This post may contain affiliate links for books we recommend. Read the full disclosure here.
Book: “Sing Me to Sleep” by Gabi Burton
Publishing Info: Bloomsbury YA, June 2023
Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: Saoirse Sorkova survives on lies. As a soldier-in-training at the most prestigious barracks in the kingdom, she lies about being a siren to avoid execution. At night, working as an assassin for a dangerous group of mercenaries, Saoirse lies about her true identity. And to her family, Saoirse tells the biggest lie of all: that she can control her siren powers and doesn’t struggle constantly against an impulse to kill.
As the top trainee in her class, Saoirse would be headed for a bright future if it weren’t for the need to keep her secrets out of the spotlight. But when a mysterious blackmailer threatens her sister, Saoirse takes a dangerous job that will help her investigate: she becomes personal bodyguard to the crown prince.
Saoirse should hate Prince Hayes. After all, his father is the one who enforces the kingdom’s brutal creature segregation laws. But when Hayes turns out to be kind, thoughtful, and charming, Saoirse finds herself increasingly drawn to him-especially when they’re forced to work together to stop a deadly killer who’s plaguing the city. There’s only one problem: Saoirse is that deadly killer.
Review: I have to say, this cover is not it. I don’t know what went wrong here, but the strangely shiny, overly-produced artwork, and cheesy coloring of the entire thing is all just terrible. There are definitely covers I like more than others and ones that are just kind of “meh,” so I don’t often comment on this aspect of books. But man, I really hate this one. And it’s too bad, because the premise is so interesting (Black girl siren!) that they really could have done something with that. Instead, we get this.
Unfortunately, my experience of this book as a whole largely matches my feelings towards the cover: a big, fat, “not for me.” But, per the usual for the blog, I do want to start out the review on a positive note with some of the things I appreciated about this book. And one thing that stood out as unique was its worldbuilding was the inclusion of various different mystical creatures and beings. Of course, we have the main character who is a siren (though I was disappointed by the amount of time that what was originally an oceanic creature spent in completely human form on land). But there were also witches and elemental fae. When we were exploring the world and learning how all of these various factions worked with (or against) one another, the book was fairly interesting. But, even here, a lot of this information was delivered in the very exposition-heavy first half of the book. There was potential, here, however, and given that this is the first book in what I believe is a duology, the world-building is set up in such a way as to leave so interesting possibilities going forward.
I also didn’t hate the love interest. Yes, he did read a bit “Mary Sue” for my liking at times. Of course his father, the king, is the most evil person ever. And, of course, the prince will right all of the horrible wrongs in the kingdom as easily as a snap of his fingers once he gains the thrown. But, overall, he was still a likable enough romantic lead. That said, his likability just exacerbated my main frustration which came down to a persistent dislike of the main lead.
I get that Saoirse is written to be a morally grey character. Being a siren with the inherently violent abilities that come with it, this is only to be expected. But man did I dislike her. She’s incredibly reckless and thoughtless throughout the book. Her motivations only make qualified sense, with a particular eye-brow raise towards her relationship with her sister. And then she goes on to straight up murder several people throughout the story. She does have an inner arc that explores some of this, but I found her inner thoughts and journey to be rather shallow and not truly grappling with the realities of the harm she has done. And then our prince just kind of hand-waves all the murder away as “he can’t stay mad at her.” Dude. She killed a bunch of people all around you. This isn’t a personality quirk that is annoying but kind of cute.
And look, I like books with assassins and warriors who, naturally, also kill people. But I do think it takes a particularly skilled author to get this balance correct. You can create a character who is so jaded by this lifestyle that they don’t really experience regrets or you can create a world where this is fairly normalized by everyone. If not either of these, and you’re trying to create a character who has to grapple with their actions, this has to lead to a pretty serious character arc and, perhaps, a darker end to the story. As it was, I was left incredibly unsatisfied by the was Saoirse actions were “dealt” with.
On top of that, this reads as a very young YA novel. The writing style is very simplistic, without a lot of expression or depth. At times it left the pacing feeling too slow, and others, too fast. I realize that this is a debut, so there is still room for the author to grow into her style. And, like I said, there were the nuggets of interesting ideas to be found in this world. But in a lot of ways the story felt too caught up in the tropes and expectations of YA fantasy. Perhaps freed from some of these concepts, the second book will be better. If you’re a devoted fan of YA fantasy and can tolerate the younger side of the genre, this might be worth checking out. But for the average fantasy fan, I’d have to recommend passing this one by.
Rating 6: Lackluster in almost every way, I never felt like I could truly connect to this book, largely due to what I found to be a supremely unlikable leading character.
Reader’s Advisory:
“Sing Me to Sleep” can be found on these Goodreads lists: Magical Creatures and Fantasy Books with Black Leads.
The Library Ladies 