Though Miri is happy to have her wife back home, she soon realizes that ‘her’ Leah is still somewhere down on the ocean floor Miri and Leah live together, but separately. But now Leah has been brought back to dry land, and everything is going to be OK, right? Each chapter alternates perspectives between Miri and her wife Leah, a marine biologist who recently returned home after a mysterious deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe: shortly after submerging, her submarine lost power and fell off the grid for six months, resulting in the eventual death of a colleague and the discovery of something otherworldly in one of the deepest parts of the ocean. But I won’t dwell on that further because, at the end of the day, do I really, truly fucking care about that? Eh, no. But both that example and Our Wives are less outright scream-fests than dreamlike meditations on grief and love. It has tinges of the genre, in the same way you might label Annihilation (both the book by Jeff VanderMeer and its film adaptation) as horror. To label and market Our Wives Under the Sea as a 'horror novel' is somewhat deceiving. But for all my horror lovers, prepare to be disappointed. I adored every moment of reading Armfield’s gorgeous, romantic, absolutely haunting story. And they were right: this book is exceptional. I’ve had the pleasure of reading some really excellent queer horror this year, from Patricia Wants to Cuddle to Manhunt, and I’d been meaning to knock Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield off my list months ago after hearing such good things.

Our wives under the sea synopsis