I missed my chance to download the ARC of this title before it was archived, so here I am, 18 months later, reviewing a purchased copy!

This was a strange, eerie, unsettling book. I can understand why it wouldn't be for everyone. I have seen reviews where people say they just aren't invested in this story or the characters, and I can see how that might be. However, for the right reader with the right attitude going in, the whole book feels ethereally spooky... or spookily ethereal? I absolutely loved the endings in both timelines and I will definitely read Armfield's next.

There did come a point, in perhaps the third quarter of the book, where I became bogged down by Miri's voice and observations. Her first meeting with Juna is a great example. The details she narrates in this scene are specific to the point of being meaningless; it is a critical moment in the book - we're finally about to find out something! - and it is frustrating to have it disrupted by beyond-mundane thoughts. More compelling or illuminating ones, I would be okay with. But spending lots of time on Juna's looks and mannerisms felt like a roadblock to me. I believe that the scene is very in character for Miri, who has become flat and tired and burned out, simultaneously never and continuously surprised by things. I think the scene was written this way to reinforce how normalized the grief and horror had become for Miri; as motivated as the reader is to find out what Juna knows, Miri has equal and opposite energy for it. Still, it is also true that this is where the book nearly lost me and probably the other readers who complained of boredom. Alternatives might have been Miri offering a muted reaction, very little observation, and/or spacing out; these may have conveyed the same message but made for a shorter, less frustrating scene. My two un-asked for cents!

I couldn't get through this title. It ended up not being for me, but I hope it finds a hope with other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Reflective, tense, slow, and all together full of melancholy beauty, this book pulls out out just like the tide and then deposits you close enough to shore to swim back at the end.

While moments of this happened to be very eerie and enjoyable, I found myself unable to connect with most of the story. I felt as though there were too many tangents or MC went on that were not relevant to the story and only marginally helped set the tone.

An interesting premise of a story set after a submarine disaster. Leah is in a submarine accident and when she returns home,things are different. And it is slowly revealed what happened thru different POV. Interesting characters and conflict in this one...it was a bit slow at first but had a satisfying ending!

I wasn't expecting Our Wives Under the Sea to be a horror story but it was. It's sad and distressing and horrifying, both from Leah and Miri's side.

Leah suffered enough when her research sub was stranded under the ocean for months. She continues to suffer when she comes home.

Miri struggled while Leah was missing and still struggles when she comes back.

Also things aren't what they seem with the Institute Leah worked with. I wish that part had been expanded.

Haunting, gorgeous, devastating—everything you could hope for in a spooky novel where a loved one disappears under the sea and comes back irreparably changed!

This was such a weird and wacky book! I really enjoyed it and the sense of foreboding I had during some sections of the book. Great read.

A fascinating story of a woman who returns from several months in a submerged submarine. An interesting look at love, grief, mental health. Beautifully rendered story of love.

Honestly, I had a really hard time with this one. I just feel like I didn’t “get it.” I always felt like I was missing a piece of the puzzle. It was a super bizarre and horror-like read. I felt like the only thing keeping me reading was to try to understand what happened, but that wasn’t even accomplished by the end. I had very little connection with the characters as well.

When a deep-sea mission goes awry, Miri worries if she will see the love of her life again. When Leah returns, they attempt to reconnect, but something seems to be missing. Have they fallen out of love, or is something more sinister at play?

Told in alternating chapters, we see Miri in the present after the accident. She struggles with how much Leah has changed and reminisces on how things used to be. At the same time, there are increasingly strange things happening to Leah. She constantly needs to stay in the bath. She sometimes bleeds out her pores and has become despondent and disconnected. It all seems to be trauma from the accident, but Miri suspects something is either deeply wrong or they are no longer as connected as they once were. These chapters reminisce on their past relationship, how they met, their joys, their fights, and their passions.

The other chapters focus on Leah's accident. Her undersea sub suddenly loses power leaving her and her crew adrift, slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean with no hope of rescue. They pass the
Sunlight Zone, the Twilight Zone, the Midnight Zone, until they reach the bottom. Does a creature wait for them? How will they get rescued? This part is quite frightening as they drop uncontrollably to the bottom. A six-week survey turns into six months, with each crew member starting to fall apart at the seams.

The story is a mixture of horror and sadness particularly when it seems the relationship is going to end. The past reflections show how much they have changed, and it seems that this incident is a continuation of a deteriorating relationship. It becomes its own slow-motion disaster. There is so much poetry in the relationship, the book waffles between a slow-motion divorce and a horror novel. Armfield keeps the supernatural at bay to let this part breathe, making for a gripping journey. I couldn't put the book down. The ending doesn't go how I thought it would, but it makes for a very satisfying ending. Beautifully written.

Favorite Passages:
“What would you have done if you’d found something like that in your mouth?”
She is looking at me seriously now. I think about my own mouth, imagine it filled with things that have no business being there—ghost groans of words that died before my tongue could shape them.
“If I found something like that in my mouth, I’d spit it out.”

“Sometimes in the dark, I imagine I hear Leah knocking on the wall that separates us, neat little knocks that request not entry but only conversation. Not real, of course, but something to occupy my mind when my home seems to fill with water and I find myself without the correct materials to plug the gaps.”

“To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognize the teeth it keeps half-hidden.”

