Lies We Sing to the Sea

Excuse me, but did the author actually admit to not reading the source material in its entirety?

Here's the actual quote from the author:

“I read a lot of the stories within The Odyssey, because they're in things like Percy Jackson, and those little books of mythology you get as a kid, but I actually started and finished writing without sitting down and reading the whole thing. I have various translations; there are parts that are very beautiful and readable, but it's so long, and written in a ‘prose-y' way that's kind of impenetrable” (read the whole interview here).

The Odyssey

Percy Jackson

This was a very good book that speaks to loss and love in a way that I think everyone can experience. The understanding that in a moment of grief, pain, and injustice what your heart may seek will not bring you the relief that you seek, but can instead inflict your pain on so many others was very well illustrated. Parts of this book were a bit slower, and other sections moved very quickly. Overall I would recommend it!

This was quite mediocre.

There were two good things about this book:
1. The writing style - the woman knows how to spin a sentence that sounds good.
2. The bold ending - it was a bit out there and I liked that she did not pull her punches (though most people will probably be a bit annoyed).

The rest was entirely subpar.
The story was uninteresting, the characters were vague and boring, the mystery was all over the place... I did not like the interpretation of Greek Mythology and the way she used the Odyssey. I did not like how facts were revealed at random -like the author was adding things on the fly.
I did not like the romance (this love triangle was so stupid and badly constructed, I found myself wishing our main characters would just drop dead and release me from this suffering).

The whole things seemed shallow and lazy.

i really enjoyed this book, i loved the three main characters and while the ending was sad it was also very beautiful and felt like the right way to end this story...


also i just want to address everyone who gave this book a bad rating on this website before it was even released, just because of one interview where the author said she had not read the entire odyssey: guess what, it doesn't matter, you don't need to know the entire epos for this story. actually, you don't need to know it at all. i think it's enjoyable either way. also please do not come along with cultural appropriation or whatever, this is not applicable here at all.

i sincerely wish you would just read this book with an open mind without being so set on hating it from the beginning and without nitpicking the author's every word, misinterpreting her on purpose and writing hateful reviews. it is an awful pile-on here on goodreads and i absolutely hate that it's targeted at the one more recent sapphic story set in ancient greece that we got during this whole hype around ancient greece in literature. if the marketing tried to go for the whole “odyssey” retelling schtick then this is NOT the author's fault, publishers love doing that kind of misleading marketing all the time. just read the book or don't.

at heart this is a lovely sapphic story filled with a lot of love and compassion and i do recommend it.

It's a good book loosely based on events in The Odyssey, but takes place over a hundred years after The Odyssey and is not an Odyssey retelling. If the author had not done that interview I don't think it would have been obvious that she's never finished reading the Odyssey. Despite the numerous weird things the author said in that interview, the book is pretty good for a debut novel but doesn't really stand out against any other Greek myth based novel.

For more of my reviews, check out my blog.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperTeen for providing an ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

When I requested this book on Netgalley, I didn't know that there was any sort of controversy about the author. I just thought the synopsis sounded interesting, and, well, I love a mythology retelling. Then I went looking on Goodreads for other reviews — I usually do this before diving into an ARC. I don't really read any of the reviews in detail, but I do check out the star ratings. It's been a good factor for seeing what I'm getting into — if most people rate it around 3 stars, well, then it's probably a mediocre book. You see what I mean? Well, when I went to look up Lies We Sing to the Sea, I saw that it had been rated many, many times as 1 star. That's when I started reading some of the reviews a little more in depth.

Apparently, Sarah Underwood — the author — has never read The Odyssey, yet here she is writing a ‘retelling' of the same myth. Now — color me confused. How can anyone write a retelling without reading the original myth? That makes absolutely zero sense. She cites such sources as Percy Jackson and other modern retellings as how she's gotten the story. But uh...I'm going to be truthful with you here — I don't think I would have requested Lies We Sing to the Sea if I had known this about the author. All of this is really a moot point, because when you get right down to it — Lies We Sing to the Sea is not a retelling of The Odyssey. It takes minor characters from the original myth and weaves a whole story out of them. Odysseus himself is maybe mentioned once or twice but that's it.

So really, I guess I'm saying is that the fact that Sarah Underwood hasn't read The Odyssey really isn't that big of a deal. The story she creates here is a heartbreaking one, but one that was told really well. It doesn't stand up to other stories that it will be compared to, namely Song of Achilles, but it definitely is inspired by such books. Like without a doubt Sarah wanted to tell a similar story. So yes, for those of you that want to know, Lies We Sing to the Sea has a tragic ending. It is a sapphic love story that does not end well. Is that spoiling things? I don't think so, because this is written in the manner of Greek Tragedies so anyone expecting a happy ending should really know better. Either way, the story was told well, but I did miss the atmospheric, poetic descriptions of Madeline Miller. Lies We Sing to the Sea is told much more simply — possibly because this is, in fact, a YA novel?

Who knows.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book, but I can't see myself picking it up again. I'm not really one for tragic endings, despite loving Greek myths. What it really boils down to is that if you like Greek myths, and know what to expect from them, then well, you'll probably enjoy this.