This is lovely lilting literature of the highest standard as you might expect from the author of the incredible 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo'.
Here the setting is Cyprus and the small grouping of Petra and her daughter little Aliki, Nisha, a maid/nanny who has come to be her help in the house and Yiannis, the man who forages in the local woods.
But from this scenario develops an extraordinary story of the past and threatened futures of all the characters. Petra, who is a wealthy businesswomen too busy perhaps to see the life of her daughter and too ignorant to see how Nisha is just more than the paid help.
Aliki has grown to love Nisha, almost as a replacement mother. She hears wonderful stories about Nisha's life in Sri Lanka, how she also has a daughter and about learning to look to the stars above from a boat in the garden when Nisha has crossed seas to be there.
Yiannis, who has lost his wife and his high flying finance job, down on his heel and ending up in this quiet Cypriot village, in a small flat from where he also goes out at night to poach songbirds, an illegal practice - but one which brings him needed income.
Finally- but also exceptionally is Nisha. Quiet, hardworking, lonely for her daughter but growing to love Yiannis for his comfort and support in her moments away from the hard working days. Her own husband died tragically in Sri Lanka and Nisha has survived somehow to hopefully a point of hope for her and her own daughter.
Life carries on until a night after Yiannis has asked Nisha to marry him. Suddenly when Nisha disappears all will be longing or lost in time and hope.
Other characters around lead us to question the lives of these foreign maids. How they are treated. Why they are here. Above all that they too are human - with love and life. I liked the surprising role of Tony and the wonderful old lady in black opposite who helps to babysit Aliki as Petra realises she must also 'wake up' to what is happening under her very nose. Look out also for the wonderful cat!
Songbirds is influenced by a recent tragedy in Cyprus in which 5 migrants disappeared.......again the authorities didn't care. Cyprus is seen in all its beauty with the Troodos mountains and the wonderful wildlife - which in themselves (even beyond the songbirds) give hope to the plot. The characters are linked to the nature but will it also be their final resting place?
Lefteri has a non sentimental telling of the plight of refugees and immigrants because she makes their lives like ours. The problem in this novel is about those that forget that they are.

I was really looking forward to this as I loved Beekeeper. However, whilst it was beautifully written, it felt to me as though the author had found an issue that she wanted to write about and created a narrative around that - it wasn't subtle at all and would have almost read better as a non-fiction reportage piece. It just felt very soap-boxy to me.
I also didn't like reading about the bird-trapping - a great analogy I suppose for the issue but not pleasant to read about.

Set in Cyprus we are introduced to Nisha, a Sri Lankan maid who works for Petra. She has worked for her for nine years and has helped to raise her daughter whilst having to leave her own in Sri Lanka.

But then Nisha goes missing. The police won't help as they assume foreign maids are flighty anyway.

The entire book is about the hunt for Nisha.

Although there is very little action, it is a thought provoking book as Petra learns things from her daughter about Nisha that she had never known. We see Petra growing as she understands that she never even knew this woman who lived in her house and her shame at that.

The character development is really well done, and although it was a slow book it was a thought provoking one.

Slow paced and easy to read book which I enjoyed. The story relates to migrant workers in Cyprus and has an interesting array of characters and vividly descriptive.
Beautiful written and emotional read which highlights class, culture and natural world.

The overview from the book:

She walks unseen through our world.

Cares for our children, cleans our homes.

Her voice unheard.

She has a story to tell.

Will you listen?

Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. By day she cares for Petra's daughter, Aliki; at night she mothers her own in Sri Lanka by the light of a phone.

Nisha's lover is Yiannis, a poacher, who hunts the tiny songbirds as they migrate to Cyprus on their way to Africa each winter. He dreams of finding a new way of life, of marrying Nisha.

When Nisha disappears, little Aliki insists she wouldn't simply run away; they must find her. As Petra learns to take care of Aliki herself, she comes to understand the woman she barely knew, and realises only she and Yiannis will bother to look for her. What they uncover will change them all.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm going to try to be as honest as I possibly can with the review because I had such high hopes for this. The Beekeeper of Allepo was a masterpiece in my eyes so I already knew that nothing would be able to compare. It is needless to say that I still had high hopes.

