A review by kemikemi
A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Regardless of however the book was marketed, to me this book is a mysterious and anxious character study inside a dark academia fantasy setting. The focus on higher education research and the Llyrian literary world, with exerpts from books, poems, and academic  articles from within Llyr at the start of each chapter, reminded me of Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett—another book I enjoyed that created additional academic lore to immerse the reader in the culture it was creating and further the themes of the novel. Angharad, as well as Myrddin’s poems, were written so beautifully and I wish they were released on their own so that we could read them in full; Ava Reid did such a good job with the setting of Hiraeth, its location within
the Bottom Hundred, and with the overall character that was the sea.

This book was also a fascinating character study, and no matter how many other people call her bland I will stand by Effy as a character. The beginning was a little hard to get through because her perspective was giving me so much secondhand anxiety; the description of her thoughts and feelings were so visceral and yet she also spoke in vagues, so that you could not clearly grasp what exactly was haunting her so. Once she began to reveal her past, however, it all slowly clicked into place, and from the moment she said it I knew in my heart it was all real. It’s a bit of a tale as old as time, a young woman who is experienced no one believing her for so long that she begins to doubt her own senses and sanity. Don’t get me wrong, I was very invested in the mystery behind Angharad and wanted to see what the truth would unfold to be, the most of all I wanted to know if Effy would ever get to experience realizing and proving that herself as right in her own personal story. I also don’t understand how people don’t see the romance in this story, because I very much did; it was tender and rooted in someone caring for and believing in you. Especially with the blatant juxtaposition of very masculine older men trying to tell Effy who she was and what she needed, her relationship with a same-aged peer and quiet academic felt very precious to me and I enjoyed every minute they were on-page together. 

My main critique would have to be the way the events of the book unfolded from the climax to the end; when considering the pace of the rest of the novel, it did feel very fast and like so much information was suddenly dumped on us.
I did feel very vindicated, having guessed from the moment Preston said he didn’t think Angharad was written by Emrys Myrddin it was written by his widow, although initially, I was a bit too optimistic like Effie and thought that it was going to be a love story where women weren’t allowed to publish novels and so one man who loved his wife so much published it for her so that he could prove to her that her writing could and would be beloved by the entire land. The reality is so much more bleak, but in a world where sexism is so ingrained, a story about common men being commonly greedy and cruel more realistic than a fantastic love about a man who rose above basic misogyny.
However, this complaint does not ruin my enjoyment for the book as a whole, and thus I rate it four stars. I had a great time diving into this world, and I also have to thank Saskia Maarleveld for her fantastic narrating of the audiobook; I especially loved how she did Preston’s voice, and I think her voice lilting across all the Llyrian and Argantian words and accented voices really elevated the experience for me. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings