I went into this book with zero expectations, picking it up purely because I liked the cover: suffice it to say I was pleasantly surprised. It's a slow burn, but I couldn't put it down. It is the story of a wife returning from a deep sea military mission and her struggles to readjust to land. Flowing between the past and the present, it is as haunting as it is terribly mundane - a leisurely and darkly funny dip into cosmic horror. It's also about grief and love in deteriorating relationships (familial, platonic, and romantic) PLUS it is packed to the brim with fun ocean facts. Highly recommended for fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Jeff Vandermeer, and Samanta Schweblin.
Overall I rate the book somewhere between 4 and 5, but something in Armfield's writing just sunk deep into my bones and it's making me round up.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I really love lit fiction so I enjoyed the writing especially in the beginning. The descriptions of the relationships and even mothers was beautifully told. The horror aspect was vague and I think on purpose to let your mind wander and come to your own conclusions. It’s definitely a different type of book that won’t resonate with everyone but for a certain type of reader this will be a hit. I listened and enjoyed the narrator(s), and liked the varying perspectives. 3.5 stars rounded up.

The way Armfield wrote about grief really hit home for me. She said that what hurts most isn’t the loss itself, but the emptiness that it leaves behind. The fact that you’ll never see that person again. I feel that rings true.

She goes one-step further, asking the question; when is the right time to start grieving? In this book, Miri mourns the person that Leah once was, while Leah herself is right there, just different.

This was a beautifully written, almost subtle horror. The author didn’t go out of her way to show us things you’d usually expect from horror taking place in the deep sea, like monsters and other horrific creatures. Instead, she does the opposite; the scary part is that there’s nothing. Well, not until the end, but the isolation of the crew is a big part of what makes the situation so scary. They’re on their own, left to assume the worst & panic.

The body horror is another thing. Rather than going into graphic, toe-curling detail, the author left her descriptions rather vague, which I actually liked. It left it to the imagination, which is what I love about book period, and over-descriptive writing kind of takes away from that.

I’m a sucker for literary fiction, and this was no exception. Im a fan of horror as well, and this was rather the perfect mix for me to read & enjoy.

I definitely recommend this book!!

Wow, overall I really enjoyed this book! I rate it a 3.5 out of 5. it's very unique and different from books I generally read. I like the blend of genres this book uses. Mixing mystery and science fiction through literary fiction is something I enjoyed much more than I typically enjoy literary fiction. The two perspectives were very effective in creating intrigue over what happened to Leah while on her mission. I enjoyed this especially since I have a fascination with the ocean, however the beautiful literary style does backfire in a sense because it doesn't keep building the momentum because of the slow moving introspective nature. Because of this the ending is a little underwhelming. Im really glad I read this book and will defiantly follow this authors work. It is a very strong debut novel.

"Every horror movie ends the way to know it will."

The way that this book ruined my brain and heart again and again, going through each stage of grief.

Every horror story has a love story at the center– the eye, if you will. Like Miri, I wanted so desperately to cling on to the way things were and pretend like maybe a miracle would pull through, though I knew very well that grief and this story can never come full circle. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end, and life will continue on whether it is the time for sorrow or joy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for gifting me with an ALC of Julia Armfield’s debut novel, Our Wives Under The Sea. In exchange I offer my unbiased review.

I almost gave up early on, as I wasn’t sure this eerie novel was for me, but thankfully the haunting narration pulled me in and kept me hooked.

Told in alternating POVs, we hear from Miri, the wife left behind and her partner Leah, the wife who journeys under sea as part of a scientific exploration. It’s clear that something terrible has occurred on the submarine but it’s unclear exactly what happened. The story slowly reveals the horrors and will leave you wondering what lurks beneath the surface?!! Author Armfield writes with lush prose, evocative and dreamlike as she examines grief, love, trauma and memory.

This was a short novel but it makes a big splash (sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun)!!
This would be great for bookclub discussion.

I grabbed the audiobook from Netgalley and the two narrators are absolutely fantastic.
A highly enjoyable way to consume this story.

Two wives retell a story where one goes on a deep-sea dive gone wrong, finally returning much changed, while the other, left in the dark for months, begin to mourn her. In alternating chapters, the dive itself is retold, as well as her partner reckoning with, and caring for her wife.

The prose does an amazing job of making the reader sink into the story of the couple while fostering the quiet mystery and blossoming melancholy of life and love changed. What’s brilliant about this is how subjective the experience is. I think you could come up with a bunch of reading of this, taking the events as surreal aspects to the story, or else fantastical; certainly metaphorical. Given the themes of liminal space and sea lungs, and transitions—perhaps a more fitting label is a combination of them.

It is, I think, from my own reading, a story about mourning the change of a relationship, mourning that loss. I’m not sure I subscribe to the more unbelievable aspects as literal, but more abstract motifs to further drive home the feelings of both women. How loving multiple things at once, especially when they are a fundamental conflict, cause a schism. How creating a story about loss can aid in processing complex feelings around loss. And perhaps in the doing, the literal action, of letting go, in whatever form it takes, can be the thing that makes it real.

In its own way, it makes plenty of sense. But to allow for that to happen, the reader will have to do exactly what the story does: Turn inward in search of answers that are important to look for, but entirely of your own making. Some people will love it and some people will hate it. This is a predominantly interior novel. The ecosystem of the words is so incredibly chosen that the propulsion is the beautiful prose and the dread of both wanting and not wanting to know what will happen next. This makes it quiet. Understated. Wildly vivid and unconcerned with the expectations of the reader. It almost eschews them entirely.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I was so excited to get a copy and listen to it because I had heard great things about this book from reviews, but it didn't really live up to the expectations that I had going in. I did enjoy that there were 2 POVs between Leah and Miri but I felt like this book was written in such a way that it was confusing. I think what made it confusing is there are a lot of questions that get left unanswered. I'm a person that needs closure when a book comes to an end. I also didn't really feel a connection with either of the characters which made it hard for me to care about their story. While this book was labeled as being in the horror genre I didn't feel like it was a horror book to me.

Pub day: JULY 12, 2022.
3.5/5⭐️

This was very hauntingly emotional story that left me feeling quite raw. The writing and the narration were both exceptional.

There were some very uncomfortable moments, and maybe that was the point, but there were times the language and details just made my skin crawl and I didn’t know if I would be able to continue. It was a very interesting reading experience but not quite the right fit for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the alc in exchange for an honest review.

I just finished listening to Our Wives Under the Sea and I will say that it is not a book that was for me.  I like the concept of the novel and Armfield's writing method but I could not touch base with the characters.  I don't usually have an issue with dual time lines yet I found myself rewinding and relistening to several chapters to figure out where I was in this novel. 

The narrators allowed for easy listening with good intonations.  Voices were pleasing to the ear. 

My thanks to #netgalley and Dreamscape Media for the ARC.  This opinion is my own.

What a unique book this is. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it before. Our Wives Under the Sea follows wives Miri (after Leah’s return from a submarine research mission shrouded in mystery) and Leah (before Leah’s return from a submarine research mission shrouded in mystery) where appearances are deceiving throughout both perspectives.

Our Wives Under the Sea is a short (6 hour audio), sapphic, literary fiction (I would also argue speculative fiction) novel that is just the right amount of both weird and compelling. The ocean is horrifying and we know so little about it, which added an extra layer of creepy to the story. My real gripe is that I wanted more of Leah, more time spent on Leah’s POV and more detailed descriptions of Leah in Miri’s POV. More Leah and more about some of the weird elements (forum for fake astronaut husbands, “The Center”, etc) would’ve really fleshed out the story. But, I still enjoyed it as is.

If you liked Bunny by Mona Awad, I think you’ll like this one.

Thank you to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the audiobook arc.

Audiobook received for free through NetGalley

I absolutely adored this book. Slow going at bits but the words used where sublime. Story grabs you and you need to keep listening to find out what happens. So glad I came across it.

This book did not work for me at all. I listened on audio and it’s a dual POV story. Problem 1 was the narrator for both POVs sounded exactly the same and I had to keep checking the chapter title to remind myself who was talking. Problem 2 was that it was bizarre, to put it mildly.

Mira and Leah are a married couple and Leah has just returned from a submarine research expedition that went awry. She comes back as damaged goods and Mira is left struggling to figure out where the woman she fell in love with went or how to help her.

I’m sure there is some very deep stuff going on in this book, but this was way too out for me to find it enjoyable. I’m sure some readers will have some great explanations for the some of the things I just didn’t get, but I really don’t want to work that hard at understanding a story. I found the ending strange as well. I don’t enjoy too much imagery and I feel like maybe that’s the reason the book didn’t work for me. Others may love it.

I feel like I start most of my reviews with this but… WOW.

I’ll begin by applauding the narrators of this audiobook, Annabel Baldwin and Robyn Holdaway, because they did an amazing job portraying the emotion of these characters. I never felt like one POV lacked while the other shone, both through their voices and Armfield’s writing. The scenes that Armfield imagines are relayed so vividly to the reader that I felt as though I was in Miri and Leah’s apartment and in the submarine at the bottom of the sea.

This is a story of enduring and endurance, loss, love, and the painful journey of watching loved ones fade away in front of your eyes. Armfield’s metaphors and imagery pull you into Miri and Leah’s lives and hold you so closely that you have a hard time leaving them behind at the end of the novel. I highly recommend Our Wives Under the Sea for readers who like having their hearts slowly tugged at and then broken into pieces.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audiobook ARC of this novel!

