The Lost Voices (TLV #1) by: Sarah Porter Book Review

Rating: 5/5 Stars 
The Lost Voices by: Sarah Porter
Series: The Lost Voices 
Published: July 4th, 2011
Page Count: 291
Genre: Fantasy
Synopsis: 
What happens to the girls nobody sees—the ones who are ignored, mistreated, hidden away? The girls nobody hears when they cry for help?

Fourteen-year-old Luce is one of those lost girls. After her father vanishes in a storm at sea, she is stuck in a grim, gray Alaskan fishing village with her alcoholic uncle. When her uncle crosses an unspeakable line, Luce reaches the depths of despair. Abandoned on the cliffs near her home, she expects to die when she tumbles to the icy, churning waves below. Instead, she undergoes an astonishing transformation and becomes a mermaid. 

A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in—all of them, like her, lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives. The mermaids are beautiful, free, and ageless, and Luce is thrilled with her new life until she discovers the catch: they feel an uncontrollable desire to drown seafarers, using their enchanted voices to lure ships into the rocks.

Luce’s own talent at singing captures the attention of the tribe’s queen, the fierce and elegant Catarina, and Luce soon finds herself pressured to join in committing mass murder. Luce’s struggle to retain her inner humanity puts her at odds with her friends; even worse, Catarina seems to regard Luce as a potential rival. But the appearance of a devious new mermaid brings a real threat to Catarina’s leadership and endangers the very existence of the tribe. Can Luce find the courage to challenge the newcomer, even at the risk of becoming rejected and alone once again?

Lost Voices is a captivating and wildly original tale about finding a voice, the healing power of friendship, and the strength it takes to forgive.

Review: SPOILERS FROM NOW ON! 
Wow this book guys! So I have read it in one sitting and it was amazing, I do not like a few things about it for a few reasons but we'll get to those in the review.  But I highly recommend this series to anyone and everyone! I especally love how Sarah changed up the interesting view on mermaids, on the factor of their sirens a less written about thing in mermaids. 

We meet Gum who's a 11 year old mentally disabled boy, he's cute and there's Luce out protagonist 14 years old. How they play together is honestly adorable and I just wanted a tiny bit more of it. 

A few chapters into the book we get her change into a mermaid, and quite honestly how they have to have something traumatic happen to them is not cool and is the one thing I don't like about this book. For Luce to change we had to get her drunk uncle who've been hitting on her whenever he got drunk, but he began groping her under her clothes and tried to rape her. Her feeling this cold sensation and she felt like she turned into liquid, which she did and went over the cliff into the sea. 

Luce causing trouble 2 seconds into being a mermaid of course, her singing to a ship that was massive and the other mermaids in the tribe had to help her take it down and clean it up. Then we meet Queen Catarina who starts yelling at her, and only doesn't kick her out of the Timahk for breaking it. Me and Luce both are confused on what the timahk is, and why it is so important. Later on learning it's the mermaids code of conduct, explained by Miriam and Samantha. And larvae babies or toddlers turned and they can't defend themselves so they die easily but they can't hurt them because of them technically being mermaids. 

Now one of my favorite things about Luce is her ability to make her song different, where it offers forgiveness instead of the regular song. It works even better, and she can also control the waves with her song as well. And then Luce dreaming of a orphanage of 14 girls, who all came and became metakaza. 

We got told Catarina's story back in Russia she was sold for booze and cigarettes, in her old tribe Queen Marina falling in love with a human and willingly went onto the shore to try to change to human but died in the process. How mermaids die out of water is horrible, their heart stops from all of the pain you experience. Which later on Miriam died doing so, and at the funeral they had no choice but to sing to the huge yacht. Which oddly a boy sang her song back to her, which then she saves  A girl notices her, she could become metakaza and doesn't want to, her name was Tessa. 

One of the girls from the orphanage named Anais, is whiny and makes the whole tribe including Catarina. Anais makes the tribe greedy, sinking ships with expensive things on them just to get the stuff. As well, the tribe gets drunk quite often, and once when their drunk they catch Catarina kissing a human boy and beat at her until Luce saves her and takes her to a separate cave away from the home cave. But sadly and stupidly Cat leaves the cave when Luce goes for food and something to brace Cat's arm since they broke that. 

Now the whole book she kept dreaming of her father, and I think in book 2 Waking Storms he might be very important. 

Final Thoughts:
This book though, it was so good considering I never put it down once. I got sucked into the book as I did with book 2 Waking Storms (review posted soon). If someone like Luce as in real life she would be a great best friend, as I felt she was literally with me the whole entire time. Just this series will be the death of my sleep tonight.