Our Wives Under the Sea

4 ⭐️

I thought this would be an easy 5 stars until about halfway through when the plot slowed and everything started to fall apart. Incredible writing, but a disappointing ending, and, maybe it's just me, but the characters did not grip me in the way that I had hoped. They are likable, and their relationship is likable, but I did not care enough when everything inevitably came to an end.

Another small bother was the backstory development. Both Leah and Miri reflect on their relationships with their parents and how this shapes their present moments and Leah's felt much more fleshed out than Miri's. I'm still not sure how Miri's relationship with her mom and her illness relates to Leah other than the fact that Miri watched both of them die. It felt as though the author built two houses in a neighborhood and never built the road between them.

Regardless, I did not want to put this book down and would happily read it again, and anything Julia Armfield writes in the future.

I am not sure how to feel about this one, truly. Not a lot actually happens, most of it is internal thoughts and very non descript actions. Which at the beginning I loved. It made me feel claustrophobic, and there was dread seeping out of every scentence. But then it started to drag its feet, with the research crew not even feeling once like scientists either. The worst for me is that I am left with more questions and no answers.

( 3.5 ⋆ )

There are many benefits to being a marine biologist :D

I was expecting to love this book, especially when I was just a few pages in.
One of the complaints I heard a lot is the structure of the book, the two POVs and stories within said POVs being interrupted endlessly. I see where they're coming from, it does feel like ads sometimes when it jumps from the creepy submarine to some domestic slice of life scenarios.

That being said, I didn't mind it at all; I was enjoying the gradual buildup of the thriller/cosmic horror, Miri's grief and the fragments of her relationship with Leah, the discussions of loss, the analogies with the sea, and on top of all that the prose was genuinely beautiful.

The problem imo was that all of this led up to pretty much nothing. The buildup, I mean. It was frustrating to see that so many things are left unanswered at the end when being lead to believe otherwise throughout both the characters' pursuit for answers, which is basically the plot. Some parts could've been easily left out out, so I think it's a little unpolished in that sense.

  Our Wives Under The Sea is not a love story. It is a story about love. It???s about how beautiful love is, how precious all of the little moments spent together are, how you come to learn your lover???s charming quirks and eccentricities. These romantic asides aren???t built into the story for the romance though: They???re built into the story to juxtapose against the harsh coldness between the lovers only a few months later, because in that time, one of them was supposed to be on an oceanic exploration for a few weeks but returned a few months later a completely changed person. It???s not so much the horror it???s advertised as, but rather the aftermath of horror. Both of the protagonists are pushed to their emotional extremes, but refuse to let go of each other. Our Wives Under The Sea is not a love story, it is a story about how fragile love seems and also about how strong it really is, a portrait of a marriage in the face of tragedy, an ode to the seemingly insignificant moments still remembered years later. In a tight 220 pages, Our Wives Under The Sea is a devastating, powerful novel that remains compulsively readable throughout with exceptionally poetic prose and some truly clever chapter breaks (you???ll know what I mean when you see them). 

Rating: 2.3 leaves out of 5Characters: 2.5/5 Cover: 2.5/5Story: 2/5Writing: 4/5Horror: .5/5Genre: HorrorType: AudiobookWorth?: MehHated Disliked Meh It Was Okay Liked LovedWhat a lackluster story. Honestly don't know what people are raving about. Armfield kept everything as bleak as brown water. The relationship between the two women were the only think worth remembering when it came to the book. Nothing was well explained. You had maybe ONE moment where you went ‘OH'. But when Miri meets up with the sister who knows what is going on do we get to hear it? No... we are literally left in the dark. Also the ending? I don't even know. This was lazy writing at best trying to be like ‘art'. Like Leah, somethings are better at the bottom of the ocean.

Not a horror book. I DNF'd at 26% when I felt like the book was going nowhere. I googled to see if my suspicions were right, they were. This is 95% about a failing marriage after a tragic event and 5% “horror”. I felt Miri was unlikable and Leah was unreliable as a narrator. The parts of the book I was most interested in were the submarine and it's sinking, those chapters were 4 pages long while Miri's parts were 20 pages long or more. If you aren't looking for a horror or thriller this book is for you, if you are looking for that, then avoid it.

4.7:

An eerie story as October is coming to a close! I've been thinking about it all through the week. It's the second I've read this month regarding a sea creature but the difference is that this one is so beautifully written, and I actually DID care about the characters.

I could feel my submechanophobia, growing from a casual fear at the back of my mind, to an unsettling thought at the forefront, constantly. I wonder what was going through Leah's mind as it all faded.

There's something about grief and letting go that I'm pretty sure I'm just too dumb to grasp. And it's still not completely clear to me how things came to be as they were at the end, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and want to look more into Julia's work.

3.5

man this is a hard one to rate so i might change it eventually. i loved so many things about this one: leah's chapters, the relationship between leah and miri, the atmosphere, the writting; but then there were so many boring chapters that made the book feel like it's 400pgs long. i love everything sea/ocean themed, especially in horror, thats why i think im willing to rate this higher than i should (and also bc its a lesbian horror novela and thats my fav subgenre of books). also this reminded me so much of the game called “iron lung” and the movie “the shape of water”

The last time I read a horror novel that explored grief, it was John Langan???s The Fisherman???s Wife, which I enjoyed thoroughly and found appropriately spooky. So when this book cropped up in some best-of lists this year, and many of the reviews implied or out right stated this was a horror novel, I decided to give it a shot.

And yes, yes, it IS a horror novel, but not quite in the same way as Langan???s book. No: the horror here is in watching the slow deterioration of a relationship/relationships, something indefinable hanging between everyone that no one can seem to get over or around. And the thing is: it???s neither of their faults. On one hand, how do you explain a profoundly traumatic experience to someone? An experience that has changed you so fundamentally, that it might feel like you???re someone else entirely? And on the other hand, how do you try to understand what your partner is going through in the wake of a traumatizing event? How do you reach out to them, ask them to open up, without accidentally cutting them, or yourself, on the sharp edge of a memory? How do two people deal with the weight of all that? How do you keep a relationship from just???disintegrating? 

In broad strokes, that???s what happens in this novel. The story is told via first-person narration with both Miri and Leah as narrators, the chapters alternating between them. On one hand, Miri???s chapters are mostly set in the present, drifting back and forth to explore her past as it relates to the present of her and the just-returned Leah. It is in Miri???s chapters that the themes of grief and grieving are most pronounced, and it is both heartwrenching and nightmarish to read about how she deals with Leah, and her notion that maybe, her wife didn???t quite come back as herself. There???s a kind of slow, inexorable awakening in these chapters that feels terrifying, because you can see how Miri realizes that something is coming, KNOWS it???s inevitable, but isn???t sure yet what she???ll do. She???s failed before, after all. Will she fail again?

As for Leah???s chapters, this is where the horror story side of the novel comes in, which I won???t get into for fear of spoilers, but they feel very cosmic horror-esque - and no, NOT because of the obvious Cthulhu references. These chapters are slow too, like the Miri chapters, but the flavor of terror here is different: a slow descent (heh) into the unknown, into madness (?), into thoughts that are maybe best left in the depths of the mind. What???s down there in the very deepest depths of the ocean? Who knows. What lies in the very deepest depths of the human mind? Who knows. Do we want to know? SHOULD we know?

Taken all together, these chapters twine and twist and twist and TWIST so the tension???s almost unbearable, until finally, towards the book???s latter fourth, they finally snap and unravel into the conclusion. That the POV makes everything feel twice as intimate and maybe a tiny bit claustrophobic - which I personally enjoyed, mostly because of how uncomfortable it was to see all this happening. I know that seems strange, but the up-close feel really made this even more compelling to read. This is helped along by the writing, which is lovely right from the get-go and makes reading this book immensely easy for all that the story feels like it should be going a lot more slowly than it actually does. 

This book should be my favourite book of all times. Sadly, it is not. 
I found Miris passivity not very believable, the explanation of why she is so passive unsatisfying. Not even bringing her into a hospital once? Really?Also, I wish the deep sea creature would remain unseen. Or take a bigger part. Feels neither here nor there.