Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the Kindle ARC. What a great piece of contemporary fiction, mixing in very subtle horror. I hadn't read the tag that part of the story was tagged as horror but the shift from contemporary to horror was very smooth and startling as it happened. Mimi and her wife, Leah, have been in a relationship and marriage for over seven years. Mimi writes grant applications as a living and Lean works for The Centre, an apparent sea exploration organization. Mimi gets used to Leah being gone on expeditions, but on the last expedition, Leah and her crew don't return when expected. What is horrifying is the description of what happens to Leah and her mates Mateo and Jelka, while at the bottom of the ocean with no power and nothing connecting them to the world above. When Leah finally returns from the expedition, she has changed in ways that Mimi doesn't understand. Her gradual decline and unresponsiveness to her wife are also horrific. The writing is meaningful and shows a relationship that was once strong sink to the depths of the ocean.

"The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness."
Thank you NetGalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

"Our Wives Under the Sea" by Julia Armfield is the story of a lesbian couple Miri and Leah after Leah returns from a deep-sea mission from a company that is shady and ended it disaster.

I would give "Our Wives Under the Sea" by Julia Armfield a 5-star review because, without giving away spoilers 1; I loved the plot line even though it left one big question at the end 2; I loved the characters Leah for love of deep-sea animals 3; I loved that the story centers around a lesbian couple in a horror fic 4; there were many parts that I could personally connect with and 4; overall I loved every aspect of it even though it left me with one big question at the end I really hope there will be a book two.

This book was a little bit of a mixed bag for me. Julia Armfield is a beautiful, lyrical writer. Her prose is made of starlight. It's attention grabbing and keeps my intrigue. Unfortunately, that's all that this book was for me: pretty writing. Although this book is about the exploration of grief, relationships, and letting go, everything feels surface level. Miri and Leah sound exactly the same, and Miri's monologue about their relationship is, unlike the sinking levels of this book, extremely shallow. Did they ever fight? Did they ever laugh until they cried? Did they sleep tangled in each other, did one snore, did one ever have nightmares, were dishes ever thrown, how did they know they were in love with each other? All of these questions pretty much went unanswered. Their relationship felt like bite sized tidbits instead of a deep exploration. Which, speaking of, Leah's chapters were definitely the most interesting of the two, but they weren't enough to keep me entirely interested throughout. I do like that her condition is never really explained. I love the ambiguity of it all, the ending, too. But unfortunately, if the book is about character exploration and character-driven, I need a deeper conversation than the one had here.

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

Our Wives Under the Sea is a romance, gothic, suspense, and horror novel, as well as a character study, and it does all of them wonderfully. It's tense, reflective, haunting, sad, and beautiful. In this dual POV book, we follow Leah, a researcher who has just returned from a deep sea mission gone wrong, and her wife Miri. Leah's mission was supposed to take three weeks, but she did not return for six months. As the book progresses, we learn what happened to Leah, and we watch as both of them deal with the new shape their relationship has taken.

I absolutely loved this book. This was my first introduction to Julia Armfield, and now I know I need to pick up Salt Slow. The writing was beautiful and haunting. "Elegiac" is a word I've seen this book described as, and I have to agree. I felt every pang of love and loss expressed by these characters, especially Miri. This book asks the questions, "How far are you willing to go for the one you love?" and, "Can your love endure in the face of seemingly irrevocable change?" It was everything I expected and so much more. I can't wait to pick up a physical copy.

*I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily.*

Book 52 of 2022 — Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

I found this book as an uncorrected proof on NetGalley. It is set to be published July 12, 2022. Thank you Flatiron Books.

Upon finishing this book, I feel one thing — unsettled. A beautiful portrait of change in marriage, but I’ll be honest…it’s very heavy.

The book alternates between Miri in present day, trying to piece together what happened to her wife on a deep sea expedition. Leah comes back from the mission wholly changed and we view the events leading up to her return in the past from her viewpoint.

It’s a definite slow burn. I slogged through the first 20% to finally get to some sense of being hooked. I have a VERY hard time not finishing a book, so I will power through just about anything.

I really enjoyed the writing style. Armfield is descriptive to the point of being overwhelming. You can hear the sounds and see the spaces she details.

An interesting read. I liked the religious aspect in the God versus “little g”god. I feel like I’m not quite smart enough to get the whole gist, but it was definitely worth the try!

4⭐️/5

A claustrophobic piece of literature. I liked the atmosphere and the imagery but not exactly a favorite. Full review to come closer to pub date!

It's been a long time since finishing a book has made my heart ache like it did when I finished Armfield's beautiful novel. Her writing is so gorgeous and the chapters alternating between Leah and Miri sustained the suspense perfectly. I also loved Salt Slow but this is even better.

our wives under the sea was just as delightfully odd and gorgeously written as the author’s short stories. this is a brilliant addition to my favourites list.

This is an extremely haunting book that I would probably call a mix of horror, literary fiction, and magical realism.
Our Wives Under the Sea is about a married couple, Miri and Leah, and the chapters alternate between their perspectives. Prior to the beginning of this story, Leah went on a submarine mission that went wrong, resulting in her being gone for much longer than anticipated. Her chapters are set in the past, on the submarine, and they slowly reveal the story of what happened there. Miri’s chapters describe the time waiting for Leah to return and caring for her afterwards, as well as flashbacks to the early time in their relationship.
This is not a very long book, but that didn't stop me from feeling connected with it. The gorgeous imagery in the writing and the quiet horror really affected me. This is definitely a story about all different kinds of grief, using the vastness of the ocean as a way to visualize the feelings. Throughout the book there's just a sense of creeping dread and sadness, which honestly scared me more than action-packed horror.
I highly recommend this book for people who enjoy this type of subtle, unsettling, lyrical writing.
Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron for this ARC to read and review.

A review of this book is live on my Goodreads and Bookstagram, and I will be posting about it again right before the publication date.

I really wanted to love this book, but sadly it just didn’t strike the chords I expected it too. The solitude and trauma Leah and Miri experience fell flat for me. I expected a crescendo but only heard a droning melancholy.

this was SO good. everything i ever wanted -- prose you wanted to lick off your fingers, full of perfect details and ominous vibrations throughout. i was hooked from the very first paragraph, and devoured this in two days. the end broke my heart in the best possible way, and i loved how everything was left tenuous, ambiguous, uncertain -- because grief endures, and love/loss never truly goes away.

Our Wives Under the Sea is an elegiacal masterpiece of queer fiction—at once a fascinating take on changeling stories, an intimate study of a fractured relationship, a harrowing exploration of grief and loss, and a love letter to the human heart and all the things that make it afraid. Miri and Leah's relationship is gorgeously written and is thoroughly explored from its beautiful beginnings all the way through to the slow unraveling that follows. The shift in Leah after her return from the ocean's depths and Miri's desperate attempts to find the woman she loves within the person who's returned is surrounded by such a clear love for the Gothic fiction and horror films that inspired it that Our Wives Under the Sea feels like a classic before you've even finished reading it. Already highly praised by such names as Sarah Waters and Florence Welch, Julia Armfield's debut novel is a must-read for readers longing for romance, horror, and all the intersections they share.

I loved this book from the opening paragraph. It checked all of my boxes for a favorite read…it’s well-written, features unique/nuanced characters, and tells a fascinating, unfolding story through two POVs and across multiple timelines.

Leah is a deep sea diver who leaves for a routine 3-week trip to the bottom of the ocean. Along the way, the submarine malfunctions, sending Leah and two other crew members power-out to the sea floor. What happens during the next six months changes Leah, so that when she returns, she finds it impossible to live a normal life with her wife Miri. Her coping behavior becomes more and more erratic, until Miri is forced to take drastic action.

This debut novel is assured of being one of my favorites of the year. If this type of “different” literary fiction sounds like your thing, please pick this title up. You won’t be disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley and Picador for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

holy fuxk — this book is insanely good. the prose, the characters, the slow moving dread, all of it. I was, and continue to be, obsessed. I can't get over how flawed and fleshed out and human our characters feel -- and again, the writing is just phenomenal in a way that had me wanting to race through, but also savor it. would 100% recommend

Leah disappeared for months in a deep sea submarine exploration gone wrong, and her wife Miri is left to assume the worst.

Nonetheless, Leah returns from the deep, and Leah comes home. But Leah is not the same.

What a haunting premise for Julia Armfield's latest debut. This is a short novel; one that was equal parts literary fiction, psychological horror, and a deeply-poetic commentary on the mystery of grief. Told in alternating chapters between Miri and Leah, this poignant story unfolds slowly but more beautifully than I could have ever anticipated.

Miri's chapters are an uninhibited free fall into her psyche--more a masterfully-penned character study than anything else. Her reflective inner dialogues are complex, almost uncomfortably human, and occasionally drift back through the history of her relationship with Leah. Leah's chapters, on the other hand, are where the plot comes to life, and where the truth of her doomed voyage under the sea is revealed.

If you're looking for a plot-propelled story, this may not be for you. But, trust me when I say that this is worth reading for even the writing alone. Armfield pens a deeply-unsettling but equally-gorgeous story of love, the temporality of life, and the beckoning mysteries of the deep all woven into one.

As Miri comes to terms with her new reality of a wife she hardly recognizes and Leah grapples with an inexplicable pull back to the depths despite finally being back on land, the story starts to take on the form of a modern folktale. There are flickers of the fantastical strewn throughout these otherwise austere chapters, and that's really what made this such a masterpiece for me. By the very end, you'll have found that you've slipped into a story where it's abundantly clear that there is so very much--of life, of ourselves, of the sea--we will never know, and so few answers we ever had to begin with.

With a premise like this book there was NO way I wasn't going to pick it up! This is my first experience with Julia Armfield, and it did not disappoint. Leah and Miri are married and Leah is going on a deep sea research trip for 3 weeks. Except is takes 6 months. And when she comes back, she is super weird and Miri doesn't know what happened on the trip. I'm sure there are lots of books like this with astronauts, but I loved the idea of this happening on a submarine voyage and I truly had no idea what to expect.

This is strictly literary fiction though, and though the plot is fantastic, the main star is Armfield's writing. It is lyrical and beautiful and while the story moves somewhat quickly, it is a short book that you will want to savour. This can certainly be classified as a horror book, but there is also a solid and heartbreaking love story as its soul.

This ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. It comes out July 12, 2022!

An interesting and unnerving plot about two women whose lives take a head on collision when one of them comes back from a deep sea exploration....not herself.

Leah hated the water, until a fateful encounter with her fathers determined will changed all that.
Now a deep sea explorer, she travels via a research submarine to the depths to "take notes, and observe" with a team of two others when a sudden shut down of systems leaves them drifting and stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

Miri feels like she is stuck in a time warp, her wife out to sea on an expedition that was supposed to last 2 weeks is now at 6 months. With little to no contact from her wife's employer on the whereabouts of Leah, how long must one wait before grieving or moving on?

Told from both perspectives of Leah and her time in the deep as well as Miri dealing with the aftermath of Leah's return, we find ourselves with some nauseating, claustrophobic inducing imagery. I for one, have a fear of deep water and reading Leah's descriptive nature of the steel tube they lie in was....icky?

All of this to say that though I enjoyed this quick read and the intrigue it provided, along with some stellar quotes, The ending was less than great and could have been way more surprising. I was disappointed that there wasn't something more to this mystery.

Special thanks to #netgally and #flatiron for the advanced copy.

(This review is based on an advanced review copy provided by NetGalley.)

I liked this, more or less — I’m intrigued by it — but I’m not sure what to make of it. I wish it were more fleshed out, and that we got more answers, or even just more information to wonder about. It felt like the plot didn’t really kick off until about 70% of the way through, like the first 70% was mostly exposition.

I would describe this book as psychological horror with a touch of body horror. It reminded me a bit of You Feel It Just Below the Ribs, the way most of it is slow and meandering, and Catherine House, with its suffocating atmosphere and how the whole thing feels like a depressive episode.

On paper this sounded exactly the kind of thing I like — quiet, character-centered, literary sci-fi — but I didn’t connect with it as much as I thought I would. It feels literary mainly in the sense of not being very commercial, because it’s slow-paced and not much happens, but the prose isn’t as lush or poetic as I was expecting. Also, parts of it kind of feel like reading Wikipedia pages on oceanography.

That said, I do love the concept/premise of this book and would totally read a sequel if it promised some answers! I also found it surprisingly funny. One of my favorite parts is when the main character finds a message board of women who like to role-play that their husbands have gone to space, and it feels exactly like an absurd subreddit, complete with discourse and mods and elaborate rules about posting.

Rep: Both POV characters are (probably white) women married to each other. No sexual orientation labels are used for either of them.

Content notes: I don’t even know how to describe all the weird stuff in this book. Brief but vivid eye trauma at 76%. Caretaking of a spouse with an unknown illness. Death of a parent. Parent with unspecified degenerative disorder (I'd guess Huntington’s), and POV character who is at risk of inheriting said disorder.

This story is about the relationship between Miri and her wife Leah. Leah has just returns from a submarine mission and is acting strange and removed. She is slowly deteriorating, and Miri is trying to cope with Leah’s curious illness as Leah gets worse and worse.

Our Wives Under the Sea is a beautifully haunting story. Throughout the book there's just a sense of creeping dread and sadness.

I was really excited for this book and was promised a queer haunted novel that was part literary fiction, part horror, part thriller. Although I found this writing style so incredibly beautiful and lyrical, I really struggled to get through this story. Frankly, the story lacked tension and plot for me, and I didn't fall for the characters enough that their presence alone was an excuse for the absence of plot. I remember getting to the halfway point in the story and besides being bored with it all, I realized then that nothing had even happened, not really. To me, this book would have been better if it was much shorter, but even as a short story I would have needed higher stakes. Something more than just pretty writing, you know?