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A review by soartfullydone
A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.75
I’ll just say it. The Wolf and the Woodsman >>>>>>>>>>>> A Study in Drowning. It’s not even a contest.
I was so looking forward to this book, too. Ava Reid is a talented writer whose work is slept on too much, but if A Study in Drowning was her first work handed to me, I’d be sleeping, too. Do I blame YA at this point? Reid’s immersive, atmospheric writing was on full display here, but it amounts to mostly empty vibes with An Important Message to Tell, so there’s no chance you’ll miss it.
The atmosphere is, by and large, the best thing about this experience. The way reading books set in winter always makes me feel colder, reading A Study in Drowning gives me a constant impression of feeling damp, surrounded by dripping water and moisture on all sides. That’s how much care and attention Reid put into the book’s imagery. As the main character Effy’s anxiety manifests as a feeling of drowning, so does Hiraeth Manor rot and decay due to rain, storm, and sea. I cannot say that A Study in Drowning didn’t live up to its title.
It’s everywhere else where it falls flat. Folks are calling this a dark academia book. It’s not. It’s a mystery in a gothic setting. The riddle of the mystery is sadly obvious from around chapter 2 or 3, but it’s at least intriguing enough to have kept me reading. I absolutely love how it brought the gothic, though. Hiraeth Manor feels like its own character. The manor setting and Ianto are by far the most interesting aspects brought to bear.
Too bad it’s all overshadowed by such a tiresome protagonist and a predictably instalove romance that carried no feeling with it whatsoever. I do believe A Study in Drowning tries to be a gothic romance. Between Preston, Ianto, and the Fairy King, I believe the pieces are all there, but this book either tries to do too much or it focuses on the wrong, repetitive things to truly make it work. Or, worse, it still plays it all too safe. I haven’t decided on which is true yet.
What A Study in Drowning also claims to be is an academic rivals-to-lovers romance, and yeah, that is a lie. Effy and Preston are not academic rivals at all, and it goes beyond them not being in the same college of study. It’s the fact that they are never at academic odds or seeking to truly challenge or undermine the other. And they really should have been.
Effy arrives at Hiraeth Manor to redesign the house of her favorite author—Emrys Myrddin—and Preston arrives to prove that someone else authored Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad. Y’all, I was expecting sabotage. I was expecting for spit to fly, for two nerds to really go head-to-head on proving their argument as the prevailing one, or to at least discredit the other. And maybe sparks would fly between Effy and Preston, begrudging yet there nevertheless.
What I got instead was Effy being snappy and regionalist? I guess? Because she’s so mad that half-foreign student, Preston, checked out all the library books she needed. Preston, in return, is a little impatient and testy, but he never says anything off-color or remotely challenging. And despite how much the book tries to tell me that Effy challenges Preston, she doesn’t. They almost instantly decide to work together in proving Preston’s theory since Effy is so disillusioned by the state of Hiraeth Manor that her beliefs about Myrddin are already in tatters lol
In truth, Preston is only here for a few reasons: 1) to be Effy’s toothless, unthreatening love interest unlike all those other creeps, 2) to be the only man who never says anything misogynistic to or about Effy unlike all those other creeps, and 3) to be the person who holds Effy up from falling, literally, and to inspire her to do anything besides run away.
If it weren’t for Preston, I daresay there’d be no story at all, which is so funny given how much A Study in Drowning is supposed to be about women reclaiming their agency in a world of men. But Effy has no worth unless Preston tells her she has worth. Effy doesn’t feel like she’s deserving of anything until Preston tells her she deserves more. Effy has no academic credibility unless Preston defends her against other men. It’s kind of embarrassing, how hamfisted the feminist lines are yet how easily they are undermined by a character so boring, I sometimes forgot he was there.
