Julia Armfield’s, Private Rites is a beautifully haunting tale that lingers long after you’ve turned the final page. Set in a world drowning under relentless rain, it follows three queer sisters grappling with the death of their father, a celebrity architect whose work helped shape their crumbling reality. Loosely inspired by King Lear, the story weaves together themes of grief, love, and complicated sibling dynamics. Armfield’s prose is lush and mesmerizing, pulling you into a waterlogged near-future where sinking cities and a resigned society form the eerie backdrop.

What makes this novel so gripping is how Armfield captures the quiet horror of a “mundane apocalypse.” There are no dramatic explosions or end-of-the-world battles here - just people stubbornly clinging to routines while the world slowly dissolves around them. The sisters’ story is raw and deeply emotional, exploring estrangement, the weight of grief, and the fragile ways we hold onto each other in the face of disaster. Armfield’s ability to mix the every day with the extraordinary makes this a deeply personal and unforgettable read. It’s eerie, tender, and absolutely captivating; a must-read for fans of character-driven, poetic storytelling.

PRIVATE RITES
Julia Armfield


A trio brought together by blood. The only thing holding them together. The only thing holding them accountable. If not for blood, they wouldn’t be here now. They would’ve gone long ago.

Isla is a therapist, unconvinced she has a purpose. Even as she is helping her clients, she feels invisible and ineffective. She spends her days dreaming in her therapy sessions of clients that recover, clients that move on, clients that don’t need her.

Irene is angry and has always been. Frustrated with herself, more so with others, despondent and full of conviction. She is oftentimes accused of being angry even when she feels she isn’t. There is a hardness to her that makes loving her difficult and altogether not worth the effort.

Agnes the youngest, born of a different mother. Unattached, unmoored. Bends with the wind and sets sail on rocky waters, which is at this very moment, a detriment.

The earth is in a moment of watershed. It’s been raining for what feels like years. The sisters gather at the hospital bed of their dying father. Who to them has died at least once before. All the sisters grieve more for the living than the dead. His passing, merely a rainy day in June.


Beautiful writing. In the beginning, I felt a bit overwhelmed by the words. The sentences were too rich to absorb. I read the beginning several times thinking the entire text would be in a way, indigestible. But Armfield moved on and so did I. The poetry of the beginning lasted throughout the novel. But was interlaced with easier-to-manage latent words. Which is the only way I was able to finish the book.

Armfield has been telling the same story in all the books written by her that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Simply changing the characters' names and introducing settings that mirror her intention. It is a story of grieving those who are still living. Missing the ones who are near you but somehow somewhere far away. Not seeing the ones in front of you because you’re too busy wishing they were someone else. Not loving and accepting yourself because you’re too busy trying to be anyone but you.

Ghosts. Living.

I find that I appreciate Armfield’s novels more than I enjoy them. They almost feel inert. Unalive. A little selfish, taking more than giving. They are contemplative, and thoughtful, and I’ll always recommend them. This one is no different.

Out tomorrow! Make sure you pick up your copy where books are sold or borrowed.

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for the advanced copy of the audiobook!

PRIVATE RITES…⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This novel is going to stick with me for a while, I think. It was atmospheric as hell — I felt the rain, the constant gloom. Author Armfield deftly weaves in worldbuilding alongside character and relationship studies. I felt so seen (and called out lol) by different aspects of each of the Carmichael sisters, Isla, Irene, and Agnes. Each woman was so complex and flawed, trying to cope with the fucked up world the only way she knew how. And through it all, the constant threat of the rising water lent the novel an undercurrent of dread. Narrator Hanna van der Westhuysen did an incredible job performing uniquely for each point of view. I think this is shaping up to be one of my favorite reads of 2024, and I need to read Julia Armfield's other work!

The writing was absolutely beautifully. i was finding trouble following the story, which caused me to be quite bored. i wish the “city” chapters, and the apocalypse, were described a bit more.

