I thought this would be a fairytale retelling but it really wasn't. It was far more of a cautionary tale.
Annie is on her school holidays and on her way to Viaii Nisi, the island where her mother has just opened a brand new resort hotel even though Annie actually wanted to go rock climbing in Greece.
She strikes up a friendship and a flirtation but before she can do anything one of the guests disappears, and so does her friend.
Then she finds piles of bones that people tell her aren't real but what about the rumours that there is something in the water? IKt's up to Annie to get to the bottom of it before her mother's hotel is ruined and more people end up dead.
Interspersed with Annie’s point of view, is the story of Lorelei, a siren who is obsessed with humans and who has fallen from grace. We see her tragic tale and how her life is interwoven with Annie's
These Wicked Waters is part mystery, part imaginative take on the siren lore, highly entertaining and a quick read.
The only problem for me was the ending which (aside from the whole siren thing) took a turn that I found hard to swallow. Sirens, yes. Reincarnation is a step too far.

Annie's mom has purchased an island resort. Annie has to go work there during the grand opening. She is not thrilled. She wanted to go climbing instead. Also, every one of the previous owners are dead. Annie has done a lot of research and doesn't believe the deaths were due to natural causes. Could mermaids be real?

I love mermaid and siren stories. This one was decent, but not great. I love Annie, Lorelei, and Benny. Parts of the ending just fell a little flat.

For the life of me, I could not get into this book at all. I tried several times, and it wasn't happening.

Did not finish. Did not like this book.

I couldn't get into it.

The writing was awful and the characters were just dull. The story dragged too much for me.

I like to give books a chance with the first 100 pages and I did and I just couldn't read anymore.

The book had a lot of potential but just didn't live up to it.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read this title!

3.5 stars
Very interesting read, not exactly my style but still great plot. Very good writing on the author's part.

I found this book to be entertaining. I wasn't convinced with some of the details but overall, I enjoyed the mystery of it all.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I expected, but I still liked it. I struggled to believe that Annie got over her fear of water so easily. And while she made several decisions that made her an active character, they weren't very smart choices and it felt like she should've known better. Especially at the end, she became very selfish with very shallow motivation, which moved her to where she needed to be for the final battle, but it made me dislike her a little because she abandoned her post after it was made very clear that she was the last defense. Had she figured out that defeating the Siren Queen would make the others vanish and thus worth leaving her post, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. But she stumbled into that solution after leaving her post and didn't even try go back after realizing she wasn't needed, instead she just kept running blindly and became reactive instead of active. The very end twist seems to come out of left field, the seeds planted for it early on weren't quite enough for me to buy it. However, if there ever is a sequel, I'd read it.

Cute story. Loved the snippets from Greek mythology.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40960578-these-wicked-waters

I found Emily Layne’s ‘These Wicked Waters’ to be a fun and bewitching debut. Anything involving sirens or mermaids is going to demand my attention so I was delighted when I received an e-arc of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. It had the right doses of suspense, action, romance and wanderlust to keep me entertained and turning the pages (-which is definitely something as my app seemed to blend the lines of the paragraphs together so I had to squint to make out some words! 😂). The mixture of Ancient Greek references and history were seamlessly embedded into the narrative without being too overbearing or reliant on the reader’s own knowledge. At first it was a little tricky to navigate between Annie’s perspective then Lorelei’s backstory, however this became more fluent as the story unravelled; the history and mystery of the strange island was slowly revealed to the reader like a jigsaw puzzle coming together. We do get introduced to a lot of characters relatively quickly so I did find my brain metaphorically jogging to keep up with who was who, however the tale itself was really interesting and neatly woven together. My particular favourite bits were the connections between Lorelei’s and Annie’s characters and the way that influences the story and the part when Annie goes to the ruins and we begin to understand their significance to the plot. Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable read!

Books about mermaids/sirens a apparently are so hit or miss with me. I’m also apparently having issues with dual perspectives or alternating chapters because I’ve i start getting into the book, the tone changes and then I’m lost and lose interest. Unfortunately, These Wicked Waters fell very short for me and I ended up DNF at 34%. Not enough was going on to keep me invested in the plot or characters. Annie portrayed as a snotty teen, the way she was with the lifeguard and her mother. And none of the chapters with the sirens made any sense to me.