And I don’t know. Maybe this lowbrow feminism 101 is good for somebody, but I just find it so rote at this point. It’s not even written differently, like in a new metaphor kind of way. For example, a random male student compliments Effy, calling her pretty, gorgeous, did she know that? I just sighed and went, “Say the line,” and predictably the book went, “If she said yes, I do, she was a conceited harpy. If she shook her head and rebuffed the compliment, she was falsely modest, playing coy. It was fae-like trickery. There was no answer that wouldn’t damn her.” And I’m like, sure thing, The Breakfast Club (1985).
Maybe it says something that we keep having the same conversations about women’s place in society, how men view women, and so on. But is it too much to ask for some originality about it? Especially in a book exploring, ironically enough, the concept of stolen ideas and the importance of the authorial identity? Do we even need to spell it out like this? Can a YA book, perhaps, try to demonstrate a situation instead of telling you how it is? Must it only preach to you, because if it doesn’t, you just won’t get it?
Whatever, I complain about this lack of nuance and finesse all the time. Probably why I take an immediate 89 hit points of damage whenever a new book starts doing it to me. I have to accept that, in this, I am not the target audience. A Study in Drowning is for that girl who really, desperately needs to be seen by something, and that’s just not me at my big age.
Fortunately, there are other things to complain about. How none of the world-building surrounding Llyrians and Argantians and their wars are fleshed out. How the only setting that feels real is Hiraeth Manor despite Effy seemingly losing her grip on reality.
Llyrian regionalism between North and South, on the other hand, is familiar only by nature of me having lived in the American Deep South. If only the Drowning and the Sleepers meant more to me than young adult capital words! If only I could place what time period the world of A Study in Drowning is trying to mimic! The Edwardian period? The 1950s in the U.S.? A blend of something?
And if only the men in this book sans Preston could go two sentences without being prompted to say The Most Obviously Misogynistic Thing you could think of, like they’re reading from a cue card. By the way, I don’t care about misogynistic things being said in general, that’s fine. I care about how it’s presented, and here, misogyny is always bald-faced and obnoxious when, in my reality, there’s a lot about misogyny that is understated and subtle. Baked-in, one might say. Because the misogyny here is so incredibly hamfisted, it makes sense why the book presents feminist ideas in an equally hamfisted way.
Then, of course, there’s Effy and how she exhausts my patience. Her passivity. Her lack of growth. Her nonexistent spine. Her unearned ending. Her fear of men being healed by a soft boy love interest. What are we doing here?
It’s the way her reactions to anything become so predictable and so unchallenged. Dry popping pills that never seem to work. Lips trembling. Fighting the urge to cry. Choking back tears. Eyes stinging. Skin prickling. Knees trembling. Barely catching herself from falling. Blushing at the slightest sign of anything embarrassing or suggestive. Sinking through the cracks. Feeling nauseous (should be nauseated, and I’m dying on this hill). Panic swelling in her chest. Making a sound that sounds like a laugh. Choking back a laugh. Just on and on and on. True drinking game material, this one.
A Study in Drowning is supposed to be a study about Effy (and other things that are drowning), but she achieves nothing without Preston. We all need help sometimes. We all want someone to believe in us. But as a reader, I needed to believe in Effy, and I didn’t.
She reads so much more like a caricature that’s been heaped with trauma after trauma, fear after fear rather than a living, deeply hurt young woman. I agree with the book’s message that survival is its own bravery, that fighting back isn’t the only recourse a woman has or is expected to do. However, I would argue that surviving also means doing something, and besides the inciting action of the novel, Effy mostly just does what she’s told. She is, in fact, the doll that so many men want her to be because the novel isn’t interested in developing her until its whiplash, anticlimactic ending. Master Corbenic’s “prophecy” for her also weirdly comes true with Preston, but because he’s so “safe,” this so-called feminist novel doesn’t even see it. I could scream, actually.
