2.5/5

Wow. I was not expecting to have to DNF this book. There was so much happening in the first 20% of the book that I was too overwhelmed to continue reading. I had trouble keeping characters and their storylines apart and I didn’t understand several of the words used to either describe family members of mythological beings.

The POV switches between two black girls, one is an undercover siren and the other, I don’t think I even got far enough to find out what she was. There’s loads of mentions of different mythological creatures, but after a while it just got a little hard to keep up.

I also found that the lack of world building was kind of disorienting. What am I expecting to picture in my head? It would’ve been nice to have seen a little more of the world so that I know whether to expect something like Zootopia or New York with werewolves.

However, I did enjoy the bond that the two girls seem to have. It’s a solid friendship. But it wasn’t enough to keep me interested :(

I’m super sad to have to DNF this book, because I had such high hopes for it. I think the premise is honestly so amazing and I don’t think you should base whether or not you read this book solely on my opinion.

In modern day America, there are some people who carry a mythological heritage: They are mermaids, gargoyls or sirens.
Tavia has to face not only the racism and sexism that comes with being a black girl in the US, she also has to keep a big secret, that impacts the life of her whole family: She is a siren. But while Tavia is trying to find her place in society and fights for her rights, her adopted sister Effie struggels with the mystery of her own family and heritage.

This book is a really nice story about finding out who you are and finding your place in the world or - in short - about growing up. It manages to do this while connecting modern day issues with magic.

The basic story was intriguing, taking on current social issues in an urban fantasy setting. There are elements of interesting world-building here, and I appreciated the bond between Effie and Tavia (though I continually bumped on the term "play-sister" or "play-family").

However, I found parts of the world-building half-baked or unexplained - sprites, for example, are referenced frequently, but the way they work in this world is never really laid out (mostly they're minor annoyances but following the major and tragic incident in Effie's childhood everyone was just like, "oh, guess it must have been sprites ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"). It also doesn't really follow for me that supernatural creatures are an accepted part of this world and yet have had seemingly no effect on history - they aren't mentioned in the Bill of Rights, military conflicts and colonization and their outcomes seem to have been the same, the story of The Little Mermaid still exists even though mermaids are real. (On a more minor note: the Renaissance Faire is apparently so big and popular that there's fanfiction devoted to it even though it only runs two weeks a year?)

I also didn't find it particularly appealing that Effie and Tavia were nearly the only characters who were sympathetic or seemed to act in explicable or supportable ways. Tavia's parents, Effie's grandmother, and Naema often came off as pretty monstrous, even when supposedly acting out of concern. And while I thought that the passages about Tavia's support network were often quite beautiful, the idea of it didn't super make sense to me. The fact that you wanted to be in the gospel choir at this particular high school meant that you were also signing up to help hide a siren? What if you just liked gospel music?

This one might just not have clicked with me, but I think it might work better for others.

I was pretty excited to read this book. When you list what it's about it sounds pretty stunning and a great idea for a book! Though unfortunately I don't think that the full potential of this book was reached, this more than anything upsets me because it wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't a great one and it had the potential to be incredible but sadly it just... well wasn't.

In Short: Mermaids / Sirens / Mythical Creatures + Racial Tension + Found Family = A Song Below Water

The problem with this book is that it's so messy. For the first half it genuinely felt like i'd been swept off my feet but not in a good way, the story either made no sense and failed at building its world and lore or it made sense and felt incredibly slow and somewhat boring, with no in-between. I felt like i'd accidentally been approved for a sequel novel instead of a standalone/first book in a series. There is so much that isn't explained and is left to pick up or google that it felt too overwhelming at times. Don't get me wrong, i'm all for books that leave the reader to their own devices when it comes to not explaining cultural things but A Song Below Water didn't leave cultural or things that could be left to the reader to learn about out of the book. It left out key information like what exactly is a Siren in this world? What is an Elko? What's the difference between the two and why are Elko's loved and not feared? It just felt like a mess at times where things weren't fleshed out enough.

