I loved this book! I was a big fan of Weyward, a beautifully told tale of sisterhood and motherhood, and women’s need to establish a sense of self and a relationship with the power in nature.

In The Sirens, Hart continues her exploration of women’s relationships.

There are three stories intertwined here, Mary and Eliza in 1800, on a convict boat to New South Wales, Jessica, an awkward teen falling in love with her art teacher and Lucy, fleeing college after assaulting a boy who shared her nudes online.

Each story revolves around a small town and a bay with a sea cave, where men keep turning up dead. It is a novel of victimization and revenge, of fighting for power when everything is taken from you. Of family secrets and joy and despair, with mystery and magic and the strength of women’s love for each other.

This book is not perfect, and maybe there were unlikely and perhaps silly decisions made by Jess at the end of the book. But the rest of the book was so lovely, so earnest, so interesting that I am able to overlook a silly plot hole.

I loved my time spent with this book and the narration by Barrie Kreinik was pure magic! Her singing of mournful Irish sea shanties gave me goosebumps.

Lucy flees university in the dead of night after a violent sleepwalking incident, but when she seeks answers at her sister Jess’ house, only to find the house a mess and Jess nowhere to be found, Lucy will uncover more than she bargained for about her sister, her parents, and her own past. Lucy and Jess’ stories are interwoven with Eliza and Marys’, two sisters traveling to Australia on a convict ship in the early nineteenth century. Both sets of sisters seem literal worlds apart, but as Lucy realizes the dreams she’s having about Eliza and Mary may have more truth to them than she thought, she descends into a spiral to find the truth about her birth.

I think this story did a fantastic job of depicting descent into madness which turned out to be the only way to find the truth. The magical realism was well done and kept me intrigued without being too unrealistic. That being said I do wish there was a little more folklore elements sprinkled throughout the story so the fantastical ending didn't seem so sudden. I wasn’t surprised by the ending, but I do feel it could’ve been done less abruptly.

The narration was emotive and added a unique element to the story, especially during the chaos of the finale.

I mean props to the author for making me feel so uncomfortable reading this that’s truly a talent but this book was genuinely hard for me to finish, I only finished it because it’s an arc.

I absolutely loved Weyward and had really high hopes for this book, but I was sadly disappointed. The story was slow and meandering, I didn't connect with the characters and in the end, I just didn't really care. I skimmed though the last half of the book to find out the "mystery" but everything just fell flat. Oh well, I look foreword to more from Hart in the future. The audiobook narrator is fantastic however.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced audiobook. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to #netgalley and #macmillanaudio for this #giftedaudiobook . Emilia Hart has such a unique writing style that I am always so captivated by her lyrical prose. I believe Barrie Kreinik has the perfect voice for this novel due to the incredibly haunting, hypnotizing quality of her narration. She literally sounds like a siren...her reading accents AND her singing voice! This book was so well done, I predict it will be on my top 10 list of 2025! I love the twists at the end and highly recommend this on audiobook! I read this in a day and have missed it ever since

I did enjoy this but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read Emilia Hart's first book Weyward. Both of these stories explore very similar themes in very similar story formats so much of that I felt I was rereading Weyward. I did enjoy the mystery and mood of this one, as well as the setting.

I was hoping for a big more magic I suppose in the Siren aspect but I might have been expecting too much considering this is not labeled as fantasy.

There was a surprising amount of twists and turns throughout the novel, which kept me more invested in the narrative, but to be honest I could see most of the twists coming.

Regardless, I think there is an important story here. I love female rage, I love dark mermaid-y stories, a love a historical element. So overall, there were a lot of aspects I enjoyed. I just overall think Weyward did it better.

Plagued by nightmares, college student Lucy heads to the coast of New South Wales, hoping her sister, Jess, can help her to decipher her dreams. When she arrives at the cliffside house, however, her sister is nowhere to be found.

Two hundred years earlier, Mary and Eliza board a convict ship leaving Ireland for the Australian coast, but the more time they spend at sea, the more things change for them.

The Sirens interweaves the stories of these four women, illustrating the ways they are connected and uncovering the mysteries tied to the tiny coastal town where Jess resides.

It’s a tale of history and sisterhood, mystery and magical realism.

There are some themes and scenes in the book that should come with trigger warnings. Please check a reliable source.

I listened to the audiobook version, and Barrie Kreinik’s narration is fantastic. She flawlessly captures the accents of both the Australian sisters and the Irish ones. She even sings the ballad that the Irish sisters cling to in the story. Her narration kept me going, even through those scenes that were viscerally more difficult to experience.

Stick around after the story concludes for an interview with the author.

4⭐️ for the story
5⭐️ for the narration

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio. All review opinions are my own.

