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beefthedwarf's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
"A Study In Drowning" was captivating, magical, and mysterious. I typically am not drawn to romances, but the relationship between the main love interests was compelling and sweet. I often see the book marketed as Enemies to Lovers or Rivals to Lovers, but I'd moreso call it Disagreement to Lovers or perhaps simply Opposites Attract.
Act 1 is quite slow to pick up, Act 2 does a good job building the tension, and Act 3 is exhilarating -- until it's not. It seems like the author lost some confidence that her work would speak for itself and added 30-ish pages of exposition that essentially explained the whole book and then some. A lot of it would have been more rewarding sprinkled through the earlier parts of the book. Nonetheless, it is very well structured.
Overall, the book was an amazing read and extremely rich in both prose, world building, and themes surrounding misogyny and sexual assault (both literal and metaphorical).
Spoilers:
Act 1 was slow to start, as if the author wasn't quite sure where to begin. In her effort to avoid giving away Effy's character and history too quickly, the beginning was just too vague and I found myself almost DNF-ing. I just didn't feel compelled to care about any of the characters yet.
Ava Reid did an excellent job finding ways to push her characters to engage with the plot. This was especially important considering Effy as a character is described as an escape artist -- always running away from difficult problems. The plot really starts when Effy has no way to go back to college OR go back home. While her psychosis ends up just being the "Magical Psychosis" trope (booooo), I feel like her other mental illness is very real. The splitting, the assumptions, the black and white thinking, the urge to escape, the lack of identity colliding with the urge to know how other people view her, etc. All very common for folks with C-PTSD (or, if I were to armchair diagnose her, BPD). I feel like the author was very well versed in Effy's style of trauma response and handled it well.
I don't know how many times Effy was described swallowing her pills dry. Folks -- DO NOT DO THIS. I don't know how this poor girl did not develop an ulcer.
The book glosses over a lot of the characters' bodily functions. As far as we can tell, Effy's guesthouse has no bathroom, and the only bathroom we see in Hiraeth Manor is dilapidated and Ianto doesn't allow Effy to use it. Where does she piss?! Where does anyone piss?! No one ever seemed to eat breakfast or dinner either, except the one time at Blackmar's mansion. While there is a degree in which an author shouldn't be expected to elaborate each and every human maintenance, this was a very noticeable exclusion.
I loved the artificial history and scholarship surrounding Myrddin and literature as a whole in Llyr. It really made the world feel big and real, even if it was just a backdrop for the mystery. It made the characters feel big and real -- the world matters to them. However, I was disappointed that there was a brief descent into the politics of the warring countries, their respective settler colonial history, and which of them could actually be considered the aggressor, only to have it dropped entirely without a single additional mention.
I often see the book marketed as Enemies to Lovers or Rivals to Lovers, but I'd moreso call it Disagreement to Lovers or perhaps simply Opposites Attract. Effy got annoyed at Preston for petty reasons and Preston was more or less minding his business. There was a moment of conflict upon Effy discovering the truth of Preston's thesis, but an alliance formed quickly. It was well done and great to read, but not exactly what I'd call Enemies/Rivals to Lovers.
The changeling reveal for Effy was a bit sloppy, in my opinion. While the book was clear there was a secret to Effy, it would have been more interesting and rewarding if the concept of changelings and their naming conventions had come up earlier in the book.
The book deals heavily with Effy's sexual assault trauma and her responses -- escaping, escapism, anxiety, lying, splitting, emotional responses, etc. I also feel like the book was not-so-subtly hinting at the affects of childhood sexual trauma as well, thought less explicitly described. This can be seen in the way Effy both admires and vilifies Angharad (the character), and fears and fantasizes about the Fairy King. It makes sense -- even if the Fairy King did not touch her the same way her human assailant did, knowing that an adult wants to take you as a child bride is incredibly distressing.
Act 2 does a good job building the tension, and Act 3 is exhilarating -- until it's not. It seems like the author lost some confidence that her work would speak for itself and added 30-ish pages of exposition that essentially explained the whole book and then some. A lot of it would have been more rewarding sprinkled through the earlier parts of the book. It was incredibly boring sitting and reading Angharad reveal the answers to all the mysteries to our protagonists who'd almost died trying to solve them. Most of the evidence they managed to uncover was lost entirely, which was disappointing -- but I suppose they needed that information as the big push to go into the basement and find the box, which did survive. Given that Reid gave an acknowledgment to Zelda (presumably Fitzgerald) at the end of the book, I suppose Angharad's long winded exposition was the spirit of every female writer whose work secretly bolstered a man's career. Still, it was just not very fun to read after the excitement of the climax.
Speaking of the climax -- at some point, I totally lost track of how Ianto was doing anything. How was he grabbing Preston AND shackling him to chains AND hammering a stake into a wall AND holding a musket to his chest? Totally took me out of the scene trying to figure it out.
Overall, the book was an amazing read and extremely rich in both prose, world building, and themes surrounding misogyny and sexual assault (both literal and metaphorical). The Fairy King as a stand in for sexual trauma and grooming, paired with the recurring symbol of green representing victimhood, was very gratifying.