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley for an honest review.
Im not normally one for suspense but something about this book caught my eye......okay ill be honest that something was Sirens. It drew me in from the first few pages and held my attention until it shifted points of view. At first this annoyed me but as the book went on I enjoyed that more and more.
This book gives such Nancy Drew vibes and was such a nostalgic read for that reason. Would ten out of ten recommend picking it up.

I really, really didn't like this book. The editing was very bad, and there were a lot of grammatical errors throughout. Also, the characters were all very stereotypical and not very well developed, which made me dislike this book because I couldn't form any kind of connection or relate to any of the characters.

This was a very interesting read about Greek sirens. The plot line was easy to follow, but there were some elements that made little sense in the grand scheme. The end was vaguely reminiscent of a segue into a possible sequel. , but I think that the book is fine as a stand alone read. Definitely something I would recommend to some of my fantasy readers.

First, the cover is stunning in the book! The world is written beautifully and I could feel each character's emotion. I hope there is another book if there is going to be one!

I don't want this review to be very negative as I did enough on my blog (https://bookgirlreviewsbooks.blogspot.com), but These Wicked Waters is a slow novel with bloodthirsty sirens (that I am still not sure how some have two while others have one tail), flat characters, and a romance that felt a little flat for me. I kind of wished that Victor and Annie had their romance earlier or stayed as friends because it felt a little left field the way the author had it.
Also, I have never been so disconnected from characters before because Emily Layne tried to break stereotypes, but I don't get what exactly she was trying to accomplish with the characters. I wish there was more backstory and the author took more time to flush the characters and world out more because it could be an incredible story.
It has a lot of potentials and the sirens are original because I have not read a story with sirens like that before and it made the story.
I'm giving this story 3.5 out of 5 stars because of the originality and I'm also curious to know if there is a second book because the romance started too late and I need more of it. Also the twist is interesting, I mean I figured it was something to that extent, but I never saw that particular thing.

I really wanted to love this. I normally love a mermaid siren story. It just felt like I had read it before but I haven't. Not totally original but its so hard to find a fantasy book that is!

I had trouble getting in to this book, the main character seemed a bit flat and not much information was given at the start so I had to figure it out for myself. But once lorelei and Annie met its started to get more interesting and I was able to finish the book. I did enjoy the end but it al felt flat and done before. They story could be great with more details and descriptions.

I received a digital advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I usually love stories about mermaids and anything related to the sea, but this was not a winner for me. I thought the writing was good, but the plot just didn't connect for me.

I really wish I would have enjoyed this more, but I just didn't. The story was not bad, the writing was good, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this book. I just didn't enjoy it.

Thank you for allowing me to review this title.

I am a big fan of mermaids and sirens, generally speaking. Especially if they're the murderous type and not necessarily Ariel (but I also love Ariel).
This one started out great. The sirens were creepy-looking, history was uncovered and our main character wasn't that terrible. (No, I don't have high standards when it comes to the personality of main characters)
But the longer it went, the more average These Wicked Waters became. You could see the story develop with your eyes closed and smell the oncoming romance from miles away.
Unfortunately, the finale of the book wasn't that great either. Everything was solved way too quickly, considering how long the feud had been going on.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC!

The Good
-SIRENS. Killer sirens but, nevertheless, sirens.
-oooooh blood!
-It is dark
-Flashbacks about the sirens – Lorelei, Echo, Thessalonike, etc. Those were really interesting. At first, I thought it was happening concurrently with Annie’s story so I was really confused but when I figured it out, I was like ohhhhh
-Annie’s a great main character with awesome rock climbing skills
-It’s quite atmospheric
-That ominous warning on the last chapter before the epilogue.

The Not-So-Good
-Things only started to get interesting around the 40% mark
-That little twist at the end was so out of the blue (and almost but if it means there will be a second book, I’ll take it
-Interesting characters but they needed to be fleshed out more

Overall

Fantastic debut novel! With so many characters and so few pages, it was not enough to explore and develop the characters more. However, the story was really enthralling and once everything was set up, it was so hard to put it down.