This let me down. I expected so much more. I didn't feel connected to any sister and felt like this story had potential but went no where

Things I knew going into Private Rites:
Julia Armfield’s novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, was phenomenal.
King Lear inspired
Things I learned reading Private Rites:
Oh no, I don’t remember King Lear at all! Thankfully that didn’t get in the way at all.

Armfield’s newest novel is exceptional and surprisingly in the future (I don’t read book blurbs).
Three sisters are brought back together at the death of their father. They’ve all been estranged from him and one another for years. Their reunion is anything but smooth. Chapters are from different perspectives, interweaving the past and the present into a shocking conclusion.

The future rain soaked world Armfield created was enrapturing. The famous architect father, his designs, and their disconnect to the common man was fascinating. I really enjoyed this book.

What a strange and wonderous book. Private Rites follows the lives of three sisters, Isla, Irene, and Agnes, after the death of their powerful, brutal architect of a father. All three of them are adults, a bit estranged, and at deeply different stages of their lives. Also, the world is ending. That's a rather large feature. It has been raining for years, water slowly rising, and England left to try and rise with it, and maybe it's just them, but it seems to be getting worse. So the trio contend with their various romantic relationships, dead-end jobs, each other after decades of their father pitting them against each other (and seemingly trying to continue doing so through the inheritance), and the world growing ever stranger and more hostile.
A lot of this book is slow and reflective, the three women trying to come to grips with everything around them. Meditations on how to live in a world that might not keep going, how to love, how to be sisters with people you don't know, if you ever did, and also don't like too much. All three of the sisters are complex in their own ways. Isla, a therapist with a drinking problem, is going through a divorce and flailing professionally. Irene keeps sabotaging her stable relationship and is trying to figure out where to go professionally. Agnes is finally becoming an adult, falling in love for the first time truly. And then, towards the end, the slow moving thing ends and things get super weird super fast. And I loved it.
This is the kind of book that you think about for a while.

Julia Armfield never disappoints. This is another haunting story of life experiences in a world where water is a main focus. I still think of Our wives under the sea, and this one will be very hard to not think of as well. Great job. I couldn’t have love it any more.

2.5 ⭐️

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year. I had read "Our Wives Under the Sea" by Julia months prior and really really enjoyed it. I cried and I was creeped out. It was a wonderful weird girl book. When I heard of the release of "Private Rites," I was so so excited.

This book was beautifully written. Julia is an amazing writer. Like OWUTS, I expected a slow burn plot. I expected it to be unrushed in pace, but once I neared the ending, I knew with certainty that it would pull me in and thrill me. I did not get that here. The book was extremely sluggish and never really hit for me. I waited and waited. I ended up having to take a long break halfway through because I had lost interest. The characters were all unlikeable to me. Three bratty, selfish, and gay sisters. I wasn't relating to the story. There wasn't any suspense/weirdness/creepiness to hold my attention like I had hoped for.

The book was marketed as a dystopian novel. Again, I did not get that here. There was mention of the world under water, but that is not what this book was focused on. That detail was so minor in comparison to the sisters' relationships, with partners, and each other. This book was really about sisters who have grown distant and they lose a father. It's about grief. It's about coming to terms with a less than perfect childhood. It's about parental disappointment. OWUTS also reflected so much grief, but it had that eeriness mixed in that made it breathtaking. The emotions and thoughts of the sisters were repetitive. The ending was beyond quick and unexplained. This was literary fiction, not literary horror.

I received early access to the audiobook. I did not enjoy the narrator of the audiobook. I had to listen to her on 2X speed and her voice did not suck me in. The audiobook would have benefitted from multiple narrators. The book is written from three POVs (the three sisters in third person), but there was only one narrator. It would have been easier to follow if each sister had a separate voice.

Overall, I am disappointed and sad.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for early access to the audiobook! I truly appreciate the opportunity!

For this being my first experience with this author, I can't say I loved it. Dysfunctional family dynamic, though the representation in this is great.
I did love the commentary on climate change and I enjoyed the atmosphere and the writing style, but I had a harder time connecting with the characters. I would absolutely read another book by this author though and I am looking forward to reading Our Wives Under the Sea as well.

While the pacing occasionally drags before rushing toward its climax, *Private Rites* offers a poignant exploration of family, identity, and environmental turmoil. Readers who enjoy speculative fiction with emotional depth will be drawn into its eerie, immersive world. Armfield, the author, masterfully weaves the uncanny with the deeply personal, crafting a story that lingers in the mind long after the last page.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the audio ARC which I received in exchange for my honest review.

