The Sirens by Emilia Hart is though provoking historical fiction and fantasy mashup that will grab your attention from page one and refuse to let go. I loved Weyward so I was thinking incredibly excited for this one. And it did not disappoint. From the beginning the story is full of eerie and dark undertones that left me feeling unnerved. That atmospheric vibe continued throughout the story. I really loved the use of multiple povs and timelines to tell the stories. The folklore and history that surrounded the mermaids made them feel so realistic. This was a truly wonderful work of fiction that makes you think and feel so much. I highly recommend if you're looking for an eerie story full of magical realism and secrets.

The audiobook was excellent. The narrator did a wonderful job at being expressive while still keeping the atmosphere dark and eerie.

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

The Sirens intertwines POVs of two sets of sisters in present day, 20 years prior, and 1800. I was entranced from the beginning and cared about all POVs equally. This novel is the perfect blend of magical realism, mystery, and historical fiction. I deeply hated part of the epilogue, but that is my personal opinion.

Narration performed by Barrie Kreinik was outstanding as always.

I received an ARC and ALC from St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A lot of the time it can feel that women are fighting the world. Historically they have been more venerable, more easily disposed, are critical of our bodies and have them criticized. Men have their own challenges and are boxed into judgement and standards. But they have also been given more credit and power. This book centers about the echoes of this struggle through time through the lens of someone fleeing ridicule and assumptions in our modern era and those back to the early days of colonial Australia.

Let me start with the positive. There are some very lovely environmental descriptions. For those of us in the US it might also introduce people to a part of world history that is less known. I enjoyed the narration of the audiobook quite a lot. And I like that it folded in different types of relationships. The strongest of these for me were in the historical sections.

What was lacking in my reading experience is simply that nothing really stood out. There are many stories about social benefit of the doubt when it comes to masculine or somehow more advantageous persons. There are many family stories. Split time narratives are a common format that, in the author's defense, are very difficult to really knit in. Avenging beings are certainly not common--the cause of the pattern being revealed relatively early had me hoping for a great twist or other later. That never came. With that block in place a lot of this became sadly rather predictable.

Being able to see where a story is going isn't always a dead end for a read. But if you're going to play your hand, you need to at least tie us emotionally to the story. To give us some thread to still follow. Yes, I couldn't see exactly how it would unfold and it did legitimately near the end trick me by almost making a twist that would have left me actually as a rather mad reader as I thought it would have undermined what points were to be had.

What was so frustrating about this experience is that I never bought into the reason it had to have a split timeline or a fantastical element. There was very little mystery as to why this condition existed in the present day. And without fleshing out the original myths and making the majority of the emotion of those in the past be fear and worry rather than an awakening to the injustice of it all, it seemed to just be there because the author wanted to play with this myth. Yet so many questions on that side were still left open that it was more of an 'okay, and?'

That's not to say that I would tell someone not to read this. It's just not a standout, which is a shame. I can absolutely see Hart's potential in her prose. I certainly am interested in seeing where she goes with their next book. I admit that part of my disappointment is that I had great hopes for this novel. As it stands, it is an ambitious first attempt that just didn't work for me as it was structured.

Lucy's life is thrown for a loop when a guy decides to violate her and her dreams are suddenly overwhelmed with the experiences of women centuries ago to the point of sleep walking revenge on the guy. Panicked, Lucy flees from her college to visit her older sister, Jessica, but when she gets there her sister is no where to be found and the dreams continue.

In the dreams she sees two sisters, Eliza and Mary as they are convicted for fighting back when a man tries to hurt one of them and shipped off from Ireland to Australia as punishment. Along the journey their bodies begin to change in strange ways that they learn is tied to their mother who disappeared into the sea when they were young children.

We also get a peek into Jessica's early life through the diary Lucy finds and learns family secrets and at least on mystery still unsolved.

Overall the story is about women womening. Overcoming, protecting, persevering.

