Undertow (The Undertow Trilogy) (original 2015; edição 2015)

What a different take on an invasion story. I think this could be sold as a Romeo and Juliet romance but that's not the focus at all. It's an interesting commentary on racism. I love the friendship between the girls. And it's definitely a series starter, and I'm hooked. Look for these in the library next year. ( )

Most paranormal creatures are familiar - elves, ogres, fauns, etc. This series is unique in that the creatures are undersea ones - sirens, for instance. Lyric Walker lives on Coney Island where the coast has been invaded by sea creatures - and she discovers that her mother is actually one of them. Of course there is the cross species discovery of different cultures and the obligatory teen romance - but it is entertaining and a creative setting. ( )

Umm...What can I say????

This book is absolutely amazing! I have been in a reading slump for a while now and have found it incredibly hard to get into a book. Once I started reading Undertow late one evening the slump was destroyed. I could not put this book down!

In Undertow the Alphas come from their underwater world onto shores of Coney Island and stay. Lyric Walker witnessed it all...but what exactly is going on?

Following Lyric as she tries to handle the appearance of the Alphas and her personal life is quite intriguing. Family secrets at home along with a captivating prince at school, as if the Alphas themselves are not remarkable enough already. This is a wonderful take on the people of the sea, nothing like our typical siren/mermaid yada, yada (do not get me wrong, I do love them). Undertow is like none I have read before and I cannot wait to get me hands on the next book! This is my first book by this author and is definitely one of my favorites. ( )

Interesting. I liked it, but wonder if some of the background will be elaborated on in additional books. ( )

Lyric Walker lives with her NY policeman father and beautiful but homebound mother in Brooklyn neighborhood that has seen better days - rundown apts, crime and gangs, groups that roam at night, curfews, shuttered businesses. Story jumps off in only a few pages - the Alpha, a wave of five nations of oceandwelling creatures have recently come to her Coney Is beach; at first America is in awe, but circumstances get ugly fast and paranoid humans and Alpha begin to clash. Lyric's neighborhood is now renamed "the Zone": "two square miles of Coney Is that the military, the government, and police keep under constant surveillance...the neighborhood lost ten thousand residents..the rest are stuck without the money to move on...then there are [Lyric's] parents...they've got their own screwed-up reasons for staying, but hopefully, it won't be for much longer" (21-22).
Lyric, her best friend Bex and their friend, Tito Ramirez, nickname Shadow, endure the opening days of their local school, Hylan High, where the gov't is attempting to integrate some of the Alpha children with the local teens. Not only is it a media frenzy, protestors, and menacing "Niners", a gang whose growing ranks believe the Alpha must be removed, and even New York's governor surround the school - every day the students walk the gauntlet to get indoors. But the drama and violence find them inside too, and as the plot ramps up, we readers find out why Lyric is committed to just "laying low", and waiting for her parents to decide to finally leave. But then Principal Doyle asks Lyric to assist the Alpha's prince, Fathom, and between lessons of reading English, and dodging the bullies in her school and neighborhood, she realizes her family's "secret" is not secret to the authorities - and she must comply with their wishes to protect her parents.
At times a bit overheated treatment of all the characters, and yeah... unrealistic: day after day of violence even in the classrooms, eventually even a day when a teargas, weapon toting invader slams his way into the school to shoot and kill - yet Hylan High, and the beseiged administrators and teachers have to keep holding school- really? It was hard to suspend disbelief for some of the plot details - and of course the sci-fi premise: ocean creatures who can come out of the water, breathe and move like humans, and then re-enter their waterworld at will...cool idea, with cool weapons on/in their bodies - but with instant English speaking skills? I did pick up on the not so subtle oh so current political subtext: how do we Americans deal with foreigners in our midst? And Buckley knows teen slang, the depth of teen crushes and friendships, and keeps the various plot threads twisting and moving - in fact it quickly gets to cataclymsic proportions, and of course, Lyric's true nature emerges by the last couple chapters, with powers that awe even the Alpha... all in a huge battle that ends with Lyric pushing Bex on a raft through the shoreline's waters, heading south, avoiding US soldiers, determined to find her parents, taken to a camp- yep, another YA apocolyptic/sci-fi/fantasy thriller trilogy... ( )