I have mixed feelings about this one. I loved the authors debut novel Weyward and I feel like this one didn’t live up to the high standard of such a phenomenal debut. Emilia has a gift of writing such graphic and detailed scenery, I could almost hear the ocean as I read however the plot pace suffered at times because of this. I didn’t particularly like Lucy as a character and even though this story was about the four women, we spent more time with Lucy’s pov than any others. I would have preferred Jess’s pov rather than just meeting her through the pages of her diary. The ending was satisfying so I’m glad I stayed with it but it did feel like too much of a slog at times to stay engaged. I would recommend this book but really only to those who enjoy historical fiction and/or mythical retellings and don’t mind a slower pace.

It took a few chapters for this book to have me hooked, but once there I was completely caught up in the stories of Lucy & Jess (2019) and Mary & Eliza (1800) and how they might come together.

This novel weaves back and forwards in time as Lucy tries to unravel the disappearance of her sister and the secrets she finds once she starts looking, and how they are linked to the dreams she has been having that are getting more vivid and real each day.

Mary & Eliza's story was so well written I could see and feel myself on the ship just as Lucy and Jess must have in their dreams. What dark times they were for the women on the convict ships.

I loved the magical realism and myth around this story. I also liked the way the author left it until the end to share exactly what the truth was behind Lucy & Jess' parents and the baby rescued from the cave in Comber Bay.

There were bits of this story I worked out before the author had Lucy and Jess uncover the truths but it didn't ruin the story and there were some conclusions I came to that turned out to be wrong.

There are some dark events running through this book; grooming, image-based-abuse and the protection of men with little thought to the victim. There is also the disappearance of the men from Comber Bay and part of me likes the idea behind these disappearances (I can think of a few men I'd like to have disappeared over the years).

I really enjoyed The Sirens and will be listening to Weyward in a couple of weeks time.

An eerie, atmospheric read. Beautifully written, playing off dual timelines to weave together a story connected through time. This is a slow paced piece of magical realism, with strong running themes of sisterhood, dreams, and the sea. Our narrators are Mary and Lucy, women each with distinct voices and stories who each highlight female defiance in the face of the injustices they face.

Mary, an Irishwoman being transported to Australia with her sister Eliza on a convict ship, after committing a crime, slowly revealed to us. Lucy, an Australian university student who runs to seek safely with her sister Jess, after a sleepwalking episode ends in her assault of the man who leaked intimate photos of her to social media. We’re quickly immersed in the mystery of each woman’s relationship to their sisters, and their connection across time to one another. By the end, all the interlinking threads are tied off, allowing us to see the full picture of the plot.

I do wish there was less name dropping of devices and social media platforms in Lucy’s POV, as it read as rather inorganic and took me out of the story. There was a real warmth in reading about familiar places for me in this novel, with magical realism rarely being set in Australia. This is my first time reading one of Emilia Hart’s novels, and I so look forward to her future work! I already have a copy of Weyward ready to go!

A warm thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy of this book for an honest review.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart
Three and a half stars.

This was a tough one for me to rate because there were some parts of this story that I genuinely really enjoyed, and others that I did not.
To start with, I was excited to read this book because I really enjoyed the authors book ‘Weyward’. I became even more excited when I found out the book was mostly set in Australia, because how many books in the fantasy-ish genre are set in Australia? Not many that I have read anyway.
How the story presented in terms of themes reminded me a bit of The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding by Holly Ringland. Both stories carried deep familiar connections and secrets, as well as a strong connection to the sea. Not only that, but both touch on the cultural importance of Country to Australia’s First Nations, and both are deeply descriptive.

Strangely, I thought perhaps this book was too descriptive. The writing was beautiful, but I think the letters written by a 16-year-old female character were too descriptive and mature to be realistic. I also wish we could have learnt more about the characters through conversation, rather than POV’s of multiple characters. I felt this especially at the end of the book.

There are also some big truths thrown at our FMC at the end of the book, and I wish we could have had a bit more insight into how she dealt with all of them. To me as a reader, she seemed quite accepting of her new reality.
I am excited to see what Emilia Hart has in store next!

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Australia for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Thank you netgalley and HarperCollins for the arc, I was excited to dive in after loving hart’s debut novel.

The Sirens covers two storylines; Mary and Eliza, and Lucy and Jess, over a period two centuries. The themes of resilience and womanhood are startling in all of their experiences.

Hart excels at intertwining stories from different times together and this was a highlight for me. The more the events clicked, the harder it was to put down the book, as I wanted to find out everything right there and then. The epilogue did a great job in closing up the picture and provided some key insights into the story.
I highly recommend!

