By Amanda Hocking
St. Martin’s Press, $17.99, 290 pages
Lullaby is the second book in Amanda Hocking’s Waterson quartet. At the end of Wake, young teen and avid swimmer is pursued by a trio of beautiful girls. However, these girls have a terrible secret, and when Gemma wakes up from a night of haunting song, powerful magic, and fuzzy memories, she finds that she has inherited their secret – Gemma is a siren. In order to protect her sister Harper and her boyfriend Alex, Gemma leaves with the trio in exchange for their safety. As she lives with Penn, Lexi, and Thea, Gemma learns the full burden of the siren’s curse. Forever beautiful, song to enchant those around her, and a nauseating lust for something Gemma can’t identify, she is doomed to immorality and a life without love.
Meanwhile, Harper and Alex enlist the help of those around them to research sirens and find out how to save Gemma. When a murder identical to those in Capri, Harper, Alex, and their friend Daniel rush to the city. Harper knows that the sirens are there. However, they still do not know how to break the curse and if they’ll be able to save Gemma at all. Even once they find Gemma, will she want to come home? Can she come home? Because Penn, Lexi, and Thea will never leave Gemma behind.
Amanda Hocking’s Lullaby continues her engaging writing style of slowly developing characters and their relationships with those around them. While the book drags in places where Harper and Daniel attempt to understand the chemistry between them, and research about the sirens is inconclusive, the reader is still possessed with an intense desire to find out if Harper will be able to save Gemma, and an ache for the curse Gemma now suffers.
Reviewed by Rachel J. Richards
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