Blodeuedd's Wednesday Review of A Study of Drowning by Ava Reid

By: Ava Reid

Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld

Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins

Release date: 09-19-23

Publisher: HarperAudio

Fantasy /From bookbeat.fi

There are 3 big audiobook sites here and one sent me an offer trying to get me back, I took it to listen to this book ;)

I have no idea what to call this. It is fantasy, but at the same time it feels like an alternative Wales a 100 years back. A country that is at war and not at war with some other country.  They are protected by Sleepers, and they have magic or not. And 200 years back there was a big Drowning. All very mysterious and Gothic.

Effy studies architecture, but she wants to study literature, but is not allowed as a woman. There was something with a professor that still haunts her. She finds her solace in the book Angarad, and she might be crazy, or not. There were many ? in this book. Was she crazy? Her doctors and family thought so. She saw the Fairy King and she was scared through out the whole book. And it came to this point where I really really wanted to know if The Fairy King was real or not. There is this current of danger and despair through out the whole book. It truly gives the book its dark atmosphere. 

The story brings Effy to design a house at a place where her favorite author lived. A dark melancholic place. She meets a fellow student that is trying to prove that her favorite author did not in fact author Angharad. And she helps him, because she tries to prove him wrong. 

And the darkness gets darker, the weather more brutal. The house is crumbling, and she has nightmares. She is nearing her breaking point.

Saskia Maarleveld is narrating and I always like her narrations. She has a great voice, does great distinct characters and has the perfect feel for this book. She does fantasy well and really gets into the book.

Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales. She’s had no choice. Since childhood, she’s been haunted by visions of the Fairy King. She’s found solace only in the pages of Angharad - author Emrys Myrddin’s beloved epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, and then destroys him.

Effy’s tattered, dog-eared copy is all that’s keeping her afloat through her stifling first term at Llyr’s prestigious architecture college. So when Myrddin’s family announces a contest to design the late author’s house, Effy feels certain this is her destiny.

But Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task: a musty, decrepit estate on the brink of crumbling into a hungry sea. And when Effy arrives, she finds she isn’t the only one who’s made a temporary home there. Preston Héloury, a stodgy young literature scholar, is studying Myrddin’s papers and is determined to prove her favorite author is a fraud.

As the two rival students investigate the reclusive author’s legacy, piecing together clues through his letters, books, and diaries, they discover that the house’s foundation isn’t the only thing that can’t be trusted. There are dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspiring against them - and the truth may bring them both to ruin.