Lucy is very much troubled and in trouble. After a huge humiliation, she found herself attacking the cause of it and so she escapes it all by rushing off to see her older sister, Jess. But when she arrives, her sister is gone, having left her phone and an unlocked door. Her sister has been distant for a while and Lucy doesn't feel she even knows her sister well enough these days to make heads or tails of what Jess has left. On a different timeline we see the story of Mary and Eliza, Irish sisters on a convict ship heading to New South Wales from centuries before. The sisters have their own mysteries to solve, having lost their mother to the sea many years before. And they have their own futures to consider as they travel away from all they've known.

The sea figures heavily in this book, along with the kinship of sisters and women, in general. It's an eerie tale at times and there are twists and turns that make this a fascinating read. There's also a certain otherworldliness about it, using elements of fantasy and mythology to round out the story. At times it isn't completely clear what the connection is between the modern and historic aspects of the story, but it's nicely tied together by the end, and I think it was elegantly done. This left me with much food for thought when I finished reading and I suspect it will linger with me for a while.

Overall, this was an excellent read and I rate this 4.5 stars. I would like to thank Netgalley and Harper Collins Australia for the free copy of the book. I have provided my review freely and with no obligation.

Two sisters, two timelines, separated by over 200 years. Mary and Eliza are convicts on a ship bound for NSW, while Lucy and Jess navigate a world filled with secrets and a haunting past. Their connection? The small seaside town of Comber Bay.

Comber Bay has a checkered history marked by a tragic shipwreck, predatory men who vanish without a trace, the mystery of a foundling, and the elusive sound of women’s voices echoing from the waves.

This novel will captivate your attention, immersing you in its mystical and ephemeral world as you unravel these intertwined stories. The writing is simply beautiful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from the author of Weyward, which I am yet read but am now eager to explore!

Thanks to @emiliahartbooks, @netgalley, and @harpercollinsaustralia for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. 📚✨

The Sirens is Emilia Hart's second novel after her debut The Weyward Girls which I have seen all over bookstagram. I didn't know much that novel but the blurb of The Sirens sounded interesting.

This was a dual timeline historical novel with a dash of magical realism and mystery thrown in and the title gives away the mermaid/sirens link. The book was also set in Australia (the author is Australian but now lives in London) with a NSW South Coast location for the present day.

In 1800, sisters Mary and Eliza are deported from Ireland and put on a convict ship to Australia. In 2019, Lucy living on her university campus almost strangles a boy during a sleepwalking nightmare. She then flees to her sister Jess's house at the coast hoping she can help her. But Jess is missing. Lucy soon starts to hear rumours about the town, about a number of men who have gone missing, a baby who was left abandoned at a beach cave. Her nightmares are also increasing.

This was an easy read but it didn't completely land for me. There were themes of sisterhood and female resilience in the face of men's poor behaviour. The magical realism was done a little too lightly for my personal taste.

I did like the dual timelines and the setting but the unravelling of all the threads took too long and the end felt like it was wrapped up in a bow too quickly with a few threads left unclear or not resolved at all. I didn't gel with Lucy in particular, I couldn't understand why she would run away and there was a problematic relationship later in the novel that I didn't enjoy. So unfortunately overall this wasn't quite the book for me.

The Sirens is quite a complex story with several narrative threads moving it along. I enjoyed the way this story came together, culminating in the revelation of a family mystery along with confirmation of a mythological/supernatural aspect.

The chapters set in the past onboard the convict ship were incredibly engrossing, dread filling all the spaces in between with the appalling conditions the women were kept in and the certain knowledge of their fate at the end of their long and arduous journey. From the outset, you know this ship ends its journey as a shipwreck, and as you become attached to these women, that tragedy is an ever-present hum in the background of their chapters.

I really loved the epilogue, where the origin of the baby found at sea was fully explained, bringing all of the narrative threads full circle. Just as she did with Weyward, Hart has a talent for interlocking the past with the present. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and recommend it.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart is an intriguing story that is sensitively written with characters who are both captivating and complex. Set in two periods it creates an interesting historical perspective as well as capturing the contemporary issues that emerge from the storyline.

Highly recommended read.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from HarperCollins Publishers Australia via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

#TheSirens #NetGalley

I loved the first book I read by this author and was looking forward to this one. I have to say I didn't like this one as much but it's still a good read and a very interesting book, somewhat about folklore and the crossover between Ireland and Australia.

Written over dual timelines we see two sisters deported from Ireland to be shipped to Australia as convicts and then we have two sisters in Australia that struggle with a skin condition that makes them different from the people around them and their struggles through life. But not all is as it seems.