There's a lot going on in the central family to the point of improbability. I liked the way the stories intertwined and connected. It was a good read for me!

A lyrical fairy tale infused with a true crime investigation. The mystery of a sister who has gone missing in the days leading up to a gallery exhibition for her new series of paintings depicting images that came to her in dreams. Her younger sister leaves her university journalistic writing program, after a sleepwalking attack of a male student who exposed photos of her on social media. But when she escapes to her sister’s seaside cottage in New South Wales, she finds her sister absent, but secrets to help determine her whereabouts are revealed through her diary.

There is a dual-timeline of another set of sisters being exiled from Ireland to New South Wales aboard a ship that capsizes before reaching its destination, rumored to have lost a hundred female prisoners whose voices still haunt the inhabitants of the coastal town. These sisters haunt the dreams of the two in the modern-day plot.

I enjoyed this novel because it was well written and had elements of various genres. It focuses on family dynamics and generational ties and features females getting revenge on men who have wronged them. If you appreciated Emilia Hart’s other fantastic work of fiction, Weyward, I think The Sirens will also suit your fancy.

As in her debut novel, Weyward, Emilia Hart beautifully takes on a story of female power and resilience. In this story, we follow sisters in 1800 and 2019, each working to overcome their own trials. The present day events are shrouded in mystery and secrets, but both stories are unified by the magic of the sea.

Thank you Emilia Hart, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this audiobook! The sound quality was great, and the narrator, Barrie Kreinik, did an excellent job bringing the characters and storylines to life.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, St. Martin’s Press and the author for this audiobook ARC.

I was really looking forward to reading The Sirens and was thrilled when my ARC request was approved. That being said, I was a bit disappointed by this book. I think my main issue was that it read more like YA/new adult than true adult fiction. I also felt that the “twists” were pretty predictable if you paid close attention to the characters and their actions. My hopes were high because, on paper, anything mermaid-y is right up my alley, but I felt that this story and the author’s writing didn’t really live up to their potential. I enjoyed the narrator but found her Australian accent much stronger than her Irish one, so the narration between sections was uneven for me.

“Humans were born to storytelling.”

And so was Emilia Hart.

Weyward is one of those books I’ve thought about daily since I read it. I love a book that centers around strong women supporting each other. I’ve quoted an old library patron of mine many times, and I will whenever I feel like it’s necessary:

“Women draw strength from other women.”

The Sirens is exactly that type of book. It is empowering. Heart wrenching. Inspiring. Desolate. Emilia Hart makes you feel every emotion. Proud, strong, defeated, weak, scared. The epitome of womanhood.

The storytelling in The Sirens was velvet. It was so beautiful and it was all I thought about when I wasn’t sitting with it. I appreciated the acknowledgement of the indigenous peoples that were pushed off of their land to imprison women for petty crimes by the British. I appreciated the history lesson. I appreciated the empathy given to these persecuted people. I appreciated this beautiful book. I cannot wait to continue to soak up everything Hart writes.

Wow what a book! Told in two timelines of two sets of sisters, The Sirens tells a story of resilience, determination, and the strength of women. I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was BRILLIANT.

Following a convict ship from Ireland we learn the story of Mary and Eliza and their journey to Australia. But their story gets entangled with two other sisters from the modern day, Lucy and Jess who both dream of Mary and Eliza’s journey. All four of them share a skin condition that makes them allergic to water.

We mainly follow Lucy’s journey to find and learn more about her sister, Jess, and figure out how they’re all connected.

This book was really thought provoking and addictive. There are some heavy themes which I think would make anyone uncomfortable with a teacher and student relationship.

Also the epilogue/prologue I think helped answer questions and gave Mary what she always wanted too, but also a betrayal? So I’m conflicted because is anyone else going to know???