The premise really appealed to me I'm that this books wasn't laced in fantasy. However I found listening to the different narrators hard to focus on the story at hand. The layers didn't quite work for me and the end was soso.

This book was very good and entertaining. It is a story of familial love, secrets, betrayal, and forgiveness. With a little more that makes it magical. Mermaids? Shipwrecks? Mystery? Magical realism.? Resilience? Sisterly love and strength? Check. Check. Check.

I liked these characters. I could relate to them in ways. I could empathize with them. Even when I thought I had the whole story figured out I couldn't find that last puzzle piece. That last piece did end up making me lose some respect for the person but in the end it tied everything together. All in all a good entertaining read.

From the publisher:

A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine



2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever.



1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies.



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.

Thank you NetGalley and MacMillian for this advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

so i am most definitely not the biggest fan of multiple timelines, which is a part of the reason why when i was reading the ebook a few months back that i had a hard time getting invested in this book. that and being insanely confused like i missed a bunch of info, which created a lack of emotional connection and feeling overall like it was a chore to read. i found the premise of this book to be super intriguing and still really wanted to give it a try via audiobook and i am so glad i didnt give up on it completely!

this was my first of emilia’s and i will most definitely be picking up weyward and her future work after listening to this. it was still a bit tedious but being able to listen and following along on the ebook did wonders for me on this one! it went from 2 to 4 stars for me. the narrator was wonderful and really help bring emilia’s words to life.

The Sirens

It’s been almost exactly two years since I read and loved Weyward so when I saw she’d written her sophomore novel I couldn’t wait to start it!

This starts with a historical note sharing a bit of the history of convicts being shipped from England to Australia in the late 1700s. Crucial to the story and very interesting, I was impressed that this tidbit was at the front rather than the back of the book. However, this felt very far away from what I’d think of as a traditional historical fiction, yes there are some aspects but it was more focused on female characters and the mythology of mermaids. Once I wrapped my head around that change and embraced how idiosyncratic this was I really enjoyed it.

While the format and atmospheric writing felt similar to Weyward, everything else was very different. I think going into this expecting a unique story, a lot of magical realism, and richly detailed storylines rather than comparing it to her previous novel would be the way to go.

I did a combo of audio and digital. The audio really grew on me and once I was particularly impressed with the singing of Barrie Kreinik. Thank you Macmillan Audio for the alc and St. Martin's Press for the arc via Netgalley.

Pub day: April 1, 2025
Rating: 4/5⭐️

I would like to thank the publisher for sending me an audio-arc in exchange for an honest review through NetGalley.

This book had dual POVs with wildly different plots. Present day (2019) Lucy wakes up in the room of her now ex friend/lover with her hands wrapped around his throat. She flees to her sister's house, trying to call ahead but with no response, and hides. It's not long before she learns that her sister has also disappeared, but this time? Lucy has found her sister's diary, and there are some secrets that have been buried that Lucy is about to bring to light for the first time. The second POV is from Mary and Eliza, twins who have been send to Australia as convicts from Ireland. As their story unfolds, we watch as slowly they grow to be less human.

There's a lot I have to say about this. The raw emotions from the moment Lucy wakes up to her discovering of the truth and secrets long buried are gut wrenching. The common theme we see is how men silence women, take advantage of and then blame them when things don't go their way. There's a lot of powerful moments between both pairs of sisters. The truth of what they are isn't exactly a secret (at least I hope not as it was one of those things I saw coming a mile away. There were some twists that I didn't see 100% of what was to be revealed, but for the most part I did find a lot of this predictable. However, that didn't distract from the whole message behind everything. I was hooked for the most part, but I did find it to be a pretty basic story. Otherwise, I love the way the plot seemed to ebb and flow like the tide, how we got a little bit more about the girls from the 1800s, the folklore woven into this, and the writing itself. Absolutely beautiful book. I totally recommend this.

Actual Rating 4.5 stars

I absolutely loved this authors debut Weyward.

Sadly this one just didn’t hit the same for me. I found the story a bit confusing with the switching back and forth between time and characters. I really enjoyed the boat expedition and the strong female characters.
The present part of the story for me was where I was a bit underwhelmed. The story moved a bit too slow for me with not much pay off in the end sadly.

With that said I did love the narrator. I thought she did a stellar job and will absolutely listen to more of her audiobooks!

Still I appreciate this authors writing and will certainly pick up more from her in the future.

Powerful, imaginative, and brilliant. Weaving three different time lines, but everything felt perfectly tied together. Really loved this book and it’s feminist themes.

I was absolutely blown away by The Sirens. My expectations were high, as Weyward has been my favorite book of 2024, but The Sirens definitely held up to the test. It's a tale of women, wronged by men, brought together through generations to keep themselves safe. Feminine rage stories are my absolute favorite, and this was no different.

