This story may be about a disappearing woman, but it's really about how this disappearance affects others around her. If you're expecting a mystery here, then you will be disappointed. This is more an exploration on how women are treated, discarded, not really cared about. It's painful and moving and absolutely stunning. Highly recommend.

Engaging story that keeps you pulled in for the entirety of the book. Fun for me having been to Cyprus, but a nice intro to the history for anyone who has never been.

Another gorgeous novel by Christy Lefteri. I loved the Bee Keeper of Allepo and I'm happy to have a chance to read this one as well.

Thank you, Random House, for the gifted copy.

This book! It’s on my list of favorites for 2021, much like The Beekeeper of Aleppo was on my list in 2019!


Songbirds is the story of Nisha, a Sri Lankan nanny and housekeeper living in Cyprus who disappears. The reader does not meet Nisha in the present, only through the voices of Petra, the woman for whom she works, and Yiannis, her love. There are multiple side stories as well, some of them of the same importance as the main story. From the very start we know that Nisha is missing, and the eerie tension builds and builds. Has she been kidnapped? Did she go back to Sri Lanka?

Much like with The Beekeeper, Christy Lefteri shines a light on some important issues. The primary focus is how domestic worker are treated in some places, with very long days, little time off, and living far away from their families because it’s the only way to support them. Also important is that when multiple workers went missing, the police did not wish to investigate, seeing the women as less than. There’s a tie-in between this storyline and actual missing people, and the author’s note is not to be missed. Also of importance to the storyline are the gorgeous songbirds who are poached and consumed as a delicacy. All of the wildlife is depicted with such stunning writing.

I wasn't the biggest fan of The Beekeeper of Allepo but I was lucky enough to attend a zoom event with the author and the way she spoke about this book and her inspirations compelled me to pick it up. It was an interesting choice to introduce us to the main character through two alternating perspectives, one her lover and one her boss. As with The Beekeeper, there's just something about Lefteri's writing that doesn't connect with me. Her stories seem to evoke emotion; unfortunately, I never really feel it.

A moving and powerful book, in which characters must undergo intense loss and sorrow to understand deeper prejudices and expectations that exist within their communities and their own hearts. I am eager to pick up another book by this author soon.

“The truth is in the earth, in the song of the birds, in the rhythms and whispers of the animals. If you want to see and hear it-only if you want to-it is there’’ Life has love and beauty, but it also can easily be forgotten. We seek freedom, but can easily become entrapped.

Nisha works as a nanny and maid for Petra who has a young daughter. Petra has been widowed and loses the ability to connect with life. So, when Nisha comes from Sri Lanka to work for her, she brings joy to her daughter, Aliki. Children search our eyes to see if the world is a safe place and a happy one. This is the gift Nisha gives to Aliki.

Nisha finds love with Yiannis and he wants the world to work out for them. Nisha also has her own daughter, Kumari who she has to leave behind in Sri Lanka so she can come to Cyprus and make more money to provide for her beloved child. Nisha is a migrant worker, she has crossed a border and is therefore not seen as having value. Migrant Women are believed to go from one place to the other and not care about their own families. Each is believed by many Cyprus people to have no value, except as someone to work for their families, and one that can be discarded without a thought.

One day, Nisha goes out and does not return. Yiannis is beside himself with worry and so is Petra, but the police will not help find her since she is a foreigner. More migrant women go missing, but it remains uncertain if there is any connection. Will Nisha be found and come home to Yiannis or has something awful happened to her? Only, when we all understand that each creature has depth, connections, joy, and fear will we ever truly change how we treat others.

Birds play such an important role and parallel the lives of Nisha and all the women like her. Birds are migrants, too. They are flying to their next area of freedom, but can also become entrapped. This is so true with the Songbirds. Each sings luminously until their very last breath. This is the case for marginalized migrant women who value life, try to find joy, to sing until the very end. The gift we should give is to understand their dignity and and grant true freedom.

