Songs from the Deep
by Kelly Powell
My best friend and I chose this book to read together as the second attempt of beginning an adventure into buddy reading! Our first venture was to read "The Affair of the Mysterious Letter" by Alexis Hall ~ but that was before this blog and also a book that we DNF'd at about 40%. Since I never gave it a proper review (I didn't even rate it on goodreads) and we had a lot of really mixed reasons for dropping it, we're just going to gloss over it as a failed first attempt and call it a day.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
For a spoiler-free review, please see my goodreads review.
Buddy Reading Breakdown
Preface: The way that my friend and I conduct our reading sessions is to meet up (usually at my place) and take turns reading aloud to each other. Whoever is not reading aloud is annotating their copy of the book. Sometimes we stop to chat, and sometimes we will read straight through and chat at the end. At the end of the session we copy each others' notes into the sections of the books we'd read aloud (and thus did not take notes on ourselves).
Date Began: 2/16/2020
Date Finished: 2/24/2020
Total Pages: 292
Reading Session 1: Sunday, February 16th || Completed up to page 73/Ch. 11
The story opens up with a very maudlin teenaged girl, Moira, who is obsessed with the sirens that live along the coast of her island. These sirens lure people out to sea, drown them, and eat them - they are incredibly dangerous creatures and are hated by most inhabitants of the island. However, since they draw in a lot of tourism, which the island heavily depends on economically, they are protected by a hunting ban that Moira's own father helped to instate ten years ago. A suspicious murder on the beach is blamed on the sirens and people start thinking about lifting the ban - but Moira doesn't think the sirens did it.
The big thing that I took away from this first third of the book was that Moira is VERY much a teenaged girl. I say that like it's a bad thing because it annoyed the crap out of me in this first third. This is a YA novel, where the main character is seventeen and acts like a seventeen-year-old (albeit one with a borderline unhealthy obsession with blood and death), so really it's on me if I can't connect with the character -- being that I'm nearly thirty. I'm just not the right target audience for this particular character (and perhaps, judging from this first bit, the book as a whole).
The mystery aspect of the plot so far is OK (not great but OK), but we're only in the beginning so there's plenty of time for it to flesh out and grow. I've got several notes with predictions and questions - mostly questioning Moira's thinking and the motivations of various characters - but the vast majority of my notes are on the characters themselves as I get to know them. There are at least six notes dedicated to pointing out how obsessed Moira is with blood. It's first-person POV and she's kinda creeping me out.
**Since my friend had work things and also had to go out of town, we decided to divi up the rest of the book and do reading assignments a la a more traditional buddy reading sort of thing.**
Reading Assignment 1: Read up to page 194/Ch. 25 by 2/23
I am clearly not the person who should be reading this book. This has been made quite evident by my reading experience of this section - because while I spent this part hating less on Moira, boy was I taking issue with Jude (the secondary character/ex-BFF/love interest?). We do spend a lot more time investigating the mystery and that bit improves quite a bit. There are several little twists and turns.
But the reveals... >.> Some of it just felt so paltry and low-stakes. I really think that it's more because I'm not the best reader for this book rather than it being any sort of fault on the book though. Jude's utter spinelessness bothers me though.
Also, TOTALLY called the reveal of the siren in the closet.
But the really disappointing thing about this section was the letdown of her release. I felt like there should have been more going on there. Instead, we discover the siren, then spirit her away and release her in about 7 pages. I really wish there would have been more to do with the siren at this point. I'm definitely getting the feeling that this is more of a contemporary sleuth sort of book than a fantasy, which is fine, but what I'm really curious about are the sirens and it's one thing that's left barely explained throughout the book so far.
I am clearly not the person who should be reading this book. This has been made quite evident by my reading experience of this section - because while I spent this part hating less on Moira, boy was I taking issue with Jude (the secondary character/ex-BFF/love interest?). We do spend a lot more time investigating the mystery and that bit improves quite a bit. There are several little twists and turns.
But the reveals... >.> Some of it just felt so paltry and low-stakes. I really think that it's more because I'm not the best reader for this book rather than it being any sort of fault on the book though. Jude's utter spinelessness bothers me though.
Also, TOTALLY called the reveal of the siren in the closet.
But the really disappointing thing about this section was the letdown of her release. I felt like there should have been more going on there. Instead, we discover the siren, then spirit her away and release her in about 7 pages. I really wish there would have been more to do with the siren at this point. I'm definitely getting the feeling that this is more of a contemporary sleuth sort of book than a fantasy, which is fine, but what I'm really curious about are the sirens and it's one thing that's left barely explained throughout the book so far.
