Minus one star for "man smells" and "woman smells" over and over and over and over and over. Fear smelled, desire smelled; everything smelled except for the physical world.

Otherwise! I enjoyed this one more than Weyward. In my opinion, it's more creative, and the historical fiction aspect was neat. I appreciated the author's note regarding Australia.

Sirens is a twisty fantasy about sisters told through 3 POVs: one in long gone past, the recent past, and the story's present. It was easy to follow, and I really enjoyed how the narratives were layered and twisted and pushed the reader through the story.

The audiobook is well done. Barrie Kreinik is easy to listen to, clear at fast speeds, and does the accents well.

Thanks to netgalley and MacMillan Audio for an audio arc to read and review voluntarily.

Four women and two different centuries, and one coast by the sea. The story begins with Lucy and Jess in 2019 intertwining with Mary and Eliza in 1800. All fighting who they are, but eventually accepting themselves as they are.

I was excited to read this one. I liked Weyward and this was also on many anticipation lists for 2025. The prologue caught my attention right away, but it was soon lost. Now, the audiobook is narrated by Barrie Kreinik and while this is my first time listening to a book narrated by her I have nothing to compare to. She has a very soft, soothing voice. Unfortunately, the first part of the audiobook started putting me to sleep because of that. I almost DNFed and most definitely would have if I was physically reading it. Luckily that's when the story shifted from Lucy to Mary and Eliza. I found their story much more engaging than Lucy and Jess and I was able to push forward and finish. The whole book had a creepiness to it and there were a few little twists you might or might not guess. It was like everything went together but it also didn't.

Thank you to NetGalley, MacMillan Audio, and of course Emilia Hart for the opportunity to listen to this book before its release on April 1, 2025. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

#NetGalley #MacMillanAudio #emiliahart #TheSirens

This isn't a bad book by any means, but it's not for me.

The writing style was phenomenal and the story-telling itself was well done.

However, the story didn't really keep my attention and some days it felt like a chore getting through it. The fantasy aspect doesn't really appear until 75% in. If I'm promised a fantasy book, I expect there to be fantasy elements long before the 75% mark. And even when we did get those elements, I felt like they were poorly developed and we didn't really learn much about them. They were just thrust at us with little to no explanation.

There are also a lot of themes in this book that likely went over my head. The most obvious one was sex-based oppression, but otherwise they weren't very clear to me. I'm going to go ahead and say that that's not the author's fault though. When I read, I don't dig deep to try and find covert meanings behind characters actions or other plot points.

Finally, I just didn't feel that the plot itself was very compelling. I was never quite sure what the overall goal was, and a lot of earlier plot points seemed to be dropped without any resolution.

Like I said, it's probably me, not the book. I should probably just stick to genres I know I like instead of trying to be bougie.

3.5 stars I think this one was about on par with Hart’s first novel, Weyward. I appreciated the mystery aspect, the strong bond between both sets of sister, and the healthy dose of justice doled out to harmful men. The Australian history was interesting, and not something I’ve encountered before (other than knowing generally that the British sent convicts to Australia). I didn’t come away from the story feeling like I knew Lucy’s parents or Mary very well, and I think that was a weak point. If they had been fleshed out a little more it would have given the ending a little more payoff.

The epilogue really brought the story down for me. While I was happy to learn the parentage of Baby Hope, there were things about the reveal that undermined the rest of the story in my mind. I didn’t even take issue with who the parents ended up being, it was the causal (careless?) way the affair was framed that bothered me. It would have been more in character (and tapped into the supernatural elements of the story) if it had been an obvious bewitching where the person couldn’t tell what was dream and what was reality, similar to the dreams that haunted Jess and Lucy. Instead, the person is just chill about cheating on their (grieving!!!) wife for no reason. On top of that, we are supposed to see this character as different from the other men of the novel—one of the “good ones”—only to tack on infidelity right at the end (with the siren’s blessing, no less). I feel like this ending could have so easily been adjusted to make it work better with the overall message of holding men accountable.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC for this beautiful audiobook.

If you like the layout and set up of wayward you will like this story. You have present and past PoV and strong female characters.

This is a story about disappearing men and the sirens (read mermaids). I am a huge Little Mermaid fan so I was of course intrigued and I love Celtic atmosphere which was enhanced by the narrator and her accent.

Now here is the reason I am giving it a 4 and not a 5. This is personal the time jumps are hard for audio. So there were definitely times I was a little lost or confused. So if you are able to keep track then this is perfect.

I will also state that the middle was a bit long and felt it could have been shortened a little bit.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the audiobook ARC copy.

"Sometimes there is no choice, only love." - TEARS.

I loved this! Weyward was one of my favorite reads last year so I was so excited to get my hands on this one early - I'm giving it a 4.5 though. It was an almost perfect. I'm going to go ahead and round up to 5 though because overall I did love this so much.

So I went into Sirens semi blind, just as I did with Weyward and I was not at all disappointed.

This is a beautifully woven tale of several women across different times, yet connected as the older stories give you some background to what is going on in the 'modern day' timelines. I just want to also add in here there is a whole history segment at the beginning which I thought was really interesting that the author included. That made this one stand out a little from Weyward, I don't remember as much historical background being included there, but either way, it was really cool to see at the start of this book!

This had a similar plot formula as Weyward, so while they are completely stand alone/separate stories, if you enjoyed Weyward I don't see why you wouldn't enjoy this next book. This one is just about sea witches instead of regular witches, haha.

The only thing that took away from this being a perfect read was too much of the middle section of the book was spent on Lucy and while it ultimately ended up just being kind of a slow burn situation for the events toward the end of the book, it just made the middle drag on a bit. Also, I felt like some of this was a little too predictable with some of the foreshadowing, so that ultimately took away from the surprise/story for me just a little bit.

However, this was still a really enjoyable read. I loved all the characters, and their stories. This made me cry a few times because I felt it was really beautiful. I don't write spoiler reviews so I can't elaborate on what specifically made me tear up, but the relationship between Jess and Lucy was just really sweet and beautiful and definitely had me in my feels a few times.

Anyway, definitely recommend this one to anyone that loved Weyward, or beautifully woven feminist tales, this one is for you! Also, I loved the audio for this. The narrator has a beautiful voice and it made for a really nice audio listen!

This is the story of Lucy and her sister Jess and Mary and Eliza, told centuries apart. Jess and Lucy are apparently allergic to water. And have dreams about women hundreds of years earlier who did the same. The water harms them, yet they are drawn to it.

Hmm....the writing was fantastic, and the atmosphere was top-notch. I just never felt compelled by the personalities of the women within.

I received this audiobook from the publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This was a tough one for me to get through. The narration was good but I found myself dragging through the story due to slow points where nothing was happening or made sense. Around 3/4 in, the story picked up and things started tying together, but overall I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I would.

One story seemed easy to follow and one story was a little more challenging to follow. I read Weyward last year and thought I would try The Siren and i've learned to no fault of the author she is just not my writing style.

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⭐️