Secrets and Lies in “The Siren”

I freaking loved The Siren, by Katherine St. John. I knew I’d like it almost immediately, because it has all the ingredients I like: backstabbing, past secrets coming back, complicated family drama, ridiculous social media influencing, all set in an exotic location, and oh look, there’s a terrible storm and so everyone’s cut off from civilization! Like I ordered this story from a menu of my favorite suspense story element. And then the whole wild story is pulled off so well, I just couldn’t stop reading.

Ok, so the story begins as we’re shooting a movie on location on a beautiful, isolated tropical island, of course, because that’s the absolute best setting for a backstabbing drama, isn’t it?

The director, Jackson Power is the son of two Hollywood success stories, and his father is financing this project and staring in it. Cole Power will play the lead in his son’s movie, opposite his ex-wife (not Jackson’s mother), who he cheated on. She’ll be playing his wife, before he cheats on her with their sexy young nanny,  played by sexy young Instagram influencer Madison. Stella Rivers, Cole’s ex, has had some rough years since their divorce, but if this movie’s a success, she can pay for some home repairs and stop doing direct-to-streaming movies.  As long as she can hold to the sobriety clause in her contract, and stay away from her manipulative ex, that is. That’s only the tiny heart of the drama, which ripples out with a false identity, a surprise pregnancy, several hookups, and so many more interlocking secrets from before the island arrival. And the whole time, influencer Madison’s trying to livestream and photograph any possible drama for likes and clicks, no matter how that makes other people look.

The story in The Siren moves around the island, with different narrators and a focus on different characters. The movie is already plagued with problems: a previous employee already overspent on a tight budget, there’s a tight schedule in the limited weeks before hurricane season begins,  Madison’s never had a real acting role, and Stella might be tippling a bit on the side…  The villain is evil, with a knack for playing to all the other characters’ weak points. The whole story is tension and secrets, and I just could not wait to see how it unfolded, especially at times when two character’s goals seemed to be completely at odds.

I’m not usually a fan of epistolary novels, or using newspaper articles, diary entries, text chains, etc., anything that’s not a story to tell the story. I almost always feel like that slows down the main narrative, without adding anything. But here, there were a few blog posts and we see Madison’s  Instagram captions, and it didn’t kill the story for me. I think it worked for me here because it highlighted the difference between the story unfolding on the island and how they’re perceived off the island, and also, there weren’t too many blog posts so it didn’t feel too gimmicky.

I loved this whole thing, the story was so dramatic and also so twisty. Such a fun read.