Review: Fury's Fire by Lisa Papademetriou

Fury's Fire (Siren's Storm #2)

by Lisa Papademetriou

Published: July 10, 2012

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Available: Amazon

Synopsis:

At the end of Siren's Storm, the Sirens were defeated, and now the town of Walfgang is once again a peaceful beach community.

Or is it? Gretchen and Will are still haunted by the memories of the night the Sirens were destroyed—Gretchen because she can't remember what happened and Will because he doesn't know how to tell Gretchen what he saw. He doesn't even understand what he saw, but he does know now that Gretchen is more than what she seems, more than a human girl. And at the same time, he is more in love with her than ever.

Gretchen knows there's something wrong, too. She feels like an alien in her own body, but she doesn't know why. And she feels a presence stalking her at every turn. Have the Sirens returned to Walfang? Or has some other force come to claim her?

Review:
Let me start off by saying that I haven't read the first book Siren's Storm. Because I somehow missed the opening line of the synopsis about this being a sequel, I was pretty confused when I started reading Fury's Fire. By the second chapter it was pretty clear I had missed some pretty big events, but I didn't let that discourage me. I kept reading, and I'm glad I did, although I would recommend that if you plan to read Fury's Fire, check out the Siren's Storm first.

I liked both main characters, Will and Gretchen. But the relationship bet ween them is where I found myself losing interest. Will is over protective, deliberately hiding things from Gretchen and acting possessive and jealous. As for Gretchen, I couldn't understand why she was with Will. There are no thoughts about their relationship. All of that comes form Will, making it seem very one sided and I wasn't invested in their romance because of this.

What kept me from giving this 4 stars is the over use of dreams and retelling of the past. I lost track of how many chapters started with a dream or memory, and even the ending seemed to be disconnected. After the main action, there is no aftermath, just an epilogue that tells me what has happened in the weeks since. I also had a hard time understanding why the villain in this story always went for the public kill. There were plenty of opportunities for the villain to get to Gretchen when only the two of them were present. It just didn't make sense to me.

Overall, Fury's Fire is an interesting read, and even though I wasn't sure exactly what happened in Siren's Storm, Papademetriou fed in enough back story so I was able to fill in enough details to figure out what was going on. She had a clean style that kept the plot moving at a nice flow, and the book was a very quick read.