Immersive. This is a hauntingly beautiful story of female resilience and the bonds of sisterhood blended with the mystery and magic of the sea.

I recommend this novel for fans of gorgeous covers, eerie magical realism, and the luminous complexities of womanhood.

I thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of The Sirens for my unbiased evaluation.  3 stars

I really enjoyed this book throughout the whole story. There was a sense of magic throughout without really knowing what it is until the end. There was a good mystery that left me on my toes wondering what would happen next.

Thank you to the publisher for a free Netgalley.

Let me start by saying how much more I enjoyed this than Weyward.

Our main character, Lucy, runs into some trouble at college. She leaves and goes to her sister's house where she finds it deserted. But Jess' phone, car, etc are still there. Lucy was fine as a MC, but her story left a few questions unanswered. Especially when it came to what led her to her sister's house in the first place.

Jess' diary gives us the backstory we need, a tad slowly, but we get there.

And finally, we have the story of Mary and her sister Eliza on a ship for criminals. This tale sometimes felt like it was interrupting the main story though the actual plot of this line was interesting.

overall, I enjoyed this story. I felt the multiple storylines to be a bit choppy and the ending just felt weird.

The Sirens written by Emilia Hart did not disappoint. It is a story of sisters told across time and of a deep connection to the sea. Written with a dual timeline, including the tragic history of early settlers of Australia.
It is beautifully written and has mystery, magic, mysticism and the author wonderfully transport you to the setting and the beauty of the setting of the story, and the cliffs and coastline of Australia.
This author also has a way of writing stories celebrating women, their strength, and their connections. This is an enjoyable read, and I highly recommend it.

First off, thank you to the publisher for my ARC. Though I received an ARC, all thoughts are my own. This review is mostly spoiler free!

I was really excited to read this book as her previous novel (Weyward) was a surprise hit for me. Like Weyward, this book is told from multiple POVs and timelines, and (mostly) through the female characters. It is the story of two sisters, past and present - Lucy and Jess, and Mary and Eliza.

The novel starts out with Lucy fleeing her college to a remote town to stay with her sister Jess after Lucy wakes up from sleepwalking with her hands at the throat of the boy she slept with once who shared her sexy photos online. The beginning of the story centers around that event and the anger/shame felt by Lucy, but then kind of drops it as a theme. Instead, it shifts to the mystery as Lucy arrives at Jess’ house only to find her sister is gone, but a mysterious painting by Jess draws Lucy in. Trying to find answers, she discovers Jess’ old diary, and the mystery begins to unravel. The reader follows Jess’ perspective from the past as she questions everything about herself, as well as Lucy’s perspective in the present as Jess’ diary equally challenges her own identity.

In the past, Mary and Eliza are torn from their home in Ireland and sent via a convict ship to Australia. Their story is mostly told from the hull of the ship, as they and the other women spend the treacherous journey in the dark. Frankly, this whole plot line was pretty boring to me and felt like it dragged on too much.

The two plot lines connect at the end of the book in an interesting way, which I will not spoil here, but is foreshadowed throughout the book.

While parts of the story were a little dry, I overall enjoyed the book and its magical realism style. I liked the mystery element, and while some parts were very predictable, others caught me by surprise. Would definitely recommend to fans of strong female characters, family mysteries/secrets, and epic/fantasy elements.

The Sirens is one of my most anticipated reads this year and I really enjoyed it! Thank you NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for the chance to read this via gifted eARC. All thoughts are my own and honest.

Emilia Hart writes multi-timeline books so well! I was immersed in both the contemporary storyline and the historical storyline. What I knew prior to reading this about Australia’s history as a penal colony was surface level, so I really appreciated the historical note at the beginning of the book. It gave me the context I needed to better appreciate the story and understand the real history.

I loved both sets of main characters! The parallels between Lucy and Jess and Mary and Eliza were extremely well written. Lucy and Jess in particular reminded me a lot of Kate from Weyward, Hart’s debut novel.

I highly recommend giving this book a chance. If you enjoyed Weyward, you’ll like this one too.

3.5
"The Sirens" by Emilia Hart is told in two timelines about two sets of sisters across centuries. Eliza and Mary are torn from their home in Ireland and placed on a convict ship. Lucy and Jess are sisters set in modern time Australia. Lucy is a college student studying journalism. She wakes up one morning after a vivid dream in her ex-lovers college dorm room with her hands around his throat. Lucy is so distraught she runs to her sisters new place in New South Wales for help after her incident. Lucy remembers Jess had sleepwalking incidents in the past and hopes she can help her. Lucy and Jess both dream of Eliza and Mary's lives and not sure why. How are sisters connected through time?

Loved- the strong themes of sisterhood and resilience, the mystery woven through dual timelines,
being physically different and trying to fit in. One of my all time favorite covers, jaw dropping and gorgeous.

Dislikes- the pacing in the middle of book was a little slow/repetitive and I wanted more from the ending.

Overall- I would recommend if you like a magical realism, multiple points of views and dual timelines.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in return for an honest review.

If you’re looking for an intricately woven atmospheric book look no further than The Sirens. This is my first book by this author but it won’t be the last. If you’re looking for a book that will engage you from the very first word look no further than this one. This book is told in dual POV past and present which is one of my favorite timelines. I love when there is an intricate balance of bouncing between the past and present and learning what led us to where we are in the present day storyline. Dark dreams and feelings of disconnection plague Lucy as she struggles with cruel acts committed against her. When she tries to escape to find a safe place where she feels like she belongs, things only get more complicated and confusing.Mary and Eliza are taken from their home and their father and thrust into a life almost not worth living. They wake each day, not knowing if they'll live to see the next. This novel is driven by strong family bonds and the striving for finding yourself and the people to whom you belong. With Lucy and Jess, and Mary and Eliza, we see how much stronger we fna be as a united front.

This book is a fantasy tale and, as the name implies, is centered around sirens and merfolk with strong feminist themes. Following two sets of “sisters” in different times, we get the perspective of 3 different characters.
For me this book had a slower start for the first 50% of the book but it was very easy to read so it didn’t feel like a drag.
The last 30% of the book is *chefs kiss.* This was a highly anticipated book for me and it did not disappoint.

I received a free ARC through NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinions.

The Sirens is swimming with mystery and eerie underwater terrors. Dark dreams and feelings of disconnection plague Lucy as she struggles with cruel acts committed against her. When she tries to escape to find a safe place where she feels like she belongs, things only get more complicated and confusing.

Mary and Eliza are taken from their home and their father and thrust into a life almost not worth living. They wake each day, not knowing if they'll live to see the next.

These stories are driven by strong family bonds and the striving for finding yourself and the people to whom you belong. With Lucy and Jess, and Mary and Eliza, we see how much stronger we can be if we're together.

Hart expertly intertwines the lives of these women and their journeys and leaves us with a tale that will burrow into our hearts like the sound of the ocean nestled inside a seashell.

The Sirens is a difficult book to classify. I initially expected it to be a mystery—which it is—but it also ventures into fantasy. However, this shift doesn’t occur until about 80% into the story. Up until that point, the pacing felt slow, and it didn’t consistently draw me back in. While my interest picked up toward the end, many storylines seemed disconnected from the conclusion.

Thank you, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for letting me review this book.

First of all, I loved the historical note at the beginning, that helped give me a better understanding of references throughout the book!

From Weyward, to The Sirens, Ms. Hart did not disappoint!

This book goes between three timelines:

-1800 with twin sisters, Mary and Eliza, being shipped from their father in Ireland to Australia as convicts.

-1999 when Jess, lonely, in a rural town, where an Art Teacher takes an interest in her.

-2019 where Lucy woke up from choking her ex-boyfriend, and flees to her older sister’s house on the coast of Australia.

All four of these women, were always told to stay away from water because it was bad for them. They begin to understand where they were either forced into, drawn to, or led to, the understanding of so many secrets all the way back to the 1800’s, to now.

These storylines went back and forth which helped build the characters and continued to add complexities. This was a heartwarming story that I actually had to go back and re-read some paragraphs to make sure I had read them correctly, because it was either too complex or too mind blowing, but in amazing ways.

I loved it. I can appreciate a story about strength in woman, and historical thrillers.

I truly hope everyone reads this book. It has suspense, thrill, pulls at your heart, and twists that I had to literally make a diagram to unravel.

Told in a dual timeline, The Sirens is the story of two sets of sisters separated by two centuries, yet they seem strangely connected and share haunting similarities. It is a masterpiece of magical realism intertwined with mystery and mild horror giving us glimpses of Australian history and Irish folklore. The beginning was a bit slow but once the story started to come together, I could hardly stop reading. Throughout the book, the atmosphere is filled with magic and mystery, and I could almost feel the magic of the sea and the healing power of water.
Eerie and dark at times, The Sirens is a beautiful, emotional tale about the bond between sisters, family secrets, love and loss, about strong and resilient women in a male dominated world and also about finding out who you are and overcoming obstacles.
I enjoyed the multiple POV’s and thought that the characters with their emotions were perfectly developed. I was fascinated by the look into Australia’s history and am interested in finding out more about it.
The writing is truly captivating and compelling, and the story will stay with me for a long time. I am looking forward to read more from the author. Publication date for The Sirens is April 1, 2025.
I would like to thank Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press and Miss Emilia Hart for gifting me a digital advance copy. I truly enjoyed reading it and the above is my honest review and my own opinion.

From the author of the spellbinding story Weyward comes a century spanning story of love, growing up, and sisterhood. In the present, Lucy awakes to find her hands around the throat of her ex-lover, called to do so by a trauma nightmare. She rushes to her sister Jess' house on the Australian coast, where she finds her sister missing. As she waits for Jess, she hears whispers of missing men by the sea and women's voices in the waves. "In 1999, Jess is a lonely teenage girl with an allergy to water and a passion for art. In the 1800s, we follow wwin sisters Mary and Eliza as the journey far from their homes and begin to feel their bodies and minds called to the sea they had feared all their lives.
This book was very similar to Weyward, connecting the lives of women throughout history who are called to a common purpose: the sea. I really loved the mermaid elements of the story, and how Hart reimagined them in a more mysterious and adaptable way.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart is a heart wrenching tale of the bond between women and the affection forged by sisterhood. Told through the narratives of Lucy, a university student fleeing a bad relationship, her sister Jess’ teenage diary, and the story of twin sisters Mary and Eliza who have been forced from Ireland onto a convict ship headed toward Australia, Hart’s novel is an epic adventure of both body and soul.

The mysteries of femininity and the sea haunt The Sirens. Lucy and her sister have been diagnosed with rare skin conditions causing painful scaling, and although their relationship has become distant, Lucy travels to her sister’s home in her time of need. She finds Jess’ cottage on Comber Bay deserted, and, using her journalistic skills, she delves into a historic series of true crime disappearances as she pieces together the secrets of her sister’s life and her own. Although the contemporary story is fascinating, I especially loved the chapters devoted to Mary and Eliza’s relationship. Born in Ireland in the late 1700’s, the twins are devoted to one another with Mary narrating the visual world for her blind sister Eliza. Their bond as sisters helps them survive a harrowing ordeal at sea and provides context for the mystery at the heart of Jess and Lucy’s lives.

