So this was marketed as a sapphic Odyssey retelling, but I found it to be more of a spin-off? In this story, a curse was placed on Ithaca by Poseidon for the hanging of Penelope’s twelve maids. Each year, 12 girls are sacrificed to keep the island safe from Poseidon’s wrath. But there’s a catch - the curse can be broken with the death of twelve Ithacan princes…and Prince Mathias would make number 12. It is up to Melantho, one of the first maids, to convince and train a recently sacrificed Leto that the prince must die.

I actually enjoyed the plot line of this book, as well as Melantho and Leto’s relationship. The thing that was honestly a huge downer for me was the forced love triangle towards the end. It’s not that I hated Mathias, I just think his and Leto’s relationship should have remained platonic. Plus Leto was basically cheating on Melantho and being super shady about it. Annnnd I REALLY didn’t enjoy the whole “oh you’re gonna die? I guess I’ll have sex with you” thing she pulled at the end. So this didn’t exactly ruin the book for me, but it did cloud my overall opinion.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperTeen for this arc!

I was OBSESSED with the cover. It's gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. I cannot rave enough. This book will definitely go over well with our readers.

That said, I wasn't particularly into the comp titles presented and they were also books that didn't really grab me, and so I wasn't surprised the book didn't particularly grip me either.

Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins for the ARC.

I really had to force myself through this book. It wasn't written badly necessarily; I was just so bored. I know that a lot of people had a problem with Sarah Underwood writing a re-telling of The Odyssey without having read the original Odyssey. I agree that was a poor choice. As an author, it is necessary to do the background research before writing your book, and reading the story that you are re-telling is the bare minimum amount of research needed. Therefore, I would say this shouldn't have been marketed as a reiteration. I'd say that's only 50% on the author though and that the publisher should take some of the blame as well. I mean, isn't that kind of the entire point of having a publisher? They're supposed to catch this sort of thing before it gets published. Read some of the other reviews that go deeper into the appropriation and inaccuracies that surround this novel, as they do a much better job explaining. This was just a "meh" book for me personally, regardless of the aforementioned issues.

Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, HarperTeen for providing me a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

I would first like to say — I'm a sucker for any retelling of a Greek myth, but especially any retelling that involves any part of The Odyssey. When I read the description — sapphic YA retelling with an emphasis on Penelope's maids...I was sold.

It took me longer than expected to actually become invested in our characters. The chapters switch between focusing on the three main characters and I found it a bit hard to actually care about them for a bit. Not because the characters themselves were unlikable but I kept feeling like I was only glimpses of who they were and I couldn't fully connect to them. Once I found my rhythm within the changing chapters and was able to get a fuller understanding of who they were, it started to come together.

I will echo what other reviewers said — there are definitely plot points that are vague and under developed. However, I didn't mind it tooooo much in my readings, mostly because myths can be a little hand-wavey, especially as they're passed down. Looking back, it does feel more like under-developed/not researched as well as possible, but it didn't stop me from fully enjoying it.

Saran Underwood has a beautiful prose. There were lines that genuinely brought me to tears and left me gasping. I think her writing style helped push past some of those loose plot points. I also was pleasantly surprised by the ending.

I did really enjoy Lies We Sing to the Sea and was able look past what folks were saying enough that I would give it a solid 4 stars.

NOTE: I didn't know going in that Underwood had not actually finished The Odyssey. Definitely disappointing but it doesn't change my review of the actual book. However, I find that extremely disappointing considering her basis of the plot is the events that took place within the epic.

Wonderful book! The writing style is captivating and draws you in from the first page. I loved the multiple narrators and that they switched off by chapter - this is a favorite style of mine. And the story line - amazing. Beautiful cover and magnificent story. Ignore the negative reviews griping about the Odyssey. This is not a retelling of the Odyssey and does not have anything to do with that story. Don’t get distracted with that noise. Read the story for yourself and judge it based on what you read! It’s great! Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy!!

Lots of plot holes that I just could not get past! Really interesting concept but unfortunately didn't work for me. Gorgeous cover though!

