I received an ARC of the book from the publisher, via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book asks the very important question of how different Gilead would be if it had mermaids and it absolutely delivered. Beautifully written, this novel was a joy to read from start to end. While it is indeed very reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale, it succeeds in being its own through it's solid engagement with queer identities by way of its many nuanced and well thought out characters and of course, the highly-evocative island setting. I do wish the pacing was a bit faster, particularly in the earlier bits, but Timms' elegant prose more than makes up for it.

If you thought The Handmaid’s Tale was great but needed mermaids, then Chloe Timms has answered your call with her rebellious debut about the bonds that shackle us to rigid communities and the desire for a spell to come along and set us free. Savage winds, overzealous fishermen and ominous storms linger on every page of this enjoyably stark debut: if you like your sea stories cold, The Seawomen is a no-brainer.

With the loudest of splashes, Timms shows no confusion about the book she is writing: this is a book for sea lovers; men have limp fish for moustaches, boys crowd girls like cormorants, women are bait on a hook. It is a book that coughs up every image of the sea Timms can muster. It also, primarily, a book for all the women longing to leave men and their toxic prisons behind in search of an enchanting, wipe-open sanctuary. Timms turns storms into rallying cries and the violence of ocean waves into moonlit embraces.

However, the very whiff of freedom in the sea salt spray is enough to have the women in the novel harassed, beaten, and finally exiled to the mercy of the ocean. Glance at the beautiful waves, pick up a pebble, fail to get pregnant: all of these are the mark of the seawomen: vicious, womanly demons that lurk in the depths of the island’s border and turn women away from God, away from goodness, and most heinously, away from men. Girls and women must keep their heads down to the earth — a holy place — and their emotions in check. Everybody born on the island lives in fear of these beliefs, enforced by the rule of Father Jessop, a bland-faced tyrant who moulds the island boys in his image and takes pleasure in the community’s many forms of exorcism and spiritual healing.

But this fast-paced and rather bitter sea tale begins with Esta as she is forced to attend her first Untethering by her devoted, mean-spirited grandmother. Esta is a little girl desperate to fit in with tradition but drawn to everything that is forbidden, with Untetherings — beach-side sacrifices all in the name of purity — a mandatory attendance to reinforce the Island’s superstitions. Women suspected of having been seduced by the sea are promptly tied to a raft and cast off to their deaths so that any ill-wind dies with them. This way, as everybody on land believes, God’s light can shine upon the island once more. It is a gripping start that efficiently sets up the laws of Timms novel and the characters that will enforce or break them in the time to come. From there, we follow Esta as she grows from a terrified girl to a curious teen, and finally to a woman that knows what she needs and the cost it will take to get it.

The problem is that Esta must follow the rules set by Father Jessop or perish as a pariah. If Esta is lucky, she will be “given a husband”. As a girl, one islander proudly advises her that girls are “best treated like animals”, in other words: keep them fed, warm, and inside a cage and they won’t bring evil to your doorstep. The heavy boot of male oppression is presented with the bluntness of a hammer, but it’s only pushed so aggressively as to allow you to easily support Esta with each step she takes in defiance of the men that crowd and control her.

There is, predictably, a tender romance threaded into the narrative to give extra risk to proceedings and also to offer moments of swoon-worthy warmth. Sadly, this is the weakest element of the book, unable to avoid a disappointingly shallow repulsion to attraction love story that lacked chemistry — those looking for sizzling waters will feel unsatisfied. Thankfully, where Timms takes the romance is more interesting, and the climax drifts in several narratively uncommon directions before settling on the one that was inevitable all along.

Since the story is exclusively focused on Esta and her internal struggles against an external world closing in, the supporting cast lacks a little depth and floats around without making much of an impact. Doran is the cruel boy that haunts Esta throughout, but besides showing up and shouting sea-witch a few times, he isn’t all that interesting and is quickly relegated to privileged bully status. Meanwhile, as the dominant force on the island, Father Jessop grows less mysterious and fearsome as the novel goes along. He is, in many ways, similar to Mayor Prentiss in The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness with his rigid beliefs and fear of women, but without the interesting inner philosophical conflict. Jessop is a forgettable villain in a story that could have done with more bite. There is also a general sense of plot imbalance in the novel with all the exciting bits squeezed into a breathless finale. Threads are left hanging, or forgotten altogether, and with it, some interesting side characters drift away. A sequel is almost certainly bubbling away somewhere.

