I'm not sure how to review this. I loved Armfield's short stories (Salt Slow) and this wasn't really very much like those; I started and abandoned this a few times before getting into it, and it was just determination to give it a proper try that made me persevere. Once I gave it some proper attention, it wasn't difficult to keep going. It's one of those books in which it feels as though nothing really happens (even though at least two very dramatic things do happen!). It feels mismarketed as a horror, even though the events in it can't really be described another way. It's quiet, and sad, and slow, but beautiful, too, and although I wished for more verve at times, I do believe not everything has to be big and sweeping. Sometimes it can be this. Didn't make a big splash, but is still lurking under the surface.

This book follows Miri and Leah, a married couple.

Leah works for the Centre of Marine Inquiry and as part of her job, she is sent in a submarine for research purposes. However, something goes wrong and the submarine loses their means of communication, leaving the expedition stranded in the deep ocean.

Leah was meant to be away for three weeks, but she returned after six months, just when Miri was beginning to lose hope that her wife was still alive.

However, Leah is very much different upon her return. What really has happened under the sea?

I really wanted to like this book as I’ve heard many great things about it.

I liked Leah’s references to the sea and all the facts she was relaying.

I think I found the book a tiny bit too descriptive. I was yearning for more dialogue! I know that it was the whole point of the story as Miri was feeling extremely lonely.

I was hoping for more oomph when it came to what happened under the sea. The build up was quite intense, but the reality of it made me feel quite flat about the whole thing.

This wasn’t for me, but it might be for you!

Thanks to Picador for approving my NetGalley request to read and review this title.

Thank you to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the complimentary copy of Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield.

I was engrossed by this book from the first page. I especially enjoyed the two perspectives in each chapter. I wouldn't describe the book as a horror, it does have touches of science fiction. I was drawn into the main characters, how they met, how their relationship progressed to the situation that they found themselves in.

I felt Miri's grief as she realises that the Leah she once knew was not the same person that returned from the bottom of the ocean. I felt the grief at knowing that their relationship will never be the same. I felt the grief of the end of relationship, which was made even more difficult by Miri watching it disappear as she watched Leah transform before her.

I would read Julia Armfield rewriting the phone book at this point. So magnificent. A startling, brilliant book, an incomparable writer. Never misses.

🌊 Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield was a haunting, devastating exploration of the ache of love, separation, and missing someone right in front of you. Diving to the depths of heartache and sea lesbians.

I loved this so much. eerie and unsettling, sadly funny and beautiful, melancholy and emotional. I went into it knowing it was ambiguous and so I was completely okay with the lack of answers. unforgettable!

Miri’s wife Leah is a marine biologist. When she returns home after one of her trips to the sea bed goes wrong, Miri begins to notice changes in her, behavioural and physical. And things begin to get really creepy.

But this is far from a horror story, in my opinion. It is a tragedy, a love story, a romance and a beautifully-portrayed yearning for a past that can never be again, for a love that will never be what it was. It’s almost like a fairy tale – but in the style of the Brothers Grimm rather than Disney.

It’s emotional without being melodramatic; the writing is poignant. It may be a bit slow for some, a bit weird, a bit reflective, a bit inward-looking, but that was its appeal for me. It was a slow build, a slow burn, that revealed the true horror at its centre with a timing that made things feel inevitable, the way that Miri must have felt.

Highly recommended if you like novels that are unusual, creepy and clever.

A spooky gothic tale about a woman who returns from a trip at the bottom of the ocean and she isn't the same woman who left. It's dark, its eery, and it is full of intrigue.

I really liked this book. It’s pretty slow going but it’s beautifully written. It’s full of grief, love and loss which is so heartbreaking. We alternate between the two main characters narratives. Through Leah we hear the past, the relationship and being stuck under the ocean. And through Miri, we hear about the now. How everyday is a struggle, of what life is like now Leah has returned. Both narratives have been well researched. This is the debut novel by Julia Armfield and I cannot wait to read what this author writes next.

A really touching and beautiful, lyrical novel about grief. Enjoy is not the right word. Wanted it to be a little spookier but that’s more on what I was expecting than anything else.