A beautiful telling of the curse of the 12 maids of Ithaca from Greek mythology, this book follows Leto, one of the 12 young women marked by Poseidon and condemned to death each year in Ithaca. Except, when she hangs with the other 11 maids, she doesn't enter the Underworld nor does she pay Charon for passage on the River Styx. She awakens in the sea near the shores of the island of Pandou, invisible to anyone else. There, she befriends Melantho, a cursed maid from centuries previous. Melantho tells Leto of a way to break Ithaca's curse. They must murder the current prince of Ithaca, and the curse will be lifted, freeing the future girls of Ithaca.

Thank you so very much to NetGalley and to HarperCollins Children's for the opportunity to read and review this book. I am a massive fan of woman-focused mythology retellings, and this one did NOT disappoint.

First, the writing - it's lyrical, emotional, beautiful, and captivating. Underwood painted such a gorgeous picture of a once-beautiful, now-decaying island of Ithaca. She made Pandou sound like a dream. Her characters so readily came alive on the pages, even the smallest ones. Underwood has a talent for creating voice in her characters - each of the three different points of view were very well-written.

Next, the characters - I fell in love with Leto, Melantho, and their love and friendship. Having read a lot of mythology, I know that most of these stories do not have happy endings. Yet, even with the sadness that permeated the end of this story for the characters, Underwood still provided a subjectively happy ending for Leto and Melantho, and even Mathias. At first I dismissed Mathias as a traditional "man" in Greek Mythology, uncaring of his female counterparts. I saw his first attempts to try and find an answer to break the curse as transparent and futile. When he began interacting with Leto and Melantho, however, his character started to reveal some depth, which made me appreciate his character a little more.

Finally, the pacing - it took me a little while to remember that the majority of this story spans about two weeks, leading up to the spring equinox and looming deaths of the next 12 maids. I think it would have been easy to rush this story and make it much shorter, but Underwood paced this story beautifully, really giving the characters and storyline meaning.

Overall - highly recommend if you're a fan of myths and retellings focused on the female characters. It's an emotional and sad read that explores love, death, loss, grief, revenge, and life. I loved it.

imagine openly admitting to NOT READING THE SOURCE MATERIAL THAT YOUR BOOK IS BASED ON and apparently not even having a basic familiarity with greek mythology retellings beyond percy jackson and the song of achilles and still getting a deal with a major publishing house 🫠

lies we sing to the sea is based on the story of penelope’s twelve hanged maids. centuries have passed since their deaths, but every spring poseidon marks twelve more girls as sacrifices to him. when leto hangs as one of this year’s sacrifices, she comes back—resurrected as something not quite human—and learns from melantho (the only character from the odyssey to actually appear in this book) that she must kill the prince of ithaca to break poseidon’s curse.

underwood’s lack of research is apparent throughout the book. not only does this fail as a greek mythology retelling, it isn’t even good historical fiction. i was constantly pausing to google if the ancient greeks would have had x, y, or z and the answer was almost always no. the plot is unnecessarily and (as far as i can tell) unintentionally convoluted, with a predictable conclusion. a tragic ending is not inherently meaningful.

i haaaated the romance. it’s a love triangle featuring a jealous lesbian LI, a cheating bisexual MC, and a sweet, gentle (if idiotic) male LI. the f/m relationship is pivotal to the plot and the f/f relationship is treated as secondary, which i found particularly frustrating in a book marketed as sapphic.

if you strip everything else away, i will say that i think underwood’s writing style is actually quite nice. i wish she didn’t try to sell this as greek mythology lite (for the people who find the odyssey too “prose-y” 🙄) and instead just wrote a YA fantasy novel.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love Greco-Roman culture, mythology, and stories and this seemed right up my alley. A sapphic reimagining of the Odyssey? Seems right up my alley. However, I did not feel as though the book lived up to that description.

The Odyssey at its core is an adventure story and this was much more focused on a revenge/justice plot put together by our sapphic leads. It takes place several hundred years after the return of Odysseus and the death of Penelope’s maids.

