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Book Summary and Reviews of The Sirens by Emilia Hart

The Sirens by Emilia Hart

The Sirens

A Novel

by Emilia Hart

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  • Published:
  • Apr 2025, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Entertaining. Hart (Weyward) delivers a high-voltage tale of family secrets, fantastical occurrences, and Australian history." ―Publishers Weekly

"Hart's second novel (after Weyward) weaves a lyrical story, intricately blending family dynamics with the magic of folklore. For fans of family relationship stories with elements of magical realism, such as the novels of Sarah Addison Allen." ―Library Journal

"Full of allure and brimming with undercurrents of buried secrets... The Sirens is beautifully written and utterly compelling." ―Evie Woods, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop

"The Sirens is an absolutely immersive, utterly captivating puzzle box of a novel, both gripping and heart-wrenching. Hart is a gorgeously emotive storyteller." ―Ellery Lloyd, New York Times bestselling author

This information about The Sirens was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Emilia Hart

Emilia Hart is the author of Weyward and The Sirens. She grew up in Australia and studied English Literature at university before training as a lawyer. She now lives in London.

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