🌊 New Book Review🧜‍♀️

The Sirens
By Emilia Hart
Published: 4/1/25
Genre: magical realism/historical fiction/mystery

This novel was a lovely and haunting story of family and found family. It’s about the secrets they try to drown, but ultimately bubble to the surface. Written in both past and present, the women might be different, but they all know the trauma and sacrifice of being a woman in a world that is ready to take advantage of the vulnerable. In the end, they must learn to feel afraid and choose courage anyway. I liked it a lot, and give it a rating of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the opportunity to read a digital copy of The Sirens!

#arcreview #bookreview #bookrecommendation #thesirens #gmabookclub #mysterybook #magicalrealism #historicalfiction #netgalley #april2025books #newbook #seanovel #sirensnovel #bookstagram

I really liked this, but it’s hard to say I would recommend it to everyone. I think you REALLY need to be in the mood for something like it to enjoy it.

It’s eerie, atmospheric, and moves slowly. I loved the blending of multiple POV’s, suspense, historical fiction and magical realism. It was so obvious to me that this was the same author as Weyward, she has such a distinct writing style that I love.

I don’t think this is a book you will love right off the bat, it’s more of a slow burn where the story grows on you as you go!

3.75 3.75 I wanted to love this historical fiction story but the modern story never quite clicked with me. In this book we follow two separate timelines one in modern times following sisters who have some sort of mystery growing up causing them not to be the closest. One day Lucy showed up at Jess’s home after having nightmares with her sleepwalking toward water. Lucy finds Jess missing and starts looking into this mystery surrounding the town and how it relates to her own history. We also follow Lucy and Jess’s ancestors as they were coming over on a prisoner ship to Australia and all the hardships they faced and their mystery surrounds Jess’s hometown. This book was interesting there was so much going on in this book that was bleak and heartbreaking so it’s hard to say this is an enjoyable read. With that said I think it was an important read as it shone a light on what those prisoners faced. Where I ran into trouble was the modern storyline, I never really found myself connecting with these two and felt like this story was a little slow paced. Overall I enjoyed this book the writing was atmospheric but pretty heartbreaking story. I would like to thank NetGalley and the publishers for a chance to read this book for an honest review.

4 1/2 stars

I really enjoyed this book and two different stories from separate time periods that it told. The way everything eventually blended together and wrapped up this overall story was well done and creative. I confess that I did figure things out - - but it took me a bit. It had a strong feministic message - - but really, it was all so valid. There is so much misogyny just by nature in society and there always has been. It was nice to see how the Sirens played into events - - albeit even if it was often in the background. It seems like this book got mixed reviews. I admit it did move slowly at times. But for me, it was all worth it in the end. It had such a solid and satisfying full circle conclusion.

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The narration felt perfect to me. It might have made the story even more enjoyable if that's possible. The narrator is such a solid storyteller, and her voice just pulls you into the story. 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book.

I wanted to love this book. However, I just didn't like it. It was boring. Nothing happened. It's in two different timelines, which is fine, but the problem I have with this type of book, is that usually only one timeline is really needed to tell a story. Lucy and Jess the more modern day characters were flat and stale. Their story was a dead giveaway from the very beginning, so there was no payoff for the reader. Mary and Eliza ( past storyline) were what made the book any little bit interesting. A book just about them and their life would have been much more fulfilling instead of the drivel that the rest of the book is. Honestly, this was flat and predictable from the first pages and makes me wish I hadn't read it.

Unfortunately, I DFNed this book. After loving Weyward, I was really excited to get an E-ARC of this book. The main reason for the DNF was due to the incredibly slow pacing and lack of development of the overall plot.

When Lucy finds her sister missing from her home off the Australian coast I was really intrigued. Unfortunately, I found the point of view changes between Lucy and Jess to be boring. The sections with Jess’ diary were achingly slow with little to nothing occurring.

I found myself wishing that I was on the boat with Mary and her sister, Eliza. These sections with the Irish sisters pulled me in especially when there were hints in Jess’ diary about a shipwreck. The sections with Mary and Eliza began to wain and became fewer and fewer. If the author wanted to delay the shipwreck and use it as highpoint in the plot she could’ve continued to write about Mary and Eliza prior to the wreck. Emilia Hart hints that Eliza is blind. How did she become blind? She could’ve created ore character empathy by telling us about Mary and Eliza when they were little. Why are they close? What interactions did the sisters have in their town? With their father? Instead a lot of the focus of the book appeared to be on Jess and her diary.

