Book Review: Serenade by Emily Kiebel

Reviewer: Sandy

sereandeI was provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

Follow your dreams… follow your destiny; that is what Lorelei is trying to do as she leaves home for college to pursue her singing career with mixed blessings from her parents. Her mother considers her singing career useless and is still brooding over the issue while her father has just picked her up for a week-long road trip, just the two of them.  It happened so fast, there no time for thinking, one second her father was standing alongside the car watching Lorelei put on her sweatshirt and the next minute he was lying in a pool of blood.  Car, gravel, sliding, this can’t be happening, yet here Lorelei stand over her father’s body singing a song for which the words just burst from her heart.   Nothing is the same for Lorelei now, her spark has dimmed, she needs a break and there’s too much tension at home. A letter arrives in Lorelei’s mail at school, which unknown relatives reveal themselves to Lorelei.  It’s amazing how relatives come out of the woodwork when you least expect them.  Deciding to take a chance, she decides to visits them and she realizes that her mother had a past, a rich world that was not disclosed to her which consists of sirens, messengers, fates, and Idis. All these words and individuals are foreign words for Lorelei but as they are thoroughly explained to her, she soon is able to defer how they all are connected and where she fits in with it.  Lorelei is told she comes from a long line of sirens, a family of women who tune their voices, listen for their calling and then sing their songs with purpose.  It’s just not any song that they sing but songs to sing individuals to their deaths.  This was all so exciting for me, thinking that Lorelei had finally found some family members she could bond with, somewhere she fit in and they were also connected by the gift of song.  In Lorelei’s group, working together, were a group of women with a wide range in ages and a few men.  I thought this combination was perfect, such a great variety, I felt it added intensity and gaiety to the story.   The big kicker was that they lured people to their deaths, yeah not something to go bragging around about.  I was having a hard time coping with this issue and I didn’t even have the gift.  Lorelei was one of the gifted ones and she was troubled now, what was she to do?  They are a special group of people, special people assigned to undergo this task when the job needs to be done but Lorelei has other questions about the job and she will stop at nothing until she gets the answers.

4 stars