Graphic: Misogyny, Sexual assault, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
Moderate: Xenophobia, Alcoholism, and Pedophilia
Minor: Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Violence
ghostlyprince's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Pedophilia, Sexual violence, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual assault, Abandonment, Death of parent, Rape, Car accident, Misogyny, Sexism, and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Alcoholism, Bullying, Confinement, Addiction, Body shaming, Racism, Death, Physical abuse, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, and Child abuse
Minor: Gaslighting, Kidnapping, Forced institutionalization, Domestic abuse, and War
jillie's review against another edition
3.5
- beautiful writing (some of the best i’ve read all year)
- gloomy, well-crafted atmosphere
- sweet love story
Cons
- too short for all of the world building it had - things felt muddled or should have been more in depth
- the “twist” (?) wasn’t really a twist & was fairly predictable
I enjoyed Reid’s writing but wish I had known what this book was actually about before reading it.
November 2023
Graphic: Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, and Sexism
Moderate: Xenophobia, Child abuse, and Pedophilia
agentlywildrebellion's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Gaslighting, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Violence, Ableism, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Child abuse
Minor: Death of parent
fastcat_11's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Some quotes that are amazing:
- I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me
- “You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”
- “But didn’t all drownings begin with a harmless dribble of water?”
- “Effy hated that she couldn’t tell right from wrong, safe from unsafe. Her fear had transfigured the entire world. Looking at anything was like trying to glimpse a reflection in a broken mirror, all of it warped and shattered and strange.“
- Not from the book but from a review that succinctly describes what’s so powerful about this book:
“[this story is] filled with feminine rage. Rage against how easy it was, and is, to write women out of their own stories, to claim them as your own. Rage against those in a position of power abusing it. Rage against the men who stake claim on a woman and do not like when the woman refuses.”
Angharad’s quiet ending and liberation with being able to tell the truth seemed like a different kind of win though — more along the lines of a quiet dignity and her quote that you don’t have to pick up a sword to be brave. Having spent so many years with a monster while keeping her sanity and wittingly trapping him along with her was a bravery as much as Effy’s standing down the Dean.
Personally, I think the second is more realistic given that Effy saw the Fairy King in all of the men in her life during the moments when Effy could peek behind the veneer of polite society and see their true (bad) intentions. However these glimpses could also be a continuation of the fantasy POV that the Fairy King can possess men because “weakness and wanting is like a wound, a gap [the Fairy King] can use to slide in” — aka when set in a patriarchal system that allows men to do whatever they please, the absolute power can corrupt their morals.
Also shoutout to the author for letting the FMC kill her OWN demons and save her OWN life instead of having the MMC pull a knight in shining armor trope. I was pleasantly surprised that Preston chose to support Effy in her goal to join the literary college, and didn’t let his “inner Fairy King” out by being greedy and taking her name off the byline or disagreeing when she leveraged the paper to get the SA assailant fired.
Minor: Pedophilia and Sexual assault
booksthatburn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
A STUDY IN DROWNING is a story of uncertainty and a shaky sense of reality, figuring out how to name and shame abusers who use their power, position, and (often) gender to obscure and diminish their abuse, and to cultivate uncertainty as to whether they did what they did, and if they did it, if it even was wrong. The fantastical setting allows for a recursive reinforcement of themes of decay, drowning, and rot as the specter of the Fairy King is invoked, threatened, and manifested in turn to build a story where the water is certain, death is inevitable, but drowning is slow. In that gap is room for denial and obfuscation as the water rises.
Effy is obsessed with the works of a particular author, and of his novel, Angharad, in particular. It tells the story of the Fairy King seducing his human bride from the perspective of that girl. Effy has the text largely memorized, and many lines in it are deeply meaningful to her, whispered as talismans against the sexism of her daily life. In a country where she has to go to the architecture college because no women are allowed in the literature college, the idea that one of the most famous writers in her country would have written this book with such a careful and nuanced understanding of a female perspective is deeply meaningful and inspiring to her. The college bars women because of misogynist nonsense about their minds being unable to handle understanding or producing great works of literature. Though she is admitted at the architecture college, Effy is the only female student there. The few girls in her dorm who are studying at the music college where they are admitted in greater numbers.
At first, Effy has a xenophobic reaction to learning that a boy from an enemy nation was admitted to study at the literature college at the same time she was denied because of her gender. She ends up meeting him, and it turns into a rivals to lovers scenario where they work together to get around the sexist institution and call abusers to account. Gradually it becomes clear as Effy is able to think and process more specifically that one of the professors abused her. She feels unable to go to anyone for help, or even necessarily to be certain in herself, that it was wrong. The other students assume she used her body to get where she is, that somehow she doesn't deserve to be in the same halls as them.
A STUDY IN DROWNING has cemented Ava Reid on my must-read list for her consistently nuanced handling of themes of abuse and coercion in ways that leverage the strengths of fantasy to help deal with traumatic realities surrounding sexism and abuses of power.
Graphic: Sexism and Misogyny
Moderate: Sexual harassment, Xenophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Bullying, Child abuse, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Medical content, Death of parent, and Death
Minor: Pedophilia, Drug use, Mental illness, Cursing, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal death, Murder, and War
estruch's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Graphic: Misogyny, Gaslighting, Blood, Toxic relationship, Sexual violence, Sexism, Car accident, and Pedophilia
guardianofthebookshelf's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Diverse cast of characters? No
4.0
Graphic: Sexual assault and Sexual harassment
Moderate: Pedophilia, Death, and Death of parent