Private Rites is to sisterhood what Our Wives Under the Sea is to grief and loss. There is definitely a watery horror underpinning this story - no one writes water horror quite like Armfield. The mental strain, the varied physicality of it, the neverending, almost monotonous dripping. But, at its core, this story is focused on 3 sisters and their twisted relationship. The prose is gorgeous, almost meandering in it's languid fluidity.

I think I would read anything Armfield writes. This is an easy 5 stars for me. Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

"The three of them, trying to be less isolated and frequently failing, trying to be less conclusively the product of their past."

The city is slowly sinking under the weight of the endless rain, like its the end of days. And it is for the carmichael family-three daughters who grew up with inconsistency and neglect under the care of their manipulative and cold father. Upon learning of his death, the complicated relationships Isla, Irene, and Agnes share have them feeling high strung and isolated. When the sisters finally reunite to discuss the future of their father's home, malevolent outside forces descend to bring it all (the world, the family, the house itself) crashing down.

Thanks, netgalley and flatiron, for giving me this ARC to review! There were twists in this book that i in no way anticipated. Armfield really invoked a sense of drowning in foreboding in this book thay sometimes made it difficult for me to read, maybe because it was too skillful and may have made me feeling so anxious about the future of the real world, where i don't have a floating house. Enviromental horror! The scariest kind!

I liked how the sisters had their own chapters and allowed you to feel their own fears and hopes, even in the end. The area where agnes discovers she in love hit me so deep in the gut- i know that feeling. And i feel like each sister made me feel both their deep grudges and desires for connection with each other. I have to say that the twist in the end made...a little confused. I didnt expect a happy ending, but i also didnt expect a hereditary movie where mom set up this ending from beyond! and i wanted a resolution for the sisters more than i wanted the explanation for why so many people were just staring unsettlingly at agnes. I enjoyed this read but it was NOT GREAT for my anxiety.

Julia Armfield is brilliant at writing living grief. Mourning something that has not quite come to pass.

Private Rites takes place in an apocalyptic world. Climate change has transformed earth into vast wetlands and sinking cities. Constant rain that seeps into your bones, a dampness eating away at the walls. As civilization becomes threatened by encroaching water, a sense of finality plagues everyday life. How people react to this nearing end is the main backdrop to our story. These manifestations of grief in our slow decline into obsolescence. And the old rituals and religions that burst forth as people clamber for control and peace of mind.

Amongst it all, our three sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes are dealing with the death of their cruel and revered father. And the haunting glass house of their childhood he left behind. Each are frankly numb to the world ending outside, left floating in the vacuum left behind. Alongside grief, this book depicts a sense of yearning. Yearning for the way life used to be, yearning for who you could have been, yearning to fix what has been damaged. It’s feeling completely off kilter, like the floor is slanted just slightly to screw up your balance but still trick you into thinking everything is level. Our sisters yearn to fit together like they should, but their pieces were broken long ago. Haunted by the sneering judgment of a father that no longer holds power over them.

It’s strange how despite their dysfunctional dynamic, I still envied their sisterhood. I’ve always wanted a sister, and this book made that ache even more acute. As a fellow middle child, I felt the most connected to Irene. The infinite anger, prickly disposition, and contrarian nature of her teens being fossilized by her siblings and now forever how she is perceived. No matter how she grows as an adult. Her academic obsession with Christianity despite not being religious. Each of our sisters are at different stages in life, each highly informed by their birth order. Isla is currently facing divorce. She has a compulsive need for authority and organization. Irene is settled in a long-term relationship but straining at the seams. Agnes is solitary before she begins embarking on a new romance. As Irene states: “Sisterhood, she thinks, is a trap. You all get stuck in certain roles forever.”

But in addition to this tale about human connection and grief, there is a creeping horror to this story as well. The wayward stares and mutterings of strangers, the mysterious carvings in wood and errant notes, the unsettling memories bursting through dreams. Paired with offhanded accounts of people flocking to unsavory organizations, performing ancient rituals, you feel a pit in your stomach the whole book. A taut cord ready to snap. With how carefully placed these mentions are spaced out; you are lulled into a false sense of security. “This is the wrong genre,” Agnes thinks just as the other shoe drops. You are viciously reminded that this is a horror novel, and all those human elements were not so much a distraction, but a tone shift. Truly masterfully done. The sickness I felt was so jarring.

I fear that I may have lost some nuance because I am not familiar with King Lear. I now have this desperate pressing desire to pick it up because I want to be in the know. I want to reread this and investigate every nook and cranny, pick up on that extra layer filled with foreshadowing and references. It may just be in my future.

