The Sirens by Emilia Hart

May 28, 2025May 28, 202518 Comments

After enjoying Emilia Hart’s first novel, Weyward, in 2023, I’ve been looking forward to reading her new one, The Sirens. Weyward linked the stories of three women in different time periods through a family connection, a shared love of nature and a theme of witchcraft. The Sirens also has multiple timelines, but this time the characters are linked by water and the sea.

The novel begins in Australia in 2019 with student Lucy waking up from a sleepwalking episode with her hands around her ex-boyfriend’s neck. Ben is not entirely innocent – they broke up after he shared a nude photo of her with his friends – but she’s afraid he’ll report her for assault, so she packs her things and flees. Planning to take refuge with her sister Jess, an artist, Lucy heads for the town of Comber Bay, but on arrival she finds her sister’s house empty, as if it had been abandoned in a hurry. Lucy is concerned, but on learning that Jess did tell one of the neighbours that she would be going away for a while, she decides to wait in the house until she returns.

Comber Bay is a small town on the coast of New South Wales and has a sinister reputation; over a forty year period, eight men disappeared without trace, never to be seen again. Also, in 1982, a baby was found abandoned in a cave not far from Jess’s house. As she waits to hear from her sister, Lucy begins to uncover the truth behind these mysteries – but she becomes distracted by unsettling dreams of another pair of sisters who lived two centuries earlier.

Lucy’s present day story alternates with the story of those other two sisters, Mary and Eliza, who were found guilty of a crime in Ireland in 1800 and transported to Australia on a convict ship. Later in the book, Jess’s story also begins to unfold, mainly in the form of diary entries from the 1990s (the diary reads more like a novel, but I think we just have to suspend disbelief there). It takes a while for all of these threads to come together, but we eventually begin to see how cleverly they are connected. There are some surprising twists that I didn’t see coming, as well as some that I was able to guess before they were revealed. As ever, when a book has more than one timeline, I find that some are more compelling than others – and in this case, I particularly enjoyed Lucy’s story and the flashbacks to Jess’s teenage years. Mary and Eliza never fully came to life for me, so their adventures on board the Naiad didn’t interest me quite as much as I would have liked.

The title and cover of the book made me think there would be more siren/mermaid mythology incorporated into the story, but there’s only a little bit of that. There’s a lot of beautiful watery imagery, though, and water plays a big part in the novel in so many different ways. There’s Mary and Eliza’s sea voyage on the Naiad; the setting of Comber Bay, with its coastline, cliffs and caves; Jess’s paintings of ships; even the rare skin condition Lucy suffers from, aquagenic urticaria. It’s a book with lots of layers and things to think about. Having read two Emilia Hart books now, however, I do have a problem with her portrayal of men. Almost every male character in both books, with only a few exceptions, is either violent and abusive, a rapist or generally misogynistic or predatory. Obviously that’s true of some men, but I think it’s unrealistic that nearly every man who crosses paths with our female protagonists would be a terrible person. I think it should be possible to promote feminism and give women a voice without going too far in the other direction.

Apart from that, I did like the book and loved the eerie atmosphere Hart creates with Lucy alone in the abandoned Cliff House, uncovering the troubled history of Comber Bay’s past while being haunted by the cries of the women on the convict ship. It’s very similar to Weyward in some ways, but also different enough to be an interesting novel in its own right.

Thanks to The Borough Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Weyward by Emilia Hart

February 17, 202313 Comments

Witchcraft is a subject I always find interesting to read about, so I was curious to see how Emilia Hart would approach it in Weyward, her debut novel published in the UK earlier this month. It’s a book set in three different time periods, something which doesn’t always work for me, but in this case the three storylines are so closely linked I found the structure very effective.

In Shakespeare’s First Folio, the three witches in Macbeth are referred to as the ‘weyward sisters’, a term which evolved into ‘weird sisters’ in later versions – and just like Macbeth, Emilia Hart’s novel features three ‘weyward’ women.

In 2019, we meet Kate, a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship. Finally making the decision to leave, she flees London for Crows Beck, a village in Cumbria where she has inherited a cottage from her great-aunt, Violet. Settling into the house, known as Weyward Cottage, Kate begins to uncover some family secrets that help her to understand the great-aunt she barely knew. A second thread of the novel is set in 1942 and introduces us to Violet as a girl of sixteen living at Orton Hall with her father. She longs to know more about her mother, who died when she was a small child, but her father refuses to talk about her, except to say that Violet resembles her – and not in a good way. As Violet’s story unfolds, we find out how she came to leave Orton Hall and build a new life at Weyward Cottage.

The third of the weyward women in the novel is Altha Weyward who lives in Crows Beck in the early 17th century. Altha, who has a knowledge of healing and herbs passed down to her by her mother, is on trial for witchcraft, having been accused of killing a local man. As Altha waits to hear whether she will be found guilty, we learn more about her life in the village and the truth behind the man’s death.

The three women are linked not just by a family connection, but also through a shared love of nature. In fact, it’s more than just a love – it’s an affinity so strong that they are able to draw power from the natural environment and find comfort in surrounding themselves with plants and animals even at the most difficult of times. I could have done without so many detailed descriptions of insects and spiders, but on the other hand the affection these women have for even the least pleasant of creatures is what makes them unusual and different. None of them conform to society’s expectations and for Violet and Altha at least, this can lead to suspicion and distrust.

The male characters don’t come out of this book very well; from Kate’s violent, manipulative ex-partner and Violet’s cold, strict father to the men who hold Altha’s fate in their hands, they are very much the villains of the book. However, I did like Violet’s brother Graham and the little we learn of Kate’s father, so not all of the men are shown in a bad light. As for the three female protagonists, I liked all of them, although Violet was the one I felt the closest connection with. The three narratives are written in different styles using different combinations of first and third person and past and present tense, so I never felt confused as to whose story I was reading. Parts of Kate’s story towards the end were quite predictable, but otherwise all three storylines were gripping, staying with one character for just the right length of time before switching to the next, and with plenty of cliffhanger chapter endings to keep things moving forward.

I enjoyed Weyward, although there wasn’t as much focus on witchcraft as I expected – it’s more a book about the magic of nature and the obstacles faced by women over the centuries. It wasn’t always comfortable to read as all three of the main characters go through some very traumatic experiences, but I found it an interesting and unusual novel and will look out for more from Emilia Hart.

Thanks to HarperCollins UK/The Borough Press for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.