This book and the links between the sisters from long ago to today, the folklore surrounding the sea creatures/mermaids. There is a lot going on in this book but it was still easy to follow even though it goes back and forth between the two stories. It is a bit of fantasy you could say along with reality and is quite emotional and historical.

A good book and I still do look forward to seeing what this author writes next.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers Australia for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

Last year I read and loved Emilia’s book, Weyward, as it perfectly weaved together the genres of women’s fiction, historical fiction with magical realism. Therefore, I was excited to read her new book, The Sirens, a book of sisterhood and magical realism involving the sea.

The Sirens is a complex, dual narrative involving characters from 1800 and 2019. I have to be honest and state that I struggled to relate to this book as I did Emilia’s previous one. That is not to say that this is not an intriguing book about women, their secrets and strengths, especially surrounding sisterhood. Basically the story follows two sets of sisters; twins on a convict ship in 1800, exiled to Australia, and two sisters in 2019, who dream or have visions of the former twins journey.

Emilia’s writing is once again most engaging with themes of nature, relationships and love, all wrapped up in a mystery surrounding the water and voices that call to the sisters. Sadly for me, it just did not live up to my expectations.

5 Stars

*Special thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for provoking me with the e-ARC - this is my honest review*

Even though I guessed what was happening and where it was going, I loved this.

Sirens is the story of Lucy and Jess and Mary and Eliza. After a traumatic experience at university, Lucy travels to Comber Bay, up the coast from Sydney, to see her sister, Jess. When Lucy arrives though, Jess is missing. In a town where men have been going missing for decades, Lucy begins to search for clues about her sister’s whereabouts and begins to unravel more secrets than she bargained for. Two hundred years earlier, Mary and Eliza are boarded onto the convict ship, the Naiad, bound for the New South Wales colony. The women’s stories enter-twine across time and space in a story of love, loss, heartbreak and female rage.

This was so ripe with history, mythology, emotion and catharsis. It felt like a cross between an episode of Round the Twist, depictions of the First Fleet, and Promising Young Woman with a hint of My Dark Vanessa. As soon as I started I had no choice but to settle in for the ride as I couldn’t put it down.

Sure, it was derivative and at times predictable, but I didn’t find it took away from the charm. It feels like everything the failed Netflix Tidelands show could have been with a better story and compelling mystery.

I love a homegrown, Australian story and it’s nice to see more female led convict stories making it into the zeitgeist. I would adore for this to be made into a mini-series.

Some minor historical and logical errors that I noticed, but otherwise a very good book that I devoured - much like a siren.

*4.5 stars*

*Thank you to NetGalley & HarperCollins Australia for providing a digital copy to review*

As someone who grew up obsessed with The Little Mermaid as soon as I see anything associated with magic, mermaids, and the sea I am immediately interested.

This book has a fantasy element to it that is not immediately obvious and I love how it slowly develops throughout the story. There are two POVs and timelines, Lucy in 2019 and Mary in 1800. I enjoyed Lucy’s chapters more, especially with the element of mystery surrounding the whereabouts of her sister Jess and Lucy learning more about her through reading her diary. I also liked how Mary’s chapters are framed as being intense dreams that Lucy has started getting, we are learning about Mary through her subconscious.

The two kind of big mysteries relating to Lucy and Jess I guessed while reading but it was still satisfying when they were uncovered. The other part of the mystery, which is revealed in the epilogue, really made me love this book even more. Just how it connects everything in the story and mirrors specific elements of the characters’ history. It felt like a full-circle moment which just once again felt really satisfying.

Overall I really enjoyed the story and loved the character development, especially the relationship between the two sets of sisters.

This book is such a hauntingly beautiful and eerie tale, I really enjoyed it. The writing style is lyrical and easy to absorb, and I loved the Australian references throughout.

The Sirens is a tale told across two timelines, as we follow the intertwined destinies of four women. As you cross between the two eras, you’re swept into the lives of four very different (yet also similar) young girls as they discover themselves and their place in the world.

A strong feminist current runs through the whole story—the portrayal of women's lives and their fight for autonomy is front and centre. Female empowerment, resilience, and the unbreakable bond between women are strong themes flowing through all their stories. I found this focus incredibly powerful, and the metaphor of the water being female also added another depth to the journeys taking place. The water offers a sanctuary where these women can cast off the weight of a male-dominated world and be truly free to embrace their uniqueness.

