LOVE LOVE LOVE! Emilia Hart has quickly become a favorite for me. After devouring Weyward I was looking forward to The Sirens and it did not disappoint. Part mystery, part thriller, part magical realism or had everything to keep me turning the pages as quickly as possible. Hart writes the most badass women and I absolutely loved this story.

Though i think the writing in this book was beautiful, it felt a bit like a reskin of Weyward at times, Harts other novel. The plot was (for the most part) predictable, and I'm not a huge fan of some of the relationship decisions. I did overall enjoy the book and cry at the end (though i was not a fan of the epilogue), so 3 stars.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for this arc!

I found the beginning of the book to be somewhat choppy while switching between point of views. Towards the middle of the book, the storyline really took off and had me intrigued. I found that reading the journal entries didn’t really feel like journals, but more like chapters. I think the author could’ve written the entries differently to make the reader really feel like they’re reading Jess’s Diary. I did really love the concept of the book and thoroughly enjoyed the last 50 pages. I don’t think the beginning dialogue of the book was necessary to the ending.

🧜🏽‍♀️📜🌊🚢🎨🐍

<i>The Sirens</i>: Part fantasy, part historical fiction, part feminist, part thriller. There’s a little bit of everything sprinkled into this one, much like Hart’s previous work, <i>Weyward.</i> The story is told mostly from Lucy’s point of view as she flees to her kind of-estranged sister’s house from a messy situation at her university. When she arrives however, Jess is nowhere to be found…even though her phone is in the house. After a few days of Jess still not turning up, Lucy becomes stressed out and ends up following a rabbit hole trying to determine where her sister might be and why. The alternate POVs come from Jess’s high school diary and from a young woman aboard a prison ship with her sister in the 1800s.

I liked the mystery surrounding Jess’s whereabouts, the fantastical elements (sirens—who wouldn’t love that?!), the interesting family dynamic, and the way the plot points were gradually pieced together. At times the pace was a little slow for me though, as I felt from the beginning like I knew where the book was going but it really took long time to get there. There were also a few things I didn’t love about the ending, as it felt kind of rushed compared to the pace of the rest of the book.

If you liked <i>Weyward,</i> I would definitely recommend preordering or picking this one up on release day because it was a fun and unique read. Well told stories about sirens are hard to come by these days, so I give Hart a lot of credit for branching out to that.

3/5
⭐️⭐️⭐️

A huge thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I devoured this book. I found myself reading it any chance that I had, and finally, just retreated to my room to finish it. The characters were wonderful and flawed in the best ways. Mysteries, mermaids, scandals, lies, and the unbreakable bond of sisters. What more could you want?

I want to start by saying that I really love Emilia Hart's writing style, it is very unique and I usually can't put it down once the story gets going. I absolutely loved her first book Weyward, so I had high expectations for the Sirens, which I was excited that I had received an ARC for. The Sirens was written very similarly to Weyward in the fact that it is very related/parallel stories that take the reader back and forth in time until the end where they finally overlap (not literally) and things click into place.

That's usually my favorite part in her work, when things finally click into place. This one felt like it took longer to get there, but when it did, it was great. I'll be honest though and say, I did not like this book as much as the first one, but it is still a good read. It is very female character based, but there's just something about the character Lucy that I don't like. It feels like her character hit the mark, and it made the first part of the book hard to get through. Yet, once things started to pick up and she starts diving into her sister's disappearance instead of doing basically nothing except stressing out, it became really interesting and I was hooked.

Unfortunatly I found the book hard to follow. Lots of character got a little confusing. The plot dragged in places - the timelines were hard to follow at times. Cover art was fantastic!

Weyward is one of my all time favorite books so I was really excited to read this but it just did not hit home. I had an extremely hard time following, there is sexual assault that felt like it wasn’t needed and the book would have been almost the same without it. I was honestly confused at the end by the big reveal because there are so many different characters throughout the book and they have almost no distinguishing features. The book also just kind of ends, without tying everything together. I didn’t enjoy the multiple viewpoints and felt it wasn’t fully clear what the point of it was. I wish I could have loved this and I’m sure many people will enjoy it.