I read the prologue and said "what the heck did I just read". At the end of the book, I'm still kind of saying that BUT it is clear what Armfield is doing here is brilliant. I can't exactly name it, but this washed over me, entranced me, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. While not for everyone, it is worth exploring.

What did I just read? Genuinely I have no idea.

It was a world ending book which is what drew me in. I adore that genre. And honestly I did love the slow burn world build dread.

However I thought it was leading up to some big finish and the finish... It was exactly as I predicted and also answered nothing.

I wanted to love this so much and though many times I got tempted to DNF because nothing was happening, I also had to know what happened. Honestly wish I hadn't.

Thank you Flatiron for my free ARC of Private Rites by Julia Armfield — available now!

» READ IF YOU «
👯‍♀️ have sisters, because you’ll get it
👀 live for that ‘unsettling’ vibe in a story
🐙 enjoyed Our Wives Under the Sea

» SYNOPSIS «
Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes could not be more different—at least in the most obvious ways. Deep down, they share more than they think, especially when it comes to the rocky relationship each had with their recently-deceased father. When his will is read, tempers flare, but the sisters will have to come back together to combat the strange, unsettling feeling that someone is watching them…

» REVIEW «
Our Wives was one of my favorite reads of the year, so of course I simply HAD to get my hands on a copy of Private Rites! I’m happy to say I enjoyed it and that the eerie vibes were very similar to those of Our Wives, though they didn’t really “kick in” until the last third of the book or so. Fortunately, I was engrossed in reading about the sisters and their lives so I wasn’t pining for the creep-factor—it just became an added bonus.

Definitely check this one out if you love dark, brooding literary fiction with a sprinkle of speculative “wtf”…

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Private Rites was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024 and it did not disappoint! After seeing several King Lear references, I brushed up on that storyline and found it beneficial to the overall reading experience. This is a stunning and atmospheric tale that will pull you in and pique your interest until the last page.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a gorgeous book. More literary dystopian sci-fi/horror like this, please!
The dystopian/apocalyptic part of this book was masterfully done. The slow collapse of society and people still going to work amidst catastrophic flooding and weather events was chilling and honestly, a bit too real.
Loved how queer this book was, as well. The casual inclusion of a major nonbinary character, plus all the sisters being sapphic, was incredible.
King Lear is one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays, so the fact that I liked this retelling really shows how great an author Armfield is.
Armfield's prose is gorgeous and honestly unmatched. She is a master at water-based horror.

Julia Armfield writes so beautifully. However, I was never fully sure what was going on in this book. Definitely more plotless and just vibes. I enjoyed this book but it didn't capture me like her previous book did.

Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron for a copy of this ARC.

This book couldn't seem to decide what it wanted to be. Essentially all of the "horror" takes place in the last 10 pages. Everything before then is build up which can be good but in this case it felt like most of the book was an entirely different genre from the ending.

The writing swung between being very loose on the details of the important things and often more specific than necessary on tiny details that didn't truly mean anything. This was certainly a conscious stylistic choice, and one that may have worked if I enjoyed the story more but it really just led to the book feeling even more disjointed.

This is certainly a book some people will love, but it is also certainly not a book for me.

Julia Armfield’s writing is yet again hauntingly beautiful. I went into this one blind per usual and had no idea what to expect. Set in a world that has flooded and the rain never seems to cease, we encounter the Carmichael sisters. Their famed architect father has died bringing the sisters together again.

To say this is a slow burn is putting it mildly. Despite their circumstances all three of the sisters are so steeped in apathy and simply accept the world for how it has become. Armfield writes waterlogged London in vivid detail and it’s absolutely fascinating and horrific to see how people are forced to cope with a flooded city.

Most of the book is focused on the mundane which contrasts strikingly with the apocalyptic conditions that face our characters. The last bit of the book gradually dials up the WTF element culminating in a strange yet appropriate ending. I didn’t fully understand all of the elements and recognize this book will be incredibly polarizing due to its literary structure. I enjoyed this one and definitely look forward to more weird horror from Armfield in the future.

Armfield has a talent for pinpointing very real emotions and feelings, then giving them to characters that are empathetic but not loveable people. Ilsa, Irene, and Agnes are three sisters with the same dad, who live in the same drowning city, and copes with their upbringing in very different ways. "Private Rites" explores their grief and rage at his passing as well as their hopeless climate, where rain never stops and you're always a bit damp.

A re-telling of the Shakespeare play "King Lear", the novel stands on it's own and can be appreciated without the reader having read the play. The writing is detailed and there is enough going on between the 3 sisters that I was engaged. Narrative-wise it is slow and is much more character driven. It took a while after finishing that I could fully appreciate everything that happened. I plan on going back to King Lear before I revisit.