As for the more mysterious aspects, given the delightful cover and synopsis, you’d be forgiven for anticipating a book with a real supernatural presence to it, but this is curiously lightweight, with all of the siren shenanigans confined to the background, just out of reach and off the page. Timms is more interested in the dynamics of Esta’s feelings and the role she is expected to play as another woman on the island. Much of this novel is spent with Esta itching to leave the creaking floorboards of her various homes and all the ways in which she can avoid talking to the men that demand her attention.

But the real heart of The Seawomen is with Esta and the sea; a constant draw to her eye, the whisper of something dangerous, unknown, exciting, and Timms exceeds where it matters, and that’s in creating a tantalising, palpable tug between one woman and the sea that is waiting for her to slide in. Water has long been tied to sexual awakening and birth, so it’s no surprise that Timms doubles down on this connection, with many passages like “the tide tonguing the heel of my boots” and “the water was pushing and pulling my thighs.” While the central romance fails to spark, there is no question that the book comes to life when reveling in Esta’s attraction to the sea that has defined her entire existence, only now she wonders if sinking into it might be the only way to truly live.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a heart wrenching, yet, wondrous tale. I was gripped from the first page and despised the novel’s villain and the constant judgment people living on the island experience. I would definitely read more of Chloe Timms work, it’s just next time, I’ll be prepared and have tissues throughout.

The Seawomen is a brilliantly written book about an isolated island community.

It follows the life of a young girl, Esta, and through her story reveals how the isolation enforced on the island’s inhabitants by their powerful and cultish church to ‘protect’ them actually keeps them vulnerable to dangerous manipulation. Although Esta’s story is often sad and terrifying there are frequent glimmers of hope and she develops into a resilient young woman with a silent conviction that the order of things on the island isn’t right and that her future lies in the forbidden Otherworlds beyond the horizon.

The book, like the ministers imagined version of the Seawomen, kept calling me back; eager to find out how our brave protagonist might find her freedom. Events from the past being slowly revealed hooking me further in.

This book is a great piece of storytelling, beautifully described, well paced and never predictable.

Thank you to Netgalley and the author Chloe Timms for the ARC.




Thanks to Netgalley and the author for the Arc

Unfortunately couldn't get past the first few pages. Nothing personal, I just didn't enjoy the writing style. 3 star rating because this was just a personal feeling

An island where men rule with an iron rod of religion and women are blamed for everything bad that happens, from the storms that blow in off the sea to a leak in the roof – this is the setting for Chloe Timms’s The Seawomen.
The mortal women who go about their daily island business of producing children and serving their men are under the cosh: ‘We shut our eyes and turn our heads and pray to god: we marry and we lie under men just to live another day.’
But the mythical Seawomen of the title are free, making them all the more reviled by the the island's self appointed leader, Father Jessop, and all the more alluring to Esta, our hero, who gradually realises who the true monsters are.
If this makes The Seawomen sound heavy going, it isn’t. It’s also a love story and a tale of friendships and family secrets. The writing is compelling and pacy, while the descriptions of the sea are sublime. And the concept is perfectly judged - just that touch beyond reality but, actually, not so very distant.

What a brilliant debut novel! Chole Timms' The Seawomen is intelligent, beautifully crafted, and hard to put down.

The story is set in a dystopian fictional island named Eden island, inhabited by a religious cult population. The common people are completely cut-off from everywhere else, following a twisted version of the Bible preached by generationally fanatic priests. They are kept in check with the fear of 'The Seawomen', creatures that can morally corrupt the women and call upon the wrath of God. The women's sole purpose is to bear children and look after the household. But, that's not all. Every woman is given a period of 12 months to conceive, failing to do so results in being drowned in the ocean. Not only that, the people here believe that every misfortune, from storm to sickness, is caused by some women coming under the influence of the Seawomen, and she is accordingly hunted and punished. In this place grows up the protagonist Esta. Orphaned as a child, she is brought up by her grandmother, one of the staunchest believers on the island. She slowly learns to question, yearn for freedom, uncovers the systemic corruption and tries to fight back. It is the story of her self-discovery.

The Seawomen reminded me a lot about The Handmaid's Tale, and I say it as a compliment. Things in this book are inspired by real-world events, be it corrupted religious leaders, witch-hunts, or the lack of autonomy for women. That makes it eerily relevant. Esta's journey from someone taught to believe without questions to seeking the truth is beautifully done, with its dilemma and guilt and the realizations of hope and dreams. The ending is perfect with the pitch of the story. I sincerely hope this book and Ms. Timms get the attention they deserve.

Highly recommended! 4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for providing a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Seawomen is an interesting blend of post-apocalyptic dystopia and folklore. It has basically no technology element and reads like historical fiction. We follow the main character Esta from childhood to adulthood in a society that shames women into submission and values them only as vessels for reproduction. This society lives isolated on an island where people are taught to fear the sea, and the creatures who inhabit it are seen as bringing evil and misfortune. Any woman who doesn't follow the set path of becoming an obedient baby-making machine is accused of being corrupted by the Seawomen and ultimately executed.

Reviews so far have indicated this book as very unique which, as someone who was raised around Catholicism I have to sadly disagree with. That said, this is in no way a bad or unoriginal book and in fact was very gripping, particularly past the halfway point. There is subtle foreshadowing as to what is going to happen to Esta woven throughout, and the writing overall was very evocative and created a fantastic sense of space and places.

Comparisons with The Handmaid's Tale will be inevitable but I think the general feel of this book is very different, as it takes place on a remote island and there is less of a "this could happen to you!" factor.
Esta is I believe a 4th generation islander whereas in the Handmaid's tale the characters have actually lived through the transition in their society and have first hand experience of "the before times".
For Esta this is the only reality she has ever known and I really did enjoy how her awareness grew gradually and she was trapped in a back and forth between what she'd been taught and what she was starting to figure out independently. The sense of guilt and confusion was captured very well and made the character's journey to self-empowerment all the more meaningful.

The Seawomen is an utterly mesmerising debut, beautifully written and observed through the voice of Esta, a protagonist who is immediately likable and whose childhood/adolescent/adult experiences growing up in a cult-like environment (no spoilers here) have you rooting for her from the very first page. I loved the way that Timms brought the island and its inhabitants to life; I could *taste* the salt of the sea as I read, and picture each unique character not only via their distinct personalities, but also some lovely imagery (one that comes to mind: ‘She had a dimple on her chin, like someone had pushed their thumb into her before she was fully bake.’ DEVINE!).

If you liked The Handmaid’s Tale, if you adored The Village, you’re going to LOVE The Seawomen. *****

Esta was raised on Eden's Isle by her grandmother and faces a life of piety, bound to a religious society who cut themselves off from the mainland in the name of salvation. The island is kept away the outside world, they fear the water, and the only way to remain virtuous is never to enter the sea, to follow God's word. Women on the island are controlled, married off and must conceive a child within the twelve months of their appointed motheryear. If she doesn't bear a child in that year, she is marked as cursed, and cast back into the sea as a sacrifice.

The premise of this book really intrigued me and although I was expecting a 'you're in a cult!' realisation and struggle to free herself sort of plot I was still sufficiently intrigued to see the how's and why's of that happening. I can only say that I am not normally a dystopian kind of reader however I like the odd flirt with the genre, I was not disappointed. The storytelling was such that I felt I was on that island and could see every building and every landmark.

The treatment of women in this book is very much 'it's all our fault and we should change but the men are fine' which historically we know to be more true than we would hope! But other than that I think the characters are well written and the growth throughout is steady and understandable.

My only issue is the action starts quite late and ends extremely abruptly, I am not sure if there is a sequel or not but if there isn't I guess it is open ended?

Overall I really enjoyed this read and getting lost on this island.

4.5 stars


Oh,this pulled me in from the first few pages,and I was rushing back to it every second I got.
It's dark,and grim,and horrifying and shocking and scary... and absolutely compulsive reading.
It's one I'm going to be buying for friends even if they don't like a bit of dystopian fiction (and what's wrong with them if they dont).
Possibly the best thing I've read this year.

I’m a woman and a mother of two young girls.

Trying to strike a constant balance between teaching them kindness and that ‘no’ is a complete sentence, between finding joy in their autonomy and teaching them to be wary, all through the lens of a 33-year-old female experience is, frankly, debilitating.

I dread the day that I look into their eyes and see that knowing that all women share and all women recognise. I don’t know what to do about it. If there’s anything I can do about it. If this is simply a rite of passage for women and girls.

The Seawomen by Chloe Timms gave me a space to explore some of these disquieting concerns.