Thank you NetGalley, Christy Lefteri, and Ballentine Books for granting me a copy of this wonderful book.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!

Songbirds is a beautifully tragic tale of a women you never meet, Nisha. One night Nisha leaves her employers home to meet someone and doesn't come back. Petra, her employer, and Yiannis, her lover, tell us the story of their attempt to find her. This is the story of a troubled place with deeply flawed people who only by loosing someone they love are they able to confront their own issues and become better.

Lefteri based the book on a true story from Cyprus about the foreign women who work as domestics for the families that live there. She took a tragic story and made something lovely. It is a story that made me upset reading it but would recommend it.

From Christy Lefteri, the prize-winning author of THE BEEKEEPER OF ALEPPO, comes SONGBIRDS, a poignant and beautifully crafted story of a missing migrant woman and the community left to search for her amid their own secrets and prejudices.

Thirty-eight-year-old Nisha has worked as a maid --- read: nanny, housekeeper, chef and everything in between --- for wealthy widow Petra and her daughter, Aliki, for nine years. The work is grueling and the hours long, but Nisha adores Aliki and has a beautiful room full of antiques and a working relationship with Petra that is built on respect. The trio live on the island of Cyprus, far from Nisha’s native Sri Lanka, known for its setting as a battleground for wars between the Greeks and the Turks, and divided into a tentative peace in 1974.

Although talks of reunification surge through the partition every few years, most Cypriots seem content with a lack of violence as opposed to an abundance of peace. Like Petra and her family, many hire maids through agencies that outsource from other countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Nepal, relying on the women to run their households while bemoaning their poor English, judging their willingness to leave their families and children, and reducing their freedoms to scant hours. So, you see, Nisha is lucky in many regards that she enjoys a close bond with her assigned family.

One night, Nisha makes Petra’s favorite dinner, an aromatic dhal curry, cleans the kitchen, tucks Aliki into bed...and disappears. Petra is confused at first, but when she realizes that Nisha has left her passport, a locket from her deceased husband and a lock of her own daughter’s hair, she is terrified. There is no way that Nisha would have left without her most precious items, or without saying goodbye to Aliki, whom she has loved as her own.

Petra waits a few days before approaching the police, but they assure her that Nisha most likely crossed the Green Line that divides the island for better work. Reading between the lines, she correctly assesses that Nisha is just an immigrant to them, not one of their own, and therefore not worth their time or effort. But as Petra takes over the household and her daughter’s care, she realizes that Nisha was the glue holding her family together. While Cyprus might not owe it to Nisha to find her, Petra certainly does.

In alternating chapters, we meet Yiannis, Petra’s upstairs tenant and Nisha’s lover, who recently upset Nisha with his own revelation. Desperate to make ends meet in a cruel economy, Yiannis has been illegally poaching songbirds, a dangerous job that, like any sort of illicit career, is difficult to leave with one’s life. Days before Nisha disappeared, Yiannis proposed, explaining that he could help Nisha support her family with his earnings, and maybe even take her home to Sri Lanka to begin life anew as a family, along with her daughter. Like Petra, Yiannis feels as if he alone has noticed Nisha’s disappearance, and when the two join forces to find her, they are forced to confront several hard truths about privilege, the migrant experience and their own blindspots when it comes to the woman they loved.

As Petra and Yiannis begin to talk to Nisha’s maid friends and examine hidden realities of life for a migrant worker, they push up against some very real villains, both human and systemic. With vivid, lyrical descriptions and the clear-eyed gaze of a reporter, Christy Lefteri explores the impossible choices faced by workers like Nisha and how these decisions --- often made out of desperation or danger --- leave them vulnerable to abuse, imprisonment and death. She uses ripped-from-the-headlines stories of missing migrant workers to write Nisha’s story, laying her very real flight from her hometown against the migration patterns of songbirds to expose the frailties of the system, the brutalities it breeds and the myriad ways we have turned a blind eye to the plight of migrant workers like Nisha. The parallels --- and the messages they convey --- are haunting, unavoidable and galvanizing.

