A beautifully readable art-world novel that weaves satire, lust, and critique into a neat little package. My only complaint? I wasn’t ready for the book to be over!

One of my biggest problems with reviewing books is that I put off reviewing books I love because I never feel I can do them justice. Seriously! I can't bring myself to review The Historian or The Resurrection of Joan Ashby because I just love them both too much. Does anyone else do this?

I read Sirens & Muses almost a month ago and have been basking in my memories ever since. This novel had everything: the minutia of class differences, the evolution of art world "darlings" and the complications accompanying the inspiration, production, and commodification of art. Author Antonia Angress weaves the aggressive and manipulative pursuit of artistic relevance and the quiet quest for authenticity into the larger framework of a societal consumption in such complex and detailed ways that I shake my head in disbelief that this is her novel. I made so many highlights throughout this text and absolutely agree with the comparisons to both Writers & Lovers and The Goldfinch. I will be widely recommending this novel to anyone who truly appreciates all types of art.

I was transported right into the middle of this story.
Many thanks to Random House Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Academia and finely wrought characters make "Sirens & Muses" a must-read for fans of literary fiction. Angress has created a series of character driven chapters (each chapter focuses on one of a rotating cast). Worth reading, will definitely recommend. Strong work.

This book has a little bit of everything: multi pov, campus novel, first loves, coming out, artsy kids - including the anti-capitalism guy!,Occupy Wall Street, the recession and early Bitcoin prices for that baby Millennial/young Gen X’er nostalgia, the no longer relevant artist, protest art (both ok and bad), and tumblr art (all cringe).

It is an engrossing coming of age novel with exquisite prose and an interesting background as the recession rages on while money continuously flows through the art world. All the characters have to quickly become adults or have to start again mid career. How do you even have a chance if you have no money or connections? Does art make a difference in politics or protests? Can they be combined or is that too commercial?

4.5 stars.

I'm always looking for novels that have a focus on art and artists, and while Sirens & Muses most definitely fits the criteria, it was much more than what I'd anticipated. Focusing on art as work versus play versus financial gain, the cutthroat world of collectors and representation, and the difficulty of establishing a name and what can be lost if this is accomplished, the novel provides a multilayered look into four artists who all want different and sometimes contrary things. The book's structure worked extremely well for me, as little things that might not completely make sense at first quickly took shape in another character's storyline, and not once could I anticipate what was going to happen. What's more, all of the characters were brilliantly crafted: they were dislikeable and aggravating and sympathetic at turns, and while the end provided some sense of closure for them, nothing was set in stone, which I quite liked. Angress's writing was another high point (although there were some instances where I tired of having a character's emotions told to me rather than parsing the emotion out for myself), and I adored how her descriptions of each location, from Louisiana to New York, felt realistic without being overdone.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the tone and overall writing style of this book. The author has a gorgeous narrative voice, and I was impressed by how it managed to stay consistent even while taking on the viewpoints of the four main characters. Sirens & Muses provides some really interesting perspectives on art and fame, while also depicting four very raw accounts of the struggles of artistry.

Parts of Preston's story dragged a bit, but knowing Preston, I can't imagine how they wouldn't. This book was also left very open-ended, which is not really my thing but is also not really a fault in and of itself.

Thank you Netgalley & the publisher for the ARC of Sirens & Muses! I really enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of the author's work.

5 STAR BOOK REVIEW: Set to be published on July 12 (we are officially counting down the days!), this book will have Booktok and Bookstagram in a chokehold for the remainder of the year!

Picture this: a dark academia novel set at an art college in New York, an angsty LGBT romance subplot between roommates, with sprinkles of #OccupyWallstreet era anti-capitalist political commentary. This book was handcrafted for Gen Z.

Antonia Angress' exquisite prose is perfectly paired with Carolina Cunningham's stunning cover art, leaving this debut novel an immediate must-have for all. I have no doubt that every influencer will be featuring this masterpiece on their bookshelves in the months to come.