Esta is raised by her formidable grandmother on the remote, self-governed island of Eden. Eden’s citizens are bound by its stringent religious laws and customs. Frightening is the public consequences for any who are even perceived to be in transgression. And the accused are always women.

A woman must marry the man chosen for her. And she must conceive a child within her allocated motheryear. The island accepts any failure to conceive as a sure sign from God that she (not her husband, just she) has been corrupted by The Seawomen, mysterious sea-dwellers believed to entice Eden’s women into helping them take over the island for untold evils.

Condemned women are bound to boats and forsaken to drown in the sea in an act called The Untethering. Indulging in vanity, not praying enough and even gazing out to sea are judged as omens.

As Esta uncovers one shocking truth after another about the island, its piety, its patriarchy and the Seawomen themselves, she reckons with danger, internalised dogma and her own heart. In a battle between safety and freedom, Esta must decide what each is ultimately worth.

The Seawomen presents a timely conversation on true societal freedom, why women are centred as objects of control and what each of us overlooks in the name of keeping our places in our respective communities, however uncomfortable the realities of those places may be.

Through the characters of Barrett, Esta’s father and Ingram, Chloe Timms expertly highlights the plight that men also suffer at the hands of patriarchy. However, these are collateral shockwaves borne from the epicentre of devastation inflicted on individual women’s lives in the first place.

Timms shows us it doesn’t start with the worst acts of brutality imaginable. It starts with words and ideas unquestioned, nonsensical attitudes adopted uncritically, fear of being outcast from a group amplified and played upon.

It is frustrating to engage in public discourse around violence against women and girls to be met with “not all men” and “women are violent too”. The Seawomen is the perfect work to encourage defensive minds to peel back further layers.

The conversation is not intended to be accusatory (although it can feel that way when viewed through the lens of limited characters and intended maximum emotional impact on Twitter).

It is meant to encourage society to look for the proverbial Patient Zero. To ask why she is oppressed, by whom, what liberation looks like for her and what we can each individually do to contribute to that liberation. And, most importantly, why we should actually want that liberation to materialise.

The Seawomen uncomfortably reflects back to us our sorrowful complicity in our own oppression, contrastingly from both fearing the alternatives, and from being trained to win approval, reward and power from our oppressors, as seen through Esta, Mull and Norah, and the Eldermothers respectively.

This novel reminds us to get uncomfortable and examine our sources of information with a meticulous eye. Especially sources we have never thought to question and particularly their attitudes towards othered groups.

Which groups are being othered and why? What does our source stand to gain from retaining power over this group, be that economical, geographical or supposedly moral?

What becomes of the othered group when we accept the ideology of our source, lazily trusting them to have done the hard work on our behalf of connecting with the othered group before deciding they are a risk?

What visceral reactions do our bodies produce when we even consider the possibility of disagreeing with our source’s decrees?

The surveillance by which Father Jessop instructed the inhabitants to practice put me in mind of post-WWII Russia, the practices of which time we easily blanch at the thought of.

Yet we carry out and revel in witch huntings and figurative burnings every day, online and in real life. For what we say we don’t like, for what we say we do like, for who we love, for how we dress, for how we raise our children, for what we believe in. It always seems to be women offenders who never rise from the ashes that remain.

On Chloe Timms’s writing, I was enthralled from the off with the raw voice of child Etsa. She narrates the dystopia in that stark, matter-of-fact way only a child can, making the events all the more chilling. It reminded me a lot of Chrissie in Nancy Tucker’s The First Day of Spring.

We follow Esta over a number of years into early adulthood, and with that journey and the different anxieties jostling for her attention comes subtle changes in her narration style and word choices.

So subtle, in fact, that I didn’t realise how much she changes until I went back to the beginning to pick out my favourite quotes! I thought it was genius.

The Seawomen is an important work and I truly hope it is widely read. It asks us to examine who in society has power, how they liberate or oppress with that power, how our individual, everyday actions uphold that power, what it would cost us to topple it and whether we’re brave enough to pay that price.

Many thanks to Chloe Timms, Hodder Studio and Netgalley for the ARC.

A horrifying dystopian tale in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale.
On a remote island, women are required to bear children during a specific year, their motheryear. They are forced into often loveless marriages, and their fate is out of their own hands.
Those who fail to produce a child are thrown to the Seawomen, in a ritual called the Untethering.

Esta is coming up to her own motheryear when she witnesses an untethering which haunts her. Can she escape the same horrific fate?

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for granting me an arc.