Reading Assignment 2: Complete book by 3/1
Huh. Okay, so I didn't hate this as much as I thought I was going to. Not to say that it's suddenly become one of my all-time favorites or anything, but I was fairly satisfied with the ending. Jude makes his stand and Moira more or less pulls her head of her ass. The bad guys get caught (though unfortunately not eaten - I really wanted them to be eaten), and it's all wrapped up in a way that made sense.
This last bit of the book mostly focuses on the Jude/Moira romance, though - or at least their feelings toward one another. Unfortunately, I just don't buy it. I thought that their dynamic worked well as friends who were reconciling. The romance aspect felt forced, almost like it was shoved in there because it's a YA book and YA books "must have romance". Which, I get that it's a common theme and I have no problem with that ~ I read plenty of YA and enjoy plenty of romantic plots and side-plots. However, in this case I just couldn't feel the chemistry.
Huh. Okay, so I didn't hate this as much as I thought I was going to. Not to say that it's suddenly become one of my all-time favorites or anything, but I was fairly satisfied with the ending. Jude makes his stand and Moira more or less pulls her head of her ass. The bad guys get caught (though unfortunately not eaten - I really wanted them to be eaten), and it's all wrapped up in a way that made sense.
This last bit of the book mostly focuses on the Jude/Moira romance, though - or at least their feelings toward one another. Unfortunately, I just don't buy it. I thought that their dynamic worked well as friends who were reconciling. The romance aspect felt forced, almost like it was shoved in there because it's a YA book and YA books "must have romance". Which, I get that it's a common theme and I have no problem with that ~ I read plenty of YA and enjoy plenty of romantic plots and side-plots. However, in this case I just couldn't feel the chemistry.
Final Thoughts
I'm glad I read this book, and I'm glad that I read it as a buddy-read because without that structure I probably would have A) DNF'd by the time I was done with the first third of the book or B) Hate-read it until the end with blinders on and refused to see the things that were done well within the book. Since I was able to take notes and then talk about the things that I was picking up on in the book, I was able to back myself up a bit and take a proverbial chill pill. Once I did, I was able to be more objective while reading so that, while I don't know that I'd go so far as to say I enjoyed the book, I certainly didn't hate it and can appreciate it for what it is. I also was able to learn more about myself as a reader, and what I do and don't like. For example - I don't like unreliable narrators.
Things I Liked About This Book:
- The aging of the characters. These are very accurate portrayals of teenaged characters. They aren't just adults in teen bodies - but actual teenagers reacting to the events as they take place in the story. It was very realistic and very well done. Not only that, but the adults in the book were also accurately depicted in their responses to those teenagers and what they were getting up to. I particularly liked the way Moira's mom was done, and the relationship between the two of them.
- The concept. I really liked the whole "sirens are real and they're an endangered species, they eat people but let's protect them" thing. It was interesting and different. Even if the approach wasn't quite for me (I would have wanted more info and interaction with the sirens themselves), I can appreciate why it was done the way that it was - with the sirens being more animal=like than people-like, even if they were... people-looking.
Things I Didn't Like About This Book:
- The romance. I did not buy into the Moira/Jude relationship. It felt forced and very tacked-on, rather than it being an organic evolution of their relationship. After barely speaking or seeing each other for four years, they struggle to fall back into the rhythm of being friends, and then suddenly over the course of a few days they're in love with each other. If there had been feelings from before that were resurfacing then maybe, but four years ago Moira was a whole 12/13 years old so...
- Moira... or Jude. I just wasn't a fan of either of these characters, which is probably again - on me - but it's worth stating here. I found Moira unlikeable and Jude kinda pathetic for most of the book. Moira especially frustrated me with her motivations, even though they were in character for her. She was obsessed with clearing the blame from the sirens - when a young boy who was her own student that she was close with was the one who was murdered, and she saw his corpse. Her whole focus was on making sure the blame did not land on the sirens, rather than finding the real killer because they hurt Connor and that really rubbed me the wrong way. I might have had a less difficult time with it if she hadn't had such a personal connection to the victim.
There are other things, yes, but most of those are touched on or explained throughout my little blurbs up there - so I won't go into them again if they weren't BIG THINGS.
In all, I decided to give this book a 3.5/5 - by far one of the most unbiased ratings I've ever given. The writing was solid, and the story was there, but it was a slight miss. I think an actual teenager or someone who likes characters like Moira (unreliable brats) will enjoy this book far more than I did.
