To say I consumed this book isn’t accurate—instead, this book consumed me. I read it from cover to cover onboard a flight that raced the sunset; outside the window, the light of the world kept pushing back against the inevitable, encroaching dark. Within the pages of their newest novel, Ava Reid has written several brilliant, haunted individuals, adrift and seeking answers, all of which can only be found in a home built for darkness. This is a story about stories—who tells them, and who they’re about; if the tellers are telling the truth, and if the subjects can ever have power over the tellers. And what power lies within the reader’s hands? When you are witness to a beautiful lie, do you have an obligation to find the truth? Reid grapples with these questions of art and artistry, legacy and literature, love and power, abuse and survival, and so much more in their dazzling novel, A Study in Drowning.
Effy Sayre is a young student in the college for architecture, as the university doesn’t allow women to enroll in their literary program. Belittled by many of the students around her, mostly male, haunted by visions of a character from her favorite book Angharad, and desperate to escape both, Effy believes she’s found it when she enters and wins a contest to redesign the ancestral home of Emrys Myrddin, the beloved and mysterious author of Angharad. Arriving at Hiraeth Manor, she can’t help but notice all the danger that abounds and riddles with no answers: There are no mirrors within this home; the sea threatens at the edge of the storm-wracked cliffs; Emrys’ son looks at her with a hunger that makes her stomach turn; and there is another student within the Manor. An academic rival who is determined to prove that Emrys Myrddin was a fraud, Preston Héloury becomes a splinter beneath Effy’s very heart. But as the two grow close, despite their best intentions, they begin to unravel the true mystery of Myrddin and Angharad, the truths of Effy’s childhood and her haunting visions, and the decrepit foundation upon which the Manor, and Myrddin’s life, was built.
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A Study in Drowning
Whether it’s before, during, or after reading this excellent novel, I urge you, dear reader, to read this essay from Reid. I think you would find a lot in there to admire on its own, but having read it prior to reading A Study in Drowning, it gave me the proper scaffolding to embrace the book Reid put their whole heart into, their experiences acting as a foundation that only added to my own experience of this novel. More than that, it is a tremendous and vulnerable essay of Reid’s mental health history and journey, and the ways in which they shaped A Study in Drowning. As I read this novel, I found myself reflecting back on the essay they had written, which only made me appreciate the book more: A Study in Drowning, like all great art, becomes a time capsule for who we used to be, a story that, in the now, may be the very mirror another might need to see and find themselves in.
And Reid holds nothing back, examining with brutal beauty how a young woman might contort herself, round and round, to keep herself safe from a world designed to make her feel lesser than, ashamed, hurt, and as small as possible. And, as a character towards the end of the novel aptly says, Reid stakes that that’s nothing to be ashamed of; in a story so centered around the idea of heroism, Reid asserts that in such a world, simply surviving, making one’s way through the horror and terror in a single piece, is absolutely enough. It casts the entire novel in a really incredible light, that even when Effy is at her lowest, when no one believes her and forces magical, mundane, and institutional threaten her in every conceivable way, even then, she picks herself up and keeps pushing. Forward, onward. Effy, at the end of everything, saves herself and it is beautiful.
Along the way, Reid delivers in every possible fashion. Atmospheric, gothic prose, sentences of shadow and mist abutting against the glamour and pine of fae malice, pages dripping with the brine and salt of seawater and history. Amidst these landscapes, they give us a tender and honest slow-burn relationship between Effy and Preston, these two hungry young academics so eager for truth, each hoping to bring the other into their own worlds of warmth and wonder. And throughout it all, the building menace and tension as it all comes crashing together in a crescendo that had me holding my breath at 30,000 feet.
Ava Reid has quickly become an author whose every work I will read, no matter what. I know when I open a book they wrote, I will find everything I want as a reader, and in A Study in Drowning, they have once again delivered. From the prose to the characters, from the world to the mood, from page to page, I found only delight, joy, and an eagerness to see how it would all come together. If you’re looking for a good starting point for Ava Reid’s work, I couldn’t recommend A Study in Drowning highly enough. Then, once you’ve been blown away, go and read the rest of their work, too!
A Study in Drowning is published by HarperTeen.
Martin Cahill is a writer living in Queens who works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He has fiction work forthcoming in 2021 at Serial Box, as well as Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Fireside Fiction. Martin has also written book reviews and essays for Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble SF&F Blog. Follow him online at @mcflycahill90 and his new Substack newsletter, Weathervane, for thoughts on books, gaming, and other wonderfully nerdy whatnots.
