I like magic realism. I like a dual timeline. I like a mystery. I liked Hart's debut novel, Weyward. However, I am in the distinct minority as I did not like this book AT ALL. Billed as a "...breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea." But this [description, especially extraordinary!] is NOT the book that I read!

I preferred the 1800 story where the sisters Mary and Eliza are on a convict ship headed for Australia. The 2019 story--of sisters Jess and Lucy, not so much.

I learned a few new words:
fetters are chains/manacles and
merrow is Anglicized for mermaid
farls are inedible black berries

There were many "OY" moments and many grimaces. I pushed myself to finish it so I could read something else [and hopefully much better!].

I don't have much to say about this book as I didn't care for it/was never engaged.

On a positive note, I did like the cover.

What an amazing and beautiful story. I loved it!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review!

Really struggled to get into any sort of groove reading this one. I felt the characterization could have been stronger, the multiple perspectives more interesting, and the plot more gripping. I did like the setting and the themes that we set out to explore. I am always here for women fighting back against their oppressors.

But unfortunately this was not my cup of tea. This feels like a safe option for a workplace book club or a group just forming, but I don’t feel that it lives up to the depth I was anticipating.

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Loved this so much! Thank you so much NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Sirens! Can’t wait to see more from Emilia Hart!

I'd like to thank NetGally and the publisher for this ARC.
3.75 / 5
The Sirens is beautifully woven together with mystery and mythology, creating a story that felt both timeless and haunting. The dual POV structure worked beautifully, allowing the past and present to echo each other in meaningful ways. While the first third of the book moves at a slower pace, it lays a strong foundation for the rich, immersive narrative that follows. Emilia Hart excels at exploring themes of generational connection and the resilience of sisterhood, and those elements were particularly strong here. This was an artfully written, atmospheric novel that made me feel as if I could smell the sea at times and kept me engaged from start to finish. If you enjoyed Weyard by Hart, you'll find a lot of familiar thenes in these pages, and I definitely recommend giving it a read.

A beautifully descriptive tale of the sea and the women who learn that they have it in their veins. I love stories of magical realism and especially this one set in/near the ocean. The story is told in multiple points of view and in different periods of time and I felt it was engaging and gorgeously written. The story is a slow burn with an exciting ending. I loved the author's debut "Weyward" and am very appreciative to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for an early copy of Ms. Hart's second book.

3.5 stars - This may be my first mermaid/siren book - I really enjoyed that magical realism part of the story. The Sirens has history, mystery and feminism. Set in Australia, there is a beautiful opening acknowledgement to the indigenous people of the land. Loved the author interview at the end of the audio to hear more about her process and inspiration.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart is a compelling story told in two timelines; the 1800s where we follow sisters Mary and Eliza, and 2019 where we follow sisters Lucy and Jess. We get to watch a mystery unfold that spans centuries and discover how these two timelines are intertwined.

Before I jump into my spoiler-free thoughts of The Sirens, I’d like to preface this review by mentioning that I have never read a story involving sirens nor have I read any other works by this author (although her popular Weyward is on my TBR!).

I went into The Sirens without knowing at all what to expect in a story such as this and turns out I really enjoyed this book! I could tell how much time and care Emilia Hart put into this novel and as the reader, I appreciated that so much. My rating it around 3.85 stars!

The atmosphere of this book was SO good, you truly felt like you were there. The setting was eerie, cold, damp and mysterious. I love when a story makes me feel so immersed in it. I also thought the characters were written well and I was able to connect and feel for them, some tears were shed for sure. It’s important to me when reading that I WANT to read about these characters, their stories and be immersed in the atmosphere created and I found myself really looking forward to reading more of this each day. The story got better and better as it went on too, so it was definitely a page-turner for me!

I loved how this story was written with dual timelines as well as multiple POVs. I really loved how The Sirens had snippets from a podcast, snippets from a diary and snippets from news articles peppered through in addition to the multiple POVs so that we the readers are able to piece together this mystery too. That style of story-telling is something I enjoy very much and thought it worked out so well in The Sirens!

I want to say it was around the 50% mark when I had pieced things together and figured out where this story was heading and what the “reveals” were going to be. I was correct with my theories, but I think the story is written in a way for us to figure some things out around that time and to watch everything come together for the rest of the story. Figuring it out at that point in the story did NOT take away from my reading experience, I really enjoyed seeing everything unfold!

Filled with sisterhood, womanhood, mystery, atmosphere, resilience, uniqueness, self-discovery, myths, magic and more- The Sirens is a book I definitely will be recommending! It is certainly a story that will stick with me for years to come.

