I love Ann Liang's writing style. Her books always have a C-drama worthy plot. A Song to Drown Rivers is no different. If you love historical romance dramas, you'll love this book.

This was such a well-executed retelling on the story of Xishi. This book felt enchanting, addicting, heartbreaking, and all of the above. I loved all the characters and absolutely adored the story, but I think with this being my first dive into this genre, it was a bit hard for me to connect with the story the same way so many other people did. Overall, Ann really takes you on a roller coaster of emotions with this story and I wish I could experience the ride for the first time again. I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy in October and re-experience this story!

A Song to Drown Rivers is a lovely retelling of the legend of Xi Shi. A bit slow to start, once the story picked up I was fully engaged. The politics and intrigue were the highlight. My main critique that keeps it from being a 5 star read is the target audience. This is marketed as an adult fantasy, however it read very young adult. I don't mind it and do read young adult books, but wasn't expecting it for this book and believe it took away from the story a bit. Writing about a courtesan without delving into the very adult themes around their role felt off and I would have loved to explore the implications more fully. But overall this is a well done story that touches on great themes! I was just hoping for a more compete vision

First and foremost, thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an eARC for an honest review!

I have nothing but good things to say about A Song to Drown Rivers. It is a beautifully written story that manages to cover patriarchy, womanhood, power, war, grief, love, loyalty, and family at the same time. None of these topics feel forced or strained, which is a credit to Liang's prose and ability to create a world that you can fold yourself into. While the journey of Xishi draws on some well-known tropes, Liang brings new and refreshing light to these tropes, and again, makes them feel as natural as the world that she has created. Xishi is a character that is written with such care and nuance, providing readers with the ability to feel what she feels along her journey. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a beautiful historical fantasy that will allow them to fully hear the song that drowns rivers.

This novel about a commoner-turned-spy and the spymaster with whom she falls in love is full of lovely imagery, but too often coy and vague on details. Xishi and another young woman are trained to infiltrate the court of their country's enemy oppressor, where Xishi is to seduce him and convince him to weaken his country's defenses without him knowing. It's a dangerous undertaking: Xishi's companion loses her cool and dies horribly as a consequence; Xishi herself deliberately wounds herself and is hunted by a court official. She begins to feel sympathy towards her mark, but in the end, reveals all to him when her country attacks his. In the end, she dies before being reunited with her putative lover, but they meet again in the afterlife. Xishi isn't a very strong character, and she rarely feels much inner turmoil or has much character development--as though the training she undertakes to hide her true expressions was adopted by the author as well.

This was my initial venture into historical fiction with minimal fantasy elements, A Song to Drown Rivers draws inspiration from the legend of Xishi, exploring themes of womanhood, sacrifice, revenge, and love.

Despite my unfamiliarity with the legend, the story captivated me, weaving a compelling yet heartrending narrative. I particularly resonated with the exploration of revenge.
Ann Liang's prose is undeniably beautiful, though at times, it tended to be overly wordy for my taste.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to enthusiasts of Chinese-inspired historical fiction seeking a tragic love story intertwined with a cautionary tale of revenge.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martins Publishing for giving me e-arc and the opportunity to review this early.

ARC provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

<b>4.5 ☆</b>

I ended the book with a weeping heart- grief, especially when it’s well written, hits hard. I’ll be honest, in the beginning, I wasn’t as into the story as I wanted to be. Certain parts made me feel disinterested with the addition of a ‘love at first sight’ trope as well as the plot felt like something I had read before. But knowing that it was inspired by a legend really helped me fall in love. It’s a story of morals meant to teach readers- and I was sucked in after a few chapters. A show of how gray humanity it- those seen as heroes and villains aren’t really one sided- and a story of how not everything has the happy ending one wants.

This imaginative retelling of the legend of Xishi was both stunning and devastating in the most beautiful sense of the word. It's impossible to put down.

The explorations of the themes of revenge, beauty, war, and power were moving and thoughtful, well worth taking the time to digest after you've been swept away with the narrative. The author captures the elements of Chinese culture and the legends well, immersing the reader in the ancient land and its customs. It's an excellent and entertaining introduction to heroic Xishi.

This is a great tandem read or book for group discussion. It would also make an excellent read for anyone looking for an accessible window to Chinese classics.

4.5 heartbreaking stars

This story is breathtakingly beautiful. From the beginning you’re captivated by Ann Liang storytelling. You cannot put it down, you find yourself yearning for the main characters.

