When Rebekah and her parents move from Montreal to rural Ontario, she is quickly drawn to the McNair siblings, Kit (Kathleen) and Landon. Their relationship quickly unfolds into a complicated love triangle. Their paths eventually break, but stay parallel as Rebekah enlists in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, while Kit, now known as Christopher joins the Air Force and Landon the Navy. Rebekah and Kit’s paths never cross during the war but events that take place eventually bring Rebekah back to the McNair residence and eventually to reuniting with Kit and Landon.

The Cure For Drowning was outside my normal genre but I’m so glad I was able to read it. It was written in such a captivating manner that held my attention steadily throughout the 3 parts and timelines. I was absolutely drawn to the historical setting that took place in Canada. I really enjoyed Rebekah and Kit’s perspectives as the book follows them, especially as they embark on a WWII path. It was a beautiful love story, with hints of magical realism and a stunning work of identity and representation.

✵𝖬𝖺𝗇𝗒 𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗇𝗄𝗌 𝗍𝗈 𝖯𝖾𝗇𝗀𝗎𝗂𝗇 𝖱𝖺𝗇𝖽𝗈𝗆 𝖧𝗈𝗎𝗌𝖾 𝖢𝖺𝗇𝖺𝖽𝖺, 𝖫𝗈𝗀𝗁𝖺𝗇 𝖯𝖺𝗒𝗅𝗈𝗋＆ 𝖭𝖾𝗍𝖦𝖺𝗅𝗅𝖾𝗒 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗀𝗂𝖿𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗆𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗌 𝖠𝖽𝗏𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾𝖽 𝖱𝖾𝖺𝖽𝖾𝗋’𝗌 𝖢𝗈𝗉𝗒 𝗂𝗇 𝖾𝗑𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗇𝗀𝖾 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗆𝗒 𝗁𝗈𝗇𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝗋𝖾𝗏𝗂𝖾𝗐.✵

I enjoyed this book! It was well written and the plot was interesting. It was a really slow start though so it did take me a while to get in to it. But I would recommend it to anyone who likes queer romance and or historical fiction!

I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this book but was pleasantly surprised! The characters came to life with Loghan Paylor’s beautifully descriptive writing. They were well developed, interesting and I felt, historically correct. Telling the story, switching back and forth between Kit and Rebekah’s perspectives, made for a delightful read. You get the felling the characters are constantly enmeshed even though they’re often apart.
I found the Canadian aspect of the story interesting. The Gemanic war storyline of Rebekah’s family definitely played an important part, as well. Selkies, queerness, love and war and intrigue ….The Cure for Drowning has it all! Beautifully written.

Thank you for my eARC from NetGalley and the publisher, Random House.

A little girl wanders onto the frozen river following what she thinks are lights, hearing noises others don't or can't. The ice breaks and her little body goes under.

Later, her brother carries her frozen dead body into the house. It was over an hour walk, he knows she's gone. Nobody could survive that.

The mother refuses to accept this. She does everything she can think of to warm the girl up, to prove she's ok. When it fails, she prays. When that fails, she reverts to prayers from before, ancestral prayers, Celtic prayers.

The child wakes up. So begins Loghan Paylor’s The Cure For Drowning.

A moving, magical, and refreshingly real story of family, friends, transformations, and love in a complicated world that's often over-simplified.

This is a coming of age story exploring identity and love. Love that's tested by cultural differences, gender norms, a world war, and competing sources of passionate feelings.

The Cure for Drowning is a delicious reminder that magic is very real and can take different forms. When I finished this book I thought about how we remember things, how we talk about them, the ways we tell and retell and reshape them. And I thought about how Paylor may have created these characters and this story, but the individuals in this story have existed before and literature has traditionally erased them.

Representation does matter, it is also beautiful and touching. May we all get to meet someone who kisses us as though we were the cure for drowning.

I read this as an ARC from NetGalley. I loved the characters in this book, they were all well developed, nuanced and interesting. The switches between Kit and Rebekah’s perspective are seamless. It brings about the feeling that they are intertwined through the whole story even though they are often far apart. The writing is flowing and beautiful. I am definitely interested to read other work by Logan Paylor.

