A review by aubigney
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I found Miri's POV extremely slow and boring, even for contemporary literary fiction. I also found her unlikeable and unrelatable, whether that is intentional or not (although I suspect the author didn't care that much). It seemed like the author had a lot more fun with Leah's POV, which was much more interesting, tense, and mysterious -- and also more in Armfield's wheelhouse as she likes to write about the ocean. Miri's parts seemed like a chore and that they were hastily written, as though Armfield just put them in there to fill an already sparse book. The overabundance of filler words like "I thought," "I remembered," "I felt," especially in Miri's parts, turned the book from an okay read to a chore to read. There were a few elements, especially towards the end, that could have filled the whole book but were thrown in carelessly -- like
the conspiracy theory about whether the company trapped the submarine down there on purpose
and
the beast itself
. The body horror elements were amazing but since they were written in Miri's perspective, they were delivered with such a lack of care that it was hard to engage with them, particularly in a way that would have made them more horror-ific. While I loved Leah's parts, especially for how vibrant and interesting they are, the lack of quality in Miri's parts dragged the book down for me. Down, down, into the depths below.
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