Before reading I wasn’t aware of ‘The Legend of Xi Shi’ one of the renowned ‘Four Beauties’ of ancient China. I did do my research after finishing this story and i have to say Ann Liang did an amazing job in bringing this story to life. Ann Liang’s writing is so beautiful and lyrical that you’re immediately transported into this story.

My heart is completely and utterly heartbroken after reading this. I’m not a fan of love triangles but this story did an amazing job that you didn’t know who to root for at the end. Everyone in this story deserved better 💔 I wish I could read this again for the first time. I cannot wait for the physical copy to come out so I can be heartbroken all over again.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book is beautifully written. You can see and feel the tension and drama surrounding the main characters. and their heroism. While I wished for a disney-esque happily ever after, I think that the author delivered a true, difficult, and poignant ending. This book is a great choice for followers of Elizabeth Lim and Sue Lynn Tan (two authors I enjoy!).

Thanks you Netgalley and publishers for the free e-arc.

I was so excited for this one because the legend of Xi Shi is a banger and it's great to see an English language retelling of it, but I am BEGGING publishers to please stop publishing YA manuscripts as supposedly adult titles! There doesn't need to be a ton of explicit content on the page, but I simply can't anymore with sanitized stories about virgin courtesan spies who somehow manage to never have sex with the target they're meant to seduce in what is supposed to be an ADULT book (and the existence of much better YA novels like IRON WIDOW and GIRLS OF PAPER AND FIRE, which despite supposedly being for a teen audience don't gloss over the realities of being a concubine, make this even more annoying). The writing isn't awful and if this book had been published as the YA it actually is, I would have been less disappointed by it, but despite the beautiful package--which I predict BookTok will eat up!--unfortunately A SONG TO DROWN RIVERS is just okay, and doesn't otherwise stand out from the glut of historical and mythological retellings still saturating the marketplace.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I love when I pick up a book thinking it will be good, just to find out that it’s actually excellent.

Xishi’s story is extraordinary, thrilling, and heartbreaking. I couldn’t put this one down and was so sad when it ended. It’s not often that I say a book is too short but I gladly could have spent an extra 100 pages with this story and still not had enough.

This was genuinely one of the best and most beautiful books i have ever read, I am still shaking over the fact that I even got an ARC for it!! This is also quite possibly the most emotionally devastating book I've read in a long while, I was truly fighting for my life not to cry on my plane while reading the last 20%, despite expecting a tragic ending.

My one comment is that I wish we had just a little bit more time with Xishi and Fanli being happy, but I also feel like the fact that they never truly got to be happy together, and were separated for so long, makes the ending all the more tragic and impactful. I still absolutely loved the book and characters though -- genuinely if a book can make me cry it's a really good book to me.

I absolutely loved everything about this book. It’s a beautifully written story about two warring kingdoms. A young girl is sent to seduce the king of the Wu kingdom, learn his secrets, plans and destroy his kingdom from the inside. It’s fiction at its finest with espionage, intrigue, war and forbidden love. I couldn’t put this book down!

Well, I finished this book yesterday, and I am still at a loss for words.
I was so impressed by the storytelling that I couldn't put the book down, but at the same time, I was so riddled with nerves from reading this book that I had to pause a few times to let my brain catch up with what was happening.

I loved Xishi, and I never grew tired of listening to her speak. She didnt exhaust her trauma, or whine about her life. She was chosen to accomplish a task, and she used what she was born with to do just that. Her ability to be clever, to manipulate, to play people against others. I had to respect that she wasn't some sleeper cell raised in a remote village trained from birth to be a spy. She was just a beautiful woman, and she let men underestimate her while she played them like puppets.

Fanli for me was a great addition to this book, and I appreciated that he wasn't in a major part of it. He was something to be thought of in a moment, but suppressed and forgotten to keep the mask on. Something to look forward to when things seem dire.

Two things in the book that looked like it had foreshadowing but never panned out, where her heart condition, and the sword. I thought they would work into the story some how but they never really did.

The ending was one of the best and most surprisings ones I've read in awhile, and honestly the last part where they reunite I don't think it needed to be in there. Not every story needs the HEA, and it's refreshing when sometimes you can't be saved.

I really loved this book. I am very glad I got to read it. I will definitely buy the physical copy for my shelf and reread it in the future.