Emilia Hart’s prose sings throughout the whole of the novel. She oscillates between third-person storytelling in both past and present tense and first-person accounts from diary entries, holding the readers’ interests as the plot of her novel unfolds. Beneath the story of sisterhood and the deep bonds of trauma forged between women is an empowering message of strength and resilience, and, like the sirens of mythology, the characters learn to harness the power of their collective voice to bring justice to an unjust world. The text drips with the watery images of the salt-laced sea, and those drawn to the ocean will delight in Hart’s rich descriptions. Hart, the author of Weyward, is an expert at weaving together generations of narratives to create an engaging and cohesive tale, and The Sirens is the perfect choice for a meaningful and atmospheric summer read. Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review.

The Sirens is a beautiful tale about female resistance following two sets of sisters from the 1800s and today. This book was a bit creepy as other reviewers have noticed so if you get scared easily it may not be for you. That said it was beautifully written and the ending was 😘 I’ve also read Weyward which I still think I enjoyed more however you can expect similar things from Amelia Hart in this one.

Lucy and Jess are sisters who are both allergic to the water and Lucy has gotten herself into trouble at school and fled to her much older sister Jess’ house. There she finds her missing and starts to unravel the mystery of not just where she’s gone but her life story.

3.5 ⭐️ After reading “Weyward” and naming it one of my favorite reads of all time, I knew I had to read Emilia Hart’s next novel immediately. “The Sirens” is a combination of historical fiction, women’s literature, mystery and mermaid folklore. This was another captivating feminist tale of sisterhood, the resilience of women, and the mesmerizing draw to nature- in this case, the sea.

Like “Weyward”, this involves multiple POVs and timelines, which in my opinion, adds so much to the story. I love Emilia Hart’s writing; The beautiful, atmospheric descriptions and how she manages to weave together the past and present is pure magic.

Despite loving several aspects of this book, it did take me longer to get into. I still very much recommend this and am so grateful to have been an ARC reader. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Emilia Hart.

While Emilia Hart’s debut, Weyward, focused on a connection to the natural world on land, The Sirens takes us to the swirling sea 🌊

This book follows a similar formula to Weyward where we alternate between three different women’s stories. In 1800, Mary and her sister Eliza are being transported on a convict ship from their homeland in Ireland to Australia. In two more modern timelines in the 2000s, we follow sisters Jess and Lucy as they search for answers to mysteries that have been washed up by the tides of time.

While I was interested by the main thread in each timeline, the finer details grew murky as we waded deeper into the story, which led to me having a lot of questions floating around by the end, especially with the mermaid folklore and origins. While I know it’s more magical realism than fantasy, I would’ve loved a bit more background on that aspect.

I appreciated the focus on the healing and transformative power of water as well as the overarching feminist themes and steadying force of sisterhood. This book also has a darker, mysterious undercurrent which leans into the genre of suspense. But I think the twists were too heavily foreshadowed because I guessed every single one of them, so they didn't have the impact for me that I think was intended.

Overall, I thought this was a good second book from Emilia Hart, but I personally thought Weyward was better plotted, more distinct and had stronger characters. Both books have a uniquely beautiful writing style rooted in natural elements that I love, so I’ll continue to read more from this author in the future! 3.5 stars

First thank you to the publisher, St. Martin's Press, NetGalley and the author for an advanced copy in exchange for my unbiased review. This was a beautifully haunting story of two sisters in the present, and two sisters in the past. There were a few nights where this book crept into my dreams. The writing is vivid and incredibly atmospheric. I did not previously ready Wayward by this author, so I went in blind to her style and immediately grabbed Weyward when I finished. Four stars, great story.

Thank you to NetGalley, Emilia Hart, and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read The Sirens in exchange for my honest review.

This novel follows the intertwined journeys of Lucy and Mary as they uncover the mysteries of their heritage. Lucy’s quest to find her missing sister turns into a deeper search for belonging and self-discovery. The story weaves in twists and turns that are masterfully executed—some of which took me by surprise, beyond the expected siren lore.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whimsical, almost ethereal atmosphere of this book. The blend of fantasy, sea mythology, and family secrets made for an enchanting read. If you love stories infused with mystery and folklore, The Sirens is definitely worth diving into!