Spoilers.

Christy Leftari is an amazing author, and whilst the language in this story was lovely to read, I found it really hard to connect with any of the characters. It just felt too melancholic that both Nisha and Petra lost their husbands in the most tragic way and whilst I realise this was an intentional detail by Christy such that the women came from similar circumstances of being widows, their differences such as in Petra being the affluent boss and Nisha the poor maid, didn't bring out much sympathy from me and I'm not sure why. I didn't much like Yiannis either and their love story just seemed like Christy was trying to hard to show forbidden love.

The short chapters of the hare were completely irrelevant for me as well. Except that they predicted the outcome for me from the get go and that ruined it for me. Would have preferred abit more of a mystery. The ending was also too tidy.

I'm really not sure what else to say except that I was disappointed. It may well just be a reflection of my mood as the book has recieved many many postive reviews. For me I am still eager to read more of Christys books buy sadly this one didn't live up to the hype of The Beekeeper of Allepo. But I think nothing can either. It's still my most favourite book.
I would like to thank Netgalley for this ARC and will be giving it 3 stars.

This is a story which will stay with you long after you have finished it. A Sri Lankan servant goes missing in Cyprus and as her employer, Petra, searches for her, we learn about her past life, the new life she has made for herself and the precious memories she has left behind. As Petra looks for Nisha and talks to the other women who know her, the travails of her life in Cyprus are revealed and Petra learns about Nisha the person rather than just her servant.

Songbirds, a touching tale of economic migrant workers in Cyprus, the invisible workforce which holds up the domestic lives of so many families and yet is unacknowledged and undervalued.
Nisha has left her 2 year old daughter back in Africa in order to work and send money home to keep her and mother fed. Years of facetime parenting have passed with Nisha becoming the linchpin in her employer Petra's household, the one holding it all together. It is only when she goes missing that Petra employer realises Nisha's true worth and as she searches for Nisha she comes to see the life Nisha leads and discovers truths about herself as,well. Heart-rending and with beautiful descriptions and prose this novel throws light on the plight on economic emigrants, exposing exploitation and
mistreatment of vulnerable communities.

This is the most beautiful and heart wrenching book I have read in a very long time. It is the story of Nisha, a young widow from Sri Lanka who goes to Cyprus to work as a maid so that she can send money back to her mother and young daughter. This is a situation that many, many women from Asian countries find themselves in, and they are often terribly mistreated - not only in Cyprus, but in other Asian countries, in Europe and in the Middle East. Nisha’s employer Petra doesn’t treat her badly, but also doesn’t see her as a fellow human being. Nisha’s lover Yiannis is kind to her, but has problems of his own. It’s not until Nisha goes missing that Petra and Yiannis fully realise that this woman is a mother, a daughter and a valuable human being, and they join forces to try and find her. Any more would give the story away, but read this book and marvel at the beauty of the writing, the depth of the story and the capacity of people to love, hate and ignore the basic human needs of others. Expect to be shattered and to think about this book long after you have finished reading it. A real masterpiece.

A beautifully written book about the lengths that women will go to in order to provide for their families. Nisha suffers personal tragedy but rises above it and ends up working abroad, sending money back to her family in Sri Lanka. We see her life as a maid, how she cares for the mother and daughter, and her new lover, plus communicating via video screen with her family back home. One night she goes missing, and as her lover and employer look for her, you see how she touched their lives.

Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe and selling them on the black market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha, who works on the island as a nanny and maid--having left her native Sri Lanka to try to earn enough to support her daughter, left behind and raised by relatives. But Nisha has vanished; one evening, she steps out on a mysterious errand and doesn't return. The police write off her disappearance as just another runaway domestic worker, so her employer, Petra, undertakes the investigation.

