"Hart has firmly cemented herself as a master of multi-timeline storytelling and feminist gothic fiction."
After being captivated by Emlia Hart’s Weyward, I was eager to dive into her new novel The Sirens, and it didn’t disappoint. Once again, Hart delivers a spellbinding story that deftly moves across timelines, generations, and mysteries, drawing the reader into a richly atmospheric world where the past refuses to stay buried.
At its heart, The Sirens is a tale of sisters. In the early 19th century, Mary and Eliza are transported from Ireland to New Zealand as prisoners, their perilous ocean voyage steeped in hardship, secrets, and whispers of the miraculous. In the present day, sisters Jess and Lucy are pulled into Mary and Eliza’s story through hauntingly vivid dreams that blur the line between memory and imagination. Hart also threads in passages from Jess’s teenage diary, adding yet another lens through which truth slowly comes into focus.
As the narrative unfolds, Hart reveals a mystery that has echoed across centuries: the miraculous birth of a child named Hope and the strange, recurring disappearances of men. Each fragment of story - past, present, and deeply personal - gradually interlocks until the full picture emerges, and with it, an unforgettable meditation on resilience, sisterhood, and the legacy of untold histories.
Hart’s prose is both lyrical and propulsive, balancing the gothic atmosphere of the sea crossing with the intimacy of family bonds in the modern day. Her ability to juggle three strands of narrative without losing momentum is remarkable, and the slow-burn unravelling of the central mystery is deeply satisfying.
Much like Weyward, The Sirens is a novel about women finding their voices in the face of oppression, about how the echoes of the past continue to ripple forward, shaping the present. It’s haunting, immersive, and beautifully crafted - a story that lingers long after the final page.
| Primary Genre | Fantasy |
| Other Genres: |
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK #1 LibraryReads Pick 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.
The Sirens features in the following genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Narrative theme: Journeys and voyages, Myths and Legends / Mythic fiction, Speculative fiction, Mythical creatures: Mermaids, mermen and other water spirits or beings
The Sirens is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Sirens was written by Emilia Hart and published by St. Martin's Press an imprint of St. Martin's Publishing Group
The Sirens has 352 pages
£10.79