My only critique is that I wish the final conflict had been longer and the build up a tad shorter. The prose is so deep and rich that tiny anxious details take a back seat in order to build up on 3 different character studies.

Julia Armfield does it again!

This is such a beautifully written story following the complicated relationship between three sisters navigating life after their father passes away. Not only are they trying to process their feelings on family memories and trauma, they’re trying to assimilate to a world where it’s been raining nonstop for years, which has completely changed every day life.

Armfield has a way of crafting slow, melancholic, and mysterious atmospheres while perfectly portraying the complicities of relationships. Each sister was written with such depth, and I felt like I truly understood each of their intentions and perceptions of their family dynamics, which ultimately tugged at my heart strings by the end.

Gorgeous family literary fiction set in a dark, depressing setting… would definitely recommend!

Thank you to Flatiron Books and Netgalley for the ARC :)

Every time I finish a book by Julia Armfield, I'm left screaming, "WHAT DID I JUST READ AND HOW DO I GET MORE OF IT?!?!?"

Isla, Irene and Agnes are estranged sisters whose father, a renowned architect and all around asshole, has just died leaving them to sort out their isolated and neglected childhoods, their feeling for each other, and a complicated inheritance. But wait, there's more. It's been raining for years, literally, and the world around them has finally reached a tipping point. The center cannot hold. While society tries harder and harder to deny it's own collapse, Irene, Isla and Ages find they may be both the key and source of change necessary to walk into the future.

Armfield is an author I adore, but who is difficult to recommend. This book did things to me. It's absolutely gorgeously written; I can think of nothing else remotely like it. But It's also challenging, strange and quite terribly bleak. I loved it, but be sure It's for you before picking it up.

As we move into the last month of the year for reading, I am so happy that I am finding such solid books. Private Rites is an absolutely beautiful climate fiction story wrapped in family dynamics and generational trauma. All of this is soggy, soggy, soggy from the never-ending rain in this not-so-far away world.

Atmospheric and perfect for dreary weather, I ended up devouring this via audio. The narrator absolutely crushed it and I felt so drawn into this story during my commute last week. Private Rites cast an eerie and otherworldly rain cloud over my life during the time I was with it.

Following three sisters, this story explores the pain that tears us apart but also bonds us. I loved the ending of this one and the buildup was absolutely perfect. Check this one out if you like mysteries, climate fiction, and enchanting writing! I can’t wait to finally get to this author’s book, Our Wives Under The Sea, after loving this one.

**Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the eARC of this one and to Macmillan Audio for the ALC!**

Julia Armfield has such a unique voice that grabbed me with Our Wives Under the Sea an her second novel, Private Rites, has similarly demanded my attention. In her re-telling of King Lear, three sisters, Isla, Irene, and Agnes are brought back together after their architect father dies. In dealing with his death, the three sisters' lives each begin to spiral in different ways all with the backdrop of a climate crisis where the persistent rain has forced everyone to figure out how to live with rising waters.

If you are in the mood for a ~vibes~ book I absolutely recommend Private Rites - you get queer, sapphic relationship drama, sister drama, parent-induced trauma, and a what in the world just happened ending, all with Armfield's exquisite writing style.

I both read and listened to Private Rites and really enjoyed the audiobook. The text version does not have quotation marks for the conversations, which sometimes trips me up while I'm reading, but certainly gives a different effect than listening. I would absolutely recommend either medium while reading.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Flatiron Books, and MacMillan Audio for the advanced copy.

Private Rites follows three estranged sisters in the aftermath of their difficult father’s death. Set in an ever raining, apocalypse like state leaves the ready feeling uneasy throughout the book.

This is a particularly character driven book and as with every Julia Armfield book written beautifully. I did find it a little bit slow at points but the end was shocking and fantastic. I could not recommend this book more ! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This book is written in my favorite style: a beautiful blend of vignette and elusive prose. Julia Armfield blew me away with her writing in her last book, and while that is a tough act to follow, I found this novel successfully scratching that itch that "Our Wives" left me with. The relatability of characters was felt deeper in this novel, allowing me to feel more invested. I personally adore novels with a disjointed style or ambiguous voice, but it is certainly not for everyone.
Fans of literary horror with some tasteful body horror, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, or even Tender is the Flesh would enjoy this novel.

Private Rites is a speculative queer reimagining of King Lear set at the end of the world. Julia Armfield yet again immerses the reader into a wet and wild world. I loved how the city got its own segments of the narrative. The sense of dread that increases throughout kept me turning pages long into the night. I loved this exploration of grief and sisterhood and the impact of climate change.

I had a hard time connecting to the characters and the plot was too slow for me. I really wanted to like this book but I didn’t.