Thank you kindly to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending me the ARC e-book of The Sirens in exchange for my honest review!

From the very first chapter, The Sirens gave me eerie chills—I was hooked. The haunting atmosphere even crept into my dreams, which says a lot about Emilia Hart’s storytelling. This book is a mesmerizing mix of historical fiction, magical realism, and mystery, following four women across two timelines. At its heart is Lucy, a journalist piecing together the hidden threads between past and present.

The story shifts between 1800 and 2019, weaving together the journey of two Irish sisters sent to Australia as convicts and Lucy’s modern-day investigation, filled with unsettling dreams and long-buried secrets. Hart’s prose is hypnotic, and her deep dive into Australia’s convict past and Irish mythology makes for an incredibly immersive read.

At its core, The Sirens is a feminist tale of resilience, sisterhood, and empowerment. It’s a slow burn, but every twist is worth the wait. If you loved Weyward, you’ll find familiar themes here, but Hart carves out her own distinct space with this novel, proving just how much she’s grown as a writer.

I can’t wait to see what she does next!

Thanks to Emilia Hart, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for letting me read this beautifully crafted book. “The Sirens” will be published on April 1st, 2025

This took me a while to really grasp what was going on, but I was so intrigued by the mystery of it all! I'm glad I stuck with it cause wow that ending was good! A fantastic story of feminist power and the bonds mothers/daughters/sisters have. I was so glad I got to read an early copy of this! Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for my digital ARC!!

Having loved Weyward, I had to read The Sirens. Once again Emilia Hart has brought us a magical tale of the struggles of women, told in dual timelines. The main theme connecting the stories is sisterhood and the sea. Beautifully written, fascinating, and enjoyable. 4-1/2 stars

I received an ARC for free and gave my opinion voluntarily.

This book weaves together a rich, mysterious story that spans across centuries, focusing on the unbreakable bond between sisters and the eerie pull of the sea. Lucy, trying to make sense of a terrifying nightmare, finds herself drawn into a small town with strange rumors of men vanishing at sea and whispers of women's voices on the waves. As she dives deeper into her sister Jess’s diary, the secrets unravel, and the way the past connects to Lucy’s present is both haunting and beautiful. The way the narrative shifts between timelines—Lucy in 2019, Jess in 1999, and the tragic tale of twin sisters Mary and Eliza in 1800—is masterfully done, creating a deep sense of mystery and anticipation.

What I loved about The Sirens was how it blended magical realism with the weight of history, showing the resilience of women across time. The sea plays such a huge role, almost as a character in itself, with its power, its danger, and its mysterious allure. The emotional depth of the relationships between the sisters, combined with the unfolding mystery, kept me hooked from start to finish. It’s a beautifully written and captivating tale that’s perfect for anyone who loves stories about family, fate, and the pull of the unknown.

Despite its quite obvious plotline, The Sirens is nonetheless an enchanting story about the lies we tell, and, like Weyward, the constraints placed upon women.

Now, I’m not sure if we were supposed to infer the entire plot from the first 30%, but at that mark I had reasonably assumed all the plot twists. There’s one thing that should be obvious to everyone from the cover and the jacket copy (and the first like ten pages), but there are a few other plot points that seemed like they should be twists (narrative-wise) but were far too obvious in their trajectory. I’m torn about whether this is a big deal or if it were somehow intentional?

Regardless, I still found the book engaging - it’s told in three different perspectives, which helped to break up Lucy’s sections which would have felt belabourous otherwise.

While I liked the characters - nothing about them was annoying or outlandish - I didn’t really connect with any of them beyond a superficial level. We are told Lucy’s main issue in passing almost as an info-dump, where it would have been harder hitting if we’d seen or been with her when she lived through it. With Jes, while I get she felt isolated and alone, one of her decisions I didn’t really understand; it felt a bit too convenient for the plot. Another aspect of the story I also think just didn't get enough attention, so the climax didn't carry a lot of heft.

I also wish we’d had more time with the sisters on the ship, as while I sort of enjoyed the slow approach towards Lucy’s story and how it was told in a drawn-out way, we didn’t get enough with the sisters before they were on the ship - much like Lucy’s issue at college and Jes’ backstory. I guess what I’m saying is that the book could have actually been longer, or Lucy’s sections could have been shortened a bit to accommodate more of the other stories.

In truth, I think Lucy’s story just had the wrong focus. There’s a bunch of lead-up to a “murder mystery” in the town where Jes lives, but aside from a few times, Lucy doesn’t really delve into it. I think if Lucy’s tale had been more of an actual murder mystery, with her sleuthing around a lot more and the reason for the murders less obvious, both her story and the twists might have worked better.