I am so incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to read this prior to publishing, and I'm thrilled to purchase my own physical copy for my collection on release day – thank you @randomhouse

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
Do you enjoy reading about pretentious fucks in the art world? Do you like to read about mommy issues? Do you somehow have nostalgia for the mid-2000s?

Pre-reading:
I don’t remember how this got on my to read shelf, but I love the cover, and I got it early.

Thick of it:
Ayy Tamora Pierce! There’s not that much sex in the books, calm down. This book is a weird mix of pretentiousness and then very current/millennial-based references. It reminds me of Ringling where my sister went to art school. Everyone is using the phrase glazed donuts lately, me included, but never heard it about eyeballs. Don’t think that really works. People don’t owe you anything for having an affair with one of your parents. That’s on your participating parent. Karina has fake cool girl energy and is already exhausting to me. I’m sorry, don’t romanticize toxic relationships as if staying together is the be all end all. Divorce is good. The minute someone doesn’t want to be in the partnership with every bit of their being, get out. I don’t like this book. I’m not looking forward to reading more. Oh my god, I cannot with this book; It’s so, fuck off. I don’t think he humiliated him. He came off as the douche. Tumblr is, unfortunately, dead. Preston is an ass. A pickle jar? Ew. Also, girls fucking guys to get back at their parents is tired. This book is exhausting. Also, men don’t like being argued with. Sara Shakeel wannabee. It would be the blue Powerpuff. I just listened to a podcast or a YouTube video about the Silk Road. It’s feminine romanticism to think men liked being called on their bullshit. They’ll label you something like a firecracker and slip off to something more passive. Irrevocably has been ruined by Twilight. I’m surprised there’s never been more of a crackdown on Chatroulette and Omegle and all the cp because of them. Why does no one in books ever react with disgust to characters smoking? Why is it always ‘I don’t smoke but I will with you?’ I do think the fictional art pieces that she comes up with for this book are interesting though, and I buy that they’re college-age students in this time period. And they were roommates. It’s a prank email. Poor girl. That is a brand. Fucking detritus in every novel. I hate that word. She is not a Capricorn. Aquarius bullshit for sure. Although the Capricorn narcissism of lusting after yourself for sure, haha. She could get one of those dollar gym memberships and shower that way. The money lust, very Cap, but she just doesn't give me Cap vibes. Something’s off. I don’t like any of these characters. The whole idea that men are only lecherous ruiners is tired. Also, it feels like author insert fantasy porn of her mom apologizing to her/envisioning her different mommy issues in different characters. Louisa feels like an accessory in this book. I don’t even think this book counts as character development because it was so sparse on details about the characters to begin with that it’s kind of just like fleshing them out into what they already were. They’re not really growing as people. I don’t quite buy that that’s the most amount of money she’s ever had in her hands. What about a tax refund? She’s clearly been working. My tax refund is pretty hefty. That’s just fundamentally untrue. He’s literally working as a tutor so that’s having a young boy listen to an old boy. People don’t want to listen to old, racist, outdated fucks. There’s a difference. Money matters in this book until it doesn’t for plot. It’s annoying. Also, I feel like the bit about ambition letting you want things other people say you shouldn’t want is very heavy-handed on the gay. That’s not the same as ambition. It feels forced. This book just rubs me the wrong way. It feels like a complete story. I know what it’s doing. I just don’t like it. I like my privilege with restless ennui, not hypocritically woke. I think naming cockroaches after peoples’ exes went viral at zoos a couple of years back. I feel like this is just copying that. I will say the one thing that this book does well is having characters and their arcs orbit around each other. The pointed misuse of ‘their’ for Internet speak is very effective, but also so irritating. I do not like the ending. It’s not even that I need a neat ending because I like plenty of books without a neat ending, but I want more. This is blah. It feels like you had a word count limit and just stopped and tacked on a few concluding sentences to make it end. Literally going back and quote pulling and seeing Robert’s quote about how teachers use their students to feel better about themselves and he doesn’t like it, but then he does exactly that. It’s almost like she uses each character for each little self-insert bit that she wants to address, but then will ignore it to play the archetype of the character. They’re not consistent. They all just feel like the same person with thin, stereotypical embellishments. The scandalous art in the book also just feels like a warped collection of the Daily Mail headlines over the last few years. I can't tell if that’s bad. It makes it feel very current, but for a book so about creating unique art it seems a bit plagiarized.