Julia Armfield's writing is, as usual, brilliantly heart-wrenching. I could clearly see how this was a King Lear retelling, but I don't think readers should get too caught up in that. This novel is a thorough exploration of what it is to be drowning. Drowning in dread, in grief, in anxiety, in family dysfunction, in childhood trauma, and even in desire. Not to mention living in a drowning world that is slowly creeping towards an apocalypse. The sibling relationships were so well done in terms of hitting that perfect mark of having people that know what it was to grow up with your parents and yet being total strangers in adulthood in some ways as your lives have diverged. No one writes melancholy quite like Armfield, and though the apocalypse in the story is slow and oncoming, it's compelling all the same.

I was excited to read this book but found that it did not hold my interest and left me feeling disappointed.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

confession: i had to start and stop this one no less than five or six times. at one point, i was 75% of the way through and had to start over because i had no idea what was going on.

this book is about three sisters: irene, isla, and agnes. they've just been told that their father has died.

i think that i was very much put off of this book from the beginning when isla, a therapist, talks about dealing with her patients and nicknaming them atrocious things while in session with them. a therapist mentally referring to a patient as "ugly knuckles" - okay? though i understand that therapists are human beings, i'm not truly sure what this sort of narration about her served.

i grew even more frustrated with the interactions between sisters. both older sisters are hostile and mean toward baby sister agnes, born of a different mother. when they're not being unnecessarily cruel and dismissive of each other, they were constantly at each other's throats. there was a scene that recapped an incident prior to their father's death when he was hospitalized. one of the sisters says, "it's good that you've actually managed to show up," and is completely baffled when the other sister is upset by the way she expressed this information. it was weird and mean.

some things i think were done well: there was the inclusion of nb characters without any discussion. i loved that there was so much queerness in the book, also.

armfield also really does a great atmosphere. she painted this drowning world so viscerally that i felt like i was there.

i wasn't a huge fan of the ending. it felt abrupt, it felt like a hurried, unplanned inclusion. i didn't really get it. perhaps i'll enjoy it more if i reread it after rereading the book it was based on.

First and foremost it should be acknowledged that the prose is beautiful and poetic. It is complemented by charming narration but that's about it.

The story of three sisters in a world of persistent rain, acknowledging the death of their father. These sisters, as main characters, are incredibly unlikable and not very well developed.

Regarding the plot... It's less that there is a plot and more that upset people exist in a world that exists as a commentary on climate change, greed, excess and grief?

It honestly feels like the book is one long stream of consciousness with argumentative vingettes where the sisters are angry with everyone.

2.5⭐️ rounded up. I was extremely excited for this book, unfortunately it fell a bit flat for me. I found myself quite bored after about 30% of the way in. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, I found it a bit clunky to get through and the ending felt very rushed. I’m sad because I wanted to love this and I just didn’t. Thank you to NetGalley and McMillan audio for the opportunity to read this Arc and to give my honest opinion.

Really great audiobook narrator. Easy to listen to, smooth voice, great accent, and could even bump it up to 2.0x speed and still understand them. That is a huge plus for me, as I will DNF audiobooks really quick if I can hear the narrator breathing or if their voice just sounds off. Even though the narrator was the same throughout, I was still able to differentiate the three sisters by the way they spoke or by their personalities.

As for the story, I found it a bit hard to follow via audiobook. While the narration is fantastic, actually reading the book in this format proved to be a bit challenging. The sisters were easy enough to nail down, but some of the flowery prose gets lost in this format. I wish there was more "dread" in this story to match up with the ending. I did not catch the subtle clues and was thrown off by the ending.

This was a highly anticipated book for me, and I want to think my expectations were high which is why I was a bit disappointed. The writing is lyrical, but the atmosphere just had me drifting and did not feel eerie enough for me. The narrator did a wonderful job and kept me engaged. Thank you to the publisher, author and NetGalley for the ALC
3 Stars

I absolutely loved Our Wives Under the Sea, so I was really excited for this one. It finds 3 sisters, somewhat estranged, who are brought together by their father’s death and news of his will. It all takes place amidst the backdrop of a world flooding from climate change and there’s a too subtle element of oddness running through the story. I wish that, as with her previous book, this element had been leaned into to create a creeping sense of dread. Instead, I found it didn’t add anything to the story other than to set up the ending which seemed to come out of left field. I did really enjoy the characters and relationships in the story but I liked her previous book better.

