A Study in Drowning; Ava Reid

The dark, coastal vibes, the Welsh inspired fairy tale, the feminist commentary (down with the patriarchy), and the mystery around “what is real? Am I going crazy?”, are all immaculate in “A Study of Drowning”. In this dark academia story, our main girl, Effy, is struggling with PTSD around a sexual assault while attending a prestigious architecture college. The only problem is she doesn’t want to be there, she’d rather be in the literature school but no women are permitted into the school of her dreams. When an opportunity that looks too good to be true pops up that allows her to design a home for her favorite, recently deceased, author, Effy jumps at the chance without looking. She’s so desperate to escape a place full of snide whispers, to prove that she’s not “crazy” to an emotionally abusive mother, that Effy doesn’t question why she was selected to design this house until it’s too late. Even writing that has me so in love with the concept of this story. And yet…

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Perhaps I read this book at the wrong time. A lot of very heavy real life things are going on, and that may be impacting my enjoyment, but I think that the mystery around if what Effy was experiencing was real or just in her mind was far more interesting than the romantic aspects. I cared more about if the Fairy King was real and the lore behind that then what Preston and Effy were experiencing. Preston is fine, but together they were a little bland as I couldn’t really understand why he and Effy had any kind of attraction toward each other outside of Effy being pretty—which didn’t seem like enough for what they endure. I think I was expecting the fairy lore in this book to be more akin to what we get with Emily Wilde and that was definitely not the case. Which, unfortunately, meant I felt the pacing glacial most of the time in this book.

The story felt like it dragged considerably in several areas which meant, come those final few chapters, we’re left with a monologue about how and why everything happened rather than having the majority of the mystery unfold naturally. Some of the twists I could guess and that was honestly fine. But so much time is spent on Effy kind of questioning her own sanity that I expected more to come from that, in either direction honestly, and that never truly materialized. And yet…

I did really like the atmosphere of this story and I enjoyed the emotional writing the author used for this book. The way the PTSD and Effy’s trauma is written and handled is really well done and mindful. But the core of the book—the folk lore, the romantic tension, even the characters at times—lacked LIFE. The reader is kept a bit too distant from Preston and Effy (outside of her trauma) that I didn’t feel the connection I craved and it honestly took, what felt like, forever to read this book because of it. Which is why I’m giving it 3.5 stars. I liked it, the writing is lovely, but the story and characters aren’t things I think will stick with me for very long, unfortunately. But since I did enjoy the writing and the vibes that went into this tale, I’ll definitely be checking out the authors future works!