I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t really interested in this book when it first came out. There was something about it that I didn’t like, though I can’t remember what exactly it was now. And I was never going to read it if it weren’t for a single reel that popped up on my Instagram feed about the second book in this duology (because yes, it’s a duology). Something about it made me believe I would like this book, and, well, ‘tis the season for gloomy, Gothic fiction, isn’t it?
So I thought, why not?
And initially, I was — not enjoying it exactly, but it was good enough. The mood was right, and I liked the setting, which I believe is similar to our world during or post WWII, or at least that’s the impression I got. Looking at reviews after reading it, a lot of people seem confused about this, so it could have just as well been like our world pre-WWI or the 1990’s or anything, really. But as I said, it was going well enough.
I was generous in letting things slide. For example, Effy (that’s the main character) is notoriously bigoted. This is something that I knew before I started reading because it seemed to be a big point of contention when it came to this book. And initially I justified it because one, the girl is traumatized, and two, there’s that quote from my favorite Christopher Isherwood:
“Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to you, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it—some motive—some trick.”
And Effy is a constant object of misogyny, from her peers who call her nasty names, to her professors, advisors, and even her family at times. So, I was willing to overlook it, or accept it, I suppose.
But this proved exceedingly difficult the more I read. Effy is our heroine, written to be relatable, someone we should be able to root for, and yet she’s only ever petty, whiny, and pretentious. She believes she deserves better and that she is smarter than anyone else, and yet has so little drive to do anything about it except belittle people she feels are below her.
She’s brought to tears by almost everything that happens to her, and quivers before everyone like a little fragile flower, but with Preston (who is her love interest; also, more importantly, an immigrant/minority in this country) she snaps and gets angry at every turn. And for stupid reasons as well. Like, for example, he asks her to put her seatbelt on while riding in a car because the road is bumpy and she could legitimately get hurt. But Effy gets angry at this (“he’s treating me like a child”). What?
And you cannot talk about Effy and the failings of this book without talking about the feminism aspect of it all. I see what the writer was trying to do here, but in my opinion, she failed to discuss misogyny in any valuable way. It’s all surface-level. In a way, it would have been ground-breaking a decade or so ago, but now it only serves as a boring, derivative version of things we’ve seen before (done better).
Effy is the perfect victim — white, blonde, pretty, upper class. There are no other notable women in A Study of Drowning. Yes, there’s her friend and the friend’s girlfriend, but we know nothing about them and they appear only for a moment. And yes, there’s another woman at the end (without spoiling too much), who’s also a perfect victim (also white and upper class). There are no poor women in this, no women of color, not even in the background.
The men are all bad and predatory, all except Preston, whose entire personality is being whatever Effy needs. He never argues his own opinion too passionately, never does anything wrong. He’s hairless, harmless, a cardboard cutout. Even when Effy is offending him and practically saying he knows nothing about the subject he’s been studying and writing a thesis on, about literature in general, he says nothing.
While we’re at it, why are women not allowed to study literature, but are allowed to study architecture (where mistakes could lead to people dying) and other subjects in this world? Her own mother works in banking. The national treasure book is about a woman. How does that make sense in the grand scheme of things? Is it only because the author wanted to hammer down the point that women should be allowed to do whatever they want?
And like sure, that’s true, obviously, but how does womanhood in this world interact with society in general? Do we only care for the plight of the upper class white women?
So, Preston is working on a thesis that would disprove the authorship of Effy’s favorite novel, and Effy agrees to help. The scholars believe (and the premise of this thesis is) that because the author comes from a poor background with little access to school, he could not have possibly written something so beautiful and important. And guess what (sorry, I have to spoil it a little), the conclusion is that they are right — the poor author could not have written the book, it was his upper class wife.
And look, I know that authorship has been stolen from women for ages now, and it is an important issue, but why are we throwing other marginalized groups under the bus here to prove our point? It would be interesting if A Study in Drowning was interested at all in examining this prejudice, but it is not.