The scene-setting of the final confrontation was SO cool, though. So cool until it was abruptly, tragically over. Makes me wish even more that Reid had focused on Hiraeth Manor, on those trapped by it and the legacy it represented! All of the clues and people we needed were there in that house, on those grounds. Why did we waste so much time being anywhere else? It’s the potential I’m mourning here.
Oh well, another Illumicrate edition to donate to the library.
The atmosphere is, by and large, the best thing about this experience. The way reading books set in winter always makes me feel colder, reading A Study in Drowning gives me a constant impression of feeling damp, surrounded by dripping water and moisture on all sides. That’s how much care and attention Reid put into the book’s imagery. As the main character Effy’s anxiety manifests as a feeling of drowning, so does Hiraeth Manor rot and decay due to rain, storm, and sea. I cannot say that A Study in Drowning didn’t live up to its title.
It’s everywhere else where it falls flat. Folks are calling this a dark academia book. It’s not. It’s a mystery in a gothic setting. The riddle of the mystery is sadly obvious from around chapter 2 or 3, but it’s at least intriguing enough to have kept me reading. I absolutely love how it brought the gothic, though. Hiraeth Manor feels like its own character. The manor setting and Ianto are by far the most interesting aspects brought to bear.
Too bad it’s all overshadowed by such a tiresome protagonist and a predictably instalove romance that carried no feeling with it whatsoever. I do believe A Study in Drowning tries to be a gothic romance. Between Preston, Ianto, and the Fairy King, I believe the pieces are all there, but this book either tries to do too much or it focuses on the wrong, repetitive things to truly make it work. Or, worse, it still plays it all too safe. I haven’t decided on which is true yet.
What A Study in Drowning also claims to be is an academic rivals-to-lovers romance, and yeah, that is a lie. Effy and Preston are not academic rivals at all, and it goes beyond them not being in the same college of study. It’s the fact that they are never at academic odds or seeking to truly challenge or undermine the other. And they really should have been.
Effy arrives at Hiraeth Manor to redesign the house of her favorite author—Emrys Myrddin—and Preston arrives to prove that someone else authored Myrddin’s most famous work, Angharad. Y’all, I was expecting sabotage. I was expecting for spit to fly, for two nerds to really go head-to-head on proving their argument as the prevailing one, or to at least discredit the other. And maybe sparks would fly between Effy and Preston, begrudging yet there nevertheless.
What I got instead was Effy being snappy and regionalist? I guess? Because she’s so mad that half-foreign student, Preston, checked out all the library books she needed. Preston, in return, is a little impatient and testy, but he never says anything off-color or remotely challenging. And despite how much the book tries to tell me that Effy challenges Preston, she doesn’t. They almost instantly decide to work together in proving Preston’s theory since Effy is so disillusioned by the state of Hiraeth Manor that her beliefs about Myrddin are already in tatters lol
In truth, Preston is only here for a few reasons: 1) to be Effy’s toothless, unthreatening love interest unlike all those other creeps, 2) to be the only man who never says anything misogynistic to or about Effy unlike all those other creeps, and 3) to be the person who holds Effy up from falling, literally, and to inspire her to do anything besides run away.
If it weren’t for Preston, I daresay there’d be no story at all, which is so funny given how much A Study in Drowning is supposed to be about women reclaiming their agency in a world of men. But Effy has no worth unless Preston tells her she has worth. Effy doesn’t feel like she’s deserving of anything until Preston tells her she deserves more. Effy has no academic credibility unless Preston defends her against other men. It’s kind of embarrassing, how hamfisted the feminist lines are yet how easily they are undermined by a character so boring, I sometimes forgot he was there.
And I don’t know. Maybe this lowbrow feminism 101 is good for somebody, but I just find it so rote at this point. It’s not even written differently, like in a new metaphor kind of way. For example, a random male student compliments Effy, calling her pretty, gorgeous, did she know that? I just sighed and went, “Say the line,” and predictably the book went, “If she said yes, I do, she was a conceited harpy. If she shook her head and rebuffed the compliment, she was falsely modest, playing coy. It was fae-like trickery. There was no answer that wouldn’t damn her.” And I’m like, sure thing, The Breakfast Club (1985).