Talking about fleshing out this story there are SO many unresolved plot points that are just left hanging by the end of the book. What happened to the Camila the awesome YouTuber? Why didn't the book expand on what happened to Naemia? Why wasn't the relationship between Tavia and her Dad expanded upon? These are just some of the thoughts I had when i'd finished this. It felt like there was so much going on eventually that there wasn't enough time to resolve all the plot points in a satisfying way.

Though this wasn't all negative, if you manage to force yourself to read past the 50% mark at around 55/60% the story suddenly becomes captivating, moving and everything else you wanted from the book at the start. Things you thought should have been explained at the beginning are finally explained and make sense and the plot ramps up as well. I did enjoy this book and I didn't expect it to end up where it did and I am glad I read it, it's just there are some major gapping holes that I think should have been fixed before it was released. Though I did love the addition of all the mythical people because how often do you get to read a book that has sirens and other ancient greek/roman lore in?

Overall, It's not a bad book it's just disappointing it has such an amazing idea behind it and an incredible cover but the contents of the book and the way it just felt messy and unorganised let it down. If it was a 1/3 shorter or a 1/3 longer I think this book could have been amazing. It should have either been tightened up as a story or been allowed the time and pages to set up the story properly and expand on everything the author wanted to say. There's clearly a lot of powerful messages trying to get through in this book and it lands a few of them but due to lack of coherence at points in the book not all the powerful messages get across properly and it's sad really.

(2.5 stars out of 5)

Bethhany C. Morrow is an amazing writer and storyteller. I read MEM last year and was so excited to see her branch out into YA. A Song Below Water is about two teenage girls, sisters and best friends, Tavia and Effie, living in Portland, Oregon. In a city with a small population of Black folks and an even smaller community of magical people, Tavia struggles to keep her identity as a siren secret. Sirens, who are always Black women, are persecuted and discriminated against. While Tavia struggles to keep her siren powers from coming out, Effie, who stars as a mermaid at a local Renaissance faire, begins fighting strange changes to her body and weird blackouts where she cannot recall what happened. Is she a mermaid? Or someone else who the world rarely encounters? This book has an amazing story about finding yourself and your family and is woven through with contemporary topics such as race, police brutality against people of color, and the killing of Black boys. The book is both fantasy and fiction, but rooted in today's times with a call to activism. I highly recommend this book and, besides, how could you ever resist that gorgeous cover?

The sister’s in this book are amazing, their relationship and love for each other is so well written. They are wonderfully supportive of each other in everything they are going through in regards to both the magical elements of their lives and being young women of color. I appreciate how the author isn’t just alluding to real life events and using magic as an analogy to explore this, but rather combines magic and reality making the magical realism of the book intertwined with political events.
I also really enjoyed how the magic was depicted in the book. It was beautiful, strange, and sometimes even a little scary. The balance between these different elements was really interesting. The magic itself is not blessing or a curse but is so complex. The settings were another place were the magic elements really shined and overall were just well written. All around this was a well done book and the relationship between Tavia and Effie really drove the story forward and made it particularly compelling.

This novel is one of the best I’ve read this year! The characters are so dynamic yet relatable. I loved the flow of the story. It held my attention the whole time.

really enjoyed this book! I thought it was beautifully written magical realism and relevant to today. Everyone should at least give this book a chance! It is an amazing debut!

If The Hate U Give was an urban fantasy, that's what it would be like. A Song Below Water is such an important and innovative novel with so much potential and I'm so sorry that it fell flat for me.

A Song Below Water is mostly a story about being a Black girl, about fear and violence and being forced to stay silent. I loved the added layer of only Black girls being sirens and sirens being the most persecuted of the magical species, who, because of their power to control others, have to live in hiding. It strengthened the message of how Black people and especially girls are feared and silenced. The background of the present-day America was amazing (and especially a pretend-liberal city like Portland, where people pretend to be open-minded until something happens) and I loved how the history of sirens went back to the social movements of 1960s, it was a great touch. Generally, the permise sounded amazing and the book still had its brilliant moments and made so many important comments.

