A review by soaliha
A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

lighthearted mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I have been so conflicted about this book since I finished it a few days ago that I almost didn’t write a review for it, but perhaps its discordant nature alone means it deserves one. 

A Letter To The Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall is an epistolary academic romance set in an alternate world, where humans live in floating colonies on the ocean because there are (almost) no land masses. 

The book’s opening chapters reveal that E Cidnosin, an extremely anxious woman who lives underwater, and Henerey Clel, a sweet and enthusiastic scholar of marine biology who she has a crush on, have vanished. 

A year after their strange and unexplained disappearance, Sophy, younger sister to E, and Vyerin, older brother to Henerey, piece together fragments of E and Henerey’s letters, as well as their own, to figure out what happened to them. 

There was much I liked about this book — the characters are funny and likeable (though admittedly, not very distinct from one another),  the setting is intriguing with interesting lore and there is an overall sweet and cozy nature to it that makes for great reading in these cold and sleepy nights. There is also a surprisingly earnest depiction of OCD and anxiety in its characters which I appreciated, too. 

However, what this book lacks is plot — the majority of the letters between E and Henerey are the two fawning over each other, and while this *is* a romance novel, it actually does become tiresome. Things finally pick up in the last few chapters of the novel, but just when things become exciting (and the plot actually progresses), the story is abruptly cut off — only for us to be rudely informed that this book is the first in a series, actually, and the rest will continue in book two. I genuinely felt tricked, deceived even, if I’m honest. At no point does the cover, blurb, or introduction of this book indicate that it is not a standalone. 

While Henerey and E left me giggling and kicking my feet, the time the book spends on their idle chatter — compared to subjects of actual plot relevance — makes me suspicious (and perhaps overly cynical) that perhaps this WAS a standalone novel, but it was dragged out to make more $$.

I do still think it’s worth a read if you like light academia romances and strange, fantastical worlds — and again, there’s a lot I really enjoyed about it — but be warned that there is little pay off for the time you spend reading this book, which is disappointing given how long it is.