I never grew attached to the characters and my initial intrigue about Jess being missing and the Mary/Eliza shipwreck didn’t hold me anymore. I simply didn’t care. Due to me potentially not giving this book a rating of 3 or more I am refraining from posting on GoodReads.

Its 1800 Ireland, and a pair of teenaged twin sisters, Mary and Eliza, are packed into the cargo hold of a prison ship bound for New South Wales, along with four score other women. Their crime was defending themselves from rape.

It’s 2019, NSW, Australia, and Lucy Martin can’t find her older sister, Jess Martin. Lucy has raced to Jess’ seaside cottage in notoriously mystical Coombs Bay to seek counsel, only to find the place abandoned in haste, Jess’ car and phone left behind.

Dreams that span centuries, suffering and injustice, men who disappear, and childhood stories of sirens or 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸 … these seem to link the two pairs of sisters through time. There are brilliant aspects of The Sirens that leave me in awe and respect. I love the research, the history, and the feminine fury. There is anger and ugliness, but also compassion and redemption. I want to give this book 5 stars on principle alone.

However, I nearly did not finish it. The first half had many potential DNF moments primarily related to character depiction. Lucy Martin is the main protagonist through whose eyes we see the story unfold. It’s through Lucy’s dreams and her reading of Jess’ journal that we see the other women’s actions.

Lucy was hard to warm up to. She is a twenty-year-old journalism student in college. During the week we get to know her, we find out that she is naive, indecisive, and frequently petrified by her own actions. If adrenaline prepares you for fight or flight in a crisis, Lucy’s default setting is freeze. She’s the reason we need fire drills. Her perspective can be frustrating to follow.

In the end, I did finish the book. I’m really glad that I did. I remained baited by the dreams Mary and Eliza and I wanted Lucy to uncover the secrets of Coombs Bay. Emilia Hart is an amazing author. She did all of this. She created these incredible characters who each affected me in very different ways, and she managed to string me along even when I felt doubtful, allowing her to strike a winning blow with her fabulous conclusion.

My thanks to the author and NetGalley for this unforgettable opportunity to read and review The Sirens.

In 2019, Lucy wakes up in her ex-lover's room, horrified to find her hands around his throat. She escapes to her sister Jess's house in New South Wales, seeking answers about her disturbing dreams, only to discover Jess is missing. As she waits, Lucy uncovers eerie rumors about the town, including tales of missing men and whispers of women's voices on the waves. Meanwhile, in 1800, Mary and Eliza are forcibly taken from Ireland to Australia on a convict ship, experiencing mysterious changes in their bodies due to the water around them.

I enjoyed the overall story of this book, and how it centered around sisterhood and strong women. The pacing of the book was a bit slow for me, though. I really wanted more connection to the characters, and more depth into their lives. I get that there was some mystery needed surrounding the storylines, and I think the mystery came together nicely, but something felt like it was missing.

The pace near the end of the book and during the 1999 scenes from Jess' diary were really good. I wish the whole book would've been paced that way. If there would have been more of the Merrow/Siren lore talked about in the book to give more of a fantasy aspect, I feel like it would've held my attention a little better. Overall, I know some people loved this, but it was just alright for me.

Rating: 3/5
Spice: 1/5

Tropes:
Sisterhood
Revenge
Strong Women
Coming of Age
Family

Thank you St Martin's Press, NetGalley, and Emilia Hart for this gifted eARC. All thoughts are my own.

Magical realism, mermaids, and a darker side of Australian history — ready to dive into The Sirens by Emilia Hart? I adored her debut novel, Weyward, so I was looking forward to another female-centered story with threads of magic woven into the narrative, which is exactly what this feminist fairytale delivers. The writing is beautiful and fluid, awash with nods to the ocean throughout the prose; you can smell salt on the sea breeze, feel rough sand brushing the soles of your feet, and the cold spray of waves crashing against jagged limestone. Hart paints a full, thorough picture for us to submerge in alongside her characters.

As in Weyward, the core of this novel is the power that grows between women. Sisters, mothers and daughters, friends, and strangers collide across three separate points of view throughout — Lucy, in 2019; Jess, in the early 2000s; and Mary, in 1800. In the latter, Ireland-born Mary and her twin sister Eliza are torn from their home and forced to board a convict ship heading for the Australian coast after both are found guilty of a crime against a man in their village. As the cramped, dark boat makes its slow journey across the world and the sisters get to know the other women in their berths, they begin to notice their bodies going through odd, but remarkable changes.