The first thing I thought when I started reading Seawomen was that this was a book on cults. In a way that's exactly what it is. The inhabitants live on an Island called Eden's Isle and they have lived there for so long that the original name of the island is now lost to history. There are no records, nothing to say who or what lived on the island before Esta's people first landed there. Led by Father Jessop the inhabitants of Eden's Isle are led to believe that they must remain pure, devoted to God and not give into the temptation of the Seawomen. Creatures who live in the sea and would seek to bring death and destruction to their island.

The island is a highly misogynistic place to live. The men lead and the women are expected to do their part and breed children once the Eldermothers declare them fit to be mothers. In truth, the women are the ones to watch for, the ones who are more likely to give into temptation. If a calamity befalls the island it is the work of the Seawomen and whichever woman on the island whom they have enchanted. Once the woman is found it often leads to a process called the Untethering. A brutal act in which the woman is tied down and cast out to sea to drown. Esta's grandmother forces her to watch each one, to show her what happens to the faithless.

Despite all this Esta is still drawn to the sea in a way she can't describe and one fateful night, chased by a group of boys, she finds herself drowning in the very sea she's drawn to. What shocks her the most is when she's saved not by a seawoman, but a seaman called Cal. A budding ill-fated romance begins to form, which turns Esta's and Cal's whole lives upside down as they struggle to find a way to be together in a world where his very existence is taboo.

I cannot rate this book highly enough - 5 stars is not enough! It is hands down the most beautiful book I have read. Unique and genre-defying - neither fable, folklore or dystopian fantasy but a delightful mix of all three. Esta's story has stayed with me and I feel privileged to have inhabited her world.
Lyrical prose elevates the descriptions of the daily grind of everyday life on Eden's Isle and lightens the dark, suspenseful passages so that the reader feels as if they are being caressed by words even as the words themselves slowly reveal the dark undercurrents of the misogynistic rules and rituals that women on Eden's Isle are forced to abide by.
Told by Esta, the story gradually reveals the disturbing truth to the reader as Esta matures - her understanding of the world she lives in expands just at the moment that her life constricts around her. Both feminist folklore and misogynistic myth, The Seawomen inhabits a beautiful, lyrical literary place that highlights's Chloe Timms's talent as an author.
The Seawomen is a surefire award winner and I would urge everyone to read this compelling tale.

Atmospheric with puritan overtones. Esta was born on the Isle of Eden, the same as mother before her. Eden is a world where religion holds all the cards, those cards are firmly in the hands of men whose word is law. Women are chattels, their worth is designated by how fruitful their uterus is. Following marriage, you have exact.y 12 months to conceive or be returned to the sea and the scheming seawomen who dwell there.

Esta is curious, too curious and listens to the sea tales told, a mixture of folklore, history and a little bit of magic. Her sisters all view one another with suspicion just in case eyes should be cast their way and they are accused. Watching the sea is forbidden for women, had she not that fateful day she would of missed him walking out of the waves.

Fiercely feminist and utterly unique. Timms is a bold new talent. This is a story about oppression, the bonds that tie us - and the lies that break us. Suspenseful and intensely engaging, from Timms' lyrical writing to the genre-bending, unpredictable plot, you won't be able to put this one down.

Wow what a fantastic book ,I have read an early copy on NetGalley Uk where I requested a copy of the book after seeing the author post of her delight about the first reviews she was seeing
I love a dystopian novel and this one has it all ,a misogynist dystopian society set on an island and mermaids and mermen
I was quickly drawn into the story where I was initially unsure if the undersea creatures of their religion were fictional or true beings .It was clear from early on that women were being treated harshly by the ultra religious society but it takes a while for the underlying truths to be laid bare
Island living adds an additional claustrophobia to the story which adds a lot to the feel of the whole book
I’m not much of a fan of romance in novels but did find the relationship between the narrator and merman added an additional element to the story and was ultimately believable
I rather liked the ending of the book which had sufficient ambiguity to be unexpected
In summary I enjoyed this book and liked its uniqueness and individuality it will stay with me

Amazing story and beautiful writing. A religious cult claims that the seawomen living in the water will corrupt the population - a dystopian future with a feminist twist.

The Seawomen is something totally new in dystopian feminist fiction. Beautifully written with a convincing cast of characters, it's set on a remote island with a cult-like leadership. Although completely removed from our own world, it draws so many adept comparisons with it. Timms kept me guessing right to the end!