A Letter to the Luminous Deep

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book!

I enjoyed a lot of the world building aspects (it felt like another world that had a lot of indirect description and mystery to it) but it was really hard to believe the writing style of some of the letters. The overly complimentary tone between main characters was really distracting for me because I’ve never seen letters written in such a “I really loved to receive your letter, you are such a wonderful person and everything about you is beautiful” way. The parts I was most frustrated by was how much of it seemed to be that type of fluff - I think it could’ve been one book easily and when I got to the end there was barely a cliffhanger.

I wouldn’t read the second book most likely unless it’s also available on NetGalley (in which case I would pick it up to see the ending - I hate leaving things unfinished).

Still writing showed potential and the world was interesting so lowest I can give is 3/5

I would say that I recommend this to fans of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries and fans of WWII and WWI epistolary novels. The tone is very similar to books like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and Last Christmas in Paris, and the setting is a sort of steampunk water world where there seems to be a big social emphasis on scholarly pursuits such as natural science and innovation. I found the setting and tone very charming, and I was compelled along by the mystery as well. The audiobook did a good job of providing multiple narrators to keep it clear who was speaking. I enjoyed the "present day" perspectives of two people who were trying to determine what had happened to their respective siblings who had perished/disappeared sometime in the previous year, and it was interesting to follow their reactions to the letters exchanged between the missing couple as they fell in love before whatever happened to them. I related more than I expected to E's mental health struggles. Towards the end I sort of lost track of what was going on and I honestly couldn't tell you what happened. The book also ends with the big mystery unresolved. Coupled with my general confusion, the lack of a clear ending made for an ultimately unsatisfying read. It does appear this may be the first book in a series, but I didn't know that while reading. If I were going based on the ending I might give it a 3, but I'll stick with 4 because I think I'm partially to blame for not paying enough attention while multitasking with the audiobook on and I did enjoy the earlier parts of the story.

Content Warnings:
Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Death, and Grief
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Abandonment, Medical content, and Confinement