Beyond it being somewhat mismarketed, I also felt as though the love story was not super convincing. There was yearning but there was come chemistry between Leto and the prince than her with Melantho, the other female lead.

I also felt as though it was quite flat. The plot, the twists, and the characters were all interesting but I didn’t feel as though the work pushed enough to make me truly care or be invested in whether they succeeded or not. The sorry drug on until around the final third of the book and only then did I became invested in how the plots would be resolved. Even then, I somehow guessed a major twist that came in the ending of the story.

For all this book was about the exploitation of women, I felt only as though it was done okay. I liked digging into the treatment of the women during Ancient Greece but again it just felt flat. I do have to say there were some great quotes sprinkled throughout the book.

Overall, this book was fine. I didn’t hate it by any means but it is not one I will most likely revisit. There were things to enjoy in it, but the overall feeling I have towards it is ambivalence.

An absolutely dazzling read. For fans of Greek mythology and SONG OF ACHILLES, LIES WE SING TO THE SEA is not one to miss.

Oh boy. HCC made this seem like the book of the year, but I'm super disappointed in it.

I think if I was a lot younger (I'm thinking like 12-13) I would have loved it so much, but just like The Witch and the Vampire, it dragged on, wasn't exciting at all, and just so boring.

It felt jarring to say the least. I didn't even want to pick it up. Also, the finished copy doesn't even have page numbers on it, wtf is that?

Waste of my time, and waste of my money.

Thank you so much Netgalley for the ARC

Interesting premise but very slow and not engaging at all .

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me a copy of this book in return for my honest opinions.

Here they are.

The books was a horrible retelling if the Odyssey. I thought it was me, but have since discovered the author has never read the original novel! It is very evident she has not

I forced myself to finished reading the book because I felt an obligation to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me a copy. Sorry NetGalley, I won't be doing that again. My time is more valuable than that and there are far to many really t books out there.

Don't waste your time on this one!

Just can not recommend!

Lies we sing to the sea takes inspiration from a line in the Odyssey, but invents entirely new characters and plotlines that occur some 300 years after the end of the epic. The main character, Leto, is sentenced to die in an annual ritual to appease the god Poseidon after he cursed Odysseus and Ithaca. What unfolds from there is an adventure to break the curse that involves a deserted island, a mediocre teen oracle, a shipwreck, princes and princesses, mistaken identity hijinks, and lots of YA-appropriate romance.

I want to address a few specific things I’ve seen in other reviews:
1. The author’s failure to read the Odyssey: the top reviews on Goodreads all mention this as a fatal flaw of this book (though many of the critics have not actually read this story). While I think it was very unwise of the author to reveal this fact, the reality is that this book is very, very loosely inspired by a single line in the Odyssey. Generations of authors and artists have followed in this tradition of taking a spark of inspiration from one place and then imagining a new world from there. If you have a problem with this, don’t read it.
2. Sapphic vs. Bi: The book was widely advertised as a sapphic YA romantic fantasy story. The FMC does have a handful of encounters with a male character (which largely occur off-page), but outside of one scene towards the very end of the book, the FMC is clear in her own mind about preferring her female partner. Her male encounters are also vehicles for advancing her schemes, and not truly romantic (again, except for one scene near the end).
3. Comparisons to Circe: while I understand why people compare the two books (and it is clear that this book takes inspiration from Circe), I found the prose, plot, and themes to be too YA to be a genuine comparison to Circe.

Overall, I enjoyed the story but found the reading experience forgettable. I imagine that there are a lot of folks out there who read more YA than I do that will really enjoy it, and I wanted to try and clear up some of the misconceptions I have seen in other reviews so that they might find it.

I absolutely loved this book. The cover art is absolutely stunning. The plot was moving and the characters were well developed. I am so excited for future book endeavors from this author!

I love a good Greek mythology retelling. I love it even more so if it’s a lesser known story. To build this novel out of the maidens of Penelope, is a feat. This story is lush and descriptive. The writing is poetic. However, for me, therein lies the dichotomy. I felt that this novel was overly descriptive. I was simultaneously intrigued and bored. I thought the 3 perspectives was overkill throughout most of the book, yet I also felt like you couldn’t have the complete story without all of them. It was a slow story, but also felt like it flew by. These conflicting opinions I have make it hard for me to rate this book.