Although SONGBIRDS is ostensibly about Nisha, we never get to meet her, which is a real shame. The Nisha who comes to life through Petra and Yiannis’ eyes is a heroine the likes of which few readers have ever seen --- a woman so accustomed to loss and pain that the mere fact of waking up to greet the day is a victory, whose sacrifices and setbacks speak to broad, universal truths about the injustices of the migrant worker economy. That she comes so beautifully alive is a testament to Lefteri’s masterful control of her plot and characters, and her ability to construct a story made up of pieces, prejudice and ignorance and turn it into something responsible, compassionate and profound. Lefteri is a daring, uniquely creative author, and there is something utterly breathtaking in the way she unpacks a story so full of pain and mistreatment.

An urgent, compelling story about migrant workers, SONGBIRDS is a fantastic follow-up to THE BEEKEEPER OF ALEPPO --- yet another daring and moving novel from an author deserving of a long and storied career.

Seriously so beautiful. I loved the world view I experienced while reading this. There’s so much to learn and experience and Songbirds let me feel that in a way I never had prior. Lefteri has a knack for captivating storytelling. I loved this as much as her previous book and can’t wait for more.

Lefteri's writing in Songbirds is beautiful, if slightly aloof. Something about the changing perspectives made it harder to connect with. The story is heartbreaking, especially given that it's based on a real event.

I loved The Beekeeper of Aleppo, so I was delighted to be able to read Songbirds by Christy Lefteri. It's a beautifully written book that highlights international issues of the poaching of birds and the disappearance of domestic workers.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Lefteri’s time spent working with refugees has clearly left an indelible mark on her. In this novel she follows a young Sri Lankan mother who works as a maid and nanny for a family in Cyprus. The only communication she has with her daughter back home is through Facetime on her lover’s tablet.

Nisha is a hard worker and has left her daughter behind to earn money to take care of her. Having lost her husband, she alone must earn money to support her family. Her employer Petra is kind, but treats her like the hired help she is. The household is thrown into chaos when Nisha suddenly disappears without a word. Petra had left the raising of her daughter to Nisha as she was overwhelmed with grief over the death of her own husband. Now Petra has no one to care for her little girl or to take care of the household.

The mystery of the missing woman is ignored by the authorities. They dismiss her because she’s a foreigner and insignificant. But Petra and Nisha’s lover, Yiannis, realize how empty their lives are without her. Petra is consumed with finding out what happened.

The search for answers uncovers harsh realities of migrant women who relocate to earn money they couldn’t in their homeland. Some of these women fall prey to evil men or turn to unsavory ways of earning money. Lefteri tells of just one woman’s story but it is emblematic of the plight of many women who must sacrifice so much just to survive. Her purpose is to draw attention to the resiliency and strength of women who don’t get to tuck in their own children or see them off to school but instead, are separated by economic imperatives that mandate they live far away and care for other people’s children. This is a powerful and moving story that reminds us that all people have value and we must never forget that.

ongbirds is the second book by Christy Lefteri that I have read. I read The Beekeeper of Aleppo in 2019 and was excited to receive an ARC of Songbirds.

I found Songbirds to be a very heavy book much like The Beekeeper of Aleppo. This is a story that takes time and weighed heavy on me. It is a story about those who do not have a voice.

A nanny of two children disappears one night in Cyprus. As a domestic worker who is an immigrant, her disappearance is not important. There are others that can fill her job so life moves on.

Trigger warning: Yiannis, the nanny's boyfriend, is a poacher of tiny endangered songbirds. The descriptions of the poaching I found to be deeply disturbing and I had trouble reading this. I made me physically sick.

I received an ARC of this book. All thoughts & opinions are my own.

After adoring The Beekeeper of Aleppo I hoped to love this equally. Alas...

