Title: The Siren

Author: Kiera Cass

Series: N/A

Genre: Teen Fantasy

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

The Overview: Love is a risk worth taking. Years ago, Kahlen was rescued from drowning by the Ocean. To repay her debt, she has served as a Siren ever since, using her voice to lure countless strangers to their deaths. Though a single word from Kahlen can kill, she can’t resist spending her days on land, watching ordinary people and longing for the day when she will be able to speak and laugh and live freely among them again. Kahlen is resigned to finishing her sentence in solitude…until she meets Akinli. Handsome, caring, and kind, Akinli is everything Kahlen ever dreamed of. And though she can’t talk to him, they soon forge a connection neither of them can deny…and Kahlen doesn’t want to. Falling in love with a human breaks all the Ocean’s rules, and if the Ocean discovers Kahlen’s feelings, she’ll be forced to leave Akinli for good. But for the first time in a lifetime of following the rules, Kahlen is determined to follow her heart. -Goodreads

The Review:

No one is more surprised than me how much I freaking loved this book.

Cass and I have a bit of a hit or miss relationship where I’m either 100% on-board fangirling… or throwing the book in disgust. Luckily, The Siren fell into the former category – something I wasn’t led to expect based on some brutal early reviews I read for the book. I have a theory as to why it caused such harsh reactions for fans of Cass’ work:

The book is less about the romance, where the main love interest is kept on the periphery for most of the book, and more about the relationship girl has with her sisters, mother ocean, and (most importantly) her heart. It’s a book filled to the brim with inner conflict as Kahlen struggled to come to terms with her lot in life and find her place in the world. I can see how most readers (misled by the romance-heavy nature of her previous series) might have gotten bored with the plot as it drifted further and further from the love story. As someone who is kind of sick of seeing the same recycled romance in YA, The Siren screamed to me something profoundly different and I enjoyed the shit out of it.

I think this is one I might actually want to reread. Certainly it deserves a spot in my collection (coveted and limited space at the moment). I don’t think it’s a book I could recommend with confidence because it’s a very specific, atypical YA that doesn’t fit the mold, but it definitely fit the bill as the refresh I needed in the genre.

Recommendations: I wouldn’t recommend this necessarily for fans of Cass’ other work because it satiates an entirely different craving. Instead I’d probably hand it to the lovers of those tragic “girls in pretty dresses in a slightly dystopia era” series (which I call “elegant dystopia”). I’d also hand this to someone expressly tired with typical YA romances.

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