A Study in Drowning

I think my primary issue with this book was that the central “conflict” in this story ends up kind of just being about whether a book was plagiarized or not, and it turns out that that is just not super interesting to read about. Yes, there are other things going on, but barely, and the other things going on (the fantastical/hallucinatory episodes, and the “romance” if you can even call it that) were equally as lifeless, and failed to get me to care about anyone or anything that was happening.

A secondary issue is definitely that the worldbuilding is so thin that at multiple points I found myself wondering why this wasn't just set in Edwardian England, but with a very minor fantastical twist. In this “world” we are in, there is an unexplained war (that is super important, but also completely irrelevant), the country rivalry (what is it about? who knows, but we hate them and think they shouldn't be allowed to read our books), the North/South differences (what is the difference? idk, people in the south are willing to live in houses filled with water and black mold I guess), any clarity about the magic (seems people mostly think its fake, but also the “Sleepers” are super important to the war?), any clarity about technology in this world, even a good reasoning why this author/book is somehow the most important person/writing to ever exist etc. were all so opaque, way more distracting than intriguing, and kind of completely inconsequential to the story that was being told.

I think the only part that I feel was handled in a satisfying way was showing, through Effy's perspective, how trauma can present itself – and how difficult overcoming those experiences can be. Unfortunately, that one thread was not nearly enough to carry the rest of the book on its back, and I found myself just trying to get through the last 50% on the hope that something would spark in an interesting way, but was left disappointed.