Most of Our Wives Under the Sea is spent addressing love, grief, trauma, and recovery in a way that is so all-consuming that the moments of horror and unfolding mystery were genuinely startling. I loved this book, and while I do wish that we had a second novel to dive into the mystery itself, I felt that the ending was strong. The alternating viewpoints and timelines kept me engaged, and I wound up listening to the full audiobook in two sittings. I will be recommending this book to my colleagues, and potentially to my 12th grade students.

The star of this book is truly Julia Armfield's exquisite prose and melodic writing. Her words lull you into a story that feels peaceful and smooth all while building up a sense of anxiety and dread as Leah and Miri's relationship disintegrates and Leah's horrifying experience beneath the surface comes to life in bits and pieces. I'm completely confident that this book will be on so many people's favorites list this year, and the cover is so sharp.

I really loved this one, and appreciated the knowledge and research that went into this short novel in terms of submarines, marine biology, and the deceptive subtlety of PTSD.

I’m quite torn over this book since I think it would’ve translated better as an e book rather than an audio book, so I wanted to preface my review with the fact that I think I’d have to reread it. This book is pitched as a science fiction horror novel about a woman’s wife who goes missing on a deep sea mission and returns a different person. However, a majority of the story focuses on the women’s former relationship before this happened.

This book is watery. So watery that it is impossible to grasp. Those who like Catherine House, This Thing Between Us, Watch Over Me (by Nina Lacour) and other “literary horror” books, this is for you.

Ultimately, this is not a book where you feel satisfied at the end by all the plot points coming together to knock your socks off. This is a slow, haunting story that acts as a metaphor for slowly losing the one you love. I almost viewed this as a “growing apart and breaking up” story rather than a science fiction novel. The real stand out of this book is not the characters, or the action-based plot, or even the setting (like I’d hoped), but the writing and analysis about a relationship falling apart.

Horror is not my go to genre, but I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would. Possibly because, in a way, it is a typical "horror": think being stranded in a deep sea in a submarine without any prospect of being rescued, hearing "voices", smelling disgusting odors, dreaming of all of your teeth falling out etc., etc. But in other ways it is very different from your typical horror, and more inline with the literary fiction genre. If you expect something akin to Riley Seger or Grady Hendrix - this is not it. Our Wives Under The Sea is a short novel, only 223 pages (6 h and 7 min on audio), but it still has a fair amount of "nothing much happening". And there is a TON of character development - which is probably why I enjoyed it as much as I did. 

When Leah returns after a 3 weeks deep dive mission, turned into a 6 months mission, Miri, her wife, is overjoyed. But Leah has changed. And keeps changing. The transformation is psychological and physical, and Miri not only needs to cope with all the disturbing changes in her wife, she also needs to adapt to their ever changing relationship. She keeps reminiscing about their past: how they met, what kind of person Leah used to be when Miri fell in love with her, and the life they built together. So it is not very surprising that there is a lot of character development. 

By the end of the novel I felt like I knew both Miri and Leah very well. The writing is gorgeous, and really made me want to read Armfield's short story collection Salt Slow. But ...I think a lot of aficionados of the horror genre will probably find Our Wives Under the Sea rather slow, and unnecessarily dragged out. 

Personally I loved all the "build up", and the character development, but was underwhelmed when the "culprit" of all the transformation was revealed. I guess I expected something different. More figurative, and inline with the rest of the novel.

Read Our Wives Under the Sea if you enjoy slow burn horror with a lot of character development, if you are generally interested in marine biology, and enjoy horror stories that take place in "enclosed spaces" from which escape is impossible (think space ships, or submarines). Or better yet - listen to it! The audio is fantastic 👌 

Also this novel is written by a queer author and features F/F relationship. So if you are looking for something a bit more diverse to read, say during everyone's favorite "horror season" 🎃 , Our Wives is a fantastic choice!

Thank you Dreamscape Media, NetGalley and the author for this ALC. As always the opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own. 

Rating: between 3 and 4 🌟s

4.5/5 This book had such a growing sense of dread, it really kept me intrigued until the end! It was a pretty fast read, although maybe that’s just because most of the books I’ve read lately have been duds! This book contains alternating timelines and different perspectives, although it wasn’t hard to keep track of. My only complaint was the ending, but maybe if I sit on it longer I’ll feel better about it.

Our Wives Under the Sea defies a quick review. The plot itself, feels a bit like Science Fiction, a bit like horror. But, half of the book (more, really) is firmly set in the point of view of Miri, the wife left behind, left on land, left in charge as everything unravels. Grief, loneliness, connection is all so powerfully explored.

The audiobook is wonderfully narrated on two voices.