads me into wondering how they found that out, though.

Just as Murron regains her memories, a tempest tears them apart. Callum must find her before the sea becomes too treacherous to sail. Murron must free herself from the faerie lord of winter storms and chaos or be trapped under the sea forever. Together, they must set the imbalance right before the weather destroys everything.

Why define "selkie", but not "tempest"?
This paragraph brings in a lot of new information at the last minute that I feel a little overwhelmed by. There are three goals posed by this ending: a) Callum needs to find Murron, b) Murron must free herself from a faerie god, and c) the imbalance has to be corrected. That's a lot of information, and I'm not really sure how the book is going to work. Are we alternating perspectives between Murron and Callum? Which of these three goals is the main story going to be about?
In a query, I think it's best to stick to the main plot. So, out of these three plots, which one is the most important? I realize that they're probably all important and they all intertwine with one another, but it's still a lot to take in. I think the "faerie lord of winter storms and chaos" part is probably the most jarring, out of the three, because it seems so out of left-field that I'm left with a little bit of whiplash.
As a side note, I'd use a different word besides "weather" in the final sentence. "Weather" is not, in itself, a very threatening word. "Storm" or "disaster" are strong words -- but weather? Old people discuss the "weather".

Readers of Juliet Marillier and Robin LaFevers will enjoy GALE.
Why? What similarities do they share? Same genre, same writing style? If you're going to compare your book to other authors/titles, you need to explain the reason why.
(Also, you should look into each individual agent's opinion on this, because a lot of agents I've seen say they hate comparisons between other books.)

Told from alternating POV, GALE is a young adult historical fantasy novel complete at 92,000 words.

I know I said that I was wondering what perspective the story was told from, but I wasn't looking for an answer in the query itself. There's no reason for that -- if the agent likes your query enough to look at your pages, they're going to catch onto the POV in the first sentence alone. And so many books have alternating POVs, I don't really think you have to mention it. It's kind of the equivalent of saying, "Told from a first-person perspective, BLAH BLAH BLAH." It's not really a selling point, it's just a detail that doesn't need mentioning.

Thank you for your consideration.

This wasn't bad at all! It might be a little rough around the edges, but with some polishing and fine-tuning, I think it'll work fine. The flow is good, and it's a comfortable length. Those are the main things I've seen that people tend to struggle with, but you already have those parts down--so good job with that!

[Adrianne]

Wow, thank you! It's very helpful. If you ever want me to look yours over, let me know!