Second Book Review: The Siren

Okay, so Kiera Cass’s “The Siren” was given to me as a Christmas gift recently. My best friend knows of my love for mermaids and myths, and is unabashedly feeding the obsession with every Birthday and Christmas since it started. I currently own 6 or 7 books featuring mermaids, and I have not bought a single one.

That being said, this book is NOT about mermaids-but neither of us fully realized that until I was halfway I tot he book going “wait, this came with the mermaid stuff.”

In all honesty, this book was slow starting for me. But, in the stoubornness to finish this book that was a gift, I pressed on. Listening to it was easier, starting out as a way to fill my time as I drove. By the end of the book, I was sitting for hours in my bedroom, letting myself be swept away into the world of the sirens.

The ocean does not take mothers and she does not take wives. She takes young women, rescuing them from their watery grave. In return, she requires 100 years of their time. In that time, they will not grow old or die, they will not fall ill, and they will not be injured. They will be the most beautiful creatures I walk the face of the earth, and their voice will be deadly. Once their time is up, they will be released to live their lives, with no memory of their past.

It’s how they must live during this time though, that is the true curse. They are required to sing for the ocean, their voices enticing people to their deaths in the water. The death giving the ocean life and energy she needs to sustain the life of the world. At all other times, they are cursed to silence. For if a human hears their voice, the human will immediately search for a way to drown-their life belonging to the ocean.

The Story follows Kahlen, 80 years into her sentence. She has seen one sister released, and is nearing the release of another. Pulled from life in The 1950’s, she much prefers a quiet life and fashions as close to those of that time as she can get. She walks around the college campus in her town, longing to be just one of them. It’s when she is there in the library, secluded in a corner on the highest floor, that she meets Akinli.

He is the first person in her 80 years to attempt to work around her silence. He seems interested in who she is, rather than the beauty the ocean has cursed her with.

Akinli and Kahlen’s story drew me in from their first conversation under the tree, and had me routing for them long before their one perfect day. With lives in danger, a new sister to teach, and an ocean angry and keeping secrets, nothing seemed like it would work out well for them, or for anyone.

The closer I let myself get to these characters, the more I worried and fretted as they all banded together to solve a problem-with or without the oceans help. I was confused, and the actual problem is one I would laugh at if looked at stereotypically. But woven so well, I believed every word. I believed absolutely that the only solution to this problem was the one thing the ocean refused to let happen.

And when it finally did? My heart rejoiced. I wished I could follow after the epilogue-see where life took them and how they resolved every little thing. See the future with them, and how the lives for the sisters and the separated couple turned out.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the story it had to tell simple, sweet, yet full of the mystical and magical. An obsession with mermaids may have prompted the gift, but a new interest in the myth of the sirens kept it going.