The Sirens by Emilia Hart is a lovely blend of mythology, mystery, and emotion that swept me away from the very first page. The story weaves the haunting allure of siren mythology into a contemporary narrative, creating an atmosphere that is both enchanting and unsettling. 4 out of 5 stars 🌟

This book was truly haunting and magical, narrated from dual perspectives across three timelines involving two sisters. I admire how Emilia intricately weaves the story together. I was lucky enough to receive the audiobook, which deeply immerses you in the narrative. In the historical timeline, I loved the connection between the women and the strength they all possessed. The other two timelines continue to explore the themes of sisterly bonds, resilience, secrets, and, of course, the sea.

I absolutely loved this book and could not put it down! Emilia Hart does a wonderful job of threading three different stories and three different time periods into a wonderfully captivating story of female resilience when faced with hardship.

I usually am not a huge fan of time hoping in book but the author didn't make it feel like three different books put together haphazardly like I usually read. The stories of sisters in the 1800s, a girl in 1999, and a girl in 2019 were woven so well together that I was wanting more of all their stories by the end.

I felt like this book definitely blurs the line between selkies and sirens myths more than any other story I have read. I definitely was captivated by the idea of selkies and sirens being one in the same and being protectors of women everywhere since there is not much mythology on either of these two creatures. I really enjoyed in this book the concept of selkie sisters from Ireland coming to Australia as convicts and becoming the protectors of women after the shipwreck in a cove in New South Wales and taking on aspects of sirens by luring evil men to their deaths by their songs.

I really appreciated how the character of Lucy learning about the disappearances of men in this cove by listening to a true crime podcast in 2019 and how that leads her to her sister, Jessica, dairy from 1999. I felt like Lucy's story line was so relatable since most of us listen to true crime podcasts then end up in rabbit holes of what really happened. By the end of the book I still was a little unsure of how Jessica and Lucy were connected to the sisters in 1800 but the epilogue kind of hints at it. I just wish there was a clearer link.

I listened to the audiobook and really enjoyed the performance by Barrie Kreinik.

"sometimes there is no choice there is only love"

First of all Thank you so much Netgalley & Macmillan Audio for this ARC. This was one of my most wished for Audiobooks of the year!


"the sea is calming her its slowing the pound of her heart the nearness of the water is a bomb why its it her body seeks out the thing that would hurt it "

Comber bay is the safest place .. if you are a woman. when calls from the sea seep into the ears of 4 sisters we travel on a hauntingly beautiful tale in dual timelines. Jess, Mary , Lucy and Eliza are all connected to each other and the sea. But how ? The Sirens shows how resilient women truly are, and how the power of the sea lives within us all.
You can tell right away there is intertwining trauma between both sets of sisters, and I couldn't wait to dissect and find out how. when the truth is finally revealed, everyone is finally set free with all they need - the sea & each other .

The sirens is so amazingly well written, it captivated me from page one, it will leave you turning pages well past the time you should be sleeping. I absolutely devoured this entire story. I love a multiple POV story and Emilia cant have done a better job.

Told through multiple timelines hundreds of years apart, this novel explores the ties between sisters — both in the 1800s and present day — with the same magical ties. Following trauma, Lucy flees her college campus and escapes to her older sister’s house on the coast, only to find she’s not there. With no way to reach her and no clue as to her whereabouts, she begins to read her sister’s journal from years before & uncovers more then she would ever imagine. Meanwhile centuries before, a ship full of women are forced onto a convict ship sailing from Ireland to Australia. They begin to notice changes in their bodies during the journey but their true selves are the ultimate mystery — a similar fate placed on Lucy and Jess.
I love Hart’s ability to intertwine magical realism and strong female characters. However, I feel this story didn’t hit quite as strongly as past books like Weyward. The narration was great though and I loved the inclusion of sound effects like the gentle waves. It really brought the story to life.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Emilia Hart stole my heart with Weyward and I still think of it often. It is one of those books I wish I could read again for the first time. So my hopes for The Sirens were sky high.