Right from the first chapter this book had me in it’s grip. The little sprinkle of magical realism made this story extra special, but at its core this is an extremely compelling coming of age story that you won’t want to put down until you finish it.

I read this book in two sittings (and only because I started it right before bed the first night) then the next day read right through until the end. That’s not something I usually do, but I truly could not put it down. The author does such a brilliant job of bringing you back in time and immersing you in the setting.

The book is so beautifully written, the characters are so interesting and complex, and the relationship dynamics that are built along the way are intricate and interwoven so carefully that when I got to the end of the book I had been so deep into it that it felt wrong coming back to reality.

I loved this book, and I thoroughly recommend giving it a read if you’re at all interested in queer historical fiction overlaid with elements of Celtic mythology. It's rare for me to love historical fiction this much, and rarer still to find historical stories that focus on non-binary main characters and queer romances, so this is quite the gem and I truly hope that it won't be a hidden one. This deserves endless amounts of praise, and I expect it'll be one of my top reads of 2024.

When I was given the opportunity to read a debut novel by a Canadian Author set in Canada, I jumped at the chance! Let’s be honest — there are A LOT of World War II books out there right now. The market has been saturated with them for the last few years, and, it’s rare to find one that’s actually set in Canada. AND, with queer/non-binary representation!

Loghan Paylor has written a magical tale of love and resilience set during a time when acceptance and understanding of being different was zero to none. I enjoyed the characters and their evolutions over the years during which the story is set. Their ups and downs and how they reacted to hard times made them real to me, and I’ve continued to think about them in the weeks since finishing the book. I would have gladly read another two hundred pages just to see where life took them.

This wasn’t a quick read for me. The gorgeous words are meant to be savoured and I allowed the story to engulf me fully. It’s original, which is tough when nearly all recent Historical Fiction is set during the same time.

The Cure for Drowning is set to be released on January 30, 2024.

I felt like this book picked up steam as it went. I enjoyed the writing style, and could picture Harrichford vividly in my mind. But it really took off for me once the main characters separated during the war. It felt plausible that these characters would experience these joys and defeats (although I'm not sure about the logistics of Cpl. C. MacNair). I was unsure about the involvement of the Selkies, but it was satisfactorily tied together in the end, so I enjoyed it!

Beautifully written book that I could not put down. High recommended

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This historical fiction saga set in Canada has 3 parts - pre WWII, during the war, and after the war. There are two main POV’s, that of Rebekah, the daughter of a German doctor and French mother, and of Kathleen/Kit/Christoper McNair, child of an immigrant Irish Family.
When Kathleen was ten, she and her older brother Landon and younger brother Jep, were walking home in one of the worst winter storms Ontario had experienced. Kathleen went through the ice and drowned. Landon carried her home, and their mother tended her all night, performing some mysterious ritual that her back to life, but forever changed. When Kathleen awoke, their identity changed. They had had to relearn everything from basic motor skills to reading and math. Now, referred to as Kit, they began to dress and act as a boy.
Rebekah’s family moves to the small town, and all three siblings become infatuated with her. They spend the summer together and although Kit and Rebekah want to be together, her father wants her to marry Landon. But when anti German sentiments threaten their quiet life, Rebekah’s father decides it best to move his family back to Montreal. Meeting up with some of the McNair siblings during the war forever changes all their lives.
I enjoyed this story and found it had a similar vibe to Legends of the Fall. It’s a quiet yet engaging read and I recommend it highly!
My thanks to @netgalley and @penguinrandomca for this eArc. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Canada for the ARC.

This book was beautifully written, I honestly could not put it down. The imagery and magical realism sprinkled throughout was captivating, and I can't wait to read Loghan's next work. I'll be on the lookout for more historical fiction set in Canada - I think this was my first novel of the sort.

I loved the dual POV and the sweep from young summer to hardened war. I have to be honest, I oscillated between for whom I was cheering, and it made it all the more satisfying towards the end of the novel.

This is definitely. a contender for the best novel of 2024, and I can't wait to not only read it again but recommend it to family and friends.

Heart-achingly beautiful.
The Cure for Drowning seeps you in the sweetness of youthful summertime then wrenches you into the wretchedness of war, juxtaposing freedoms fought for in global conflicts with the constraints on identity too often encountered in childhood homes. Loghan Paylor intricately weaves lore, history and pseudo-history into a poignant examination of how story and perception shape cultural ideas of who and what we can be – and how social ills can only be cured by love, acceptance, and the courage to be who we are.

This book. An easy five star read for me. I was doubtful when I first clicked the book open on my Kindle on a Friday afternoon on the train ride home, this doesn’t seem like a unwind and relax kind of book I told myself. And yet I found myself immersed, easily captured by the story, the characters, the setting, the vividness of it all. It came so alive in my hands, in my mind and I gulped it - finishing it on Sunday afternoon as my kids watched tv before dinner.

I’m no stranger to the Second World War apart from clearly not having lived through it. I’ve read many, many novels set during the period and studied it in school and research it professionally. And this work blew me away. The detail, the emotion, the reality of it all - this book is SO well done. It spoke to me on so many levels and I will be thinking about it for weeks, months to come.

The book is written from two perspectives, Rebekah and Kit (aka Kathleen aka Christopher). The two are thrust together in sleepy rural Ontario in the immediate pre-war summer, two teenaged girls on the cusp of womanhood. Rebekah the city girl come with her parents and doctor father to this town, Kit the country girl who is confident and fierce, one with the land she works alongside her brothers and parents on their sheep farm. The two women explore their romantic feelings for one another in hidden corners of the land, stolen moments in the sunshine. And yet it’s not enough.

Because as with so many stories from this period, violence, distrust, fear and sadness grip the characters and the story, from highs to lows, and all the in betweens. This story has me feeling all the feelings, like I’ve just had an epic love story breeze past me in a Lancaster or perhaps even on the afternoon train. It’s a Canadian love saga with a fantastical twist that is rooted in the land, in the weather and the people and history of the land.

This is an incredible novel. The plot sucks you in from page 1, where you begin learning about the troubled past of Kit McNair and their family. 1939 rolls around and a new doctor moves to their small farming town in Southern Ontario, bringing with him a lovely daughter that catches the eye of both Kit and their brother, Landon. Tumultuous relationships develop and you follow the characters through their involvement in the war effort, and the aftermath.

I loved the queer representation, depictions of motherhood, complicated social relationships, and the fact that it is Canadian fiction. I will definitely be on the lookout for subsequent releases from Paylor.

Thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read and review the ARC!

Historical fiction is usually not my genre of choice but, as a queer and non-binary person from small-town Ontario, I couldn't pass up this title. The pacing is good and the dual POV kept me interested, although I struggled a bit with the length of the story. The mythological subplot felt a little bit like it was thrown in and then forgotten about, but on reflection, I do agree with other reviewers that it's possible that the characters used it to process their circumstances and identities. Part of me wishes the mythology had a more central role in the story, but at the same time, maybe that would have detracted from the very real stories of these characters. Even now, outside of the context of wars, queer and non-binary people are living narratives not unlike Kit and Rebekah's; I kind of liked the way that this story, set in a time that was so unrelatable and unfathomable to me, still felt so close to home and resonant.

I received an ARC of this review in exchange for my honest opinion. I don't think I'll read it again, but I will recommend it to my friends who enjoy historical fiction.

4.5 stars rounding up to 5. This is a story I can see myself reading again.

The Cure for Drowning is a dual-POV story that is, at its heart, a love story with queer and non-binary characters taking centre stage. Kit McNair, born Kathleen, is considered a rebellious changeling by parents that expect them to behave as a proper farmgirl. Rebekah is daughter to a German-Canadian doctor and French-Canadian mother in a pre-WWII world where her last name makes her family a target of prejudice. The pair, as well as Kit’s brother Landon, are drawn into a love triangle when Rebekah’s family move to rural Ontario and become the McNair’s neighbours. The three are pulled onto separate paths by WWII, only to be brought together again in the aftermath of the war.

This story pulled me along, I wanted to know what would happen next, and I ended up reading it in every spare moment I could find once I started. The pacing and dual-POV narrative were very well done and made this an easy read. Paylor’s settings were lush and their descriptions brought the time period to life.

To say I enjoyed our two main characters is an understatement. Rebekah and Kit, the relationship between them and with the other characters presented in the story, were compelling. The writing keeps them at arm’s-length from the reader, and I felt we did not truly get inside their heads, which may not suit some reader’s tastes, but still works for the story being told. We see these characters experience love, heartbreak, and loss, and face challenges as they try to find their way through this WWII era world.

The way the story is split up, and the way the time skips were used, worked wonderfully for me. The innocence and youth of the first part combined with the buildup to and inevitability of WWII. The different realities of WWII in Canada and for Canadians overlaid by the loss of innocence and finding a way to survive during wartime. And, finally, coming to terms with the loss post-WWII and finding a way forward and building a new life. All of which is deftly tied together by the romantic plotline between Kit, Rebekah, and Landon.

I do have mixed feelings about the mythology and fantastical elements. They were not a major part of the story, and I’m not sure the story would change at all if they were removed. On the other hand, these elements added to the atmosphere of the story, and it’s interesting to consider whether these explanations were the characters’ way of coming to terms with their own stories and world rather than being literal happenings.

As for the ending, again, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, it feels very fitting. On the other hand, I feel like it left loose strings that I’m not entirely satisfied with. Those strings being Kit’s relationship with their mother and the farm, and both Kit and Rebekah’s relationships with Landon, particularly Kit’s and the conflict there. And yet a resolution to these things may also have felt unrealistic.

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for making the DRC available to me. All opinions are my own.

This is a very well-written historical romance featuring paranormal elements and a queer love story which takes place in Canada during WWII. While slow at times, it’s worth reading until the end for the beautiful writing and ocean imagery that is interspersed throughout the novel. The characters are likable enough, and the love story is memorable. It’s not the first historical fiction I would think of when making recommendations for that genre, but it was a unique perspective of the effects of WWII on a small family in a small town. Overall, I really enjoyed it—thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

This was so magical and moving. I really love magical realism, and this had just the right amount. It feels like a contemporary story, but there is such a magical quality to it.
I don't read many books set in Canada despite living here my whole life, and I thought it was so interesting to get to read a Canadian historical fiction.
I thought the characters were so lovely and unique and interesting. Kit was my personal favourite, because they were so unique and had a hint of whimsy to them. I also liked Landon and Rebekah, who both felt very well fleshed-out and different. Each character has their own voice and their own way of existing in the world.
Also, me personally, I think a happy ending is always the better choice, even if it's not always the most realistic choice, so I loved the ending.

Thank you for NetGalley for a early copy for a honest review.

Firstly, since I am a Canadian and have visited all the towns (now cities), I enjoyed the historical aspect pre and post WWII. There was even mention of my hometown.

This debut tackles social norms, mythical selkies to two different family dynamics and Canadian involvement in WWII. How can you fit this into one novel? Well done.

Below may contain spoilers:
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Kit/Kathleen/Christopher- I liked how her character was developed throughout the 10 year span. I enjoyed reading about their experience as a young girl who was just coming into herself but was limited to social norms. They weren’t able to live their true authentic self and was meshed into various roles. The ending wrap up was a little ambiguous in how they chose to live. Maybe the author left that up to the reader to decide.

Family: from working class to well-off, each have their challenges. Family can be a place to call home, though not all families respond in the same way.


WWII- tackles both air and ocean, but mostly from Kit’s/Christophers perspective with the Airforce. Would have liked to see more on her brother’s role with the Navy.

Overall, I rated ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ as the first half was a slow-burn in character development. It may have been pared down in my opinion, though maybe that is the intention for the reader to appreciate each character.

For a debut, well done!

The split POV in this was executed really well. It didn't feel repetitive, but it gave little connecting pieces that kept you wondering what would happen when the other found out about something. I also liked that this was a romance but both of the main characters were really fleshed out and had their own struggles, motivations, personalities, and people/things that were important to them. That really added depth and made me care about the characters much more than I do with some historical fiction and romances. I was kind of surprised that the magical realism part didn't play a bigger role, but it was still interesting during the pieces it did show up in.

This kind of reminded me of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, except the pacing in this book felt much smoother. It used the time jumps and split POV to keep things moving which I really appreciated and that definitely made me want to keep reading instead of feeling bogged down.