“I thought about the day it first occurred to me that, should she die, there would be no one in the world I truly loved. You can, I think, love someone a very long time before you realize this, notice it in the way you note a facial flaw, a speech impediment, some imperfection which, once recognized, can never again be unseen. Are you just now realizing that people die, Leah had said to me when I voiced this thought, tucked up beside her on the sofa with my knees pressed tight into the backs of hers. Not people, I had said, just you.”

“I remember the way that she looked at me, the open surge of her gaze, like I was something she’d invented, brought to life by the powers of electricity and set down there, in the last of the light.”

“Getting married was easy—twenty minutes, in and out. When I decided I wanted to get married, I told Leah and she started crying, which I hadn’t expected. I knew you wanted to, she said, I’m not surprised, I’m just crying. Carmen said she was quite startled to know that I’d been the one to do the asking, since I was the one with longer hair. I didn’t mean that the way it came out, she said, I meant to say congratulations, and then she hugged me very hard in a way that moved me a surprising amount. The town hall was having issues with its electrical supply thanks to a workman accidentally running a drill bit through the mains, and so the registrar had lit the room with battery-operated candles, which made everything seem more like a school play than it should have done. This is good, Leah said, mood lighting. People usually have to pay for this sort of thing. I told her to take it seriously and she smiled at me (the way her face moved, the way I had to tip my head up a little to look at her) and said that she’d never told a joke in her life. In the candle-dark, then, we got married, and came out afterward to gentle rain and no plans for the rest of the day, which felt like a miracle. Leah suggested we find something to eat and walked us over the road to a place that sold burgers, her hand in my hand like something obvious, something grown from the fabric of my own body and pressing out. The afternoon was strange-colored, inconsistent, the way the sky goes dark before a thunderstorm but the grass is still lit up and you can’t figure out where the light is coming from.”

Slow, but interesting. Super sad.I enjoyed reading between time and characters. It made the reading a lot faster, but the story had a slow reaction for me. Not my favorite, but will be a read again author.

This one wasn’t for me. I know many who loved this book, but I just didn’t get it.

Thank you NetGalley and Flatiron Books for this digital arc in exchange for my honest review which is not affiliated with any brand.

What an eerie read! This is the story of the aftermath of an oceanic exploration that goes wrong but the details of the journey are eked out slowly over the course of the book. The pace is just right; you just can't seem to quite figure out what happened until the end but you know it's bad! And what follows for these characters is discomfiting. I thought the storylines of the family members who were waiting for their loved ones was so touching. The author does such a good job of describing their helplessness and guilt, both when their family members are missing but also when they return home. The hints at corporate wrongdoing really lend themselves to the tone of the book; you just always feel a little off-kilter. This was a great read!

First, let me thank Flatiron Books and Netgalley for a review copy.

SYNOPSIS: Leah returns from a deep sea mission that was catastrophic. Miri thinks she got her wife back, but she didn't.. Leah is in no way the same person from when she left. What happened while Leah was on that vessel has clearly impacted her and she brought it back with her when she returned home.

Miri slowly comes to grasp that whatever life they had prior to Leah leaving for the mission is gone.

REVIEW: Leah was supposed to be gone on a quick mission, but in all actuality was gone for six months. When she got back, she began behaving strangely. She won't leave the bathroom, turning on the water faucets, as that seems to be the only thing that brings her comfort. She refuses to eat food, yet continuously craves salt water. Miri is her partner, but begins living a life alone, watching her wife slowly begin to disappear before her eyes. She wonders what truly happened when her wife was underwater?

How do you watch the person you love slowly fade away through no fault of your own? How do you watch them slowly slip away while it is completely out of your control?

The book flip flops between Miri's narration and Leah's journals. I wish that we were given more answers, but it truly made an impact that I won't forget.

VERDICT: 4 STARS

When a submarine expedition goes wrong, a marine biologist comes back home to her wife oddly and terrifyingly different. What follows is the search for answers into what happened below the sea.

This was a deeply poetic literary horror novel and I can't even really tell you what I read. It alternately intrigued and confused me at the same time. The writing is beautiful and haunting- the unknown cause and shifting of Miri's wife (Leah) after coming home from the exploration is spine chilling. This is definitely a niche genre and read, I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone, but it's absolutely beautiful and will blossom with the right audience. Even though I still don't necessarily understand everything I read, I can appreciate the prose and by the end I was all in my feels.

Fascinating story! Wonderful writer! What a way to tell a story.

Thank you for this advanced copy.

The rating may not be because of the story, but rather it confirmed that I can't read horror. It's not my jam, although I try when others are giving it good feedback.

A literary horror that had me either bored and zoning out or completely enthralled. This was no ordinary horror novel, but something beautiful in prose. I was freaked out most of the time and I loved it. Very short, but not sweet.

“The space around us is a claw half grasped, holding tight without quite crushing, and I wish, in the idle way I always wish these days, that I felt more confident in my ability to breathe.”

Our Wives Under the Sea is one of those stories that defies genre classification. It’s claustrophobic with scenes of body horror—bleeding teeth, closing passageways—but with the introspection and prose of literary fiction. It’s beautiful, moving, and intensely eerie. This novel prioritizes language and atmosphere in a way that won’t work for all readers (it’s a slow-burn for sure) but it certainly worked for me.

The novel looks at different types of grief, almost asking the reader to measure them against each other, and doesn’t offer any answers, but presents everything and quietly steps away to leave you with your thoughts. Finishing the book left me feeling both melancholic and disoriented, which is what I think the book aims to do.