What a fun and amazing read. The characters were likable, the storyline was good, the little hiccups and drama were great. Let’s talk about the cover, because it is absolutely gorgeous. But over all this one fell short of Weyward for me, it was a little slow in places and I felt like it drug on but then would get rolling again. I am so thankful to have got to read it as an ARC. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.

Sisters Jess and Lucy have drifted apart over the years, but as Lucy finds herself facing trouble at university, she knows her sister is the only one who can help. Plagued by creeping dreams of the sea and the distant voices of women's singing, Lucy works to unravel her own past as well as the mysterious disappearances of several men from a coastal town in New South Wales. Chapters split between Lucy's timeline in 2019, Jess' adolescent years in 1999, and the timeline of sisters Mary and Eliza in 1800 as they're forced to board a ship in Ireland as criminals destined to be slaves or forced to be wives. Emilia Hart's "The Sirens" is a riveting tale of sisterhood, parenthood, and how the pieces of history inevitably come together to lead one to their fate.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing this book, with my honest review below.

The Sirens has to be one of the more unexpected stories I’ve read of late. With a dual(+) timeline story, both focused on sisters and mysteries, this book was heartbreaking and hopeful and absolutely in its own category. We know there’s plenty to be learned as soon as we meet Lucy and Mary, the former in a more present day setting at university and the latter in the 1800’s on a ship to a penal colony. Both care for their sisters, with Lucy’s sister Jess emerging as a voice from diary entries written 20 years ago. The sisters all share some commonalities, the surface one being a skin disorder that is an allergy to water that causes disfigurement. All sisters have secrets to hide and issues they are dealing with, but they all come together in an unexpected way with a truly unexpected mystery disclosed.

It’s very hard to describe this one without spoiling it but what you need to know is that it’s poignant and will sit so to you far longer than you’d expect. I was angry at many points, at the situations and the characters, but by the end, while the explanations and realizations were completely unexpected, I was also absolutely sure that this book could not have been leading to anywhere else but this.

unfortunately i don’t think i was the target audience with this one… this was a new genre for me, i was extremely intrigued by the synopsis of the book but found it very hard to get invested in it, i spent quite some time feeling very confused and reading it started to feel a bit like a chore and tedious homework…

i’d love to maybe give this a try again in the future in audiobook form, i think that would help me immensely with getting into it as i’m still really intrigued by everything the book is about but don’t want to force myself through it.

I received this as an ARC and since I enjoyed Weyward, I was sure I would enjoy this one too. Fantasy and historical fiction are favorite genres of mine and I hadn’t really read one from under the sea before. It did not disappoint.

There’s a lot of characters to keep up with and I really had to pay attention to the dates and names of each chapter. It took me a long time to figure out the relationship with Jess and Lucy, but that was part of the plot I guess. I liked reading the different timelines though and honestly really enjoyed Mary’s story. I do wish that there had been more of a follow up on Mary’s story at the end of the novel though.

The epilogue was intriguing and not something I expected. I’ve never read a book quite like this one and it was a fun read. Overall great book and would recommend!

If you like dual timelines with alternating POV, you'll love this one. Emilia Hart is one of the few authors that does it with perfection. Lucy and Jess were my favorites and I loved the mermaid folklore. Beautiful read!

Gosh this book was so great and not at all what I was expecting. Sirens is a book about 2 sets of sisters from different time frames. The first set of sisters are on a prison boat in the 1800s. As they get further from home their bodies begin to change in ways they never imagined. The second set of sisters are in Australia. One sister finds herself having vivid dreams resulting in sleeping walking. She travels to see her sister to find some answers about her dreams. Her sister isn’t there and she begins to discover more and more about herself and her sister. She discovers that the town her sister is in has a rich history of missing men, shipwrecks, and a baby left in a cave. This book is a beautifully written novel about sisterhood, the magic of the sea and resilience.