Some of the themes confronted sat really uncomfortably with me, but are vital to the story and it wouldn’t be the powerful, thought provoking tale it is without them. I won’t go into more deets to avoid spoilers but recommend you check TWs before reading. ♥️

Lucy is probably the character who resonated with me the most. Her struggle and desperation to fit in are so relatable, I could definitely see parts of myself in her. She feels so polarised by what makes her different, as many of us do, especially as we come of age. Through her journey, Lucy finds her inner strength and learns how powerful love can be, especially from those closest to her.

All up, this book explored some deep themes, blending history and modern-day struggles with siren folklore and magical realism. I finished reading and was left feeling slightly haunted, and yet, invigorated by the strength of women and the timeless pursuit of self and truth.

Thank you so much to the author and publisher for an eARC to review prior to release.

The Sirens' is a magical realism/historical fiction book about family secrets, and sisterhood.
Ite story is narrated in dual timeline shifting between Lucy as she flees to find her sister in a small town in Australia. The other timeline is Lucy dreaming of Mary and Eliza, who are aboard a convict ship in the 1800s heading towards Australia after being exiled from Ireland.

The book is so thought provoking, and so beautifully written. The book tells a great story of female empowerment and self-discovery.
The character development is rich, the descriptions are vivid and it's easy to imagine yourself where the characters are. I found myself turning pages so quickly I was finished before I knew what happened! The ending did feel a little rushed, it would have been nice to have a bit more of a rounded out conclusion. But all in all a beautiful read!

Thank you to NetGalley, Harper Collins Australia and Emilia Hart for an ARC of this captivating book!

The Sirens is a historical fantasy that focuses on two sets of sisters on a journey to find themselves and face their fears

The story begins in 2019 with Lucy, who finds herself sleepwalking one night and wakes to her hands around the neck of her boyfriend who shared intimate photos of her on social media. Fearful of herself and losing everything she’s worked for, she makes the trip to her estranged older sister’s house along the Australian coast. She arrives and her sister is nowhere to be found.

Lucy, waiting for her sister to return, begins to have dreams of two sisters on a ship fighting for their lives, and she continues sleepwalking. After stumbling upon her sister’s hidden diary, her life changes forever.
The story then moves to the 1800’s, where twin sisters Mary and Eliza are sent from Ireland to Australia as convicts aboard a ship for criminals. The sisters fear the ocean, and as they make the journey, they feel a call to the ocean and being to transform into something else entirely. The story converges where the past meets present and the sisters walk a path of self-healing and empowerment.

I enjoyed this book, but nothing gripped me. I would give this a 3.5/stars but have decided to round down. I didn’t buy into the connection between the characters, and the plot felt haphazard and underdeveloped, and then entirely thrown out the window by the end of the book. The catalyst for Lucy to reconnect with her sister, Jess, felt weak and forced, particularly when the sleepwalking aspect was cast aside later on.

The book tells a great story of female empowerment and self-discovery. I loved the juxtaposition of the two different timelines - I love a story where past meets present and those worlds collide. I just feel this fell flat, and while there was fascinating character development and raw emotion, the connections and relationships left me wanting more and the plot development left me with more questions than answers.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC of this book!

I am really enjoying this book but to be totally honest, I need to stop reading because the layour on the app is driving me insane and i keep missing pages and I can't do it - ahhh i'm sorry! I'll definitely read it when it comes out!

Okay, let me just start by saying The Sirens had me HOOKED from page one. Like, genuinely, I didn’t want to put it down. Emilia Hart has such a way with words, and I loved how fresh and different this one felt.

The historical aspect? 10/10. I’m a bit of a history nerd so I adore anything that transports me to another time, and this book did it beautifully. The dual timeline was so well done. As someone who adores her big sister, this hit me right in the feels. The sisterly bond was beautifully written, I almost cried on multiple occasions 🥲

This was a real page-turner. Every chapter had me saying, “Just one more,” and then next thing I knew it was 2 a.m. and I had half inhaled the book. The sirens were everything you want them to be, the concept of this story just blows my mind, it’s so beautiful and creative. Hart made them so much more than just mythical creatures, and I loved that fresh take.


Rating: 4.5 stars! (And a big hug for my sister afterward.)

(I will be posting a review for this sometime this week, so I’ll update this)

The Sirens was an interesting look into women’s experiences in contemporary Australia with a dash of British colonial history and fantasy. The theme of family relations was very heartfelt.

For me, this book leaned too much into the contemporary genre rather than the mystery genre (which I prefer). I recognise, however, that the plot twist was done well, especially given that I didn’t predict it. Aside from the plot twist the rest of the book felt fairly slow.

For these reasons, I don’t think this book was really for me but it was interesting to step out of the fiction I usually engage with.
I would recommend this book to those interested in women's stories and the theme of family.

Thank you to HarperCollins for providing me with a review copy via NetGalley!