Giving it a full five stars!

Update as I have had the chance to listen to the audiobook: the narrator's voice is perfect for the setting! Enjoyed it quite a bit, but I think I did personally enjoy reading the physical copy myself, as I like to visually see the change in POVs. Still definitely worth a listen!

✨BOOK REVIEW ✨

Sirens by Emilia Hart
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Hart is quickly becoming my new favorite author. Her debut novel Weyward was beautiful and I was so excited to be able to read her next upcoming novel! Sirens, is STUNNING.

This book is captivating. I was unable to put it down, the multiple POV and dual timeline moves at a seamless pace that draws the reader. I truly don’t have the words to describe how moving the relationships between sisters is depicted or how Hart captures women’s experiences so poignantly.

A huge plus is the audiobook is just as stunning! The narrator perfectly captures the words and tone of the story- plus does beautiful Australian and Irish accents!

Set your alarms, mark your calendar and RUN to preorder or grab this beautiful book when it releases.


✨Pub date: 4/01/25 ✨







*Thank you NetGalley, Macmillian Audio for the ALC in exchange for an honest review 💌




Review posted to Goodreads
Review will be posted to bookstagram on 1/17 and will be reshared on pub week and pub day

📚 The Sirens 🎧
✍ Emilia Hart
📖 Fiction/Magical Realism
⭐4/5

🙏 Thank you to Macmillan Audio, NetGalley and the author for the advanced listener copy of The Sirens. All opinions are my own.
◾
🎯 What I loved: A story of sisterhood and the unbreakable bonds of women in the throes of abuse, The Sirens is beautifully written and haunting. Like Hart's debut Weyward, the story explored the depths of women's strength and was a thought-provoking tale of multiple sets of women who share deep connections despite the distance, time and secrets pulling them apart. The audio on this was so well done and I recommend listening to this one if possible because the Australian and Irish accents and siren songs add so much to the story. Also of note, the epilogue in this book strategically ties some loose ends together in a way I wasn't expecting, so make sure you stay the course on this one!

🙅‍♀️ What I didn't: I predicted the connections in this book early so if you're someone that wants a twist that you can't predict, be weary. But to me, this book wasn't about the twists, it was about journeys of self-discovery, reflection and growth and that's what I got in spades.
◾
Read if you love:
*alternating timelines that include references to historical events
*sisterhood and stories of female empowerment
*women overcoming obstacles and the patriarchy
◾
See also: Beautiful Ugly, The Blue Hour, Weyward, Spells for Forgetting

This was my first time with a book by this author, so I had no idea of what to expect from it, really.
I was intrigued by the plot (historical + mermaids) and I don't regret reading it.
However, I don't think I'm the right audience for this book.
I was initially very invested in the 'present' timeline, following Lucy's POV - and not so much in the other 2 POVs.
But as the story moved on, I found myself no longer curious or entertained by Lucy's storyline. I liked the turmoils of his relationship with her sister, but in general it all fell flat to me.
Also unfortunately, the 'historical' part of this story didn't clique with me.
The mermaid's lore was cool, but sometimes it got way too 'fantasy' for my taste.
I'll say this is the classic 'I'm not the right audience for this book' case.
I can see many readers enjoying this book, though.
I recommend it to readers who generally are into fantasy/historical stories.

The audiobook was perfect. I've known this narrator for a while and, in my opinion, she never disappoints. Even when I'm not enjoying the book as a whole, I always enjoy Barrie Kreinik's work.
Thank you, NetGalley and Macmillan Audio, for allowing me to listen to a free audio copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.

First, a huge thank you to the publisher and to Netgalley for supplying me with this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. After loving Weyward, I was so excited to read this book, but in all honesty, it fell flat for me from the beginning all the way to the end. If I hadn’t been given the book to review, I probably wouldn’t have finished it. A quote from the beginning of the book really shows the overwrought and stilted style that ruined Lucy as a narrator for me: “I felt like a religious zealot having a crisis of faith. What use is a weapon people are unafraid to touch?” In this line, she is talking about the truth of what happened to her, but it just seems so off the mark for the context that it completely pulls you out of the narrative. In addition, the primary device used for getting the plot going, sleepwalking, completely gets ignored throughout the end of the book and doesn’t allow the reader to fully understand how that played into the larger narrative. As a whole, I found the character to fall flat and think that the author missed a huge opportunity to reclaim the trope of a siren in a way that she just didn’t. A lost opportunity in my opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley, Emilia Hart and MacMillian audio for the free audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

I still haven’t read Weyward, so I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy this or not but the premise of this made me believe it was worth a try. I really enjoyed the characters, the magical aspects, and the alternating chapters from past to present. It’s written so beautifully. I would definitely recommend.