A Study in Drowning
The SUNDAY TIMES and NO. 1 NYT bestselling dark academia, rivals to lovers fantasy from the author of The Wolf and the Woodsman
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3.8 • 23 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NO. 1 NYT BESTSELLING NOVEL, FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WOLF AND THE WOODSMAN
'A love letter to stories - and to everyone silenced or forgotten in their retelling.' Allison Saft, author of A Far Wilder Magic
Effy 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 - a beloved epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King, and then destroys him.
Effy's tattered copy is all that's keeping her afloat through her stifling first term her prestigious architecture college. So when the late author's family announces a contest to design his house, Effy fells 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 favourite 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.
Sunday Times bestseller, September 2023
New York Times bestseller, November 2023
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A fantasy thriller that also features a sweet, sultry romance, A Study in Drowning’s beating heart is Effy—the smart, vulnerable, ultimately formidable young woman who anchors the reader in an unfamiliar world. Effy would have loved to study literature, but her university’s literature college does not accept women. Instead, she toils away unhappily in the marginally more inclusive architecture college, its only female student. When the opportunity to redesign her favourite author’s home arises after his death, thanks to a competition run by his family, it is irresistible. Long plagued by images of the Fairy King, the author’s greatest work, in which the Fairy King features, is the only thing that makes Effy feel understood. But once she arrives at the eerie house, danger is seemingly all around, and it doesn’t appear to come from fellow humans alone. The revelations that follow are as compelling as Effy herself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reid (The Wolf and the Woodsman) blurs the lines between reality and fantasy in this stunning tale. Effy Sayre, the only female architecture student at the country of Llyr's most prestigious college, is an avid fan of late author Emrys Myrddin. She especially loves Angharad, Myrddin's epic about a cruel fairy king and the mortal woman that broke his heart. When Effy is selected to design a house in Myrddin's honor, she travels to his estate, Hiraeth Manor, in the seaside town of Saltney. Once there, she discovers that her academic rival, pedantic and handsome Preston, has arrived to prove that Angharad was not authored by Myrddin. Preston enlists Effy to help him; she agrees, believing it to be her chance to gain entry into the male-only literature program. But as the two delve deeper into Myrddin's history, strange happenings begin to occur around Hiraeth Manor. Reid wields lyricism, dark academia, and fairy-core elements to eloquently imbue the narrative with originality and depth. The rivals-to-lovers romance is swoonworthy, and the seaside crags and fetid gothic mansion render a deeply evocative setting that ferries themes surrounding grief, gender, and the value of folklore. Major characters cue as white. Ages 14–up.
