Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia armfield

Some books wash over you. This one pulls you under.

A Best Book of the Year (NPR, The Washington Post, Lit Hub, The Telegraph, Goodreads, Tor.com, them, and more) and a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Goodreads Choice Award, Julia Armfield’s debut is the kind of novel we love to press into a reader’s hands here in the cove.

Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition, but this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows something is wrong. Barely eating. Lost in thought. Running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened down in that vessel, Leah has carried part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home.

As Miri searches for answers, she must face a quiet, devastating possibility: the woman she loves may be slipping from her grasp.

By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, this is a story about grief, marriage, and the unknowable depths within each of us, and the love that draws us toward one another anyway.

The Washington Post called it “shocking… achingly poetic… sharp and beautiful as coral polyps.” NPR named it “deeply strange and haunting in the best possible way.”

It’s a perfect companion for a foggy afternoon, with the sea just steps away and the floorboards creaking softly underfoot.

Come linger over the first page. We have a feeling you won’t want to come back up for air.

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