Maybe it says something that we keep having the same conversations about women’s place in society, how men view women, and so on. But is it too much to ask for some originality about it? Especially in a book exploring, ironically enough, the concept of stolen ideas and the importance of the authorial identity? Do we even need to spell it out like this? Can a YA book, perhaps, try to demonstrate a situation instead of telling you how it is? Must it only preach to you, because if it doesn’t, you just won’t get it?
Whatever, I complain about this lack of nuance and finesse all the time. Probably why I take an immediate 89 hit points of damage whenever a new book starts doing it to me. I have to accept that, in this, I am not the target audience. A Study in Drowning is for that girl who really, desperately needs to be seen by something, and that’s just not me at my big age.
Fortunately, there are other things to complain about. How none of the world-building surrounding Llyrians and Argantians and their wars are fleshed out. How the only setting that feels real is Hiraeth Manor despite Effy seemingly losing her grip on reality.
Llyrian regionalism between North and South, on the other hand, is familiar only by nature of me having lived in the American Deep South. If only the Drowning and the Sleepers meant more to me than young adult capital words! If only I could place what time period the world of A Study in Drowning is trying to mimic! The Edwardian period? The 1950s in the U.S.? A blend of something?
And if only the men in this book sans Preston could go two sentences without being prompted to say The Most Obviously Misogynistic Thing you could think of, like they’re reading from a cue card. By the way, I don’t care about misogynistic things being said in general, that’s fine. I care about how it’s presented, and here, misogyny is always bald-faced and obnoxious when, in my reality, there’s a lot about misogyny that is understated and subtle. Baked-in, one might say. Because the misogyny here is so incredibly hamfisted, it makes sense why the book presents feminist ideas in an equally hamfisted way.
Then, of course, there’s Effy and how she exhausts my patience. Her passivity. Her lack of growth. Her nonexistent spine. Her unearned ending. Her fear of men being healed by a soft boy love interest. What are we doing here?
It’s the way her reactions to anything become so predictable and so unchallenged. Dry popping pills that never seem to work. Lips trembling. Fighting the urge to cry. Choking back tears. Eyes stinging. Skin prickling. Knees trembling. Barely catching herself from falling. Blushing at the slightest sign of anything embarrassing or suggestive. Sinking through the cracks. Feeling nauseous (should be nauseated, and I’m dying on this hill). Panic swelling in her chest. Making a sound that sounds like a laugh. Choking back a laugh. Just on and on and on. True drinking game material, this one.
A Study in Drowning is supposed to be a study about Effy (and other things that are drowning), but she achieves nothing without Preston. We all need help sometimes. We all want someone to believe in us. But as a reader, I needed to believe in Effy, and I didn’t.
She reads so much more like a caricature that’s been heaped with trauma after trauma, fear after fear rather than a living, deeply hurt young woman. I agree with the book’s message that survival is its own bravery, that fighting back isn’t the only recourse a woman has or is expected to do. However, I would argue that surviving also means doing something, and besides the inciting action of the novel, Effy mostly just does what she’s told. She is, in fact, the doll that so many men want her to be because the novel isn’t interested in developing her until its whiplash, anticlimactic ending. Master Corbenic’s “prophecy” for her also weirdly comes true with Preston, but because he’s so “safe,” this so-called feminist novel doesn’t even see it. I could scream, actually.
The scene-setting of the final confrontation was SO cool, though. So cool until it was abruptly, tragically over. Makes me wish even more that Reid had focused on Hiraeth Manor, on those trapped by it and the legacy it represented! All of the clues and people we needed were there in that house, on those grounds. Why did we waste so much time being anywhere else? It’s the potential I’m mourning here.
Oh well, another Illumicrate edition to donate to the library.