Fast forward a few centuries and we get to another pair of sisters — Jess, a talented artist, and Lucy, a university student studying journalism — who aren’t nearly as close as Mary and Eliza. For one, Jess is quite a bit older than her little sister, and two, she’s since moved away from her family to Comber Bay, a small town with a dark reputation on the coast of New South Wales. Although they don’t speak regularly, Lucy knows Jess is the one person she can turn to following a startling, unexpected act of violence involving a guy she’s been hooking up with at school. There are also the vivid dreams she keeps having, which preceded the attack, ones she think Jess might be able to explain.

Lucy flees campus and heads straight to Comber Bay without a word to anyone, even Jess. When Lucy arrives Jess is nowhere to be found, but as she looks around her sister’s dilapidated home, revelations involving the long history of disappearances in Comber Bay come bubbling up to the surface, as well as shocking truths about Jess and Lucy’s own family.

There are certain elements in The Sirens that I don’t find to be as successful — Jess’s POV chapters starting much later than Lucy and Mary’s; the somewhat slow pacing of the story; a shallow, late-emerging plotline involving a teacher that seems like it was tacked on at the last minute — but overall there’s so much heart and magic embedded here that it (almost) makes (most of) my complaints drift away. Even when her characters plunge into dire situations, there’s a kind of whimsy to Hart’s writing that makes it dream-like. As if all the action is unfolding through a filmy layer of gossamer.

That’s not to say that Eliza, Mary, Lucy, and Jess are soft or helpless, however. (Far from it.) This book is as much an ode to sisterhood as it is to female resilience. Although Mary and Eliza’s story didn’t hook me right away, I was fully invested by the end, crying into a glass of wine as I witnessed the culmination of their transformation. It meanders here and there, sure. And OK, some of the storylines could’ve been tightened up, yes. And that final chapter? Well . . . no, it wasn’t my favorite choice. But this was a winner for me. Weird and bittersweet and heartbreaking and hopeful, all at once.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was SOOOO GOOD!!!! The writing really transported you straight into the story and made you feel like you were living alongside the women in each story.
I really enjoyed the parallels and how each story was told sequentially, but without confusion. It lent to the interwoven nature of each woman.
This story was incredibly unique and unlike anything I've read before because it was a blend of contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and magical realism. There were a lot of real-world issues addressed, as well as acknowledging the wrongs that were done centuries ago. I appreciated the recognition of the native communities at the beginning as well.
Each twist and turn was well-crafted and extremely well planned. While there were a lot of characters in play, I didn't feel lost or confused. Each story was its own, while also being a piece of the whole puzzle.
I really enjoyed this and can't wait to suggest it to so many readers!

Sad to say but this one was not for me. I ended up DNF’ing at about 20% through because I couldn’t connect with this one. It was extremely slow paced and I found my mind wandering whenever I started to try to read it again. I just don’t think this one is for me.

This book was so interesting! It was told through 3 different timelines. You had to be paying attention though the 1800s timeline was obvious compared to current day luckily.
Loved how you couldn’t tell what was going to happen next.
Lucy had a skin condition and her family seemed to have a secret. The secret turned out to be more than one and not what we thought. I was really shocked by the twist at the end. I was trying to figure it out.
Jess had a pretty traumatic start. And her story was kind of sad and not her fault.
The 1800s timeline was focused on some women in a convict ship to Australia. If they survived the trip it was a dismissal future ahead of them.
There was a mystery of men disappearing from the shoreline and blaming it on sirens since the 1800s were that ship ended up. Men who had done terrible things to the women in their life.
These sirens were the guardians of the women, the power they didn’t have. They helped them escape their situations.

I love the idea of Sirens of the sea luring sailors onto the rocks. Books and movies alike portray these women as strong individuals who weild power over their homes and those who would harm them.
in THE SIRENS by Emilia Hart, two sets of sisters tell their stories. They have lived 100 years apart but show the same strength and faith in each other as they battle the elements that would harm them. Hart uses the legends of sirens to build the sisters' lives. The stories told are compelling and intriguing.

A wonderful read!
This novel drew me in from the very first page and kept me hooked until the end. The characters were vibrant and relatable, the writing was engaging, and the story had just the right balance of heart and humor. Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

I was excited for an eARC of this book after how much I loved Weyward. The Sirens promised to fulfill my yen for feminine rage with sirens who lure bad men to their death and that cover…swoon! Sadly, it did not deliver.

This book was very slow-paced to the point that it literally put me to sleep multiple reading sessions until I got about 40% in. Normally, if a book doesn’t grab me by 30%, I’ll DNF it. I kept going and because I always try a little harder for ARCs and because I remembered Weyward being a slow-burn as well. I was giving the book the benefit of the doubt because I had listened to Weyward on audio and sometimes that makes slower-paced books go faster, and since this was an eyeball read for me, I wanted to give it a fair chance.

I wasn’t falling asleep anymore after 40% but it still didn’t grab me the way Weyward did. Mary and Eliza’s timeline was more interesting to me than what was happening with Lucy and Jess for the majority of the book, but it still let me unsatisfied. I wanted more story, background, depth. If I got little of those things with May and Eliza’s storyline, I got even less with Lucy and Jess’ storyline. I was confused by Lucy’s actions in the beginning of the book as well as throughout most of the book, her motivations dubious or unclear. The whole beginning felt a bit forced, just a means to get Lucy where she needed to be for the story to move forward. It felt almost like Lucy’s timeline was just a placeholder until the other storylines converged with it, with nothing really happening to move the plot forward.

The plot finally started to pick up and become more interesting around 75-80% but even at that point, it was easily putdownable. The story had a decent ending, but it was a bit anti-climactic and unsatisfying. The writing itself was very lovely, beautifully, terrifyingly descriptive in places, but the story just never really grabbed me.

Overall, it was too slow, lacked atmosphere and cohesive and engaging plot, and was a bit of a let-down.

4.25 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you SMP for the gifted eARC.

The Sirens
Emilia Hart
Publishing Date: April 1, 2025

🎧 Narrator: Barrie Kreinik 🎧

This book opens with a bang, as in present day, Lucy wakes up with her hands around her ex’s neck. We follow her as she runs from her troubles to her sister’s house in Comer Bay. But when she arrives, her sister is nowhere to be found.

Then we have Mary, a convict on a transport ship in the 1800’s. This storyline was harsh and painful, even more so because it was inspired by actual historical events.

The two timelines progress slowly until coming together in the end. I love Emilia Hart’s way of shedding light on historical women’s issues in such a magical way. Themes of womanhood, sisterhood, feminine rage, and feminine strength and power are all prevalent throughout the stories woven together here.

Historical fiction mixed with magical realism is such a great combination. The atrocities of the past are heartbreaking but a little spark of magic can’t help but give a glimmer of hope. Hart’s prose is really lovely. This is not a fast paced book by any means but I found myself fully immersed and invested in the stories of these women.

I also had the pleasure of meeting the author recently! She was an absolute delight. Hearing her speak of her own personal ties to this story was so interesting.

🎧 Despite having the digital ARC and the physical (STUNNING) book, I still chose to read this one with my ears thanks to Libby. Barrie Kreinik did a really lovely job with the narration here. Her voice was just perfect for the whole vibe of the book and I would highly recommend this format!

I think Emelia Hart is becoming my favorite authors. I love books about sisterhood and magic. Definitely recommend.

This book follows Lucy, trying to figure out why she has these strange dreams and her trying to find her sister. While going to find her sister some things happen in her sisters town that are unexplainable. Then we rewind to two sisters from the past, Mary and Eliza, (1800’s) they were fired from their homes and noticed while out to see their bodies were changing… you must read this book to find out more!! Also the spray is awesome!

Thank you to St Martins Press & Macmillan Audio for the review copy!

DNF - 25%

I just love Emilia Hart’s covers. I gave 5 stars to her last release, Weyward, but I wasn’t sure if I was still the same type of reader now as I was when I read Weyward. I remember Weyward being absolutely enraging at first, but very satisfying at the end, and I expected to have a similar experience with this, but with Sirens instead of bugs.

The Sirens reads more like a mystery - we are introduced to Lucy, who seems to have sleepwalked/sleep strangled her ex lover? (Confusing.) She goes to visit her sister, who is missing. And we hear about missing and possibly murdered men. Also some sisters being transported to Australia as convicts.

I found the first few chapters to be really interesting, and was looking forward to getting more answers. But as the book continued, it felt very repetitive. I’m assuming, based on the title and cover, that the big reveal is going to be that they are Sirens? It feels like the story is slowly marching in that direction, but I find myself wishing to understand what the stakes are for each of these characters.

If you like slow burn fantasy mysteries with dual timelines, this may interest you!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance reader's copy of this book. Unfortunately at this time I will be unable to give it my full attention, so I will provide a starred rating and return when I can give it a proper review.