A Song Below Water

read for tbr jar picks my reads vlog: coming soon

this book had a lot of amazing commentary but i do think it lacked in plot, characters, and worldbuilding. the only thing besides the commentary i enjoyed was the relationship between the two main characters.

There were parts of this book that I liked a lot and then parts of it that I couldn't stand, so this was an uneven read for me. Overall, Tavia's story was compelling, and her arc of learning to find her voice and take pride in who she is really worked for me. I loved the idea of a network of other Black girls who protect her so she can still sing, but the details on that were too murky for me. Why is a girl who doesn't like sirens on it? Who runs it? Are there actual consequences for outing her? It's not clear. The rivalry with the eloko girl didn't make sense to me either. I get why Tavia would be jealous of her but like if you don't want to protect a siren don't join a network? Overall though, I thought this section was spot-on, and the metaphor worked alongside the real-world anti-blackness that comes up.

Effie's story, on the other hand, is a mess. Nothing happens with her for so long aside from a few vague things, and then she does something awful but it's immediately reversed, so I'm not really sure what the point was. Everything about her relationship to her bio family was uncomfortable to read.

I did love the way the two girls supported each other like sisters, but the book just did not come together as a whole for me.

 Imagine my surprise as I went into this book expecting contemporary and what I got what magical realism 🙃🙃🙃
I was so shook holy shit 😂😂
This was a really interesting read that went in probably every single direction I WAS NOT expecting. I have a habit of going into books without knowing much about them, but I usually at least know the genre. For this I didn't lmao. But I enjoyed it despite some flaws. Overall, it was intriguing and engaging, despite my early pacing complaint.
I adored the relationship between the two sisters, and I found myself being very intrigued by the people Effie was getting closer and forming bonds with. I really liked Wallace too, I wanted more of him, and I wished we could have seen more of the friendship between Effie and Isabella too. However, I thought Tavia's storyline was somewhat tame in comparison. Don't get me wrong, I loved the self-acceptance and confidence she found, but I think I actually just would have liked to see her interact with more people. I don't know.
I wish the world had been more flushed out in general. I felt thrown into a parallel world, but I never really felt comfortable with it. It could have benefited from more exposition in that regard. The ending also felt a bit rushed in comparison to the pacing of the majority of the book (which, aside from being slow in the beginning, I really liked! It was a very comfortable pacing for the most part) 

Every complaint I've ever had with the YA genre has been lifted through this book. I loved the mythology, I loved the play sister dynamics, I loved the activism and real situations involving racism (mysogynoir specifically) that demands activism, I loved that I wasn't annoyed by any of the characters for falling into shallow or cliched tropes, and I cannot wait for the next book. I felt like I was reading from an actual teen's perspective. There was an appropriate amount of angst and teenage insecurity without being contrived or whiny. When I was a teenager, I hated that the YA characters I was supposed to feel connected to were all selfish poor decision making bitches. Fantasy is one of my favorite genres so I appreciate that the mythical creatures in this story are lesser known and from a wide variety of cultures. Gorgons and sirens from Greece, gargoyles from France, elokos from Mongo, and sprites from all around Europe. My favorite scene was when Tavia and Effie are just lying on Gargy's back in the reserve and having a normal sister conversation. Effie and Gargy are the real otp.

“Not when every Black person knows, cops face no consequences when they decide to pull the trigger.”-Tavia, Ch. VII (7) - pg. 1618 [ebook]




“It's about not letting being Black in America be an executionable offense,” he says. Like he's had this type of conversation before.”-Wallace(Effie's POV), ch. XII (12) - pg. 3108 [ebook]




Two sister-figures face various changes in their lives. Tavia is a Siren but she fights to keep her identity secret in a world that against people like her. Effie is about to move up in her role as Ephermia the Mer at the yearly Ren Faire, but when her past comes back to haunt her, she begins to find out what she really is.

I really wanted to like this but it turned not to be exactly blurb says. I feel mislead. Here are my thoughts:


•PROS

-Loved Tavia and Effie's sister relationship, although I thought they could've been closer and found it weird how quickly they hid stuff from each other.

-Loved the black rep and mentioning of Effie's twists.