My two main issues with the book were that (1) I couldn't tell the two main characters apart - their voices were so similar that I kept mistaking them until the very end and it's a big problem since the story has dual POV, and (2) the world-building for the magical parts was seriously missing and I actually checked it it was a sequel and I was missing some info. It's not. My problem was especially with the faire and Hidden Scales - I'm still unclear as to what exactly were they and they were a huge part of the plot.

Unfortunately, the idea that should have worked brilliantly too often felt like it was three different stories being told simultaneously and confusing each other.

I'll definitely keep my eye out on what the author writes next because these are all the technical things that can be fixed in the next books, and she has so many important things to say and so much imagination to put a fairy tale twist on them.

The synopsis and absolutely stunning cover alone would have been enough to make me want to read this book. It presented a unique premise in that this was a fantasy story that exclusively focused on women of color navigating their way through the world. It's hard being a black woman in America. Add in a power that everyone is afraid of? Even harder.

Weaving in fantastical creatures and social justice, this was a very realistic tale. Set in an alternative Portland where sprites, gargoyles, and mermaids are not creatures of lore, but actually exist. Two teenage girls, one a siren and the other unsure of what she is, are not only having to battle the normal trials of being a teenage girl, but are having to fight racial prejudices that extend beyond the color of their skin. Sirens are always black women and are feared because of their ability to control people with their voice. This adds an extra layer of racism onto sirens and black women, forcing any with the powers of a siren to remain hidden in plain sight.

It was a little difficult to get into the story at first because the worldbuilding was a little lacking and I felt like I had been thrown into the middle of a story without any explanation as to what had already happened. I kept thinking maybe I had missed something. Because of this I was fairly confused the first few chapters, unsure of what was going on. Luckily the book soon found its stride and I began to fall in love with the setting and characters.

It was worth pushing through for the final few explosive chapters. I would love to see more of these girls and this universe, I really hope this is the first book in a series. If so, I can't wait to read more!

When I saw the cover of this book, I knew I had to read it. The artwork is absolutely beautiful, and mermaids and sirens? Yes, please.

I felt this story started out a little slow, but the last few chapters definitely made it worth the anticipation. I do wish there was more detail and time dedicated to world building. The story takes place in Portland, but not the Portland we know. While I loved the idea of a tale of fantasy taking place in a city everyone is familiar with, I do wish that it had been set up to make it more believable and so that the reader could transport themselves there. There were multiple times where things felt confused and I had to go back and reread to see if I had missed something.

Despite that, I enjoyed reading about Tavia and Effie’s journey and I could see my students enjoying this story!

Thank you NetGalley for the digital ARC in exchange for a review.

Not mermaids!

This is a pitch perfect YA contemporary fantasy west coast world. Our heroine and her best friend are not mermaids, but play one at the Ren Faire. There are also overprotective tone-deaf parental figures trying their best to stifle the girls' Siren and Gorgon talents. We get to see intimately the confusion wrought by too little information too late.

It's from an imprint I trust pretty far, TOR, and they are offering a winner with n optimistic outcome and headline news relevance to our real lives.

Step-siblings Effie and Tavia love and protect each other through the stresses of every day life. Siren Tavia hides her powers from the rest of the world, but can be herself with her sister. Effie wishes for a world of magic, one she finds in a carnival. While political turmoil makes life for sirens more difficult (including a frankly disturbing celebrity known as Lexie on a Leash), the girls learn to share their voices in a literal way.

This book has an intriguing cover and premise, but I felt like it was a bit of a mess in its construction. It tries to be too many things and doesn’t accomplish any of them well. It’s a fantasy lacking world building, a social issues novel lacking a compelling plot line & forcing the black siren concept, and a character driven story with two narrators who blend together. I was pulled in towards the very end, and I do admit that there were a few well crafted surprises towards the end, but this isn’t one that I will recommend.