And, of course, like most magical realism novels, I found some things were not explained to my liking.

Yet, while I was reading, none of this was really an issue. The book has some excellent themes, including intergenerational trauma, and I found the writing lyrical and immersive. I loved that it was set in Australia, which isn’t a place I'm familiar with, and there are some lovely passages describing the water and the seaside. Despite the slower pace of some sections, I did find it an enjoyable read.

I do think Hart is a great writer, and while this one wasn’t a home run for me, I’d step up and take a swing at her next book.

✪✪✪✪: the vibes are secrets, sisters, and the sea

Much like Hart's debut book, Weyward, I fell in love with this story, its characters, and its setting. Borrowing heavily from Irish myth and from Australian history, Hart creates a world of female empowerment that is beautifully crafted.

There are no shortage of books out there right now that play with popular myths, and its pretty obvious from the title and so much more that this book is going to lean heavily into the myth of the siren, but how Hart does this is what makes this book so good. The rare skin disease, the dreams that both Jess and Lucy have had, connecting them to what might be ancestors or simply other women that they are connected to through time, the unknown setting of Cliff House and the mysteries that follow the residents of Comber's Bay are all incredible details.

There is a heavy emphasis on female stories. From Lucy running away from an inciting incident at college because she doesn't feel like she'll be listened to, that the reputation of the boy who hurt her is more important than how she was violated, to the sisters Mary and Eliza being exiled because they dared defend themselves against a predator, women need to look out for themselves, protect each other, and take their vengence or revenge when they can.

4.25 stars

Emilia Hart knows how to weave perspectives and timelines into a cohesive, page-turning narrative, and she absolutely succeeds in that here. I just don’t think this was done as skillfully as it was in Weyward. Despite the various POVs and even centuries spanning them, they all had almost the same personality—anything differentiating them was pretty superficial.

The modern POV characters were constantly making choices that made little sense to me, and the entire beginning felt vaguely confusing. I wish Lucy’s thoughts and motivations had been better explained (even later on in the book) but there was no mention of the initial incident until the very end, in passing. The whole timeline also felt a little too convenient, like everyone was just in the right place at the right time, with no explanation.

I also don’t think this will age well, in the sense that there are too many mentions of specific apps/devices and references to current events that will feel less relevant in a few years. She mentions AirPods and TikTok, as well as specific events that mainly took place on social media. The whole thing completely pulled me out of the story on multiple occasions. I understand the desire to cement this in a specific time, but I honestly don’t think it was necessary; the dates at the beginning of each chapter would have been enough.

Even so, I think the whole book was atmospheric and beautifully written. The author developed a series of complex, interconnected stories into something that was an absolute joy to read. It veered more into fantasy than the magical realism in Weyward, which I wasn’t expecting, but it was integrated into the story really seamlessly.

Once again, the focus was on generational strength and female familial ties, which I’ll always have a soft spot for. Emilia Hart has an unrivalled ability to write about relationships between women that completely transcend time, and just like with Weyward, I was left completely in awe by the storytelling once every facet of the narrative was laid bare.

If I read the prologue in a bookstore or library, I’d reshelf the book immediately. The opening is so disturbing, I was tempted to DNF, but I usually will try to give every book at least 20-30% before making that decision. That being said, the story picks up from there and generally, I was prepared to put in a four star rating because I did enjoy the writing and if things weren’t entirely plausible, it was easy to overlook because the storyteller is both well researched and I found her style engaging. Until I read the epilogue, and the house of cards fell hard. Without spoiling, a character’s character was brought into question — presumably to answer a mystery that did not need to be addressed for the story to resolve, and this character’s fall brought everything else into question, and I cannot with it. I’m so frustrated.

In a nutshell, this book has many pro-female themes and anti-male. And generally, this was fine because there were a couple paradigm “good” men that seem to indicate the nuance that while some men aren’t great and are ruled by sexual impulses however wrong, that judgment cannot extend to all men. The sirens, or as they are more commonly referred to in the book “merrow” are vigilante creatures of the sea who make it their mission to protect land women from the bad breed of men who would abuse, mistreat, and sexually exploit them. They do this with their singing and it lures the bad men into the ocean where they drown.

Lucy, with her journalistic ambitions and strong sense of justice, is the first to note the connection between the men’s disappearances over decades. And if it was a bit far fetched that a twenty year old can discover the connection in a single trip to the library what seemingly endless amounts of people have been trying to discover for decades— well, I was willing to overlook it because the storytelling was pretty good, and with a good story telling, you find you’re able to suspend more disbelief than in bad story telling.

