The Sirens

• Author: Emilia Hart
• Genre: Historical Fantasy
• Publication Date: March 4, 2025
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an ARC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

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.

I was really excited to read this book, especially after I loved her debut Weymouth so much. I’ve been drawn to historical fantasy a lot more lately, so I was all set to love this book. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite meet the bar that was set after her first book. Despite that, it wasn’t a ‘bad’ read, but it was more of a ‘meh’ kind of read.

I had read the audiobook version of this ARC, and it was narrated by Barrie Kreinik. Her narrating skills are top-notch, with her easily vacillating between a variety of Irish and Australian accents and tones of voice that range from feminine to masculine voices. If I could have just rated this on the narration, it would have been a 5. There were some facets of the novel that didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

This is a story that takes place in three different periods of time: Lucy’s experiences in 2019, excerpts from a journal that Jess kept during her teen years, and the forced relocation of two sisters in 1800 from Ireland and sent to a penal colony in Australia. 

Of all the perspectives, none of them captivated me throughout the entire book. Eliza and Mary’s held my attention the most—especially at the beginning and the end of the book. Lucy was interesting, but I really struggled to connect with a lot of her story. Jess’s POV was also hard to connect with because it was solely through journal entries. And while journal entries can be immensely revealing, these were … not quite as revealing to the reader as they are to Lucy.

Eliza and Mary were absolutely victims of circumstances, and wound up being sent to a penal colony in New South Wales after an attempt at self-defense went horribly wrong. One of the sisters is unable to speak, so they have devised a way to communicate between themselves as they’re transported across the world on a ship. But on the long trip, they come to some realizations about themselves and their relationship with their mother.

Lucy wakes in the middle of a sleepwalking episode with her hands wrapped around the neck of a guy she used to hook up with. Instead of dealing with the situation, she winds up fleeing halfway across the country (continent?)  to find her sister in hopes of getting some answers about what might have led to the sleepwalking. But as she flees the university to her sister’s house, she doesn’t respond to the many attempts others have made to reach out to her, including the university and her friends. It made me feel like she was just running away from her life and the consequences that follow her actions.

There are journal entries from Jess in the 1990s that did a lot of telling and not showing. There wasn’t really any emotional growth that I noticed in her, even after twenty years. I got a little more understanding of what occurred at that period in her life, but her journal entries never really got into how she felt or thought, and how she reflected on her experiences at the time.

After reading something that makes me want to learn more, I tend to do a little research after reading. And in this case, aquagenic urticaria is a real disease, but it isn’t anything like how it is portrayed in the book. This is just my own feelings on it, but I think if an author is going to portray a medical diagnosis in their story, they should at least take the time to get it right.

I had a couple of major issues with the book, which led to the rating of 3 ‘meh’ stars. First, it was easy to connect Jess and Lucy’s timelines, but then it was a lot harder to see how what occurs in the 1800 timeline connects to Jess and Lucy’s stories. The other thing is that the plot twists were easily predictable to me, and there weren’t really any surprises in the story. I would have loved to learn more about how Jess and Lucy felt instead of just being told what happened. 

Also, the pacing was inconsistent, and it felt like the book was entirely too long—the boat hits the doldrums in the middle of the book and so did the pacing. It did pick up at the end, but it wasn’t quite enough to overcome all the other issues. I was also frustrated with sleepwalking being a major aspect of the story and having Lucy seek out her sister, but then it was never resolved. Plot holes are frustrating to encounter, but I will say that Barrie Kreinik’s narration was my favorite thing about this book. You might enjoy this more than I did if: you like slow-paced reads, are interested in historical fantasy but don’t need a well-defined paranormal system, are intrigued by folklore you might not have heard of yet, and want to hear a wonderful narrator.

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