-Loved the attempted mixture of fantasy and black social issues, it's a very interesting and original concept.

-this book had some really, really good quotes on oppression for being black.

•CONS

-I feel the stakes weren't high enough. Something would happen but we're left with more questions while the books would move on and focus on other things like romance.

-the writing style is WEIRD. this book reads like a blog or journal of some kind. The dialogue is so causal and cringe at times. I don't know I just have like I keep getting high info dumps of information that wasn't that important. I feel like nothing was actually explained. Sometimes it was hard to tell if we were in the next scene. It only explained how they felt, no inner personal connection. Important things would happen off-page and it felt like we missed something.

-the fantasy was too low. We barely learned anything about the different creatures in this world, where they come from, the history. They're all barely touched on, we're just given the bare basics.

-the “romance” was wack and lackluster and the twist near the end totally ruined it. Wallace, a boy at a pool that Effie likes, wasn't a big enough character for it to have an big impact on the audience. He was kind of in the background the whole book.

-And for all of the book there just so much talk of the Renaissance Faire and how important it is to Effie, but we barely to see it, and that was before Ren Faire started. Why have such a huge emphasis on something only to write it out when it matters?

-Tavia and Effie go to a Black Lives Matter protest and the way it was written was short and lackluster. It didn't feel like a protest. It felt like the protest was shifted away from the black kid that died, and onto sirens and supporting them. It didn't feel right.

-Effie's POV was much more broad than Tavia's. Although, I like Tavia's more Effie's was much more interesting. She had to deal with a lot of changes and a lot of heartache and a lot of mystery. Tavia's POV mostly talked her Siren identity and being Black. When she's stopped by the police and uses her voice (on purpose btw, not “accidentally” like the blurb wants you to believe), she barely had to face any consequences from that, not even from her parents.

-what happened and how people reacted near the end was unrealistic and unbelievable.

Honestly, after the 60% mark I was just done. I was ready to get the book over with but I didn't want DNF it, I at least wanted to know the direction it was headed.

Overall, I really wanted to like this book more, but it was average. It could have been written and structured better. It didn't what it wanted to focus on. (Black Lives Matter? High school issues? Romance?) And the book suffered because of it. A Black Lives Matter fantasy can absolutely be done, but preferably not executed like this

This was a fun, magical book. It included many important discussions on racism and prejudice, while creating this urban fantasy world of sprites and sirens and gargoyles. The relationship between the 2 sisters was so sweet and wholesome and really incredible. However, I found myself bored a few times throughout. The magic of the world was confusing to me and wasn't that interesting. I think this is more of a personal preference, however, than a fault in the writing. I'm not into urban fantasy often, and I also listened to this as an audiobook, which sometimes lends to me being confused and missing certain things.

All in all, I would recommend this book. It really highlights the struggles of Black people, especially Black women, in a way that is really impactful.

There were a lot of things I liked about this book, especially the two main characters and their relationship. I also very much appreciated the elevation of Black voices, particularly women. I thought the metaphor was solid. That being said, the magical part was kind of confusing and the jumping back and forth didn't allow the realism part to unfold in a convincing way for me.

This urban fantasy does what all good speculative fiction should: uses the lens of fantasy to examine our reality. In creating a world where mythical/fantastical beings are real - and not just Euro-centric ones there are elokos of Central African myth - Morrow naturally discusses Otherness, racism, respectability politics, police brutality, victim-blaming, microaggressions and more. At first glance, and to a white reader, this could seem like a lot to put into a teen book. But Morrow is a Black woman writing about Black women and how they face these issues all the time. She does it so naturally and with such emotion, this book gives readers a lot to think about. Highly recommend to teens and adult who like fantasy because they care about our real world.

This was an interesting, timely urban fantasy about being Black and the power of a voice told through mythological creatures (like sirens). This book is a powerful tale involving the current Black Lives Matter moment with fantasy elements. The creatures are interesting. The magic is definitely something I want to know more about.

The pacing was a bit off in places, especially at the beginning. I was also occasionally confused about how the magic worked in this world.

Overall it's a good story and one well worth supporting! Pick it up