The Sirens

Two years after releasing her first novel, Emilia Hart is back with her second book, The Sirens. Set mainly in Australia in alternating timelines between 1800, 1999, and 2019, it follows pairs of sisters grappling with what makes them different and the otherworldly rumors surrounding their communities.

Why I Chose This Book:

Though I haven’t yet read Weyward, I was excited to read Emilia Hart’s new novel. As the title suggests, mermaids play a role here, and that’s a theme I’ll be reading a lot this year. (I already read one mermaid book in February, and I have several upcoming releases on my radar!) I also liked the themes of sisterhood, mothers and daughters, and the secrets that can drive us apart or unite us.

What I Liked:

• Relationships between sisters and between mothers and daughters. Feminine relationships are at the heart of The Sirens in each timeline. In 1800, Irish sisters Mary and Eliza are convicted of a crime and put on a ship headed for the newly colonized Australia. They have only each other to rely on for memories of their parents. In 2019, Lucy seeks out her older sister Jess during a trying time, but upon finding Jess mysteriously vanished, she discovers how similar they are by reading Jess’s diary from 1998-1999.
• Dealing with sexual harassment. Both Jess and Lucy have their own journeys of sexuality, abuse of power, and grappling with betrayal. While their respective stories are distinct, there are clear commonalities, too.
• Community and the power of women. Tying those previous two points together, there is a strong sense of how sisterhood can give women strength in the worst of times. The way it unfolds borders between magical realism and overt fantasy, but the result nonetheless is empowerment.
• Multiple time settings and POVs: Lucy (2019); Mary (1800); Jess (1998-1999, initially as diary entries). I enjoyed reading the different characters and seeing how their stories paralleled each other. For me it was never hard to differentiate between the characters and plots.
• So many secrets! From the truth behind family ties to the rare skin condition (aquagenic urticaria) that Lucy and Jess hide, there is so much that lurks just beneath the surface. Those secrets—paired with the local mysteries, strange dreams, and sleepwalking—give this novel a haunting and unreal atmosphere, much like Jess’s paintings.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• Ending felt a bit lackluster or rushed. There is so much woven throughout The Sirens, but the ending seemed to let certain threads go without much explanation. I wish some of the themes here had carried through more fully into the end.

Audiobook:

Barrie Kreinik does an excellent job of narrating The Sirens. She easily navigates both Australian and Irish accents for the different characters. I also loved her singing! There’s a repeated refrain of an Irish-sounding folk song, and her voice is at once beautiful and suitably haunting. Her narration serves this novel well across POVs and timelines.

Final Thoughts

I greatly enjoyed The Sirens for its many themes surrounding sisterhood, empowerment, and the magic we hold. It tackles some harder themes (sexual harassment; family secrets), but also infuses it all with a rich atmosphere. I only wish the ending had a bit more power to it, too. Overall this was a wonderful read, and I look forward to reading more from Emilia Hart.

Special thanks to the publicists at Macmillan, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Sirens here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Sirens by Emilia Hart
Audiobook Narrator	Barrie Kreinik
Audience	Adult
Genre	Historical Fiction; Fantasy; Magical Realism
Setting	Australia; Ireland; Brazil
Number of Pages	352
Format I Read	Audiobook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	April 1, 2025
Publisher	St. Martin’s Press; Macmillan Audio

Official Summary

#1 LibraryReads Pick • April Indie Next Pick

A spellbinding novel about sisters separated by centuries, but bound together by the sea, from the author of the runaway New York Times bestseller Weyward

2019: Lucy awakens from a dream to find her hands around her ex-lover’s throat. Horrified, she flees to her older sister’s house on the Australian coast, hoping she can help explain the strangely vivid nightmare that preceded the attack—but Jess is nowhere to be found.

As Lucy awaits her return, the rumors surrounding Jess’s strange small town start to emerge. Numerous men have gone missing at sea, spread over decades. A tiny baby was found hidden in a cave. And sailors tell of hearing women’s voices on the waves. Desperate for answers, Lucy finds and begins to read her sister’s adolescent diary.

1999: Jess is a lonely sixteen-year-old in a rural town in the middle of the continent. Diagnosed with a rare allergy to water, she has always felt different, until her young, charming art teacher takes an interest in her drawings, seeing a power and maturity in them—and in her—that no one else has.

1800: Twin sisters Mary and Eliza have been torn from their loving father in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship bound for Australia. For their entire lives, they’ve feared the ocean, as their mother tragically drowned when they were just girls. Yet as the boat bears them further and further from all they know, they begin to notice changes in their bodies that they can’t explain, and they feel the sea beginning to call to them…

A breathtaking tale of female resilience and the bonds of sisterhood across time and space, The Sirens captures the power of dreams, and the mystery and magic of the sea.