The only evil in this society is misogyny, and it exists solely in the oppression of and the sexual violence towards pretty, white, upper class girls. We don’t see any proof to the contrary, not even as a passing mention.
And in the end, Effy gets sole credit for a thesis she barely even worked on and that she didn’t write. Is this the feminism that we want? Is this what we believe is good? From what I learned of the second book, she doesn’t even use her chance to study the subject she wanted — she misses classes and cries in her bedroom.
So, as you can see, the themes of this book are pretty weak. Yes, feminism good, misogyny bad, sexual violence bad, but what else is new?
The world itself is poorly built as well. We learn very little about all of it, and what we do learn is very surface-level. There’s a war happening, and this somehow doesn’t affect anything at all. I’m honestly not sure how this is possible. It’s mentioned almost in passing.
The magic is not explained either, and there’s very little of it. It exists mainly in folklore and what the poor South believes. So, for the life of me, I do not understand why this couldn’t have been set in our world instead, with the addition of one fictional author and some myth. You have a university, a popular author, a crumbling manor, and a spot of old-world magic. Nothing that couldn’t have been set at, say, Oxford.
And why is Effy even studying architecture? She could have been a literature student instead, and this would make her and Preston actual academic rivals that both got a chance to examine the letters and diaries of an acclaimed, popular author. The premise after that could have stayed the same — Preston wanting to disprove his authorship, and Effy going against him. It would have made more sense. But no, the book wanted instead to harp on its point instead of crafting a good story.
Architecture is barely even mentioned after Effy agrees to work with Preston. So what was the point?
The prose is… okay. I see a lot of people talk about how beautifully written it is, and it does create a good atmosphere, I’ll give it that, but there’s a ton of overwrought sentences, similes, metaphors (so much so that you get tired of it). A Study in Drowning wants to be smart, wants to be poetic, wants to be intelligent, but all it ends up being is pretentious and honestly kind of boring.
And then there are the characters.
Effy is meek, in a word. Part of it is that she’s meant to be meek in order to show growth, etcetera, and because of her trauma, which is fine, I guess (though it makes her so hard to read). But she’s also so… stupid, there’s no other word for it. She’s so surprised at every bit of new information she learns and makes no connections in her mind. Even though all the men in this book are bad, she’s super stunned when her favorite author (also a man) is bad too.
She’s also extremely entitled. In her mind, Preston (a literature student who presumably worked hard to get into school and is working hard still because he got the very important job of writing this thesis) doesn’t deserve to borrow books of her favorite author from the library because he’s not from her country, and he couldn’t possibly appreciate them (?). What?
When Preston talks about literature, she assumes he’s being patronising and pretentious (?). When he warns her about Ianto (another clearly predatory man), she brushes it off as irrelevant and also a bit patronizing. Which, seriously? After you’ve been assaulted by a professor?
And Preston, as I mentioned, is an amalgamation of everything Effy needs, plus a little bit of your favorite book boyfriends combined. He flexes his hand after they touch for the first time (Darcy), he writes her name over and over again on a piece of paper (Cardan), and he constantly gives her a choice (Rhysand) while simultaneously being so non-offensive that he ends up being bland, unsalted puffed rice of character.
And then there’s the fact that A Study in Drowning seems so interested in stories and their role in shaping the national myth, yet doesn’t even think to explore this. Why are stories so important to this society? Why is a story about a young woman defeating a man so celebrated in a society so misogynistic that it prevents women from studying literature? With what agenda? And who is behind this? But no, we don’t answer any of those questions — instead we talk about ✨stories✨ in a nebulous, for the vibes way.
In the end, this book was a disappointment. I will not be reading its sequel, but I will give this author another chance, because I received the ARC of Innamorata (prior to reading this), and I’m interested to see if her work improved at all (be on the lookout for that review).
And look, I’m not telling you not to read this book. It might be just what you need, so give it a go if you’re at all interested. For me though, this was shallow, boring, lacking any sort of chemistry or thematic cohesion. It wasn’t even fun in an ACOTAR sort of way. But I do hope you find it more enjoyable. Happy reading!
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