Post-reading:
These characters are assholes. And not enjoyable assholes, just assholes. Anything ‘deep’ in the book feels very author-inserty. Not in love with the inadvertent message that women who endure men can bond over their trauma, or come to understand each other, or have an excuse for their bad behavior. That's pretty shit. It's a decently written book. It feels complete. The characters feel like people, but they do all feel like the same person, and not in a good parallels way, but in a sloppy, I am an author working out my issues through these characters, so suddenly they are all aspects of self. I don’t think it’s a waste of time to read it. I can see the audience for it, I’m just not it. It has the bi character is a slut thing. I don’t know, nothing in this book feels new. The book at least changes perspective enough that as soon as you are getting annoyed with a character, like the shut up already feeling, it switches. Books like this are hard to review. It’s not that I think you won’t get anything out of reading it, but I do feel like you could just read a different book and get more. Like the good parts in this book have been done before and more effectively. And if you’re reading this purely for the gay, I don’t think it goes far enough at all. I also don’t understand how you can take Cajun and New England and do nothing with the contrast more than I’ve never seen snow. Waste.

Who should read this:
Angry sad girls
Artsy fucks
LGBTQ+ representation that isn’t all sunshine

Do I want to reread this:
No

Similar books:
* The Seaplane on Final Approach by Rebecca Rukeyser-atmospheric read
* My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh-better NYC ennui
* And That is Why Men Are Terrible by Christopher Mertic Lewis-men being terrible, tired wokeness
* Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney-ensemble asshole cast
* Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney-pretentious fucks indulging each other
* The Secret History by Donna Tartt-privileged humanities students in New England

This book took a long time to set up. I got bored with it at about 40% and put it down for a couple weeks. I'm glad I finished it, though, as it started getting better after the whole Wrynn situation. I get that we had to introduce all the characters and how they were initially intertwined, but that part took too long, like it was a separate book within this book.
Ok, after the Wrynn situation....
This is a book about growing up, life, relationships, family dynamics, and art. Beautifully described pieces of art are easily seen with your mind's eye. The way the characters affect each other, comparing Preston and Karina with Louisa and Karina. Robert's impact on each of them. How each dealt with their family situations. I loved the relationship between Robert and Adrian. It all came together nicely in the last half of the book.
The title is perfect as well. It absolutely describes the story and the impact of both sirens and muses on each character.
I was asked to read this one for my honest review.

The novel has intelligent points to make about art in a time when money and commerce seem to be the forces that determine the worth of things. The four main characters are richly and sensitively drawn, though their opposing backgrounds are, conveniently, too diametrically perfect: the wealthy daughter of art collectors versus her small-town roommate getting by on scholarships and odd jobs; the hotshot contrarian rabble-rouser who finds an instant audience for his stunt projects versus the older, somewhat resentful artist and professor whose relevance has faded. In the parochial environment of an elite art school, everyone is each other's muse--hence the aptly named Karina, as in Anna Karina, the wife and muse of Jean-Luc Godard. There are the natural dramas and love triangles of young people set against more serious challenges and the environs of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and Angress does a terrific job of ratcheting up these tensions in believable ways, though at times the conflicts feel juvenile. The younger characters, in particular, seem to live for an all-or-nothing existence--life is nothing without art--that any reasonable adult voice might try to temper, and when a reasonable adult emerges in the second half of the book to put one character's dream in perspective, it feels like the kind of sentiment the reader could have arrived at 100 pages earlier.