In any case, a sleepwalking experience in which Lucy tries to strangle her estranged lover at college led her to run away to her sister’s home in Comber’s Bay, the dark home of seemingly random male disappearances. Unfortunately, her sister is not home, and in an effort to escape her own life and troubles, she begins to try to “get to know” her mysterious 18yr older than her sister by plundering through her dilapidated home. She finds a 20 year old journal in a rotting backpack in hidden cubby and naturally, begins to read her sister’s story in the hopes that it will… solve the mystery of her sudden disappearance 20years later. All the while, Lucy discovers that her sister, Jessica is/was having the same dreams of twin sisters Mary and Eliza who have been exiled from 1800s Ireland because they justifiably stopped a local pastor from raping Mary by cracking a rock over his head. Both Lucy and Jessica struggle with severe sleepwalking. And both sets of sisters mysteriously struggle with an allergy to water. The sleepwalking issue turns out to be only used as a plot device and was magically written out when it ceased to be helpful in moving the plot. Even Mary and Eliza seem to just vanish? We never really see how they were connected in the end, though I could make some assumptions based on some inferences.

This story explored complicated family dynamics and again, it was mostly satisfying until the epilogue. The problem with the epilogue is how much of my suspension of disbelief hinged on the general “goodness” of a character. The moment that character was revealed to be the same as all men, it brought into question the other model man, and truly, once you start really considering that one, you come to conclusion they are all of them bad- and in addition to that being wildly overstating morality, it’s just not true. And maybe the argument could be made that no one is truly good or bad and all of them are complex and have more to them than any one character trait? Maybe. But if the first fell as a philanderer, the second one’s fault was that he was unintentionally cruel to deny his girls their birthright and then intentionally dumb not to remember it when it might have saved them a horrific and traumatic boat ride across oceans to a land that couldn’t fail to be dangerous to young women.

I’m left with the conclusion that the “healing power of sisterhood” the author was trying to convey - with the plot the way that it was and the sisters being who they were - you’d want to believe the sisters needed healing from bad men, but in the end, the only thing the sisters needed healing from is maternal abandonment. We see in the finale a merrow can choose love on land versus living in the sea, so why are so many of the merrow mothers abandoning their children to a life of being ignorance of their true nature and ostracism for their differences?? It’s not the men these poor girls need healing from.

And again with the epilogue— if the merrow’s mission was to protect women from the sexual impulses of man, who the heck was she protecting in entering into a relationship with a married man and calling him “different” than the other men? And use the epilogue to try to frame his philandering as an inherently “good” thing??? Ultimately, I’m left with only one good sort of person in the whole book and that was Judith and she totally got shafted by every single character she was in relationship with.

Finally, the situation with the strangling was never addressed or resolved. And it might have been fine had the epilogue not taught me to think through the whole book with a fine tooth comb. But assault has repercussions beyond a smack on the hand and suspension from college. And it was never addressed aside from its being the catalyst that sends Lucy to Jess’s house.

95% of this book I might be tempted to read again. But man. The prologue and the epilogue really kills the whole thing for me. And the worst part is that NEITHER the prologue or the epilogue was necessary to the story AT ALL. It could have been left out and this book, even with the plot holes would have been an easy 4 star read for me.

I would like to thank St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I loved this story and audiobook! Thank you so much for giving the opportunity. I loved the dual timelines and the magic of it all.

The pace of the book was a bit slower than I was hoping and I wish we got some more background and depth into Eliza and Mary’s lives. Overall it was a good read, but did not compare to Weyward.

I think that epilogue just killed me. The entirety of this book I concluded it was just predictable but that didn’t bother me. The story of Eliza and Mary drew me in but of course everything had to be connected. But, what was that epilogue. Yes I am excited it all makes sense now but I’m low key crushed about him.
Separately, Jess and Lucy’s stories were also intriguing. Lucy was a good character to follow and more so when she tries to discover the mystery of Jess. When I finally got to read Jessica’s point of view I could not stop. Reading about their struggles to belong along with some myth or folklore element was the perfect combination for having me at the edge of my seat. Absolutely enjoyed reading this, it had so much drama, mystery and a bit of magic.

I think I liked this book more than Wayward. She created such an eerie, damp, sea-driven vibe with the way she described everything. The way the stories were intertwined was beautiful and the pacing and reveal of all the characters secrets was very well done. I don't feel like there's much character growth overall but the premise was very interesting and well-executed! I couldn't quite put my finger on it but it felt like something was missing from the story, but it was still enjoyable. Overall an enjoyable and immersive read.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinions!