Thanks to NetGalley and the St. Martin's Press for this ARC! This was a compelling read with the perfect balance of mystery & magical realism ◡̈

Emilia Hart has struck gold again with "The Sirens". I found her 2023 book "Weyward" riveting and "The Sirens" was equally compelling. Hart was a way of telling stories from a female perspective that is insightful and familiar and her characters are so well fleshed out that the reader feels she could recognize them walking down the street.

"The Sirens" opens with a harrowing case of somnambulance that leads the character, Lucy, to panic and look for a way to hide out to get her head together. Her dreams have been tortured visions of dark water and drowning children that somehow feel familiar to her. Looking for answers, she decides to run to her elder sister,, Jess, though they haven't spoken in ages. Jess has relocated to Comber Beach, a place notorious for the mysterious disappearances of 8 men. She arrives at Jess' house only to find that her sister has disappeared in what looks like a very hasty escape. Lucy spends the next few days trying to stay awake to avoid her tortured dreams, meanwhile trying to discover what has happened to her secretive and mysterious sister. This leads her to find out long-buried secrets about herself and her family that have her questioning everything she's ever known but they also help her to make sense of things she's never understood about herself. Oh, and for an added twist, Lucy and Jess have a very rare condition called "aquagenic urticaria".

"The Sirens" is a story that could not be more timely in its exploration of female relationships, feminine agency and the constant threat of violence that all women live with, whether consciously or unconsciously. And as she always does, Hart does this with beautifully lyrical prose and complex characters.

It is a definite must-read.

This one had so much potential but I feel the pacing and plot are not quite right. The mystery of the sisters and their childhood takes forever to get to even though it’s really obvious what’s happening. I had high hopes since I loved the authors first book but I just couldn’t get into this one.

Knowing that I absolutely loved Weyward, Hart’s maiden voyage, I wanted to snatch up The Siren’s right away.
A mix of historical fantasy and magical realism, The Siren’s brings us the story of early Australia being used as a colony known as New South Wales. A colony that was used as a prison ground for the British empire in the 1800s. Bringing a similar theme from her previous work, Hart centers the story on a theme of the ill treatment of women throughout history. Women, written in her books, can harness their own inner power and stand up to the pressures of this early world.
The overarching story of this book was very intriguing and brought a part of history left in shadows to the light. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the same drive and attachment to the characters, but this story was still a great one to get lost in.

I found this book thoroughly enjoyable, albeit a little slow in the beginning. It is compelling and mesmerizing, and even a little magical.

Told in dual timelines, it is very easy to get involved in the lives of sisters, Lucy and Jess from present times, and Mary and Eliza from the past. The story takes some twists and turns but it kept me engaged throughout, especially some of the folklore, which was a great touch.

Ultimately, this is a story of resilience and the difficulties of being a woman, both in the past and present. If you like magical realism, you’ll most definitely enjoy this one.

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC.

Excellent premise, plot and suspense. The creepy sea cove, the long history of tragedy - well done. Just a great assist to the plot.
I also enjoyed the complexity of female lives and relationships. Women who wanted, desperately, for a life of their own. Women who deserved to be safe. Targeting and grooming young women. Hart does a great job calling for accountability while showcasing the problem.

While I did enjoy the book when I got into it, I found it was a slow pace at the beginning and it really took a while for me to get into. I love that the book includes Sirens but I did feel there was way too much background info that didn't really make any difference to the direction of the story. I did enjoy the book but I definitely would have liked the pace to be a little faster to get me into the book at an earlier point. My favorite thing about this book is the mythical retelling for sure!!

The Sirens is a stunning story about family, secrets, determination, and female empowerment. It’s an epic fantasy that follows two sets of sisters—separated by centuries but connected through haunting dreams and the pull of the ocean.

I couldn’t put this book down! From start to finish, I was hooked. The story is packed with twists, a touch of magic, and so much emotion - it even made me cry at times.

Emilia Hart’s writing is a masterpiece of creativity—lush and evocative, painting vivid images that linger in your mind. The pacing was perfectly balanced, never dragging. And the ending? Stunning - bringing everything together so beautifully.

This is a “tale” that will mesmerize you from start to finish, a must-read for anyone who loves stories that empower and enchant.

Similar to Weyward, it took me a while to get into the book and figure out where it was headed. Probably about 20 percent in before it felt like the plot was moving forward vs just giving background information.

The Sirens starts with Lucy, struggling with sleepwalking and night terrors, she leaves school after a traumatic sleepwalking incident and seeks out her much older sister Jess. But when she gets to Jess’s house by the ocean, she isn’t there.

