18-year-old Effy Sayre has read the late Emrys Myrddin’s books “so many times that the logic of his world was layered over hers, like glossy tracing paper on top of the original.” Emrys is the country of Llyr’s most beloved author, and his novel Angharad has long served as a balm for Effy’s troubled soul and a source of support on her darkest days.
As Ava Reid’s darkly dramatic A Study in Drowning opens, readers are swiftly drawn into Effy’s miserable life in her first year at Llyr University. Because its literature college doesn’t admit women, she’s a reluctant architecture student adrift in a sea of snide, unfriendly men. Meanwhile, nightmarish visions of the Fairy King that have plagued her since childhood exacerbate her anxiety.
A ray of hope arrives when Myrddin’s family begins searching for someone to redesign their estate, Hiraeth Manor. This feels like fate to Effy—especially when she wins the competition to secure this daunting project. Grateful for the escape, she sets off for Myrddin’s cliffside hometown, the Bay of Nine Bells.
Thanks to Reid’s knack for atmospheric, immersive writing—as seen in her adult fantasy novels, The Wolf and the Woodsman and Juniper & Thorn—humidity seems to rise from the page as Effy strives to comprehend her strange new reality. Not only is Hiraeth Manor mildew-ridden and on the verge of crumbling into the sea, but another Llyr University student is on-site: the self-important Preston Heloury, who is ostensibly there for an archival task—but asks Effy to join his true mission to debunk Myrddin’s authorship of Angharad.
Readers will delight in the scholars’ slow-burn attraction as they delve into Myrddin’s complicated legacy. Reid uses the characters’ clashing worldviews to prompt readers to consider the ways in which power structures affect what we learn and believe. A Study in Drowning is at once an absorbing gothic mystery and an intriguing social commentary set in a richly detailed world where history and magic collide.