I enjoyed this, and Lefteri did a great job of transporting me to Cyprus, a country I have never visiting and know little about.

For some reason this novel went very slowly for me and took me weeks to finish. Maybe because it was pretty clear where it was headed.

Apparently it seems that I'm leaning towards hard-hitting literary fiction in Q4 2021 and I'm okay with that.

This is the first time in a long time that I've grabbed a piece of paper to start writing thoughts down only 20% into it.

<i>Songbirds</i> is heartbreaking and evocative and I know I'll be thinking about this one for a long time. As someone who hasn't read either of Christy Lefteri's previous works, I'm glad I picked this one up first.

Somehow, Lefteri managed to craft an astounding story inspired by real events in Cyprus surrounding how foreign domestic workers are treated in Cyprus by the middle class families they are employed by and by the police.

Nisha is a domestic worker from Sri Lanka that has been working for Petra for 9 years when she suddenly goes missing on a Sunday night. We then follow her employer Petra and her lover Yannis on their journey to attempt to get justice for her in a country that has no love for foreign workers.

I found myself hooked from the start and was overall satisfied with the ending that seemed tied up to me. Make no mistake, like me you may be incredibly infuriated with Nisha's employer at the beginning of the book, but unlike one other person in this story (Mrs Kostas), Petra does end up having some character development and ends up seeing Nisha as an actual person instead of just a "Shadow of myself". Shocking that your domestic worker will have life outside of caring for your daughter Petra, so shocking.

Personally, I am wondering if there is symbolism between the songbirds and the foreign domestic workers. As in in Cyprus, they both seem to be 'delicacies' that only the middle class and up can afford, but they don't care enough to take care of them properly to keep them safe.

What is keeping me from rating it five stars is the pacing between the two POVs as well as the lack of plot movement surrounding Nisha herself. I just wanted the pacing to be a little quicker in Yannis'. I also had an issue with some dialogue being repeated when Petra was having a flashback multiple times on a bus ride.

I think that this would make a great book for a book club because just by looking at the DNFs, the one start ratings, and the two ratings, it may lead to a great discussion.

On the topic of DNFing, if you do decide to pick this one up but decide that it is not for you, please at least consider flipping to the author's note at the end.

I highly recommend this, but please be aware of the following trigger warnings (one of which I haven't seen anyone else mention in their reviews because everyone seems to be focused on the song birds):

Graphic discussion of a miscarriage (haven't seen a single review including this one so I'm mentioning it first)
Cancer
Death of Spouse
Dead animals/hunting/poaching/injured animals

Based on true events, this is a poignant story of the lives of migrant workers. It is a heartbreaking story and well written.
Many thanks to Random House Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange honest opinion.

A book inspired by real events, about the women who migrated from poorer countries to ones of wealth, where they work menial jobs and send the money home. Typically the women are leaving behind children and other family, but don’t see a future without a way to make money for education, to get ahead. So they make the unthinkable choice to leave the country, be a mom via internet, and send money home.

This story is based in Cypress, told between to different voices, of Petra and Yannis. Occasionally between their chapters there is this foreboding interlude that describes among other things a decomposing rabbit. I could have done without that!

Nisha is missing. She is Petra's maid and caregiver of her child, while Yannis is the tenant in the apartment above who loves Nisha, asked her marry to him the day she went missing.

Petra learns about Nisha while searching for her, realizing she never knew this woman despite her being so enmeshed in Petra's live for ten years. Petra also learns how hidden from live she was with her own child. Nisha came to help Petra shortly before she gave birth, just after her husband died. Petra lives in this perpetual mourning, a shadow of a life for ten years while Nisha raises her daughter.

The mystery is the propulsion for the story but it is Nisha and the other women on the island who are the gems of the book. Not entirely an easy read, but a good one.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. I was not able to finish and won't be leaving a full review. This was not the right time for me to read it.