Michaels opens the Siren Series with this inspired story of mythical creatures, high school drama, and a 16-year-old girl, Selena Thermopolis, struggling with her identity as a Siren—sea nymphs who lure men with their angelic singing and seductive beauty, often leading to their death in the sea. After moving to an island and accidentally attracting all the boys in her chorus class with her song, Selena’s mother, Marina, reveals that they are both Sirens, and Selena must balance that identity with her everyday life as a normal high-school student. Alongside new friends, Mike, Jenny, Nicole, and love-interest Andrew, Selena must appease a bully threatening her father’s job, while struggling with her new identity on her own.

Michaels’s inspired depiction of relationships grounds this ordeal, with the key family dynamic feeling truly special and genuine to the characters. Selena’s mother, brother, and stepfather help her to come to terms with her identity—although in the case of her stepfather, he must struggle with his own discovery of the Sirens before he can help Selena. Selena also has a strong group of friends to back her up against a bully’s threat against her family. Whether she is navigating her new powers, a mean girl, or falling for a boy, Selena is sure to have someone by her side, this sense of togetherness lends to an overall feeling of emotional and psychological realism despite the prominence of fantastical elements.

Those elements, too, are deftly handled, with Selena’s “Siren-senses”—allowing her to ““hear the undertow as it pulls at our bodies”—and other supernatural inventions reading as original and exciting, Michaels’s prose touched with briny poetry. This story is well thought out and engaging; the mythology and the characters are appealing and are sure to keep the reader invested in Selena’s journey. Selena’s Song is an ideal YA fantasy, imaginative, polished, and accomplished.

Takeaway: An ideal YA fantasy, great for fans of Greek mythology and sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Great for fans of: Lucy Strange’s The Mermaid in the Millpond, Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A