The Sirens by Emilia Hart

Book Review

Melody Bowles

The Sirens is a lushly written novel set across two time periods. We follow two sets of sisters – Jess and Lucy in 2019 and Mary and Eliza in 1800. Mary and Eliza have been condemned to sail from Ireland to New South Wales on a prison ship. Lucy struggles with a fraught university romance which ends in public humiliation and a fractured relationship with her beloved sister Jess.

The writing is haunting and atmospheric with a compelling beginning. The descriptions of Comber Bay, its haunting caves and shipwrecks, are where the beauty lies in this story and were certainly the highlight for me. The bay is known as a place where men go missing, with no clear link between their disappearances aside from the cave known as Devil’s Lookout.

The book ultimately deals with heavy themes of female trauma related to sexual violence. It is thoughtful, compassionate and above all hopeful, which is often missing from stories touching on these subjects. The characters fight back against their abusers, making this a very feminist fantasy.

The titular sirens are part of the story, but not where the focus lies. They are mainly used to drive the family drama and exaggerate the idea that the characters are haunted by secrets.

Unfortunately, I guessed one of the narrative twists about a third of the way through, which killed the story’s momentum for me. I felt I spent longer than necessary waiting for the characters to catch up. The pacing sags in the middle as a result. I can forgive the prisoners’ lack of action in their situation, but expected more from ambitious investigative journalist Lucy, who seems to have clues fall into her lap rather than seeking them out.

Read The Sirens if you’d like a surreal, feminist family drama focused on sisterhood, truth, trauma and healing.