A Letter to the Luminous Deep

• Author: Sylvie Cathrall
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: April 25, 2024
• Publisher: Orbit
• Series: The Sunken Archive #1

Thank you to Orbit and Angela Man for sending me a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests and then, inevitably, for each other.

Together they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.’s home, and she and Henerey vanish.

A year later, E.’s sister Sophy and Henerey’s brother Vyerin are left to solve the mystery, piecing together the letters, sketches, and field notes left behind—and learn what their siblings’ disappearance might mean for life as they know it.

I was so excited to read this one, and it was even more anticipated because I buddy read it with Leslie @ Books Are The New Black and Julie @ One Book More, two of my favorite people to buddy read with. So armed with not much knowledge of what to expect aside from an epistolary novel with a stunner of a cover, we embarked on this journey.

The book starts off slow. And when I say slow, I mean glacially slowly. The story unfolds through two timelines worth of letters, or automated post (similar to email), set a year apart. The earlier letters are between E. and Henerey for the most part, and slowly establish a connection. At first, they are both so painfully shy and can only talk about shared interests, but gradually they open up to each other more and more, and it eventually becomes a romantic connection. There are jumps back and forth in time, so that we also see Sophy and Vyerin establishing their own bond to try and find out what happened to their siblings, who have gone missing a year prior. 

While the premise of the story sounded fascinating, the execution left something lacking. I’ve read some epistolary novels before, but never one that was completely in epistolary format without any other format mixed in, even a little. I read part of this in audiobook format (thank you to Jasmine Normil @ Hachette Audio), which was narrated beautifully, although hearing automated post message after automated post message became tedious after a while. I also found the jumps between timelines to be a bit jarring at times, and thought that the transitions could have been done more smoothly.

I think one of the reasons I struggled with the transitions was because I found it difficult to differentiate between the character voices a lot of the time. The only voice that I really found to be a completely distinct one was E.’s, because it sounded to me like she struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and possibly agoraphobia, but definitely disorders rooted in anxiety. It made it really uncomfortable to be in her head, but I think that speaks to the realistic representation that the author wrote, since that’s the same feeling I get when reading any other super-realistic anxiety rep. 

It became clear to me around the midway point of reading this that it wasn’t a great fit for me. I hung on and kept reading because I was involved with a buddy read, and hoped that it would appeal to me more as I went on, although I never fully connected with the story or the characters. I kept finding myself drifting off because rather than answering my questions, reading only created more questions for me. It wasn’t until writing this review that I realized this is the first book in a series, but I would have appreciated the author at least giving me a few answers in this book, rather than (I’m guessing) holding everything back for future books. While the gorgeous setting and whimsical underwater vibes of this story will surely appeal to many readers, this book wasn’t the right fit for me personally. I’d recommend this for people who like slower-paced stories that take time to develop, strong vibes, and strong family bonds.

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