I'm not sure I can write a review which does this insightful, enchanting book justice (and this is from someone who has a rocky relationship with fantasy!) At first I found that I was engaging a lot more with the "real life" parts of the story than the fantasy elements, but about a quarter of the way in this book really found its footing. As the story went on, the fantasy added layers to the narrative - encouraging readers to think about things in new ways.
I was completely absorbed by A Song Below Water - I didn't expect a YA novel to make me feel so tense, but at certain parts my heart was thumping, and I was desperate to know what happened next. Part of this was investment in the characters - Tavia and Ellie both felt very real from the start, and as a reader you really care what happens to them. A Song Below Water is a wonderful book, and one I'm sure I will be re-reading very soon.

A Song Below Water focuses on two girls of colour- one that is a Siren, and the other is trying to figure out who and what she is, in a world where being different could mean that you could end up being an outcast.

When we meet Tavia, she’s frightened about the world finding out that she is a Siren. Being a Siren in Portland meant that she could get a Siren collar- and be silenced. Tavia’s dad denies that she is a Siren, and insinuates that it is all in her head, which doesn’t help Tavia at all. At the start, I emphasised with Tavia, as she struggles to fit in at school, fighting the uncontrollable Siren call urges, which she masks using choir. In comparison, Effie, Tavia’s foster sister and our second main character, embraces the weird and different in order to mask that she’s not sure what or who she is. Effie thrives as her character in the renaissance faire as Euphemia the Mer, wearing a fake mermaid tail, and pretending to fall in love with another actor in the faire.

The storyline progresses slowly, and at times, I feel like nothing much has happened. In other points, there is a lot of action and that was pretty satisfying. Whilst I could follow on for most of the story, there were also a number of times where I found myself swimming in information dumps, which felt like a lot to take in, even though a lot of the information was vital to understand what was going on. It was also interesting to read in dual perspectives, as I could see what was going through Effie’s mind when things were happening, as well as Tavia’s perspective. These perspectives were rather different, and getting two views on issues that are affecting them definitely opened up my mind.

I loved the concept of this book being set in a contemporary fantasy world, where not only there are Sirens and mermaids, but also elokos and gargoyles. The variety made the world a lot more believable, rather than just having one type of mythical creature. I liked that most of these mythical creatures had a character in the story, rather than just be told ‘in our world there’s these things too!’, which made the world much more three dimensional in my head.

The characters that featured in the book were vividly described, and each definitely had their own voice that didn’t blend into the background. I really enjoyed reading about Mother Theo, who sounded like a paranoid lady that nearly sounded like she’d wear a tin-foil hat, whereas we had Tavia’s dad, who appeared constantly angry. I also found it a little too close to home that Tavia felt like the world (and more precisely the police) were watching her, given the current climate around the world where the police are currently knocking on the door, making sure that everyone is home and not outside. It was also refreshing that the romances within the book weren’t always in my face, as is the normal thing to have in many young adult books.

I’d recommend this book for those who want a fresh, different young adult contemporary fantasy that has major The Hate U Give meets Nineteen Eight Four vibes.

Rating: 3/5

(Review available on my blog on 19th May)

I am sorry to say the writing did not work for me. This was one of my most anticipated books of 2020 but sadly it does not work for me. The voice doesn't feel very different from all the other books out there and the word choice is dull. Love the cover though!

This book is excellent as a story about teenagers who deal with real issues,
but a little less great as a fantasy book.

This however didn't take away much from how much I enjoyed it.

A song below water is the story of Effie and Tavia. They are (step)sisters and best friends. Tavia comes to face even more problems than she already did when a murder victim is accused of being a siren. Since she secretly is a siren herself she struggles with oppression, discrimination and racism. Her sister is facing a different issue entirely as she might be changing into something she doesn’t understand.

What carries this story mostly is the characters (Effie and Tavia) and the bound between them,. They are not sisters by blood but they are in every other sense. Their interactions and conversations were really great to read about and I really enjoyed it. The way they talk just feels very natural and very much like actual teenagers. They also both have very complex and interesting histories and there's representation for mental illness and sign language. I could very very much relate to Effie's shyness and social anxiety.

