The siren

As is my bent, when I read a book I like by an author, I tend to read everything they ever wrote. I enjoyed Cass' Selection series, so I decided to give this standalone a try. I have to say, it was a fairly original story. The main characters are mythical sirens, doomed to do the bidding of the ocean for 100 years before being able to return to mortal lives. The work that the ocean requires of them is to provide a steady diet of people for it to consume. If natural disasters or shipwrecks don't provide enough human life for the ocean to sustain herself, she has the sirens to lure mortals into the ocean where they drown, sustaining the ocean. All this murder (as she sees it) takes a heavy toll on Kahlen, the protagonist of the book, who has been a siren for 80 of the required 100 years. She dwells on the lives she has taken, and takes to memorializing them in scrapbooks of newspaper clippings and printouts of social-media posts. I won't spoil the plot here, but it is interesting, and surprisingly introspective. Make no mistake, this is YA fantasy-romance. It is not deep or literary. But it was a fun read, and I was impressed by the originality of the treatment of the mythology of sirens. I also enjoyed the relationship dynamic between the "sister" sirens and especially the relationship between the Kahlen and the ocean (who is a body-less voice that the sirens can speak to when touching water). Overall, I would recommend this book to those that enjoy YA-fantasy or romance.

I didn't realize this was her first novel. I went in wanting The Selection and was left disappointed. If you go in knowing this was her first unpublished novel, I think you will enjoy it more.

The story is ok. Sirens. Fantasy. Mythology. All interesting things. But the characters are not fleshed out enough for me, and it felt like a first attempt too often. Which is unfair, because it was her first attempt. The dialogue was off somehow. Amateurish and it pulled me away from the story. But the part that really bugged me was Akinli's name. The spelling, the oddness of it. Every time I saw his name my brain made me stop and sound it out to remind me how to say it. Hey, weird names do that to me. I feel like she would have made a different choice now that her writing has matured, but maybe not.

The story was fine and there is the HEA you would expect. 2.5 stars.