Siren-Fear of Everything

    

I just started a new book called Siren; the author of Siren is Tricia Rayburn. I chose this book because I saw it on my sister’s bookshelf and the cover had me intrigued. Vanessa (the main character), has an irrational fear of just about anything you could imagine. As a seventeen year old girl she is still afraid of the dark and every night her sister helps her fall asleep with small talk and questions. A few things Justine might say are, "Did you see that cute dress Erin Klein wore today?", or "It's so bright in here," "I can see everything-my backpack, my blue glitter bracelet, our goldfish in his bowl. What can you see, Vanessa?”

So far in this book, Vanessa and Justine Sands go on their traditional summer vacation to Winter Harbor, Maine. This ends up as time spent with the Carmichael boys. Two years before this summer, Justine found a cliff called Chione Cliffs. Ever since Justine found them, the Carmichael boys (Simon and Caleb), and the Sands girls (Justine and Vanessa) go to the cliffs to hang out and dive during their summers together. However, Vanessa's fear of Oceans has not been helpful when it envying her older sister Justine, she opts out of cliff diving and stays at the top of the cliff, wishing she could be fearless.

There was one paragraph that particularly made me understand Vanessa's jealousy for her sister. "'Backflips!'" Justine exclaimed. 'No,' Simon said. 'No way.' I couldn't help but smile. This was exactly what I loved-and envied-most about Justine. While I still slept with a nightlight, couldn't read Stephen King, and was physically incapable of making a perfectly safe cliff dive, Justine lived for the same blood-pumping rush I tried my hardest to avoid. Here we were, minutes away from being drenched and fried, and she wanted to guarantee her shot at electrocution by jumping into a whirlpool-backward."(Rayburn 8). I feel as though throughout the book, Vanessa will become more fearless, she obviously wants to be. Now all she has to do is convince herself she can do anything Justine can-without fear.