Siren  - Tricia Rayburn Flashy-eyed women in Winter Harbor, grinning male corpses washed onto the beach, a dead girl whispering things into her sister's ear ... a stunning secret to be revealed. Wow.

Let's get this out of the way quick and dirty (after having endured 154 pages): I do not recommend this book, not even to mermaid-lovers, because ...

- The plot is so very disconnected. Things happen without the reader being "informed". For instance you switch from the scene in which Justine storms out of the beach house to the scene after her funeral and you ask "What? Somebody has died? Who, when?" After some frantic flapping of the recently read pages you calm down, because you haven't missed a word. You just have to fill in the essentials. Welcome to the world of Young Adult Sudoku. On the other hand you know looong before Nessa what those women around her are (the title, the evilness oozing out of their pores, their attractiveness to men, the bodies washed on shore, the flashy, silvery mirror eyes ... *yaaawwwwn*. Apart from the hair color, though, at least the cover fits, and I love it.)

- The characters are too uninteresting, too mean to be believable or too dumb to be comfortable to be around. (How can you not notice that your nymphomanic mom is hitting on your boyfriend, when she is practically crawling over his skin with her tongue?)

- There are sirens or - to be exact - decendants of evil man-eating/man-murdering sirens, no question. But: no underwater plot, no fins, at least I didn't spot them when I was flipping through the rest of the book. I understand that there is the necessity of saltwater getting mixed into your blood if you want to be a proper siren. That's it.

- The romance isn't even partially believable to me (I am glad that fellow mermaid-group-member Alyssa thought differently, although we seem to be on the same page as the rest of the plot is concerned): Nessa's sister dies. Timid Nessa, who was always completely dependent on that sister, mourns her for a bit and feels she has to bring light into the sudden death (the reader says "Yes, please. We don't even know the basics.") and - plong - she feels attracted to childhood buddy and neighbor Simon, brother of Justine's on and off boyfriend Caleb and - above all - a completely boring and geeky meteorology student, who says so often "Three minutes, please, I have to take a few measurements." (= water levels and such in the midst of a thunder storm or an investigation) during the first 150 pages that I wanted to stuff his equippment up his ... nose. But Nessa always patiently answers something in the vein of "Sure, want me to help? Global warming beats my sister's death and your brother's strange disappearance every day. Awful weather, isn't it?". And then she lusts a tiny bit after that future world changer.)

- Luckily my own life-story doesn't involve mourning a tragically departed family member, but I thought that Nessa and her parents were acting and reacting pretty strangely after losing of Justine. We are told that Nessa has problems falling asleep and she wants to find out more. But that's all. I compared Nessa to Kate Mercier, who loses her parents in Die for Me and I have to say Kate's numbness and hurt feel real, whereas Nessa feels "huh"?

One star for the cover, none to the book.