I know my students who love mythology will enjoy it.
I know my students who love descriptive writing will love it.
I just don’t know how to explain what I don’t like about this story beyond a vague statement.

Overall, I feel like this book was too long, but the end was super rushed. As I stated, I think kids will like it, but personally, I wouldn’t pick it up again.

I did not finish this book mostly because it was a slow start and not quite my taste. However I did purchase it for my library collection because I know a few teens who would really enjoy this book and love green mythology.

Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood is the story of Leto, one of the twelve girls condemned to the noose each year to pay the price to Poseidon for the lives of Queen Penelope's twelve maids. But Leto doesn't stay dead, and a mysterious girl, Melantho, let's her know one more death can stop thousands more.

Okay, so to start with how this book was marketed...An Odessy retelling? Absolutely not. Inspired by at best. For fans of Madeline Miller? Not even close. The Song of Achilles is one of the most beautifully written books ever. This is a YA novel. We're comparing apples and oranges here. For fans of Alexandra Bracken? Now we're talking! This read is VERY YA. It's an extremely easy read without the emotional depth you'd be expecting when you've been told it's a Madeline Miller comparison, but you do want to keep compulsively reading to find out how it all turns out, so it's still a super fun read if you can recalibrate your expectations.

I loved the dual POV from opposing sides of the conflict, that it wasn't a fairytale ending (what can I say? I'm a cold hearted snake 🤣), and I couldn't put it down, so obviously it was giving me whatever I needed. However, it did drag a bit in the middle and the character development and relationship building were a tad shallow, but neither was a dealbreaker for my enjoyment.

I'd recommend this one for those who enjoy Alexandra Bracken's books, those who enjoy Greek mythological retellings but aren't feeling particularly attached to the original tale, and those who want an easy spring read.

Thank you so much to @harpercollinsca @harperteen for my advanced copy!

As ever, please be careful with trigger warnings for this read: sexual assault of a minor, murder, human sacrifice, suicide

Another brilliant Greek myth retelling. The new spin on this story left the reader wanting for nothing and fully sated from start to finish.

Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood tells the story of a young oracle named Leto. The novel opens with a reference to the scene from The Odyssey when Penelope’s twelve maids are tragically executed as collateral damage when Odysseus returns home from his journey. Now, generations later, Poseidon casts a ring of scales around the necks of twelve girls from Ithaca every spring. This year, Leto, and eleven other unlucky girls, are to be hanged and deposited into the ocean to keep their land from being destroyed by the god of the sea. Although nothing can save Leto from her fate, she magically survives her ordeal and finds herself transformed on a secret island where she meets a being named Melantho who teaches her to command the power of water and explains that the curse of Ithaca can only be stopped by the death of the prince.

Although this book is marketed in the tradition of Madeline Miller’s Circe, it is very different from retellings of mythology which alter readers’ perceptions by giving voice to characters often unexplored by ancient poets. Underwood is not attempting to retell mythology, but she is asking her readers to consider a key unexplored act of gendered violence from The Odyssey and to contemplate the outcome of it generations later. Beneath the coming of age plot and the sapphic romance aimed at her young adult audience, Underwood explores themes about loss and grief and offers a commentary on how sins against women can reverberate through the ages. Audiences will be drawn in by the characters who are all trying to navigate circumstances thrust upon them by the barbaric actions of Odysseus and the men from The Odyssey.

Underwood does manage to spin an engaging story that casts light on the silenced women of The Odyssey, but her book falls short of transforming the content of her source material. Her characters (Leto, Selene, Hekate) are not the characters readers may know from their own study of Greek mythology, and her plot lacks convincing details about the daily life and customs in Ancient Greece. Nevertheless, Underwood provides an interesting story with a heart-breaking quality that will force readers to think about inter-generational trauma and its lasting effects. Lies We Sing to the Sea is a gripping tale for those who love Young Adult fantasy fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.