A beautiful and heart-aching story, I noticed one of the main themes within this book looks at personal happiness vs. happiness of the greater good and how it affects the choices of the women in these war-torn nations. The yearning was so real here and I liked the characters' personalities, though do I do wish they had been more fleshed out in the beginning when they were falling from each other because from my perspective, all the guy did was brood and be really skilled. I do however, love a cunning woman with a plan and this book did deliver mostly on that. Overall, this was a lovely story and I look forward to more work from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me early access to this book!

This was quite good. I do think the love interest and romance could have been built out further. The attraction felt not fully there and didn’t feel substantial. It read quite quickly and interestingly. The passing of time also felt quite quick and it felt like certain things happened a bit too conveniently. Overall it was a fun read and felt like a c-drama!

You know that feeling you get when you know that you’re going to read a book with a tragic ending? I could not get rid of the feeling of dread the entire time as I was reading this book, in fact it just kept growing into a large lump in my stomach. This historical fiction novel is based on the legend of Xishi, one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China. She is chosen as a bride for the rival Wu king and trained to be a spy for the Yue people. The handsome and disciplined advisor to the Yue king complicates her mission as she has to seduce the seemingly corrupt Wu king.

This book has everything: espionage, a romantic triangle with heartbreakingly handsome male love interests, history, and poetic prose.

Ann Liang breathes life into these legendary characters, but man… she really had me wishing and hoping for a happy ending even though I knew she was setting me up for emotional damage. I wished this book was just a happy tale where a girl is swept away by a handsome man for an important mission. Instead, it was a tale of two star-cross ponds who were just dispensable pieces of a larger chess game between greedy kings.

I think this book would be great for those who loved Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and the Song of the Last Kingdom duology by Amelie Wen Zhao. I am excited for this book to finally come out and receive the love that I think it truly deserves.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC.

A whole romance book where the romance isn’t even developed… that was definitely a choice. 🫤



This review is VERY LONG, so the summary is:
➤ The romance wasn’t developed at all (they fell in love in the first 25% of the book, off-page).
➤ The MC is a terrible spy and only survived because of plot armor.
➤ The story was full of nonsense (there’s only so much disbelief I have to suspend).
➤ The SCs were irrelevant.
➤ Most of the possibly-interesting action happened off-page.



The in-depth review:

The book starts with the MC Xishi (who is very VERY hot) being saved by a man (who is also very VERY hot). You instantly know than man is going to be the LI simply based on the fact that he’s the only person who got a really long and poetic physical description (he has beautiful clear skin, shiny hair and eyes, sharp angles in his face, his features are “beautifully refined”, he’s so tall her head only reaches his shoulders uwuuuuu, he’s literally described as “ethereal” at some point, he’s so strong he can lift her as if she “weighed no more than a feather”, etc.). I have 3 things to say about this:

1) I need authors to STOP making it so obvious from page 1 who the LI is simply based on how long his physical description is. It’s tacky and annoying.
2) Xishi and Fanli (the LI) were described as hot coooooonstantly throughout the book. I understand that HER beauty was central to the plot, so I kinda get that, but HIS??? I get it!!! His features are sharp!!! He is sexy and hot and you’re very very into him!! ENOUGH!!! 🤚🏻🤚🏻🤚🏻
3) Basically every Ann Liang LI looks the same: smooth skin, beautiful nose and lips, shiny dark hair and eyes, sharp jaw, very tall and skinny but still kinda strong… you literally can’t tell them apart. The only thing that made Fanli physically different was the fact that he had long hair. I’m begging Ann Liang to learn how to describe men differently, because this is getting absurd. Write a short king next, girl! A dude with tanner skin! Somebody with curlier hair! A wide nose! Some acne, for fuck’s sake! I believe in you! you don’t need to copy-paste these men!

Fanli then reaches out to Xishi and tells her: “Yeah so basically we want you to pretend to be a concubine for the enemy king while in actuality you’ll be spying on him and distracting him from his work bc we want to conquer his kingdom”. It was very dumb that Fanli (who’s supposed to be SUPER intelligent) was just telling this whole plan to a stranger (like, you’re compromising your mission. What if she tells that plan to other people?), but okay. She immediately accepts that mission and is whisked away to a remote place to train as a spy for 10 weeks, alongside Zhengdan, a friend of hers from her village who will pretend to be her maid. I wish her reasons for accepting putting herself at risk were better explained. The author should’ve emphasized her poverty and her desire for revenge for her sister’s murder.

