'A Study in Drowning' by Ava Reid
‘I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me and a girl when they wanted to use me’
After finishing ‘A study in drowning’, I didn’t plan on writing a review originally. I enjoyed it, truly I did— Don’t get me wrong, but as someone who does read quite a large amount of books, I’ve found that I have really high criteria in regards to which books are worth of reviews if you will.
But the more I sat with this book, and thought about it’s plot, and prose and characters, the more obsessed I’ve become with it.
‘A Study in Drowning’ follows 18 year old Effy Sayre, a Architecture student living In a Country called Llyr. Effy is in her first year at Llyr’s University, and frankly she’s miserable.
As the only woman in the Architecture college, whether she is lucky or not is debatable. Effy hates studying architecture, but she does it because the Universities’s Literature College doesn’t accept women.
Effy’s passion for Literature is driven by her love for Emrys Myrddin, Llyr’s National Author, known for his work Angharad, a story about a mortal who falls in love with the Fairy King, but destroys him.
The same Fairy King who Effy has had visions of since childhood.
The book opens with a challenge of redesigning the Late Author’s Home, Hiraeth Manor, given to the architecture students at the College.
Unknowing that the house is on the brink of collapse, hanging over a vicious sea. Effy, excited at the chance to visit her idols home immediately applies, but once getting accepted and arriving at the Manor discovers it’s a much harder task than expected.
At the home, she discovers her academic rival, Preston, is also residing at the manor under the pretense of evacuating Myrddin’s archives for academics.
Effy, distrusting and unconvinced, searches into Preston’s studies to find out that he isn’t truly here to do that, but to investigate the truth behind the authorship of Angharad.
He tries to convince her to help him in his pursuit of the truth, and she eventually agrees, with the potential of entering the Literature College as the driving force.
Together, they look into the history of Emrys Myrddin and his family’s lives, and the history of the manor itself.
The further they delve, the more they uncover about the darkness that grips Hiraeth manor, and the pair learn that evil isn’t always magical, its mortal too.
Ava Reid blew me away with this work, honestly.
This book was originally marketed to me as a dark academia, gothic, academic rivals type of book. I had delayed reading it for this very reason. I had thought that it was going to be romance driven, and the older i’m getting, the less appeal that romance driven books have.
I was so incredibly wrong.
That being said, the love story between Effy, the MC, and Preston, her academic rival, was written amazingly— but it took more of a backseat position, a subplot I’d argue.
I think that a lot of contemporary novels struggle incorporating romance into their books without meshing the identities of the characters into each other.
This was what I loved about A Study in Drowning. It didn’t overshadow Effy as a character, or reduce her to simply a girl in love. It used her romance as a way to allow her to grow into her identity, and if anything become more indenpendant through it. Ava Reid reminds us that relationships shouldn’t be all-consuming, they should be helping us grow.
I think that describing the book as merely a romance is a disservice to it.
The novel focuses on Effy and her empowerment. Ava Reid has a way of writing in a way that makes you ache for Effy so much so that its easy to think you’re apart of the novel.
Her prose is enchanting, and is able to not only engage you through its beautiful imagery but also through the questions it leaves you with.
She reminds you, the reader, to question everything.
Ava Reid’s world-building is brilliant, without being convoluted by unnecessary jargon that books in this genre often fall into. Her characters are complex and brilliant, and so incredibly human.
You’ll be dreaming about the Fairy King for days after finishing it.