Title: A Letter to the Luminous Deep (The Sunken Archive #1)

Author: Sylvie Cathrall

Publisher: Orbit 2024

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 432

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: COYER; 52 Book Club - Title “L”

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 absolutely loved and disliked this book… let me explain. I absolutely adored the lush atmospheric tone to this book. We get a lot of mentions of the environment. Hearing E and Henerey discuss their environments was amazing. I loved the slow burn of the mystery. We know something happened and they didn’t just die, but exactly what happened? I loved unraveling the mystery along with Sophy and Vyerin. The epistolary structure was a delight. Overall I really really enjoyed this book. And then we get to the ending and I was highly annoyed. This book ends very abruptly with a big cliffhanger. I was not expecting that at all and it really threw me off. Now I have to wait who knows how long until the author completes the next in the series. I am sad about that aspect. Otherwise this is definitely my kind of book.

The Sunken Archive

• #1 A Letter to the Luminous Deep

• #2 TBD

Next up on the TBR pile: