Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Our Wives Under the Sea

Although my time with this book oscillated between transfixed curiosity and exasperation to reach the point, I ultimately think this is a really well written and mostly captivating story. Despite the many questions I kept posing while reading, I understand they were sacrificed for the vibes. And the vibe is immaculate, albeit sad and weird. But in a good way.

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jojothefool's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Beautiful prose on grief, abandonment, and PTSD. It’s definitely literary fiction in that every word is saying five words and there’s metaphors and dreams and stuff. But I enjoyed myself overall, it’s just not my favorite genre. I enjoyed Mary’s POV as Leah essentially disintegrates before her. Trying to balance grief and anger and caregiving and love, it’s heartbreaking and relatable. I think the writing was a little too dense for me to enjoy in an audio format tbh.

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itsheyfay's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.25

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thebetterstory's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is well-written, and it has moments of insight about life that are interesting to see reflected back on the page. The suspense builds over the course of the novel, as you wonder what happened in the ocean, what the Centre really is and what Leah is becoming, but the overarching mystery is never really resolved, and while the ending is fitting I left the book as a whole feeling a bit ambivalent about the whole thing.

Leah and Miri aren't badly written, but I had the same issue as I often do with modern literary fiction, which is that everyone felt a bit interchangeable. Yes, they had carefully specified quirks, and their backstories and families were developed. All those elements were there, but in the end they felt pretty much interchangeable aside from those. The same goes for the rest of the cast. Names would appear in the story, and despite how short the book was I couldn't honestly tell you who Sam or any of the rest of them were or when they'd been introduced, specifically.

Similarly, if you asked me to name a character trait for either of the leads, it would have to be "nice" for Leah, which you know mostly because the book and Miri tell you so, and...I really don't know for Miri, actually. Withdrawn, maybe, or cold. They have all those insightful human moments grafted onto them and their stories, but they never really feel like they make the narrative theirs, which also makes the romance—which does have its poignant moments—feel a touch bland as well.

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