You cannot expect me to love and connect with a book as deeply as Private Rites AND write a “review”. The annotations inside the hardcover might as well be my private journal. God this one made me cry. Made me feeeeeel, in general. So… what can I tell you. It’s apocalyptic. It’s been raining for a LONG time and the world as we know it looks very different, as you can imagine. We’re following three sisters who have a taut and difficult relationship, in the wake of their father’s death. It grapples with dysfunction and crisis of a family against a world in dysfunction and crisis. The drowning world, both private and universal. It’s a dark novel with tension and dream like, lyrical prose that keeps you feeling uncomfortable from page one. But the shining star of the novel is the character work. These sisters; Isla, Irene and Agnes, feel like real people. In some ways they are quite similar, carrying similar wounds and expressing them in like ways. But they each have a strong identity that makes them crystalline. I shouldn’t even say it, but I might as well be Irene. There were things about this that were so familiar to me that it was hard to read. This is my favorite book I’ve read all year, and one of the best books I have read in a long time. I know it won’t be for everyone but oh my GAWD. It was for me. Timely, beautiful and devastating it is a haunting novel that is going to live in my bones for a long time.

…and if you’re into it — it’s A24 vibes, for sure.

(So you know it’s not as heavy on the apocalyptic stuff as you might hope. It’s definitely there but not the focus.)

A sharper and more focused work than Our Wives Under the Sea, this novel about a women's choir and ritualistic murder hits all the right notes. The creeping dread builds perfectly

*4.5 stars*

This is a beautifully written character study set against the backdrop of a damp and unsettling apocalyptic flood.

A quiet, uneasy type of horror like Our Wives Under the Sea, the middle of this book lagged a little bit to me although I did find an interesting melancholy of the sort of day to day minutia in this climate change ravaged world. If you’re looking for a cut and dry plot and a nicely wrapped up ending I don’t think this will be the book for you.

The narration was well done and very fitting for the story. I really enjoyed listening to this as an audiobook.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ALC of this work. All opinions in this review are my own.

Dear Author,

The rain kept falling and falling, your story grew darker, thicker, wet with mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the twists. One of my favorites of 2024! The narration was superb!

Thank you,

J.D. McCoughtry

Thank you, NetGalley, Flatiron Books and Macmillan Audio for the chance to listen to this wonderful book.

Thank you so much for the gifted audiobook.

Unfortunately this one was really hard for me to get though. I tried to listen to it last year and had a hard time getting into it. I decided to give it another try and it just wasn’t something I enjoyed. I appreciate the opportunity and so am happy to see so many others enjoyed it!

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review!

I love Julia Armfield’s ability to do literary horror, and I am obsessed with messy, fraught sibling relationships. Private Rites is something of a King Lear retelling, and I really enjoyed watching the sisters’ lives spiraling out of control. The atmosphere is gloomy and damp, the sisters are each paranoid in their own ways, and the ghost of their parents hangs over them in interesting ways. This is definitely a quiet book and it meanders through the sisters’ lives, but the conclusion still went hard (and you know what, “mundane apocalypse” is a really good descriptor).

For me, the overall quality of the prose and the imagery Armfield conjured were incredible, and it’s got some absolutely incredible lines that I will keep going back to. The combination of environmental crisis with personal crisis was exquisite and while I think the plot is less defined than Our Wives Under the Sea, it comes together beautifully.

The audiobook was well done and I thought made the experience more immersive—I’m not typically one to care deeply for immersion, but I did appreciate the watery quality of the story as I processed it via audio.

Man this is a tough one for me. I think I got my hopes too high after Our Wives Under the Sea. This had really no plot to speak of, which I can enjoy sometimes but I have to really connect with the characters and, in this one, I really didn't. It almost felt to me like the story had no point or sense of purpose that was driving it. There was no theme to keep me engaged. It was a rather dull read, unfortunately. The one strong point of the story was the world-building. I really liked the bleak atmosphere and potential future dystopia that the story took place in. The audiobook was done well. I had no issues with it. Just the story itself wasn't great for me.

This was a really unique end of the world type of book. I'm generally not a fan of dystopian books but this was an interesting take, adding a unique lens to a multi perspective book on grief. I subtracted a star because I'm still a little bit confused about the end of the book.

Julia Armfield's "Private Rites" is a collection of unsettling and thought-provoking short stories that delve into the darkest corners of human psychology. With a focus on themes of faith, fear, and the unsettling nature of the human body, Armfield delivers a collection that is both disturbing and unforgettable.

The basic plot point are those of a fairly standard post-apocalyptic story. Characters struggle to find meaning and safety in an unpredictable world. In this case, it's our world but with rising water levels. What makes this book exceptional is how the mundane struggles, conflicts, and connections within and between the characters are so relatable and universally human. It manages to be wild speculative fiction and quiet domestic fiction at the same time. It's not like anything else I've read

This queer, dystopian King Lear reimagining sounded really interesting but I just couldn't get into it. I ended up DNFing pretty early on. Maybe it was the narrator or just my mood but I did not feel this one. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to listen to an early ALC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Julia Armfield is an auto read for me and I loved Private Rites. This book examines secrets, family ties, and worldwide catastrophe. Really well done, clever and beautiful prose with a story that will stick with me. Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan audio for the ARC!

I really loved this story! The characters were all just flawed enough to be realistic, without becoming unlikable people that I couldn't stand reading about. This was definitely character-driven rather than plot-driven, and I really appreciated seeing how the development of these three sisters drove the narrative to such interesting places.