In The Watermark, people visiting a famous recluse of an author find that he's invented a way to suck out people's imaginations and put them in his books. Two young people are trapped and must work through various novels—a Dickens pastiche, a Russian epic, and others—in order to escape from him. In doing so, Mills gets to write 4—or is it 5—different novels in one, all focusing on the various ways a relationship can develop. It reads as if Tolstoy wrote The Eyre Affair, which is to say, the concept is not novel and while some scenes and plot elements were interesting, much of it nearly put me to sleep. It'll probably win all sorts of awards for being creative and boggling people's minds, but I wasn't impressed.

I tried so hard with this one, but I just couldn't get into it. The concept is fascinating, but I just didn't find Jaime and Rachel compelling.

Rachel and Jamie stumble upon an old novelist, now hidden away in the woods, and when they become trapped in his novel, they must find their way home through a series of networked books. This novel by Sam Mills felt like a truly original literary science-fiction, embarking on an enormous adventure. While at times slow, Rachel and Jamie's adventure through Victorian England, Manchester, Russia and an England of the Future kept me engaged throughout. Thank you for this ARC! 3.75/5

I have to give the author a lot of bonus points for originality. I've read plenty of books about characters entering literary worlds, but none quite like this. The premise was very intriguing! I just wish that it had worked better for me. Unfortunately, I couldn't find myself connecting to the characters, and it made it very hard for me to get invested in their journey. I really enjoyed the Russian portion and almost wish that had been the whole book!

The writing was excellent, and I'll definitely check out more work from the author.

*4.25 stars*

meta fiction apparently very in for 2025! an ambitious, romantic, and literary take on "is any of this real?"
read if you loved inkheart, <s>hated the midnight library</s>, or have ever had an existential crisis
also i found fate's complaint about current fiction trends hilarious (though i'm not complaining)
"Literary fashion has unexpectedly taken a perverse swerve in favour of gossipy, slim novels by young women exploring romances with unkind boys, bodily angst and the delights of Marxism."

This was good! There’s a lot of interesting philosophy going on and the stories are all well thought out. It does really drag in parts and I’m not sure about the Covid turn at the end, it felt a little like a cop out.

Thank you to NetGalley and Granta for providing me with this ARC.

This book is incredibly clever and ambitious but unfortunately missed the mark for me. It reminded me a little of a recent read of mine, Water Moon, in that they are both trippy escapes from another world (in Water Moon the spirit world, in the Watermark it’s author Fate’s latest novel). The structure is incredibly interesting but I found it lacking in its ability to follow. I was very confused throughout much of the novel, and not in an enjoyable way but just befuddled and frustrated. However, I think the author is a very talented writer and it might just be a me issue.

In The Watermark, Sam Mills presents a genre-blending narrative that intertwines elements of metafiction, romance, and speculative fiction. The story follows Jaime, a disillusioned MA student, and Rachel, a reclusive visual artist, who become entangled with the enigmatic author Augustus Fate. Fate, struggling with his latest work, ensnares them within his novel-in-progress, propelling them through various literary landscapes.

Mills structures the novel into five distinct sections, each representing a different narrative crafted by Fate. These segments transport Jaime and Rachel across diverse settings—from Victorian Oxford to interwar Russia, and even into a futuristic world dominated by artificial intelligence. Throughout these transitions, the protagonists grapple with their evolving identities and the nature of their relationship, all while seeking a return to their original reality.

The novel delves into themes of free will versus predestination, the blurred lines between fiction and reality, and the transformative power of storytelling. Mills' prose is both inventive and reflective, offering readers a narrative that is as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally resonant.

This was a little too confusing for me to follow in a way that I'd appreciate. Was trying to be deep and meta and didn't do things that well in any direction.

Thanks to NetGalley and Melville House for the ARC of this title.

I cannot stress how much I am the target audience for this book. I love David Mitchell Cloud Atlas-y recursive narratives, I love the idea of characters jumping between books of different styles, I love it.

The early-20s-Russian-dystopian-novel portion of things dragged for me a bit, but all of the various pastiches felt on point and well-realized, and I absolutely devoured this over the course of a day.

“A narrator will always find peace stagnant and will create conflict.”
“It is the consciousness of the artist that makes a painting, the way it hovers in the work like a watermark.”

The Watermark, a novel written by @authorsammills and published by @grantabooks was a novel that has been available in the UK, but just now published in the United States this week, so the US cover will be different.

I read this book in print 📕 as part of my “chunky challenge” reading for 2025, coming in at 528 pages.
To be honest, the publisher did an amazing job at printing this edition, as the font and the layout of this large book was very pleasant to the eyes. The chapters are broken up well, making it easy to read a few chapters each day.

So what is this all about? So much! The novel is broken up into 5 “books”, each of those moving in time and geography, from 1861 Oxford to 2047 London and other eras snd locations in between.
Is this a book about a Time Machine?

No, it is not, in a sense. We follow to main protagonists, Rachel and Jaime, who had been infatuated with a famous author, Augustus Fate. Fate, who is now mostly a recluse, has been struggling with his latest novel.

