Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Our Wives Under The Sea

This was gorgeous. Beautifully written with a palpable depth. The book does have a kind of sci-fi element to it, but it isn’t the main focus of the story (in case you’re not into that). Believable characters and a reflective, touching journey. Loved it!

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kathleenivy's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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nikenacs's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Strong portrayal of love, loss, and watching yourself grieve a love, even while it's still around. Listened to it on two rainy train rides over the North Sea, which was the perfect gloomy atmosphere. Good portrayal of depression, directly fed into my own depression tbh. All their relationship memories coming back made me think of all my loved ones and the little details I love about them, as well, I really enjoyed that. Especially when those memories start showing up in Leah's parts as well!

However, especially Miri's parts were a bit too slow-paced for my personal taste, and Miri as a protagonist increasingly irritated me with how much she was a dick to everyone around her. I know this is intentional, and I think I'd have more compassion with a real person, but as a protagonist, she was a lot at times.

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walenchao's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

A beautiful cosmic horror story told not for scares, but for the scars a harrowing experience leaves. A love so true it can only be broken by something so of this world, yet completely unknown. Beautiful prose, only wish there was more to read of it if I’m being honest.

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alisonfaith426's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

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lilybear3's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes

4.5

This book is so unique and mysterious. The slow buildup to the end was worth the wait. It's romantic, dark, and the more I read, the more captivated I became. It was very slow for me in the beginning, but it picks up towards the middle, and I couldn't put it down in the last third. The pacing gives readers a lot of time to marinate in Leah and Miri's relationship and how their dynamic is affected by the situation. I love the perspective changes with Miri's in the present and Leah's in the past, but also in the different environments. Some people don't like a book with an open ending and questions unanswered, but I don't mind and I enjoy reading other people's theories. Armfield nails the atmosphere and the sudden feeling of suffocation as the tension builds. The writing is amazingly poetic and insightful. I wish there were a tiny bit more elaboration on a few things like

the creature and the theory they were trapped on purpose. The body horror from Miri's perspective was cool, but it could've been more frightening. At the same time, I don't think that's what Armfield wanted us to focus on.

This is not a spoiler, but It's goes without saying that reading this book relatively shortly after the Titan Submersible incident (June 2023) was a weird coincidence and experience. Coming off of that, I made predictions on what would happen. Potential spoiler?: The second submarine media that I thought of was

Iron Lung, a video game and soon-to-be movie by Markiplier. In Iron Lung, the person is sent in the submarine for research, but the organization sending the person knows they will most likely die. Matteo suggests this possibility for their situation and that changed everything for me.

Another thing it reminded me of is

the movie Arrival. The part where Leah holds up her name to communicate with the creature was so reminiscent of Amy Adam's character in Arrival.

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maeverose's review against another edition

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mysterious sad

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

I’m unsure how I feel about this yet.

TL;DR: As other people have said, this isn’t so much horror as a book about grief with horror sprinkled throughout. I was interested to see what would happen the whole way through and I do tend to like books about grief, but in the end am left feeling overall ‘meh’ about the book.

A note on the horror elements for those worried about it:
If you’re especially bothered by body horror, gore, or themes of going insane I would go in prepared for that if you plan on reading it. I’m not a horror reader and I dislike reading those themes, but most of this book was fine for me (check my content warnings section for which parts to skip if you also dislike these themes but want to read anyway. You can’t really skip the ‘going insane’ stuff unless you just don’t read any of Leah’s chapters, but you’d be missing out on some parts of the story then). That being said, you know what your own limits are best. I have a moderate tolerance for gore in books and I’m rarely bothered by non-gory body horror. If you have a low tolerance overall, I’d probably skip it.

Now on to my thoughts:
(Vague/minor plot spoilers, but not really since this is not a plot-focused book)

I liked the way the Centre was depicted as this mysterious corporate entity, and wish that was explored more, as well as

the whole sea creature thing

. I get that the horror and mystery elements aren’t the focus, the focus is on Miri’s grief, with the horror elements being a metaphorical parallel to losing a loved one to illness. But it’s left somewhat unclear whether or not it’s also actually happening. If it is actually happening, then that leaves me a bit frustrated with how Miri acted. She seemed so uninterested in finding answers or taking any sort of legal action against the Centre. At no point does the idea even come up to do that, and that seems so ridiculous to me given everything they kept quiet about and the entire way they acted and operated. If I were Miri I’d be pissed at them. I’d be demanding answers. She pretty much gave up after they stopped responding to her calls. I didn’t understand why she never took Leah to a doctor, especially given how much she obviously cares about her, why wasn’t she doing everything she could to help her?

When Juna met up with Miri and tried to explain what she found out and Miri cut her off and left, I was so annoyed. She seemed so uninterested in what Juna had to say and I would be the exact opposite. She didn’t seem at all shocked to learn that someone died on the same trip her wife was on…

In general Miri seemed much more focused on her own grief rather than being concerned for her wife who clearly went through an extremely traumatic experience. Again, if none of it is really real then it makes sense but with it being somewhat left up to interpretation, it was frustrating.

On that note, I’ll end with some quotes about grieving missing loved ones that I liked:

“-grieving was complicated by lack of certainty, that the hope inherent in a missing loved one was also a species of curse.”

“In almost every case, the sense of loss was convoluted by an ache of possibility, by the almost-but-not-quite-negligible hope of reprieve.”

“Grief is selfish: we cry for ourselves without the person we have lost far more than we cry for the person - but more than that, we cry because it helps. The grief process is also the coping process and if the grief is frozen by ambiguity, by the constant possibility of reversal, then so is the ability to cope.”

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