A campus novel about art, artists, and class tension; a solid read overall, with a few aspects that I wasn't sold on.

First, the good: this book was really vividly situated in, and evocative of, the moment in time when it is set, which is integral to the plot, and very well done. I enjoyed most of the main characters' journeys through the novel; I loved the details about art. Well-written technical details are one of my FAVORITE things in books, and this one had them – there's a memorable sequence in the beginning of the book about canvas stretching! Enormous props to the author for pulling that off well. In general, the "atmosphere" of the book was engaging and consistent, and I quite enjoyed it.

This book suffered somewhat, I think, from the split POV; there are four main POV protagonists, of varying levels of compelling. I liked both Louisa and Karina, and while I initially felt only meh about Robert, he ended up having what was absolutely the most compelling, interesting character arc. (Preston I could have done without entirely.) Because of the frequent jumps between characters, they felt a little unevenly developed. The pacing also felt a little odd, and in general there wasn't quite as much plot as I hoped for; while the characters were certainly the focus of this book, I felt as if their arcs were not all developed enough to actually drive the motion of the book.

Overall: worth a read for anyone who enjoys campus-novel litfic, or books about artists; while I've seen it talked about as "dark academia," I would NOT classify it that way at all, and would not necessarily recommend it to someone looking for a dark academia read. (It lacks, among other markers of that particular subgenre, the whole "dark" half of that descriptor.)

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-ARC of this in exchange for my honest review!

i love academia books, so i thought i would love this, and i did! the descriptions were so complex and really helped form a solid image in my head. i loved the art school setting as well, it was fresh and intriguing.

Sirens & Muses follows the lives of four artists. Louisa is a why transplant from Louisiana, Karina is an artist from a family of wealthy artists, Preston is a rich and anti-capitalist, and their professor Robert is an artist struggling with what it means to stay relevant. These four characters meet at Wrynn College of Art, which allows them to ignore the current social and political atmosphere outside their campus.

The characters explore their sexuality and artistic desires and indulge in their worries about what the future holds for them as artists. This novel, in certain ways, made me feel nostalgic for my own college experience, and I loved reading about the art world. Overall, I really enjoyed this one.

Enjoyable story, likeable characters, interesting premise. My problem with the story however, is that I don't feel I got the closure I was looking for...

Fates and Furies meets The Secret History with the campus setting and addictive prose. Set at an elite art school and in New York City, tensions build early, but dissipate into a quiet final quarter. Readers interested in dark academia or the art world will find much to enjoy here, and book club discussions could branch off in any number of directions—genius, privilege, regret, passion. This is an engaging debut, and I’ll be eager to see where Antonia Angress goes from here.

I requested the ARC for this book and I must say I absolutely loved it. Beautiful writing! Antonia Andreas captured the life of an art student so well I felt like I was transported back in time 10 years to when I was in art school myself. The intimacy shared between artists who share their works with each other feels like peering into the most personal parts of their soul. I felt that all over again through the scope of these characters. The relationships and rivalries that surround and consume artists that share a community sucks you into this story and refuses to let go until the last page. It was simply unputdownable for me. I have never felt so represented in a book before reading this. I cannot wait until July to buy a hard copy to annotate. Thank you for this bit of nostalgia. I feel inspired to start a new painting!

Well written, engaging, but could use a little trimming. The four central characters are likeable, flaws and all, and the author's knowledge of contemporary art is deep and well represented. I'm hoping that there will be a followup, since the narrative ends with me wanting to know more. I feel I must make mention of the timing of the proceedings -- before 2016 and the changes that ensued that year. I feel that several authors are deliberately pushing their work to that era so as not to have to incorporate how the world has changed.

I LOVED this book. It was such a page-turner and I stayed up late reading it each night! I loved the descriptions of art school, the art world (although it did NOT make me want to participate in it), Louisa and Karina's grit and determination, their relationship... all of it!