In the first 1/3 of the book Xishi is training to become a spy, while simultaneously getting closer to Fanli. Almost all of this happens off-page. We did get a couple of moments that showed her training and her talking to Fanli, but they were mostly inconsequential. The dumbest scene for me was the one where Fanli does that thing men do in romcoms where he stands behind the woman with his arms around her to teach her something (in this case, how to play an instrument)…… I just had to check that this is in fact a historical book released in 2024, and not a silly modern romcom from 2005. 🤐 Xishi then insisted on playing that instrument until her hands were “slick with [her] own blood” for literally NO reason other than the fact that she wanted to learn to play in a day instead of leaving it for tomorrow, and she wanted to prove she could play better than girls who’d been learning from childhood… This is just one of the MULTIPLE times where it becomes evident that this bitch is STUPID 🤨

This whole section of the book had a lot of *telling instead of showing*, which is disappointing, firstly, because I’d really like to see a commoner being trained as a spy. That sounds SO COOL!!! Why not show it? It was such a missed opportunity! ☹️ But, most importantly, the decision to barely show anything that happened in those 10 weeks made the romance extremely poor.

I’m truly shocked that Ann Liang (an author who’s written 3 pretty well-developed romances) decided to NOT develop the romance in her 4th romance book…???????????? Literally WHY??? Why didn’t she show ANY of it???!! I’m not joking when I say I cannot list A SINGLE REASON for Fanli and Xishi to like each other, other than the fact that they’re hot. That’s it. There was no development, no bonding, nothing. They talk to each other sometimes, but they’re instantly feeling an immense attraction, and by the 30% mark they’re already in love, when, to me, they were barely even ACQUAINTANCES. I was seriously going insane. Like, what do you MEANNNN you’re feeling all of this for a man you BARELY EVEN KNOW?????? 🤨🤨🤨🤨🤨

The poorly developed romance is extremely egregious because she then spends the last 70% of the book barely even interacting with Fanli, because she’s working as a spy-concubine in the enemy’s castle (this period spans for over a year, btw!). And SOMEHOW, even after all that time, Xishi is STILL pining over that cardboard cutout of a man. 😭🤚🏻 It would already be hard to believe she fell soooo deeply in love in only 10 weeks and that love didn’t falter at all after over a YEAR. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to believe it when you didn’t even bother showing them ACTUALLY getting close and falling for each other. Absurd. The “romance” in this book was absolute shit.

There were A LOT of dumb things in this first section of the book (like the fact that Xishi’s final test was simply to seduce 1 random man at a tea-shop, and boom, she was officially a spy. 🙄 Or the time she got shot in the shoulder with an arrow and ended up in a coma for A WEEK??? Bffr… 🥴. Or the fact that despite having trained for 10 weeks to seduce the enemy king, Xishi never even bothered to ask his age… no braincells found in that pretty head of hers lol 💀).



But then Xishi FINALLY gets to the enemy kingdom and into the palace, and I was actually excited! I thought we’d get scenes of her lurking around, spying on people, going through rooms, climbing walls to get to important, locked rooms through windows……. But we barely got anything. 🤡🤡🤡

Most of her “spying” is done off-page (just like her training), and is told instead of shown. All we ever see Xishi do is manipulate the king by making little requests here and there, and, because Ann Liang refuses to let Xishi struggle for anything, the king is never suspicious of her, and immediately does everything she asks of him. This man (who is also very VERY hot, obviously) literally “fell in love” with Xishi the moment he saw her, and like… I get that he’s frivolous and she’s oh-so-hot, but still – you CANNOT convince me that a king wouldn’t be suspicious of her. The only reason Xishi wasn’t questioned whenever she denied the king’s demands or requested things of him was because of some very strong plot-armor. You reeeeally need to suspend your disbelief with this book, because nothing in that palace made any sense. 😵‍💫

