A Song Below Water

“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