The town in seeped in mystery, a shipwreck 200 years ago filled with women criminals, 8 men who have gone missing in several decades. Something is going on, and now Lucy thinks this place is related to her strange dreams, and that maybe her sister is having them too.

It is part mystery, part mythical retelling, a huge focus on the power of women and the bonds between generations. It was just lovely and captivating to go on this journey with Lucy.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was so excited to receive Emilia Hart’s latest book, The Sirens. As expected, I absolutely adored it. Don’t miss this book!

First, how gorgeous is this cover? Second, The Sirens by Emilia Hart beautifully blends historical fiction and magical realism together. It's a tale of sisterhood that looks across time and has thematic elements of love and loss. There's also the core element of the sea. Hart is such a tremendous author, and I appreciated the connection to Irish folklore.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me.

Mary and Eliza are two sisters transported to Australia from Ireland. Lucy and Jess are modern Australian sisters who keep dreaming of Mary and Eliza. What are their connection ? Why does Lucy have a skin malady that keeps her from water? Mysterious, magical, vengeful, this book will suck you in immediately.
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC.

This novel was phenomenonal. The story was almost gothic in atmosphere. I loved the mystery and the flashback to the ancestors. I wasn't expecting any of the twists. Very well written and I was not disappointed.

Hart has a natural talent for delicious prose and they are on full display in this book. The Sirens is an eerie fantasy, with myth and magic and above all, sisterhood.

I found it engaging but there were a few occasions where I was asked to suspend disbelief and I struggled with it in a few cases.

Overall, this was a new take on the classic siren tale and an interesting choice for book club with a lot to discuss.

Big thanks to NetGalley for the ARC, in exchange for an honest review.

The Sirens is a blend of historical fiction, mystery and magical realism.
We follow two set of sisters with different POVs. Mary and Eliza is in the 1800s and is on board a convict ship. Lucy is in 2019 and went to see her sister who is distant. When she gets there Jess is not home but her phone and car are. Hoping to get her sister’s advice with her sleepwalking, she starts to read Jess’s diary and finds some secrets.
A story of sisterhood, family secrets and self discovery.

I LOVED this author's debut novel, so I was super excited to get her next release early. I didn't end up loving this one quite as much though. I think the title is a bit of a spoiler, I kind of wish that this aspect was more of a mystery that we got to figure out along with the character instead. It would have kept the first half of the book from dragging so much. I did love the multiple timelines and they were both engaging. I just didn't connect with this one on a deeper level like I did with Weyward. I think readers who love a family-focused story with magical elements will really enjoy this one.

Lucy is a college student who wakes up to find she is strangling her ex. She was sleep walking, but no one will believe that, no one but her sister Jess who lives hours from Sydney in Comber bay. So Lucy drives there to get her help. However when she gets there she finds that Jess is nowhere to be found. So Lucy goes hunting for answers about her past and the nightmares she keeps having of two sisters trapped in a boat that had supposedly sunk with no survivors.

This multiple timeline book was fast paced and filled with feminine rage. I liked this more than I liked Weyward because she did a better job with the magic realism. There was also more hope and more focus on the women and less focus on the terrible men.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc. This was so good, my only complaint is that all it was pretty predictable, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. This is a story of sisters in two timelines and uncovering what happened to Lucy's sister Jess. I loved the atmosphere of this, it did what A Study in Drowning did, but better. It's vigilante justive at it's finest. I highly recommend this.

Content warnings: grooming, sexual assualt (off page), distribution of intimate photos without consent, assault.

I really enjoyed the hints of magic realism and the way the magic builds slowly over the course of the book. This book was atmospheric and had good character development. I did feel like it was too long and we could have had the plot twists revealed earlier. Also listening on audio really added to the story to hear the correct pronunciations and accents.

I've been thinking a lot about monstrous women/women as monsters (I just saw Egger's Nosferatu) - and how often the monster women in these stories aren't that monstrous, just demonized by society.

This is especially true for selkie stories, often told from the perspective of the abandoned fisherman, heartbroken over the loss of his wife to the sea. Yet the end of that story is *actually* a homecoming for a trapped woman - she may have loved him once, or loved him for a time, or not at all, but even if she did, he forced her to stay by stealing her seal skin.

Hart's take on sirens is adjacent but not identical, pulling on the same tensions as the old folklore. In The Sirens, she weaves a beautiful story of sisterhood and the feminine experience, juxtaposing the story of two Irish sisters on a convict ship with the present-day mystery of Lucy and her missing sister Jessica. The two narratives intertwine seamlessly, giving readers the same merging of realities that Lucy and Jess are experiencing through their dreams.

I loved this beautiful story about the ways women can claim their power and find beauty even in things about ourselves that society may tell us are monstrous. I'm excited to read more from Hart in the future!

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