I love a new take on an old story. <i>Private Rites</i> was an etherial story structured in a very similar way to Julia Armfield's <i>Our Wives Under the Sea</i>. It was a poignant story of three sisters set in a dystopian world slowly dying and being overtaken by water. We watch as these three sister estranged and tied together move through life in the wake of their father dying. A father who was uniquely terrible to each sister in his own way.

The eerie atmosphere of this story added so much depth to displaying how our sisters were feeling. Julia did an amazing job putting us in each sisters head and showcasing the challenging relationships between each other and their partners. The audiobook reader added a depth to that atmosphere and the tone of voice almost made me feel like it was raining outside. You could almost feel the damp and the drudgery of never ending rain and burnout in the narrators voice.

If you love books that leave you deep in thought, stories that leave you wondering, and LGBTQIA+ reads this book if definitely one I would recommend you pick up. Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 Stars rounded up to 4 out of 5 Stars

I often love a new take on an old tale. I thought I would love an updated King Lear. It was wonderful in concept. The execution was just boring. I found my mind drifting. The sibling stuff fell flat. The post-global warming apocalypse could have been a tense background to rising tension. Instead it was just whined about like it was a minor inconvenience and that older people who missed it were out of touch. I wanted to like this so much.

It's giving Little Women with extra strong daddy issues, a cult, and so much gay.

I went in anticipating a similar vibe to "Our Wives Under the Sea" and it did not disappoint with Julia's nuanced style of showing internalized suffering. The story follows three sisters that have a complicated relationship with each other as a result of a, unsurprisingly, difficult childhood with their dead, rich father. Very dead and still very problematic, their father causes more drama in his will and this story is an unpacking of their sisterhood and their intimate relationships with others. It made me really nostalgic of Little Women, honestly, to see the themes of sibling angst thoroughly picked apart, especially since one of the sisters is actually a half-sister. My only issue was with the sort of the suddenness of the ending, but I don't think it detracts heavily from the book overall.

Hannah van der Westhuysen's narration was really engaging! The audiobook was mixed well and I definitely thought the sister's individual voices were distinct enough.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this audio!!

I LOVED this book! It was a bit slow in the beginning but then boom I was hooked!! I finished it in one sitting! My first by this author but will not be my last!!

This book kept me interested from the start. The narrator was fantastic and conveyed the emotions of the characters very well. The story was well paced and it made sense. There were some parts that had me emotional and some parts that made me chuckle. I related to these characters and it was interesting to realize that this was loosely based off King Lear. The three sisters dealing with the loss of their father, each other and the memories that come up throughout the story was what kept the story going. I did like this a lot, I enjoyed the audiobook. thank you for letting me listen to this ARC

2.5 stars

I love _King Lear_. I also thoroughly enjoyed my last read from Armfield. Unfortunately, this most recent effort just did not work for me.

Three sisters deal with the death of their father and the challenging memories they have that precede that death. Readers also get some insight into each sister because of multi-perspective narration. The trouble for me was that what they were thinking, saying, and doing was not interesting enough to help me get invested in any one of them, let alone all three.

I came into this book thinking it'd be an understated favorite of the year, and I'm completing the listen (I went for the audiobook after not being able to get beyond the first section in the e-book for a bit too long) knowing that this could've really been DNF under slightly different circumstances. I'll give this author another chance, of course, but this one fell flat for me.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and it did not disappoint. I'm a huge fan of Lear retellings, and this queer, apocalyptic spin was exactly what I've been craving. All of the sisters lives and their relationships was so interesting, and seeing those typical messy and strained relationships amongst such a devastating climate crisis was so interesting. The world itself that the author built felt so realistic given how the world currently reacts to climate and public health disasters. Julia Armfield knows how to write mundanity amongst the uncanny so well. The ending did feel a bit rushed, and I wish the element of the story that happened at the very end had been drawn out a little more. I didn't love this quite as much as our wives under the sea, but I did really enjoy it and I will continue to read anything this author puts out.

I could appreciate the King Lear vibes, but ultimately I felt let down by this book, given how much I loved OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA. Being an author must be the hardest job in the world because your work isn't compared against anything but yourself.