Fate has decided his characters need to seem more “real” and discovers he can achieve this by imprisoning Jaime and Rachel inside the pages of his book.

That is all I can say, but what a unique concept, and that is what I led me to this story.

I would recommend this book for something fun and adventurous, when you need a break from reality.

I was really thrilled to receive this ARC! The concept and premise caught my attention, and I couldn't wait to jump in. Unfortunately, I just found myself unable to get into it and decided to put it down at around 40%.

For me, the writing style and tone felt a bit flat and distant. I understand this might have been a deliberate choice meant to build up to something big at the end, but I just couldn't hang on long enough to see it through. I really needed to feel a stronger connection to the story and its characters to stay engaged.

Unfortunately, there were also numerous grammatical and formatting errors that were hard for me to overlook. I totally get that this is an ARC, but when I can't read even two pages without bumping into missing words, misspellings, or punctuation issues, it distracts from the overall experience as my brain tries to compensate for the errors.

Big thank you to Net Galley & Melville House Publishing for the gifted ARC!

Thank you Netgalley & Melville House Publishing for an eARC ♥️❤️

This novel took me on a thrilling adventure, but also left me with some unanswered questions. The story follows Jaime and Rachel as they navigate through different books, searching for a way back home.
One of the standout aspects of this book is its creative concept. The author's imagination shines through as Jaime and Rachel jump from one literary world to another. But what truly stole my heart was the section set in Russia. As a native Russian speaker, I was immediately drawn into the familiar settings and cultural references. It was like revisiting a piece of my own heritage, and I loved how Sam Mills wove together the sights, sounds, and emotions into the narrative.
The relationship between Jaime and Rachel is another strong point. Their bond feels authentic and relatable, and I appreciated how the author showed their connection evolving across different ages and stories.
As I turned the pages, I started to feel that the story was getting a bit repetitive, and the pacing could have been tighter. Despite these issues, The Watermark has some truly captivating moments that made the journey worthwhile.

This was a novel unlike any other I've read. It's a love story, but so unique in every way. The story is broken up into many parts and you have to pay close attention because things/people change within. Super wild ride!

I wanted to enjoy this more than I did but it felt like the structure was fighting the story rather than making it richer. Thank you NetGalley and Melvin House for the advanced reader copy.

This book is a wild ride from start to finish. It's a little hard to review without giving away too much, but I'll do my best. Jamie is a journalist who interviews his idol, Augustus Fate. Fate tricks Jamie and traps him - along with another woman, Rachel - in the novel he is currently writing. Jamie and Rachel then careen through various novels, trying to get back to the "real" world and their "real" lives, while all the while Fate (the name is a bit on the nose, but ultimately I think it works) messes with them like they're his playthings.

This book is definitely more plot-focused than character-focused, which I didn't mind but sometimes makes it a bit difficult for me to get into a book. I was really impressed by how Mills attacked different genres - Dickensian England, Soviet-era rural Russia, futuristic America with robots, etc. - and appreciated how questions of who we are and who we would be if our circumstances are different shone through. Jamie and Rachel's push and pull of being put together in various timelines and trying to make sense of their relationship is really interesting (even if Jamie sometimes is a whiny character), and each book's world felt fully realized. This is definitely an eccentric book, but it flies by despite its page count and is wholly engrossing.

Thank you to NetGalley and Melville House Publishing for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

"A quirky, literary love story like no other, one that veers wildly from contemporary Britain to Soviet Russia to a bizarre but recognizable future, from one of the UK's hottest young novelists...

Rachel and Jaime: their story isn't simple. It might not even be their story.

Augustus Fate, a once-lauded novelist and now renowned recluse, is struggling with his latest creation. But when Jaime and Rachel stumble into his remote cottage, he spies opportunity, imprisoning them inside his novel-in-progress. Now, the fledgling couple must try to find their way back home through a labyrinthine network of novels.

And as they move from Victorian Oxford to a utopian Manchester, a harsh Russian winter to an AI-dominated near-future, so too does the narrative of their relationship change time and again.

Together, they must figure out if this relationship of so many presents can have any future at all.

The Watermark is a heart-stopping exploration of the narratives we cling to in the course of a life, and the tendency of the world to unravel them. Kaleidoscopic and wildly imaginative, it asks: how can we truly be ourselves, when Fate is pulling the strings?"

A dark Thursday Next!

DNF

Really wanted to like this one based on the premise, but it was a struggle to get to the 33% point and for the first time in a long while I gave up on a book. The premise is certainly intriguing. A 20-some year-old aspiring journalist (Jamie) won a contest to interview a famous and reclusive author (Augustus Fate). Shortly after his arrival at the author’s cottage in Wales, though, Fate drugs Jamie, and he wakes to find himself trapped in Fate’s current work-in-progress, a turgid novel set in late 19th Century Oxford. Also trapped is another person from the real world — a young artist, Rachel, whose body, like Jaime’s, remains in Fate’s cottage (Rachel and Jaime have never met but did interact for a while on an internet forum). At first unaware of their true selves, the two eventually wake up to their appalling situation and eventually are able to flee into another book set in 2010 England. The two apparently continue trying to escape the machinations of Fate by hook-jumping through various genres/time periods.

