A review by pandasbookshelf
Anthesis by Lauren Elizabeth

4.0

A dark gothic fairy tale of love, friendship and a little horror. The story follows Aglasia, a siren who lives alone grappling with her need to feed from human men. When she meets another siren, Rossa suddenly she becomes enveloped in her desire to support and connect with this being like her. Rossa wants to turn a human male into a siren, and what follows is a gory, dark tale of friendship, hope and love. The story features complex, layered and richly drawn characters. I loved the relationship between Aglasia and Rossa and seeing Aglasia grow over the course of the book. For a debut, this book is extremely well written and you can feel the author's passion come through from the page. My only criticism is that the story doesn't wrap up and I now have to wait for the next book (assuming there is one). After the slow burn start, the final third if the story really started to ramp up and go places that made me want to know more about these characters and the sirens in general. I'll be keeping an eye out for more by this author. I'd highly recommend this one, you won't be disappointed.