To start with, this is one of the most accurate and well-chosen titles I have seen for a book. It’s relevant on multiple levels, from the literal to the psychological to, we eventually find out, the medical. This stood out to me more than book titles typically do.
Our psychologically drowning main character is Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at a university that wouldn’t accept her to the literature college, which was where she wanted to be, because “women dumb” basically. This reflects the themes of sexism and misogyny that Reid weaves throughout the book. Effy has a history of trauma, and she feels like she is drowning when triggers of this history cause dissociation. Her favorite author is the recently deceased Emrys Myrddin, and when his estate solicits architecture students to design a new manor, Effy enters a design and wins. When she arrives at the manor, she finds literature student Preston Héloury there. She is initially hostile towards him out of jealousy that he gets to be in the literature college and xenophobia because he is from Argant, which her country is at war with. She moves past that fairly quickly, though her bigotry (which she recognizes to some extent), is never really addressed, and they start to become close.
It took me a little while to feel connected with Effy because I just felt like I wasn’t really learning about who she is, but this improved as the book progressed. I think she is meant to be an unreliable narrator, and my quibble with that is that this book is categorized as a fantasy and the book blurb itself mentions magic, so I figured there were significant limits to how far her unreliability could extend. It would have been more interesting and suspenseful if I didn’t know the genre going in. I also thought that she and Preston made a stupid decision that couldn’t fully be attributed to their age or their motivations, or perhaps the strengths of their motivations just needed to be further impressed upon readers, especially with Preston.
Reid does a great job with with the gothic element. Myrddin’s manor is decaying and sits on the edge of a crumbling cliff. Ianto, Myrddin’s son, is suitably creepy and possessive, which lends an edge of danger to Preston’s and Effy’s decisions. The references to things being wet, dripping, and dilapidated are very atmospheric. I liked it enough to try more of Ava Reid’s novels. And after having read and enjoyed A Study in Drowning and Starling House, I think I’m going to start trying some more gothic fantasy, too.
CBR16 bingo dun-dun for the creepy gothic vibes