notlaracheyenne 's review for:

Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood

1.0

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Thanks so much to HarperCollins UK Audio for letting me listen to this book!

(This review contains spoilers)

At the beginning of this story I was really excited to read a book where a young queer woman comes back from the dead to take revenge on those who killed her, however that wasn’t even remotely the story we got. In all honesty I’m actually struggling to describe the plot because I feel like there isn’t much to describe. The breaking of the curse takes a constant backseat as the focus is shifted onto the character’s relationships which left me as confused as the internal logic of this novel. If you choose to read this book and have any questions about the way the curse or the island of Ithaca work, chances are you will either get a convoluted answer or no answer at all. 

Our main character Leto is a deeply frustrating protagonist and the reason for this is very simple: Leto is an idiot. Throughout the book it felt like I was always several steps ahead of Leto, not due to any effort on my part but simply because Leto is being stupid for plot convenience. Speaking of plot convenience the moment that completely took me out of the book was Mathias’ reaction when he discovered Leto’s true identity because the way he jumped to the most baffling of conclusions in that moment could earn him an olympic medal. Him sending Leto away and flat out telling her he would let Melantho die did not make sense to me in the slightest and instead of even attempting to convince him of the truth Leto just takes this and somehow makes it to her home village on horseback, even though we know she is no good at riding and considering that she needed Mathias’ help to hold a dying Melantho together I do not understand how she was fine to just ride to a whole different location without bleeding to death.

There are a lot of grievances I have with this book and I don’t think I can be bothered to write them all down, which I would usually feel guilty about but considering that the author herself couldn’t be bothered to properly research this time period and the mythology she was writing about, I think I can give myself a pass.

The one element I do want to still talk about is the romance because it just felt icky to me. Towards the very end of the book Melantho asks if Leto would „still choose her“ and that one line just left me baffled because a book where Leto actually chose Melantho would have been nice but it was definitely not the one I just read. Yes, she has a romance with Melatho throughout the entire book but she also has one with Mathias and that relationship feels like the much higher priority. Leto constantly cheats on Melantho with Mathias and just before the scene on the beach we get a sex scene between Leto and him and I feel like the book wants me to just ignore that. I’m not saying that including something like this is inherently bad, if you want to write a protagonist that cheats on their partner, by all means, write that. If you want to write a story about polyamory, I would have definitely preferred that. But this isn’t a story about either of those things, this is a story where our protagonist is essentially dating two people at the same time, but the story refuses to address or even acknowledge that. I do want to tread a bit carefully here, because while I am queer myself I am not bisexual so take what follows with a grain of salt, but I couldn’t help but feel like this was not very good queer and especially bi representation because when you take another look at the beach scene in the end we literally get Leto kissing Matthias while Melantho stands off to the side and then later the book wants to claim the Leto „chose“ Melantho. Having your bi character string along two different people and pushing your sapphic relationship to the side once the male love interest is present just does not sit right with me at all.

I really wanted to enjoy this book and I looked for a reason to give this anything higher than one star but the more I thought about the book the more issues I noticed. If you do want to read this I highly recommend doing so in audiobook format, because the story may have been lacking but the narrators did a really good job with their performances.

1/5⭐️