Our Wives Under the Sea is a claustrophobic horror novel told from the perspectives of Miri and her wife Leah, who returns from a deep sea mission after being presumed dead and seems to have come back changed. This slowly unfolding tale binds Miri’s helplessness in the face of her situation and the unbearable pressure of the sea as Leah recounts what happened to her in that tiny capsule at the bottom of the ocean. Armfield’s prose is line after line of poetic language and I dog-eared so many pages to reread later. I’m not sure if this novel hit in an especially timely manner because of how it resonated with all the feelings brought on by the restrictions of Covid-19, but I was transfixed. My only dissatisfaction with the novel came towards the end, in a reveal which I felt both answered too much and not enough, but I’m not sure there would be any ending that would satisfy every reader of this novel, and dear reader, the terrifying journey was worth it.

I adored this, and I really didn't expect to in this way, because I honestly knew nothing about it before reading. When I had requested it on Netgalley I don't know that I even read the description, somehow it just ended up on my list regardless. Anyways, absolutely spellbinding. I read it in two sittings, and would have done it in one if I didn't have to sleep and attend class. The mystique surrounding it, but especially the truly singular depictions of loss and losing someone that come wrapped up in that, consistently pulled me along. Julia Armfield's descriptions and little observations are fantastic and there were so many points where she introduced small ideas that felt so unique and specific, but these moments come so casually and naturally that it does feel like our narrating protagonists would have had these thoughts. The genuine tenderness of the relationship at the core of this novel is just so real and specific and lovely, and it only becomes more poignant the more odd the circumstances grow. Heartbreaking and cathartic, the act of letting go is laced throughout, through the little observations characters have about loss in their past, and about moving on.

I will avoid spoiling anything regarding the main plot here, but the genre elements are done incredibly well, working to enhance the emotional effect rather than inhibit. Something that could come off as pulpy instead has a thoughtful, wistful effect. And though you get the feeling that something strange is inevitably going to occur, it stays within the realm of believability for longer than it has any right to given that strangeness, yet it pulls it off beautifully.

One minor qualm with the author's style: She has a tendency to place dialogue tags in the middle of pieces of dialogue, but there are a couple times where this is not done in ways that make sense or add to the flow of the words being spoken. Sometimes it even seems completely random, with a word or two floating before the tag while the rest of the line picks up afterward. I don't know why I felt the need to comment on this, it probably only happened like twice and that was enough for my brain to pick up on it.

Some have called this a horror novel, but I don't know if that's an accurate description. Perhaps it owes something to the horror genre, but if it's horror it's a very soft horror, built more on sadness than scares.

Really stunning literary horror, very different from anything I’ve read.

We follow Miri who is dealing with the fact that her wife has come back from an underwater 6 month research trip very very different. I loved Miri’s character, she was quite neurotic and very relatable, although didn’t make the best choices.

We also get from Leah, Miri’s wife, diary/log entries detailing the research trip gone wrong. These were an amazing addition that give us more information on Leah’s side of things, but they don’t really give us any more information on Leah’s current changes. I’m glad the author kept this kind of vague, I felt like it really upped the creepy factor not knowing what the heck was going on.

The prose was immaculate with a quiet, melancholy tone that I always enjoy. My only critique would be that there were a few points that dragged, but all in all a very unique addition to the horror genre that I foresee being a huge hit this year!

ARC received via Netgalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

I loved Julia Armfield's previous collection of short stories and was really looking forward to this, her debut novel, and i'm so glad to say it delivered fantastically.

This book has beautiful writing, a slow-burn creeping dread cosmic horror, and two characters who make it easy to root for them. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.

This was one of the books I was most looking forward to this year and it completely delivered. I found it to be so well-crafted: the writing itself is beautiful and the story itself is the kind of horror I enjoy most: contemplative and unsettling. There is some body horror and a few gross moments, but I would say overall here the tone is more towards creeping dread and less toward jump-scares and surprises. The portrayal of the relationship here also really stuck with me; I know I will continue to think about this book and look forward to picking up more from this author. I think readers who enjoy tense, relationship-focused stories, elements of fabulism and magical realism, and ambiguity and depth in their horror will really enjoy this.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Picador for a free ARC of this book in exchange for review.