Normally I’m a fan of metafiction and a huge fan of non-linear structure. But this one just didn’t do it for me for a number of reasons which I won’t belabor. Briefly therefore: The discussions on fate, free will, consciousness, etc. never felt particularly profound/insightful and felt forced/unnatural. I never felt any real connection with the characters, neither of whom were particularly engaging or compelling and never felt fully formed (to be fair, I did only get a bit more than a third of the way through). As for the writing itself, I several times wondered in my notes if it was supposed to be bad because the authors of the meta-novels were bad or if it was just poor writing. The former seemed more generous to the book’s author, but since the Fate was supposed to be a Booker-level author, that didn’t seem to make much sense. And while the surface trappings of the sections of the meta- novels were different, the writing itself didn’t feel that way, as opposed, for instance, to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. That was a book I couldn’t help but keep comparing this to, as well as Jasper Fforde’s Eyre Affair series, and unfortunately, The Watermark came off much the poorer in comparison, lacking in my mind Mitchell’s craft and rich characterization and Fforde’s humor and imaginative wealth. As noted, I really had to push myself to get to the stopping point, which was a disappointment based on the premise.

Escaping into a book is usually a metaphorical act. We can return to reality simply by closing the book, safely returning from our fictional journeys in even the most dire of scenarios. When Jaime and Rachel disappear into a book, however, not only can they not return to reality, there’s a real chance that they might not survive the experience. Sam Mills’s The Watermark is a wild ride through historical fiction, science fiction, and literary fiction; it’s a battle of wills between characters and author for control of the narrative.

Augustus Fate is an author (and curmudgeon) whose characters and stories have garnered awards and devoted readers. Jaime is all a-quiver when he wins a contest to interview Fate. Publishing the interview could lead to a career as a writer, something Jaime both covets and dispairs of as he tries to finish his thesis. Augustus, curiously, seems far more interested in Jaime when the young man arrives at his remote home. Augustus is also very insistent that Jaime sample some of the strangely ink-black tea that he’s prepared. By the time Jaime reaches the bottom of the cup, it’s clear that something is seriously wrong with the whole setup and with Fate. Just as Jaime loses consciousness, he sees a young woman asleep on a bed, an IV of black liquid in her arm.

Authors get their ideas from all over: real life, dreams, other things they’ve read, pure imagination. Augustus’s source of inspiration for his characters, it turns out, is to kidnap real people. Jaime wakes to find himself in the Victorian era. He’s a teenager. He’s also crushing on the governess of a girl who lives in the neighborhood. This governess, Rachel, unintentionally calls to Jaime (known now as Thomas Turridge). This story sets the pattern for the rest of the book. Either Jaime or Rachel will come to consciousness believing themselves to be a character in another story, then find their “real” counterpart, and then try to find a way out of the new story and back to reality. Small recurring names or objects clue Rachel or Jaime into the fact that what they’re experiencing is just fiction. The fascinating but deliberately obscure process of book surfing with the tea Fate uses facilitates their journey to the next story.

Some of the stories Jaime and Rachel landed in were more interesting to me than others. I really enjoyed the historical fiction stories they found themselves in. These stories have a bit more plot to them where the literary fiction/science fiction stories tend to bog down in dialogue in which the characters work through their feelings. The parts of the book where Fate (or whoever the author is) starts to manipulate the plot and setting around Rachel and Jaime into acting were absolutely gripping, which made the long passages of dialogue harder for me to endure until the story got interesting again.

By the time I finished The Watermark, I had realized that this book was more philosophical than I was expecting. I can’t fault the book for not being what I wanted. My complaints about the pacing are meant to be a heads-up to other readers, so that they won’t race through the book to find out if Jaime and Rachel escape. The ideas that come up in The Watermark—samskaras, the nature of reality and whether or not we can know if what we experience is real, Fate/fate and self-determination, love, parents, whether or not authors should let characters “do what they want”—shouldn’t be rushed. I think readers who like to contemplate the relationship between author, character, story, and reader will find a lot of food for thought here.

The Watermark is an adventurous, emotional novel about Jaime and Rachel as they travel through different books and try to find their way home.
Where to begin.... there were many things I liked about this, and unfortunately many I disliked. I loved the whole idea. It's very creative and packed out well, if not a little repetitive at a certain point. I do wish that there was more variety in the settings and genres that Jaime and Rachel found themselves in. I really enjoyed the section set in Russia, as it was so different from the previous.
Another thing I deeply enjoyed is the portrayal of the relationship between the two characters. When I saw the book classified as romance I had my doubts about it as I don't usually read much romance. I often find the relationships going too smoothly to be realistic. I really liked how the author wrote Jaime and Rachel's relationship and think it was very well done. Especially to see them in different ages across the stories.

One thing that I disliked, or rather, that left me confused, is Fate's motivation. He states that he is writing the book and wants Jaime to just live out the story, but then what is the reason for Jaime even being there? I also wish the booksurfing was somewhat explained more.
For me, the book got repetitive quick, and it felt like it dragged on for longer than it should have. It did have some wonderful moments that i thoroughly enjoyed.