This book is a masterpiece. It's haunting and propulsive and has stayed with me after reading it. I love the mystery and intrigue about what actually happened under the sea, and how the characters develop once back on land and realising that they're not quite who went down in the submarine. Very clever writing that felt like it had the impact of a much longer novel.

Such a beautifully written novel, reminiscent of Kirsty Logan and Daisy Johnson. With an otherworldly quality, this unsettling and deeply memorable novel shows real promise.

Julia Armfield writing is really haunting and beautiful. Just like her pervious work, Salt Slow, loved this one too. This is also an aching sapphic love story and it was so beautiful

Okay, I have very little to say about Our Wives Under the Sea. Objectively, I can see that it was beautifully written and the story was unusual and unique. Personally, I didn't get it/enjoy it. I know there is a big metaphor continuing throughout the story but I just didn't get it.

People will love this book. It just wasn't for me.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is available now.

For more information regarding Julia Armfield (@JuliaArmfield) please visit www.juliaarmfield.co.uk.

For more information regarding Pan Macmillan (@panmacmillan) please visit their Twitter page.

A slow burn, poetically written, haunting story of love, loss, and grief - I think it's all the more chilling for the fact that it isn't a showy, dramatic horror but an insidious one. I loved how the relationship between the two women was written, and watching that relationship change and disintegrate was quietly brutal.

A beautifully written book that pushes the boundaries of what it means to write horror. I will be thinking about this one for a long time.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for granting me a free ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Exquisite writing and having taken my time with this book, as it’s quite short, felt it packed a punch. Resonated on so many levels with me and I’m still haunted by the ambiguous ending. Thoroughly recommend.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers Pan Macmillan for this ARC.

Well, this was quite beguiling. I wasn't sure I'd think so after being what feels like the only person who didn't ravish Salt Slow (the short story collection that was published by Armfield prior to this) with rapturous praise - the stories were just to uneven for me and for every piece of brilliance there I found an equal miss.

The writing in this is just gorgeous. Each word seems precisely chosen and you can see the short story writer in her here. It's very impressive that she could keep up this razor sharp focus for a whole novel.

Miri tells the us about what is happening now that her wife has returned from a research mission, under the ocean in a submarine, that went wrong. Can Leah and her return to their life that was filled with beautiful mundane moments? Or, has the experience formed a fissure in their lives where nothing can be the same now?

Miri's chapters are interspersed with Leah's. Leah tells us what happened while submerged. The trip that was meant to be three weeks but stretched to six months wrought severe damage on her and her two shipmates. Leah's chapters are tense and had me absolutely gripped.

Miri's are quieter, by design, but somehow just as psychologically challenging.

I would say that if you want everything wrapped up neatly this may not be your ideal read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I'm sorry it took me so long to read this. I won't sleep on Armfield again!

Writing exquisite. Sense of foreboding excellent. Atmosphere cranked up to the max. Underwater trivia is completely my jam. Short chapters that are gut punching. What I loved the absolute most though were the sections of Leah and Miri explaining why they loved each other, the quirks of their relationship, the things that should drive a person mad and yet you accept as part of the intricacies of a loving partnership. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

I put off reading this for a long time because I loved Salt Slow and I wanted to love Our Wives Under the Sea as much. I didn't, but that's okay. Told from the perspectives of Miri and Leah, this follows Leah as she goes into deep ocean on a routine research mission that very swiftly goes wrong; and Miri, six months later, as she tries to understand what's happening to her wife and why she's so different. I actually wanted more from Our Wives, and found it a little slow: that's not a statement I usually make about novels, but with speculative fiction I think I do prefer a slightly faster plot. But anyway, I really liked this; the writing about their relationship is lovely, the prose is obviously beautiful and so polished, and the premise is as good as the stories in Salt Slow. If there had been more stuff in this – more plot development, a bit more action, maybe more contextualisation of their world – then I would have loved this, I think. As it is, I'm still hugely impressed by the quality of her prose and I know I will absolutely read every book she ever publishes.

An exceptional book that is at one beautiful, haunting, and deeply disturbing. Not a novel for anyone who likes a neatly tied up conclusion that explains everything, as you will still be left wondering just what one earth was going on. Julia Armfield writes beautifully and I would read anything she writes.