This book is a story following Leah and Miri both before, during, and after a mysterious submarine accident leaving Leah unable to return to land.

This book was tough for me to rate. The writing is hauntingly beautiful. That said, I felt some of the parts were repetitive. It took me a few weeks to read this book, which is rare. I loved reading Leah’s sections because I could piece together her journey. Much of Miri’s sections, though, were incredibly slow. Once Leah returns home, Miri recounts in each chapter the pain she faces in seeing Leah live her life out of the bathtub. I felt like these were the only scenes described through her sections, particularly in the second half of the book. There is only so much interaction she can have with the shell of her former wife.

That said, I did enjoy the story. I just do not think I will pick it up to read again anytime soon.

How would you react if the love of your life were to return from an assignment changed to their very core? Would you be able to commit your entire being to making the adjustments necessary to forever care for and adapt? Julia Armfield raises these types of foundational questions in her eloquent debut novel "Our Wives Under the Sea".

It will come as no surprise to readers of Armfield's prized 2019 collection "Salt Slow" that the language in "Our Wives Under the Sea" is beyond stunning. The style is innovative and moving. But it is the story that will stay with me. It starts out as a reasonably plausible drama that tests two spouses in a fundamental way. It quickly devolves into dark and increasingly disturbing places. Armfield continues to mesmerize with language and style as the reader sinks ever more deeply into an abyss.

It feels like Armfield is constantly asking. “Are you (really) as strong as you think?” “Our Wives Under the Sea” is a novel that will meet people in different emotional places, appealing to a wide audience. Ms. Armfield is a special talent.

Thank you to Picador and Netgalley for the eARC.

Quite literally, this hooked me from the very first line and kept me the entire time. I've been anticipating Our Wives Under the Sea because I absolutely adored Salt Slow and have been looking forward to Julia Armfield in novel form as well. Reading an ARC in January of a book that comes out in July and preemptively calling that it's likely to be one of my favorite reads this year, if not the top one. I loved this SO MUCH.

If you look at recent aquatic horror as a spectrum, I would put The Luminous Dead on one end and Our Wives Under the Sea on the other. The Luminous Dead finds its horror in action and the events that are taking place within the narrative. Our Wives Under the Sea finds its horror in the contemplation of grief and change. Of course, there is always a psychological element to horror as character react to the goings on. But this deep dive (pun intended) into Miri's psyche when Leah comes back from her supposedly routine research expedition and Comes Back Wrong is entrancing. There isn't a lot of plot here. It's a lot of ruminations, musings. It's repetitive, in an effective way. Miri and Leah's routine is disrupted and they have to settle into a new one. But how to do you settle into a new routine when the changes don't stop happening and you're grieving someone who is standing right in front of you?

I appreciated the alternating POV, between Miri's once Leah returns and Leah's while she's lost in the submarine. I like that there is very little explanation as to what is happening, though I can see why some people may not be as satisfied with that. It goes to show that you don't always know why things are happening but it doesn't stop the fact that you still have to react to them and they still impact your life. Now I'm waxing poetic and getting dramatic. That all is to say -- I cannot get over how much I loved this book.

"Ghosts don't speak"', she said to me. "People misunderstand this. They think that when you're haunted you hear someone speaking but you don't. Or not usually. Most of the time, if you hear something speaking, it's not a ghost - it's something worse.“

Our Wives Under The Sea is a disquieting novel about a woman dealing with her wife returning after a deep sea mission gone wrong and realising that things cannot go back to how they were. Miri's wife Leah went down on a submarine for a research project and didn't come back for six months, far longer than she was meant to be gone, and now she's back, she's not the same, distant and unsettling. Not knowing what happened or what will happen to Leah, Miri has to try and navigate an unknown reality whilst grieving for their
past life together.

Julia Armfield is a genius author. Our Wives Under the Sea won me over from the first chapters, I felt like I was inside the book, I felt the pains and fears of the characters, Julia's writing is phenomenal.

I loved how the story unfolded, it was surreal to follow Miri and Leah's relationship. Simply one of the best books of 2022.


thanks to Picador and NetGalley for the ARC in
exchange for an honest review.

So beautiful. So sad. So amazingly well written. It was a very interesting take on loss and grief. I can't wait to see what Julia Armfield comes out with next.

An introspective, hypnotic tale on loss, with moments of haunting imagery, Our Wives Under the Sea is a literary horror through and through, where a series of inexplicable phenomena builds towards a pivotal theme — in this case the crippling grief of losing someone you once loved, and how to let go. Readers expecting a clear account of the how and why will be let down by the novel's lack of resolution, as Our Wives Under the Sea focuses its effort primarily on characters' emotional journey, rather than telling a corporate conspiratorial plot it merely hints at on the peripheral. It also feels much longer than its page count, not because the plot is stagnant or overwritten, but Julia Armfield really hones in on dissecting the minutia of a bystander overwhelmed/numbed by the lack of capability to help. Downbeat and not at all pleasant — it's not a novel one can pick up on a whim and fly through in one sitting.

While it sounds like I'm giving this novel a lot of caveats, Our Wives Under the Sea achieves exactly what it aims to accomplish: a human drama with visceral grotesque elements (in that way it reminds me of the 2018 film Hereditary), and it truly delivers the claustrophobic experience one often associates with drowning (both physically and metaphorically); a recommendation if you're in the right head space for a depressing slow burn.

Lyrical, creepy and atmospheric story about the disintegration of a marriage, and a horror story about a person coming back from a dangerous and scary place. This is part horror novel and part literary fiction and I enjoyed the story about the relationship between anxious and loving Miri and adventurous Leah. The story is told in present time by Miri who is happy that her wife Leah has returned after a three -week trip in a submarine turned into six months, and Leah's voice from the past which told the story of herself and her two team members on their mission. I admit I liked Leah's story the best as I was very curious as to what the mysterious mission under the sea was all about, what happened when their controls failed and they began to sink, and most all what the Centre was all about who hired them for the. mission.

The story is filled with a lot of metaphors and descriptions of bodily functions and of water in all its components and it gave the story a dream like quality at times. Miri was happy to have the return of Leah but is unable to understand the changes in her wife and doesn't know how to help her especially since Leah doesn't appear to want any help and the mysterious centre won't return her calls. As Leah begins to change into someone perhaps not human, the story becomes intense with Leah's chapters talking about how her crew begin falling apart when they are trapped under water for so long although they have air and food. Was their trapping part of an experiment? What is/was their real mission under the sea? This proves a nice counterpart to Miri trying to find ways to help Leah while realizing the wife she once had no longer exists.

I would have liked more information on the mission and the connection between being trapped in the submarine and the changes happening to Leah, but I think the author was going for magical realism here and too much information might ruin the overall effect. I enjoyed this book and will be thinking about this story for awhile. I waiver between four and five stars because I do think a bit more information on the crew and the Centre would have added something to the story for me. Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Our Wives Under the Sea is a metaphor about grief, the anguish of loving someone who has disappeared. The chapters alternate between Leah’s experiences trapped in a submarine at the bottom of the sea and Miri’s depression and abandonment, both before and after Leah’s return. Leah’s isolation in the submarine is mirrored in Miri’s loneliness at the surface. The writing is dreamlike, reminiscent of Otessa Mosfegh, but much more compelling and substantive.

There is a hint of the supernatural that is the center of the story; something happened to Leah and her crew during those weeks in the deep. An inexplicable organization called “The Centre” was in charge of this research expedition, but their purpose and motivation was never resolved.
Armfield’s story of love explores the despair of grieving for someone who has transformed into someone you no longer know, and the courage to let them go. Our Wives Under the Sea is simultaneously romantic and foreboding. Highly recommended.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Flatiron Books for this advance copy in exchange for my review.

OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA is unique, strange and unsettling, but ultimately feels unfinished. This debut novel,
explores the not uncommon trope of what happens to a relationship when one partner suddenly becomes a completely different person. Usually, this happens as a result of amnesia, war, or sudden disability. What's different here is that Leah returns home to her wife Miri, after being trapped in a submarine in the deepest depths of the ocean. A three week dive turned into a five month mysterious absence. In alternating chapters, Miri describes Leah both as she was and what she has become, while Leah's chapters focus on the months underwater. We learn that Leah now barely speaks, stays in the bathroom with the water running almost all day, and exhibits bizarre physical symptoms such as a seemingly shedding and translucent skin. Miri's despair at the loss of the person who once was is clear and poignant. What's less clear is exactly what went wrong with the submarine that causes Miri and her two colleagues to become trapped. There are hints that perhaps the center for which they all worked had some sort of sinister motives, but it's never fully explained. It also appears as though there is an altercation with some new species of sea creature, and that somehow Leah is in fact becoming a sea creature, but it's vague as to how or why exactly this happened. The story is engaging and well written, but too many questions are left unanswered.

Our Wives Under the Sea is a beautifully written book. It's more thoughtful than most horror, much of it taking place in the minds of the two main characters, Mira and Leah. The story leaves a lot of questions unanswered, and the reader has to use her own imagination. I suspect this tale will stick with readers and we'll all be filling in our own blanks, coming up with a hundred different possibilities.

What was the big eye on the bottom of the ocean? Why is Leah changing? What was Jelka hearing? What ever happened to Matteo? What the hell happened to Matteo? And was that little bitty St. Brendan moving around on its own? That little dude was creepier than the big eye.

Our Wives Under the Sea is way different than the books with never ending action. Lots of description, both lovely and gross. Lots of memories and thoughts. It's a good novel for those who love the beauty of language.

The kind of read that slowly pulls you in and down, like Leah going to the bottom of the sea. Tremendous book, surreal and creepy, with two similarly voiced but still distinct main characters. I very much enjoyed Miri's Internet browsing of fantasy forums about lost husbands (including the flashes of humour where she leaves snarky comments, accidentally in all caps), the tangents about horrifying sea creatures, and Leah's childhood memories leading to her work in undersea research and her eventual doom. To be honest I wish the book had been a bit longer, I would have loved to have read more about Miri's relationship with her mother, and what exactly happened at the bottom of the trench. But Leah's transformation was so effective and terrifying. Looking forward to more from this author.

THE PLOT: This is the story of Miri and Leah, wives (whose queer identity is never treated as unusual or special, but like any other romantic relationship) who share a home and a totally standard life. Leah researches the ocean, diving down in submarines to see life we all can only dream of and Miri works from home as a freelancer. Told through the two women's alternating voices, we jump around in time, watch Miri lose her mother, see the two women fall in love and get married, we see how Leah's love of the ocean grows as she does, from child to woman. And we see when it all starts to go wrong.

Leah returns from her latest trip into the deep blue... different. As the story unfolds, we see what life was like underwater and how that single experience changed Leah into someone (something?) that Miri can't totally identify.

MY TAKE: I always love when an author is able to make the strange and impossible feel totally normal and, in a weird and wonderful way, Julia Armfield does that in Our Wives Under the Sea. I couldn't put this book down and I was dying to know more when it ended. I wanted to know the why and how and the who of what happened to Leah, but in a lot of ways, it doesn't matter. What matters is the relationship between Leah and Miri, the love that binds them, and how one single experience manages to change their lives together forever.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a gorgeous book about discovery, loss, grief, and memory. Told in alternating chapters between Leah - a deep sea explorer who's been at the ocean's floor for six months - and her wife Miri - who's been waiting for her to resurface. Armfield’s prose is ominous, beautiful, haunting, and a little disturbing. This is already one of my favorite novels of 2022, maybe ever. And really, I can’t stop thinking about it!

Good book. Kept me entertained.. Had a unique story line which I appreciated. So many stories these days are so similiar.

The first half of this book could've been done away with. It was mainly useless information about the characters lives before the plot of the story takes place. Nothing pertaining to the story line. I almost didn't finish it.

The second half picks up and starts to get interesting. It sticks more to the major plot line, starts to unravel the mystery of what happened under water. Just when you think you're going to get some answers, the books ends. I was infuriated.

This had a lot of promise and the summary was deceiving to say the least. The author seemed to care more about word choice than actually writing a good story. You're left with more questions than answers. It was just blah.

I honestly wouldn't have finished it, but I was given a free copy from Netgalley and felt obligated.