Siren Sisters by Dana Langer (review)

When she turns thirteen next week, Lolly will become a siren like her sisters, luring passing ships to their doom on the rocky shores of her small coastal town of Starbridge Cove. Meanwhile, she’s dealing with a distant father, middle-school politics, and a strained relationship with her best friend, not to mention the threats from a real estate developer who might be on to the girls’ secret. When her sisters go missing, she’s certain he’s responsible but realizes she must make a bargain with the mercurial Sea Witch to get her siblings back. Starbridge Cove is an interesting tangle of modernity, history, and supposed magic, as the town is being developed into a tourist destination partly because of visitors’ fascination with the siren lore that surrounds it. A similar struggle between the otherworldly and the everyday is played out in Lolly’s dilemmas as she tries to balance being a siren in training with her identity as a regular middle-schooler. The details that constitute the history of the sirens, though, are scattered and they don’t always line up, making the entire premise wobbly, and the ending is jarringly abrupt with an ambiguity that differs entirely from rest of the story’s tone. Still, joining this with Thomas’ The Secrets of Selkie Bay (BCCB 9/15) and Selfors’ To Catch a Mermaid (BCCB 10/07) would make a nice trio of marine magic.