Effy's tattered copy is all that's keeping her afloat through her stifling first term at her prestigious architecture college. So when the late author's family announces a contest to design his house, Effy feels certain this is her destiny. there was just no logic or coherency to the world building. it’s fine if your world building is simple, just make it make sense. Effy finds extreme comfort in a book that speaks to her experiences of misogyny and trauma. Are there any books you turn to for comfort after a hard day or after an experience that leaves you upset and confused?

The edges were curling in on themselves -either shyly or protectively, as if the parchment had a secret to hide." The dedication to this book reads: “This is a love story” and, respectfully, no it's not. I am not one to complain about a fantasy book having too little romance, but this dedication really sets the wrong expectations for the book. Effy and Preston’s romance is incredibly underdeveloped and is certainly not “rivals to lovers.” The entire conflict between them is Effy’s one-sided anger over something kind of stupid. Then she gets over it, they have a few scenes that were probably supposed to have romantic tension, and suddenly they're together. One: She was the only female student at the architecture college. Even if the boy had never so much as glimpsed her in the halls before, certainly he had seen her name on the exam results, and then, later, on the college roster in the lobby. Three days ago, some anonymous vigilante had taken a pen and turned her last name, Sayre, into something lewd, preserving the last two letters.

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When she arrives at the dilapidated house, which is hardly affected by the last drowning and crumbling into pieces, she not only meets Myrddin's eccentric son, but she also finds out that a literature scholar, Preston Heloury, also works with the letters and manuscripts of the late author with a secret agenda. Drawing from Welsh folklore, ASID follows the story of Effy, a young student of architecture, though her true passion lies in literature even if the school doesn’t permit women. When she gets the chance to design a home for her favourite author Myrddin‘s son at their ancestral home, she jumps at the chance despite her fear of what she might uncover while she’s there. At Hiraeth, Effy encounters a smug and mercurial fellow academic, a boy called Preston, and Myrddin’s son. Soon, Effy and Preston join forces to investigate the mysterious author’s legacy, especially around Effy’s favourite story Angharad, or the story of a young woman and the fabled Fairy King. As Effy and Preston draw closer to the truth and myth comes to life, they realise the origin to the story might be far closer than they ever could’ve imagined. If you're claiming your book is a Very Important Work and an honest exploration of mental illness, women existing in a misogynistic world and women reclaiming their voice at least be actually nuanced about it; if you touch on female empowerment as a writer then actually commit to it. Don't spit on my face and tell me it's raining.

With these themes in mind, were there any particular works of fiction that inspired you? Any further reading for our readers? The estate of Llyr’s national author EMRYS MYRDDIN is soliciting designs for a manor home outside the late author’s hometown of Saltney, Bay of Nine Bells. i went into this book not knowing anything about it, and i think that's the way it's meant to be experienced. i really enjoyed gradually unraveling the story. Overall, this book is scary, ominous, intense, moving, bold, and one of the best reads I've had lately!Effy is the perfect main character to follow, she's vibrant and brave and rears up against the forced narrative she is often shunted in, yet she is also scared and vulnerable, succumbing to the waves of the never-ending sea, swallowing down the salt water of her fears and drowning in the very place the world's narrative has left her. Her story is a constant battle; for sanity, for peace, for autonomy, for freedom, for greatness. It often appears that the entire world is against her, but she finds an undaunted strength within herself that she wields to face each struggle. I loved watching Effy grow throughout the story. Swollen with atmosphere, A Study in Drowning is sure to sweep its readers off their feet and into a fantastical world of fairytale. A Study in Drowning follows the Dark Academia route of offering a critique upon certain aspects of academic institutions. As a subgenre, it supports your theme of women silenced by history well. Had you always planned to pair the two, or had this story started as a different beast entirely?

I’ve been waiting for this book for so long. Every-time i saw TikTok video or a review of someone who got an arc my envy level was ↗️↗️↗️ It was very beautifully written, very poetic. I loved the dark atmosphere and the gothic horror vibes. It was very refreshing especially in this weather 🫶🏻 i liked the plot of the story it was very predictable but the massage behind it was very important and touching. It left me aching for effy and Angharad and everyone else involved ❤️‍🩹 the misogyny and the way men was treating women in here was very provoking and real i wanted to to kill all the men on earth. I was very satisfied and proud with how everything ended. There’s a bit where Angharad says this: “I wanted one girl, only one, to read my book and feel that she was understood, and I would be understood in return.” It’s a beautiful line and a beautiful message - it’s one that fully resonates for me, and I would be surprised if Angaharad wasn’t speaking a bit for Reid in this moment too. A Study in Drowning is definitely a “love letter to books” book and I can feel the author’s passion in showing how stories can help us survive reality and how important it is for us to be able to truly own our stories and voices. fernandan on Reading The Wheel of Time: Taim Tells Lies and Rand Shares His Plan in Winter’s Heart (Part 3) 4 hours ago In line with the previous question, one of my own favourite Welsh myths is that of Cantre’r Gwaelod, the sunken kingdom below Cardigan Bay – represented of course in Llyr’s ‘Bottom Hundred.’ You also mention a similar Breton myth in your notes, that of Kêr-Is. What drew you to this particular story frame?

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this is an dark academia story, set in a historical but different world than our own, where two regional factions (north and south) are at war with one another, and two students who are from different sides (and who attend the same university) are tasked with different academic missions at a very remote sea side manor that is falling into the sea. this is also a story about storytelling and finding safety and comfort and escapism in words and tales and myths. even if this story at the heart of this is about a fae king who will stop at nothing to take and take and take what his entitled self views as his. and like Preston, Effy also felt quite distant (it’s probably why i didn’t care about the romance since both of them were boring). she didn’t feel all that distinct to me— the book is written from her perspective entirely but in third person, and while i think single third person POV can be done right, it wasn’t done right for me here. Effy doesn’t really have her own unique, distinct voice through the third person POV. she’s intentionally supposed to be a bit turbid due to the medication she takes and her past trauma, but it just made it difficult to latch onto something tangible about her that i could connect with and root for. i truly couldn’t have cared less about her :/

A Study in Drowning is a masterclass in pacing, characterisation and tension, with a beautiful meditation on stories and who gets to have an authorial voice. A Study in Drowning is set in a world inspired by mid-century England and Wales, and Effy belongs to a class of women who would have been among the first non-aristocrats to be able to attend university. While she has the privilege of being upper class, as a woman she is still subjected to horrifically dehumanising institutional sexism. Effy squeezed her eyes shut, willing the image to vanish. When she opened them again, the chalkboard in front of her looked glassy, like a window at night. She could picture a thousand blurry, half-seen things behind it.Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales. Haunted by visions of the Fairy King since childhood, she’s had no choice. Her tattered copy of Angharad—Emrys Myrddin’s epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, then destroys him—is the only thing keeping her afloat. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to redesign the late author’s estate, Effy feels certain it’s her destiny. the plot really has no sense of urgency, no real action for the most part. there’s a loose plot there, but nothing substantial that pushes you forward, where one event links to the next and you can follow the thorough thread tying the story together. Reid seems to want to maintain the mystique of the story, to create an ominous dark-academic atmosphere throughout, and in doing so withholds so much information that i could never truly get to the nitty gritty depths of this story (and i think it