The Sirens

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Synopsis

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 nowhere to be found.

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 bears them further and further from all they know, they begin to notice changes in their bodies that they can’t explain.

From the critically-acclaimed, bestselling author of WEYWARD comes a story of sisters separated by hundreds of years, and yet bound together in more ways than they can imagine. 

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.

Synopsis source: StoryGraph

What pattern is that?
Pictured with the book in this post is my Berlin Letters Cowl, pattern currently unwritten. It’s made by alternating treble and single crochets in the round.

Review

Genre(s): Fantasy, Fiction, Magical Realism
HB&W Rating: 2 stars
View on StoryGraph | Goodreads
Buy on Barnes & Noble, Amazon
Releases April 1, 2025

I was excited for an eARC of this book after how much I loved Weyward. The Sirens promised to fulfill my yen for feminine rage with sirens who lure bad men to their death and that cover…swoon! Sadly, it did not deliver.

This book was very slow-paced to the point that it literally put me to sleep multiple reading sessions until I got about 40% in. Normally, if a book doesn’t grab me by 30%, I’ll DNF it. I kept going and because I always try a little harder for ARCs and because I remembered Weyward being a slow-burn as well. I was giving the book the benefit of the doubt because I had listened to Weyward on audio and sometimes that makes slower-paced books go faster, and since this was an eyeball read for me, I wanted to give it a fair chance.

I wasn’t falling asleep anymore after 40% but it still didn’t grab me the way Weyward did. Mary and Eliza’s timeline was more interesting to me than what was happening with Lucy and Jess for the majority of the book, but it still let me unsatisfied. I wanted more story, background, depth. If I got little of those things with May and Eliza’s storyline, I got even less with Lucy and Jess’ storyline. I was confused by Lucy’s actions in the beginning of the book as well as throughout most of the book, her motivations dubious or unclear. The whole beginning felt a bit forced, just a means to get Lucy where she needed to be for the story to move forward. It felt almost like Lucy’s timeline was just a placeholder until the other storylines converged with it, with nothing really happening to move the plot forward.

The plot finally started to pick up and become more interesting around 75-80% but even at that point, it was easily putdownable. The story had a decent ending, but it was a bit anti-climactic and unsatisfying. The writing itself was very lovely, beautifully, terrifyingly descriptive in places, but the story just never really grabbed me.

Overall, it was too slow, lacked atmosphere and cohesive and engaging plot, and was a bit of a let-down.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an eARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Until next time,

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