Her time at the palace was also riddled with extremely dumb things (other than the fact that the king somehow didn’t find her suspicious), like:
➤ how Xishi managed to bring a whole ass sword into the palace (did they not check her belongings before letting her go CLOSE TO THE KING, especially knowing damn well she’s from the enemy kingdom?? 😑).
➤ how she was ignored for days after arriving and yet when she yelled for a doctor THE KING HIMSELF immediately showed up? And then started applying medicine on her bloody wound (mind you, this is a person he spoke to ONCE). So unserious… 🥴
➤ how she literally just asked a guard to let her leave the palace and he immediately did?? And then she met up with a messenger from her kingdom so she could trade information she got by spying. Lollll okay it’s THAT EASY 😐.
➤ the fact that the KING let one of his concubines convince him to get drunk before an important meeting, and then let her join the meeting, where important information was being divulged…. Once again, in WHAT WORLD? + everything is SO EASY for her. 🙄
➤ the amount of times Xishi mentioned seeing someone’s BLACK EYES darken, or their colour deepening, was also quite mind numbing. That’s not something you can see, especially not that often. Ann Liang PLEASE try to find a different way to convey emotions. Please and thank you. 🥱

Everything was handed to Xishi. She never had to struggle for anything in this book, which made this story have no stakes. That, in addition to the fact that we rarely ever *see* her do anything, made this book extremely dull.

The moment she gets found out (kinda) is when she’s kissing the king and she says Fanli’s name (that’s the cardboard cutout of a man that she was barely acquainted with, yet was supposedly deeply in love with even though she’d known him for 10 weeks, and hadn’t seen him in like a year, btw!). I giggled because like…. Bitch?? I knew you were dumb, but SERIOUSLY?? 🤣🤣🤣 The king then brings Fanli over to his palace to torture him in front of Xishi to see her reaction. Somebody straight up just pierces Fanli’s chest with a sword, twisting it around and everything. Fanli, who’s apparently invincible, barely even flinches. Afterwards Xishi and Fanli meet up, because of cooooourse the king just let them go instead of… idk… keeping guards around them??? 🙄 One of them if your enemy, the other is the woman you’re suspicious of… But okay. Ann Liang can’t let these characters struggle + she needed an excuse to get these 2 *acquaintances* together again, to show their “romance” or whatever. Yawnnnn. 🥱

And guess what?! THE KING IMMEDIATELY TRUSTS HER AGAIN AFTER THIS! 🤡🤡🤡 Some months later the king invites Fanli for a banquet and then tells Xishi to show Fanli around the palace (once again, with no guards…. 😑). This was just another forced way for Ann Liang to put those 2 in a room together. It makes NO sense that they wouldn’t be followed, or that they would even RISK showing their emotions for each other in a palace full of servants, guards, maids, etc. Ridiculous. In this scene Fanli does that horrible crusty men do in romances where he grabs her wrist and pins her to the wall, trapping her 🤢🤢🤢. It’s supposed to be hot, but to me it’s gross 🤮. Ann Liang also did this in her book that just came out last month, in case you needed more evidence that her LIs are starting to be noticeably copy-pasted.

At this point you might’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned anyone other than the MC, the LI and the king she spends most of the book with, and that is for a very simple reason: the SCs are completely irrelevant to this story. Remember Zhengdan (Xishi’s bff and maid I mentioned at the start)? Yeah, neither did the author, because she’s barely in the story. She could’ve been a cool character, but since we rarely saw her and her friendship with Xishi was told instead of shown, it is impossible to care about her. I didn’t feel a thing in Zhengdan’s last scene in the book lol. 🫤 Fanli’s friend (whose name I don’t even remember) was literally only there to praise Fanli. Xishi’s family was mentioned a handful of times, but they didn’t matter at all. Every SC in this book was underdeveloped, irrelevant and completely forgettable.

I also need to say that THIS IS NOT A FANTASY BOOK!!! I genuinely don’t know why it’s being marketed as such. The only fantasy elements are some vague mentions of ghosts/afterlife in the last 10 pages of the book. This isn’t fantasy *at all*; it’s just a (very underwhelming) historical romance.

Overall, while this wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, it is definitely a huge disappointment, given that I like Ann Liang’s other books. This is also definitely a REEEEALLY dumb book. 🥴 If you can turn off your brain perhaps you’ll be able to look past all the dumb/nonsensical plot points, but the romance isn’t even good enough to indulge in, so I personally wouldn’t recommend. 🤷🏻 Given the fact that I literally couldn’t go more than 3 pages without finding something really stupid that I NEEDED to complain about (just go through my reading updates lol), I cannot give this more than 2 stars.



ARCs available for everyone to download on Netgalley.

Ann Liang is easily one of my favorite authors. I absolutely adore her writing and A Song to Drown Rivers was a stunning work of art. I have never been so happy to be emotionally destroyed. I fell in love with these characters and their depth. I was fully immersed into the world and the lore and I never wanted the book to end.