To me the most important theme in this book was the theme of racism. The story takes place in a version of the world where there are all kinds of magical creatures and humans with magical abilities. The main character is a Siren, which only black girls/women can be. For this reason they are being discriminated against and distrusted.
As I am not a person of color this of course effects my review, I can't judge the representation very in depth but as far as I can tell it was done very well.
Oppression was a strong theme in other ways as well. It talked about these women LITERALLY being silenced, by having to wear a collar that would make them unable to use their abilities.
And it not only talks about the people who are being repressed or the ones who actively play part in it but it also criticizes everyone who stands by and just lets it happen. And I think it succeeded at making me want to do something to help. Because you care about these characters it's hard to see them get hurt.


This is however not a strong story when it comes to fantasy.
The magic in there felt pretty cool, but it also was a bit random. As you start reading this you learn a few things about the magic that exist and thats about all you get. Some things exist. There's never really an explanation about what exactly this world is and which magical creatures there are. Therefor it's hard to be super interested in the 'mystery' of what Effie is, because there doesn't seem to be any way to know. It kept me interested because of how it affected the character but not because of the magic itself.
The reason I think fantasy books make me feel invested and not like 'everything could just be fixed by magic at any moment' is because there are sort of rules. It works better for me if its more clear what the limits of the magic are. There are some explanations about what Effie can do and a big part of it is that she doesn't know much about it herself. It's even stated at some point that everyone has to go off of myths about certain creatures because they just don't know anything. I however think it's a bit strange if there's a whole magical world where everyone knows magic exist, but no-one knows much about it.

This being said I still really enjoyed reading this story!

I honestly really loved this book and I think it is perfect for a YA audience. "A Song Below Water" is filled with themes of friendship, love and relationships mixed with a touch of magical realism. Effie and Tavia are as close as sisters can be and yet they each have unique qualities and interests. Their everyday lives are made even more challenging with the addition of magical powers as they learn to use them carefully amidst rolling and uncontrollable emotions. In their hometown of Portland, everyday people outnumber a handful of "unique" people with exceptional powers and abilities. Tavia is a siren. She is one of many who are required to keep their powers hidden because of the fear and prejudice against them. This is a novel about racism and sexism, but the through-line of social justice is subtle and interweaves well with themes of relationships and friendship. I think these are important topics and I was initially worried that this novel might be too heavy but it was actually quite engaging and upbeat.

The two main characters struggle through friendships, betrayal, love and family dynamics while remaining optimistic and hopeful for something good to come out of it all. And then there is the Gargoyle; who wouldn't love to have a Gargoyle keeping them safe and watching over them from a distance?

I think even adolescents who aren't into fantasy would still love this book. Effie and Tavia exist in more than just a fantasy world, their world is relatable to everyday life and the supernatural is weaved throughout a believable and complex plot. That is a challenge for every author who writes magical realism; it takes skill to make the unbelievable become ordinary and rational.

I would highly recommend "A Song Below Water" by Bethany C. Morrow. I would mostly recommend it for adolescent readers who enjoy fantasy mixed with relationships and friendship. I also want to thank Macmillan-Tom Doherty Associates and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A Song Below Water is a book I wish existed when I was a teen. The main characters are two sisters named, Tavia and Effie. Their love and devotion for each other is both beautiful and agonizing. Tavia is fighting a society that wants to silence her because she's a siren and black. Tavia has a "network" of people that help to protect her siren identity comparable to the Underground Railroad that aided Harriet Tubman. Tavia wants to live freely. But how can a siren live without restraints in a society that fears sirens?
Portland, OR is as much a character in this novel as Tavia and Effie. The place where parents can name their daughter, "Altruism", and the child not feel out of place. A place that's supposed to be extremely liberal with hipster chic, but black residents are still dying at the hands of police.
This novel is well written and full of content. There are issues of racism, prejudice, and broken family dynamics. The mythological features and main characters' ethnicity gives this novel an uniqueness that makes it a must-have for my library's YA collection. My only critique is that the story seemed to drag a bit towards the middle of the book.