Songbirds is a book based on a true story of what happened to some migrant workers in Cyprus - and that aspect of the story is heart-wrenching. I did find it took me a while to get absorbed into the story but it is well worth sticking with!

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

After having really enjoyed ‘The Beekeeper of Aleppo’, I was really excited to read Lefteri’s upcoming novel. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me early access to this in exchange for an honest review! (One immediate piece of advice - don’t read this with The Beekeeper of Aleppo in mind, as this isn’t really comparable)

This novel follows the story of Nisha, a Sri Lankan lady with striking amber “mango eyes” who moved to Cyprus to work as a house maid for Petra, a heavily pregnant lady whose husband had very recently passed away. Having also lost her husband, Nisha had been forced to leave her own young daughter in Sri Lanka, communicating to her via tablet and video calls, and sending money home so that she could live a comfortable life… until one day after nine years of excellent service, when Nisha disappears without a trace.

The narrative switched between two key characters; Petra, and Yiannis, her lover living in the flat above Petra’s house. I did enjoy the multiple perspectives, but actually found both of them (particularly Petra) to be quite unlikeable. I did find it strange that Yiannis was highly flawed and morally questionable due to his awful line of work (poaching) - and yet I found myself warming to his character slightly more. Perhaps this is because he clearly felt so deeply about Nisha, whereas Petra (whose only crimes really were that she didn’t pay enough attention to her daughter and maid) seemed aloof and a bit unconvincing. I also grew frustrated during the middle 1/3 of the novel, at which point Petra and Yiannis were learning the same information and not communicating with one another. It felt unnecessarily repetitive.

I found myself more than anything yearning to hear Nisha’s perspective, as Lefteri managed to create such a wonderful and complex character who actually doesn’t directly feature too prominently in the novel. I was fully invested in the search for her and the mystery of her disappearance. I was disappointed not to read a segment from her perspective - but on reflection, think this was a wise choice from Lefteri as it adds to the mystique around her character.

There were so many amazing techniques used - in particular, the ability to masterfully paint vivid settings in the reader’s mind, and the beautifully haunting markers of time through the descriptions of the hare. Although my heart broke at many points in the novel (and I was shocked to read that this was a novel written based on something that had actually happened in Cyprus recently) I did feel that the conclusion was well-rounded.

Overall, I’ve given this 4/5 stars - it is a beautiful and captivating novel in its own right, but personally it was missing a bit of spark and the characters from which the world was presented felt unlikeable.

A great, ‘can’t put down’ read!
A tale about migration, both of birds and people. In Cyprus, there are many female servants who have migrated from other countries for work. They send their wages home to help their family live. These ‘maids’ are expected to give all their time to their jobs and their employers don’t appear to regard them as individuals. The women are not allowed to have relationships with men and if they become pregnant, risk loosing their job.
This main character of this book is Nisha, whose husband was killed in a gem mine in Sri Lanka. With not enough money to support herself, her young daughter and her parents, she travels to Cyprus to become a maid. She is placed by an agency in the home of another widow, who is expecting her first child. Nisha helps the mother recover from the grief of loosing her husband while becoming a substitute mother for the baby. Nisha works hard and starts a relationship with a man who, after loosing his well paid job, is now involved in the poaching of migrating birds, an illegal activity which pays very well, but very hard to get out of.
One evening Nisha is seen walked quickly down the road. She did not come back, she left her passport and valuable possessions in her bedroom. No one know where she had gone.
The mystery continues with some disturbing results. However, what also comes to light is how little Nisha’s employer knew about her and how much she had taken her for granted.
Themes include, loss, home, exploration and imprisonment intertwine with the stories of the main characters.

This is a rather beautifully written book. It tells the tale of young women driven by poverty to seek employment in Cyprus in order to support their families. Often they are not treated well and some end up as prostitutes. Nisha is lucky - she works for Petra and has taken over as mother to Petra's daughter Aliki. She has her own daughter, Kumari, but the only contact she has with her is a nightly FaceTime. She is in love with Yiannis, but he has got involved with an illegal trade - trapping songbirds for food. When Nisha goes missing the police are not interested so Petra, Yiannis and Tony, a bar owner, try to find out what happened. It turns out that some other young women have gone missing too. This is another sad story of injustice and exploitation, like The Beekeeper of Aleppo, but not quite as powerful.

