I really love Emilia Hart’s writing- her prose is beautiful. But The Sirens left me wanting. It just fell a little flat for me. Weyward is a hard book to follow, for sure. The quality of writing is still there but it just fell a little flat for me.

Jumping into this, I truly didn't know what to expect.

The story spans different generations and women, sisters, with alternating povs. Fantastic prose and writing style that kept me intrigued and wanting more from the mysterious vibes that this book gives.

The timelines were easy to keep up with an not overcomplicated as I've seen it done at times.

Plus: THIS COVER!!! I can not wait to see it on my shelf!

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.

Solid writing, a hint of mystery and historical characters all drew me in for this books. Lucy leaves town in a hurry and goes to her sister’s, but suddenly nothing in her life is what it seems. Good character development.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart. Folklore , feminist fantasy,

I rated this book 4 stars.

The book begins with Lucy sleep walking and waking-up to see herself choking a boy from her college, horrified and scared she leaves to go be with her sister Jess. Arriving to Comber Bay Lucy finds Jess’ home empty with no clue where she has gone. Told by a neighbor Jess just need a break before her art showcase, Lucy decides to wait for her return. Surrounded by Jess’ art that oddly look exactly like what Lucy’s been dreaming. This story has 3 timelines, Lucy present day 2019, Jess through her diary in 1999, and Mary and Eliza in 1800.

I throughly enjoyed reading this book, was a little creepy but the story and changing of timelines kept me going. Emilia has a wonderful way to pull in a reader, very excited to read Weyward and anything else she writes.

Thank you, NetGalley and St Martins Press for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

I LOVED this book!! It was such a quick read and I loved the dual story lines and different points of view and how everything came together at the end! I also loved the message about family and how we will go to the literal ends of the earth for our loved ones!

I was fully caught hook, line, & sinker into this novel & only released at the fullfilling end! An immensely satisflying tale with merrows, convict ships with women, whimsy, family & relationship drama. I thoroughly enjoyed & definitely recommend this book. I'll be checking out Emilia Hart's other works for sure.

This is my unbiased, honest review. Thank you to NetGalley & St. Martin's Press for an ARC.

Thank you Netgalley, St. Martin's Press, and Emilia Hart for providing me with an arc of this wonderful book. She's done it again with another fantastic tale engulfed in magical realism with different timelines that converge together at the end, creating a beautiful story. The women in this book experience many hardships from the past and current day issues including grooming, sexual assault, bullying, etc. And seeing how they overcome their trauma with magical elements and how they tie in was such a ride. Emilia Hart is becoming a must buy author for me!

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.