This book made me very emotional and kept me on my toes. I grew up as a young girl infatuated with mermaids and found this novel an amazing ode to their magic.

Thank you NetGalley and Emilia Hart for the opportunity to read this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Wayward was so enjoyable that I leapt at the opportunity to read Sirens. Another historical/present time plot, Sirens is about sisterhood, strength forged in fire, and women in two very different times who both experience violence, struggles, and unity. If you loved Weyward, you’ll adore Sirens.

What an absolutely stunning cover!! It immediately drew me in and I can wait to see it printed in real life!

The plot of the “The Sirens” follows different females and sisters over multiple generations with alternating POV. I enjoyed the change in timelines and seeing the different sides to the hardships and challenges that women were facing among different time periods.

I have to say that Lucy in present day (2019) was definitely the character that captivated me the most. Potentially because she was the most relatable to me being a modern day girly, but I also found her situation of waking up from sleep walking and her distant and strained relationship with her mysterious sister to interest me the most.

I also loved the folklore surrounding mermaids throughout history and the curious nature of the small sea side town.

I can’t wait to see what this author comes up with next. I enjoy the way she blends history and modern day stories together and strongly focuses on womanhood as a main theme in her books.

Thank you to St Martin’s Press and Emilia Hart for the EARC!

Publish date; March 4th 2025

The Sirens tells the stories of 4 extraordinary woman thru out three different time periods-

Lucy- 2019, wakes up one night in her former lovers dorm, hands around his throat, with no recollection of how she got there. With the threat of expulsion and assault charges, she runs away to the one place she feels safe, Cliff House. Her sister’s house.

Jess- 1999- before her little sister Lucy, is born, Jess struggles with self esteem issues when her skin starts to flake and become scaly. She seeks comfort in the one person who ever acted like she was beautiful, the new art teacher.

Mary and Eliza- 1800- Twin sisters are being shipped off to Australia aboard a convict ship with a grimm destiny. During the voyage, the ocean calls to them.

I’m not entirely sure how I felt about this book. There is no denying, Emilia Hart is a brilliant writer. Her stories are so deep, and always the focal point is love. But this one, left me wanting more. I’m not very familiar with Siren lore, and I finished this book feeling like I still had no idea what they were. At least Hart’s version of them.

Lucy’s story started off focusing on one problem, then by the end, that problem was dismissed? Never spoken about again? Forgotten about? The way days went by without any communication from her sister… stressed me out.

Jess’ story for the first 2 parts is told in diary format. Kinda. I never really love “diary” as a way of telling a story. I just feel like no one actually writes in a diary the way authors white their characters writing in a diary.
Example: “Can I get you something? Painkillers, water?” “No,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’m just going to sleep it off.”

Mary and Eliza’s story was my favorite. They are on the ship, on the prison deck but they mostly reminisce about the past, and what lead them there.

The stories overall kept me reading. Mostly because I wanted to learn more about what the changes lead to and what being a siren meant. But the Epilogue.. I really disliked it.

Overall, I cannot say it was a disappointing book. I will read anything Emilia Hart writes. Weyward was one of my top favorites last year! Making this a highly anticipated read that just didn’t quite live up to my hopes.

Thank you NetGalley, the Author and the Publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

Aftwr reading Wetward, I knew I had to read this. I was luck enough to obtain the ARC, and loved it. I will admit, I was a little confused initially with multiple timelines, but it all came together.
The sirens is a fantasy novel that at its heart is about the power of sisterhood. Well written and an immersove story that sticks with you.

Emilia Hart's second novel shines as brightly as her debut. The Sirens effortlessly sews together past and present, reality and magic, in one novel and again delivers with female power.