What a lovely book. I did enjoy it. To me it was beautiful and so well written. The book is set in Cyprus and is about the disappearance of a maid/nanny. Somehow though, that does not always seem the central plot as the book is so rich with the lives of Nisha, Yiannis and Petra as they tell the story. The setting was near the partition line which added interest and a subplot of trapping songbirds was unusual. A book I was always happy to return to and one I couldn't work out how it would end? Sadly it was also one that I was disappointed to finish. I do hope the author will write more very soon.

I was eager to read Songbirds by Christy Lefteri as I had read The Bee Keeper of Aleppo. Early on in the book there is a scene when Yannis is hunting Songbirds and I found it completely distasteful and nearly didn't finish the book. I put it aside for days but found I was haunted by the scene and desperately needed to see it through. As the story unravelled I came to understand the parallels in the Songbirds and the characters trapped in their own invisible nets. I really enjoyed the way the author has crafted this novel and can highly recommend it, with the added caution that some scenes in this book will haunt!

his book had me enthralled from beginning to end. It’s a thoroughly engaging account of what we coldly term “economic migrants”. It tells the story of Nisha who travels to Cyprus to improve the life of her daughter and mother who remain in Sri Lanka. However, Nisha has gone missing and the story is told by her employer, Petra, and her boyfriend, Yiannis, as they try to piece together what has happened so that they can find her. The characters are well written, three dimensional and flawed human beings, who it is easy to relate to and sympathise with. As the reader, you only get to know Nisha through her relationship with others and never in her own words – and the silence and invisibility of the economic migrants in the book is a big theme. The mystery of Nisha’s disappearance makes for a real page turner but with depth and heart. It had me questioning myself and the choices I would make if my life were different, and the way our society views and treats economic migrants, who often aren’t given the same level of understanding as refugees. Once I’d finished it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and the people in it.

𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑦 𝐿𝑒𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖 wrote about refuges from
Syria in her first book, The Beekeeper Of Aleppo which I absolutely loved. 𝑆𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑑𝑠 is her second book by her and its focus is on economic migrants in Cyprus ans challenges the distinction drawn betwern refugees fleeing from a country due to war and migrants fleeing for economic reasons.

This is another important story by the author for everyone to read and it didn’t disappoint at all.

I must admit though that I struggled understanding what was going on in the first 50 pages. And I think I prefer the writing in The Beekeeper of Aleppo for I found that it was a bit more poetic and beaufiful, but Songbirds has plenty of beautiful proses. If you loved her first book, you are likely to enjoy her writing in this book too.

Beautiful and heart wrenching book. Striking parallels between class, culture and nature. Stunningly descriptive.
A book to read, and reread.

I enjoyed this book. It explores the experiences of a Sri Lanka mother who travels to Cyprus to look after another child so that she can earn money to send back for her own daughters care. The 2 year old daughter has been left with her grandmother. Nisha is treated well by her employer, but taken for granted until she goes missing. We then learn more about how foreigners are treated in Cyprus and about the people who employ them. Nisha's story is told through the viewpoint of her lover Yiannis & her employer, Petra.
It is a sad indication of modern life in poorer countries that people are forced to leave their own countries to earn a living in others, thus separating families by hundreds of miles. Many of these migrants never see their families again. This story, based on good research throws a light on this situation and opened my eyes to many of the hardships they can face. Worth a read.

Lefteri has done it again! I loved it, a thought provoking , eye opener.
We follow the story of Nisha a migrant worker from Sri Lanka , who heads to Cyprus to work to support her family. Nisha goes missing , we explore what happened to her, finding out information of her life along the way. This story will stay with me for a while. I feel a lot of people would benefit from reading this!