Liz's Reviews > The Sirens

Emilia Hart manages to do a good job of combining historical fiction, folklore, mystery and magical realism into a well crafted, suspenseful story. The Sirens relies on the two pronged storyline approach. The present day concerns Lucy, a student who leaves her university under a cloud of suspicion and heads to her older sister’s seaside home in New South Wales. But when she gets there, her sister is nowhere to be found. Her sister’s new hometown has its own sense of suspense - 8 men who have gone missing over the past few decades and an ancient shipwreck that cost 100 female convicts their lives. The historical story concerns two of those convicts, sent from Ireland in 1800 to Australia.
There was a great sense of underlying tension in both storylines. This was the rare book where I was equally invested in both stories. Both stories deal with the power men hold over women and how women find ways to wrest back some autonomy.
All four of the main characters were richly drawn and fully developed.
I was fascinated to learn there was such a thing as an allergy to water. Called aquagenic urticaria and it causes hives, swelling and itching.
There’s a large dose of magical realism entwined in both storylines. This is often a problem for me but it worked well here because of the links to so much folklore.
My thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this book.