Night Waves

Shape-shifting monsters crawl from the sea to assail modern-day Brighton, England, in this lurid, predictable horror-thriller. When an offshore drilling operation ruptures an underwater crypt, it sets free vicious, sharp-toothed and sharp-clawed sirens who steal the faces of the victims they violently murder. Kirsten Costello, seeking a new start in Brighton after breaking with an unpleasant modeling career in London, narrowly escapes a siren that becomes fixated on pursuing her, hell-bent on taking her body and then her life. Irons makes some movements toward reflections on dual lives, personas, and identity, but the book is ultimately done in by a lack of subtlety. The bombastic prose and heavy-handed sensationalism (including lesbian sex scenes clearly written for the lascivious male gaze) make it feel overwrought, with mindless sirens who lack believable motives or characterization, and an ending that is unsatisfyingly full of empty gore. These B-movie monsters rate barely a C. (July)