There were some problems, inconsistent pacing and predictability within certain parts of the story, but overall this is an amazing story. Emilia Hart writes atmospheric, lyrical novels, that perfectly capture the frustrating, grim reality of being female in our world. The multiple POVs are well executed with each character grabbing onto the reader and leaving them wanting more.

The novel follows Lucy, who runs away after a sleepwalking incident to visit her sister. When she arrives in the spooky town (Australia's Bermuda Triangle with multiple missing men over the decades) her sister is not at her dilapidated house. Another narrator is Mary, a young Irish woman, being transported to New South Wales along with her twin sister Eliza and four score other women. There is a mysterious air throughout, leaving the reader to wonder the connection between these women and events over time.

All in all, an excellent read. The narrator is breathtaking, switching between the Australian accent and the soft Irish lilt with ease. I highly recommend the audiobook.

Thank you to Net Galley and MacMillan Audio for the ALC! All opinions are my own!

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the ARC of The Sirens. I really, really enjoyed this book! I love a split timeline, and this writing and story were just beautiful. I think I liked this even more than Weyward. Solid 4.25.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, St. Martin’s Press and of course the author for the audiobook ARC.

I was looking for an adult siren fantasy fiction read for a while and this was perfect. I commend the author for taking on a storyline like this. It is no easy feat to write a storyline like this and not only make it engaging, but real and raw. Yes, this can come off as dark and cold, but by bringing in real historical concepts and even acknowledging them in the beginning is what can start the conversation of the past. Some historical events are dark, especially the painful legacy of the 1st nation peoples of Australia. What happened to them was real and it was dark and it was cold.

I didn’t know what to expect based on the description of this book. It’s a little slow in the beginning but for good reason. The author does an amazing job in her writing and the character building. There are two timelines that take place within this story, which can sometimes be confusing, but It is beautifully written. You definitely need to pay attention because all minor details matter for the story to be told and understood. The two timelines converge and things start to click into place.

This is a story of women’s empowerment and perseverance. The only critique I would make is the ending seems to be rushed. I feel like there is more story to tell and more questions to be answered.

This was different and original and the breath of fresh air I needed. I definitely plan to preorder a hardcover of this book.

Just as a FYI -if you have any triggers take caution.

This was such a great read! I loved Emilia Hart's first book, so I was thrilled to receive an ARC of this one. The cast of characters was really robust and well written. I loved Jess and Lucy as well as Mary and Eliza, our four main characters. The writing was lovely and almost haunting in places. While the book lacked mystery (I called most of the reveals before they happened), this plot is an absolute stunner, and I was along for every second of the ride it took me on. While it can be annoying to see every turn coming, sometimes it doesn't detract from the reading experience, and I felt that this book fell into the latter category. I didn't mind that I knew what was coming because I wanted to watch it unfold. Though there's nothing new or groundbreaking happening in this plot, it was an absolutely lovely read that definitely scratches the itch for a magical realism book filled with a feminist bent.

Wow this was fantastic. It’s haunting, and atmospheric, and devastating, and powerful, and horribly beautiful.
It reminded me a lot of The Book of Speculation (which I loved).

We’ve got a dual timeline, one with sisters on a prison transport to Australia 1801, and then a modern timeline with estranged sisters in Australia dealing with intersecting trauma. Definitely be aware of the content warning here; there is SA, grooming, and violence against women. But there is also vengeance.

The tension woven throughout the novel ratchets up as we progress until it’s almost suffocating. But the payoff and figuring out how everything is connected is just amazing. The reveals and the climax are so emotional. The end feels empowering and triumphant.

I’d highly recommend this, especially on audio. I think fans of Erica Swyler and CJ Cooke will especially love this.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the preview. All opinions are my own.

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.

I think the narrator did a great job on the audiobook version everything was clear & entertaining going back and forth in the timeline 💋

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Emilia Hart for the ALC!

Publish date; March 4th 2025