The Sirens

The Sirens is British-Australian author Emilia Hart’s second book, published in 2025. Both this and Hart’s debut novel, Weyward (2023), were New York Times bestsellers. The Sirens was also selected as a Good Morning America book club pick, a LibraryReads selection, and an Indie Next pick. The novel weaves together the stories of three different women, connected across time, from 1800 to 2019. Through their narratives, Hart explores themes including Female Connections as Protective Influence, The Pull of Familial Relationships, and Discovering and Expressing Oneself.

This guide is based on the 2025 St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of sexual violence, sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, child abuse, death, death by suicide, physical abuse, emotional abuse, pregnancy loss, graphic violence, racism, and religious discrimination. 

Language Note: The source material uses language that reflects antigay bias and uses slurs to refer to women who perform sex work. This study guide reproduces this language only in quotations.

Plot Summary

Inside a cave beside the sea, a woman gives birth to a child. 

In February 2019, the novel’s present-day timeline, college student Lucy awakens from a sleepwalking episode to find she has tried to strangle a classmate, Ben. Lucy had sex with Ben and sent him a nude photo of herself that he later circulated on social media. Knowing she will be accused of a crime, Lucy flees to visit her sister Jess, a painter, who has recently bought a house in Comber Bay, New South Wales.

As she travels, Lucy listens to a podcast describing the mysteries of Comber Bay. Over the past decades, several men have disappeared there, collectively known as the Eight. In 1982, an infant named Baby Hope was found in a sea cave near a cliff called Devil’s Lookout. The couple who adopted her later left the area. 

Lucy arrives at Cliff House to find the house empty and the door unlocked. She stays at the house and meets Jess’s neighbor, Melody, who says Jess left for a few days. The paintings Jess is preparing for an exhibition echo the dreams Lucy has recently been having about women traveling in the dark hold of a ship. There was a notorious shipwreck in Comber Bay in 1801, and people say they can sometimes hear the drowned women singing. Seeking clues as to how she and Jess could be having the same dreams, Lucy locates Jess’s high school diary.

In 1800, Mary, a 16-year-old Irish girl, first views the ship that will carry her and her twin sister Eliza to New South Wales. The ship, which has a mermaid prow, is the Naiad, the ship from Lucy’s dream and from the infamous shipwreck in Comber Bay. Mary and Eliza, who is blind, meet some of the other women on board and learn their stories. 

Mary still grieves the loss of their mother, whom their fisherman father met on the seashore and who drowned when they were five. Mary and Eliza were warned to stay away from water, but on the night of Samhain, when they visited a local stream, a man named Byrne assaulted Mary. Eliza intervened by striking Byrne on the head with a rock. The girls were sentenced for transport for the assault, and Mary fears the future that awaits them in New South Wales.

In the present, Lucy reads Jess’s diary, which begins in 1998, when she is 16 years old. Jess feels isolated and different because of her skin condition, a rare allergy to water called aquagenic urticaria, and she wonders if she is genetically related to her parents, because neither of them has it. The one bright spot in her life is taking extra lessons from her art teacher, Cameron Hennessey, who is young and attractive and believes Jess has talent. 

Jess has sex for the first time with her best friend Max after he rescues her from nearly drowning when she sleepwalks into his pool. Later, she tells Cameron about her sleepwalking and the image of the woman from the dreams she keeps having, whose name she thinks is Eliza. She searches for information about her past and discovers that she is Baby Hope, found in the Comber Bay cave and adopted by fisherman Robert Wilson and his wife Judith. Distraught, Jess arranges to meet with Cameron, and they have a sexual encounter.

In the present, Lucy is upset by the diary and its revelations, wondering if this means that Jess is not her sister. She researches the Naiad and finds the names Mary and Eliza on the passenger list. Lucy’s own sleepwalking incidents keep bringing her closer and closer to water, just like Jess, and she wonders why she and Jess are both dreaming of these women. 

The police visit Cliff House, looking for Jess in connection with Cameron Hennessey. Afterward, Lucy talks with Melody about her fears for Jess. To explain why she is not worried, Melody describes how Daniel Smith, one of the Eight, disappeared: He tried to force Melody to have sex with him while they were visiting the sea cave, but the sound of women’s singing lured him away. Melody believes the bay protects women, and Jess is not in danger. Returning to the diary, Lucy finds a picture of an ultrasound.

The narrative flashes back to 1999 when Jess, pregnant, takes a bus to Cliff House. She wants to give birth in the cave where she was found, and where she believes she can hear women singing. Her father finds her at the cave and takes her to the hospital. The state accuses Jess of endangering her child, who she named Lucy, and wants to put her in foster care. Jess’s parents offer to be Lucy’s carers.

In 2019, Jess reflects on how she has come to Comber Bay to try to get in touch with the women in her dreams and make sense of her past. While preparing the final painting for her exhibition, she gets a call from Cameron. He’s been accused of sexually assaulting girls at the school where he teaches and wants Jess to shelter him. When Cameron arrives, Jess realizes he took advantage of her all those years ago, even though they didn’t have sexual intercourse. She tells Cameron they can hide for a time in the cave, but after several days of being trapped there, Cameron attacks Jess.

Lucy, dealing with the knowledge that Jess is her mother, calls their parents, who promise to drive to Cliff House right away. After she finds Cameron’s wedding ring at the top of the stairs leading down the cliff, Lucy takes a knife and climbs to the cave.

In 1801, the convicted women aboard the Naiad are starving as the captain limits their rations and water. They work together to open a cask of rum in the hold and drink it. The captain is furious when he finds out and punishes an older woman, Aoife, who takes the blame. Aoife dies from the flogging, and Mary feels anger toward men like Byrne and the captain, who harm others with no repercussions. She also realizes that she and Eliza are developing scales and gills, and she is frightened about what it will mean when they arrive on land.

When the Naiad runs aground on the rocks, Mary remembers that their mother was a merrow, an Irish mermaid, and had wanted to bring her girls to live in the sea. Mary and Eliza, who now have fins and gills, save their friends, who want to return home. Mary decides to stay in the bay to bring justice to men like the captain. She also decides that she wants to be a mother.

Lucy arrives at the cave to find Jess safe and Cameron gone. Jess says he drowned. Jess embraces Lucy as her daughter and takes her for a swim underwater. They hear a boat overturn in the bay and realize that their father Robert is drowning. Jess and Lucy save him.

In April 2019, Jess and Lucy are at Cliff House with their adoptive parents. Robert is recovering from the accident. Jess and Lucy have fully embraced their merrow forms, though they keep this a secret from the others. Max, who Jess has revealed is Lucy’s biological father, is coming to visit.

In an epilogue that takes place 37 years earlier, Robert Wilson has a love affair with Mare, a mermaid he meets in Comber Bay. She tells him she has been responsible for the disappearance of the other men, but Robert is different. One day, instinct leads him to the shore of the sea cave, where he finds an infant—Baby Hope. Robert realizes she is his child with Mare.