Underlake

by Erin L. McCoy

A richly glittering debut about the interlocked fates of two women, raised worlds apart, who must join forces on an extraordinary journey, diving leagues beneath the water's surface—and straight into the fathomless heart of fear, forgiveness, and love.

    Thirteen years ago, Otta escaped the small town of Steels, intent upon becoming a marine biologist. Now she's returned, having failed to achieve her dream, and carrying the guilt of a friend's death during a deep-sea dive. She thinks she may never dive again, but then a stranger appears at her door.
    This stranger, May, says that her daughter has run away, and insists that she's under a nearby lake—alive.
    Because it turns out the small-town legend of "the underlake" is three decades ago, an entire valley and the town in it was flooded to make way for a dam, but the people in that town refused to leave.
Now, they're still living beneath the lake, self-proclaimed “refugees of a world obsessed with change,” connected—and held apart—by an intricate, airtight system of tubes and sealed buildings. To find May's missing daughter, Otta and May must travel deeper and deeper under the water. Along the way, they'll discover communities that have lived in isolation for decades, fomenting extremes of delusion and nostalgia. As the two women bond in the thrall of their search, they are each forced to confront the layers of fear, control, and uncertainty that drive their quest. Together and alone, they must challenge the laws of love and society—and push their bodies to the mortal limit.
    Hypnotic and arresting, Underlake How do we claim our place on the great timeline of history, and who do we erase in the process? It brings a poet's attention to language, gesturing at the evocative and ethereal work of Preeta Samarasan and Marilynne Robinson, while also shrewdly exploring the American obsession with inheritance, property, and race. Finally, Underlake is a powerful meditation on what is possible when women reach through time, space, and memory to relate to one another.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Adult, Science Fiction Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Magical Realism

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 2026

Reviews

[AndaReadsTooMuch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am struggling to classify this book. Modern lit? Yeah, kinda. Sci-fi/Fantasy? Yeah, a little there too. Weird? Definitely but not only. It doesn’t fit neatly under one label, that’s clear. It’s a little bit of finding yourself, rebuilding yourself after a loss (of what was and of what never would be) and fantastical (a city of people living under a lake, yes -under- a lake). Oh and those people? They all center around a reverend who teaches them that everyone “overlake” was struck down for a sin and have been annihilated. But are they the only ones living under the lake? You can see why this one absolutely defies classification. It’s a genre all on its own.

A dam was built and a town or two flooded. A staunch group of people believed the land and god would save them, another relied on a factory to keep them alive hoping salvation came at the hands of the richest family in town. Instead nearly 200 people drowned. Or did they? Otta returns home after a devastating loss only to help a woman named May find her daughter. She claims her daughter is under the lake. Alive. Otta decides to believe her and vows to help find Daphne. What happens from there is nothing like what you’re expecting.

Underlake hits shelves April 21. If you want an unexpected and heartfelt narrative, with just a slice of fantastical, then this one is for you!

Huge thank you to Doubleday and author Erin L. McCoy for sending this ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

[Syd Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been blown away by this book. The worlds colliding here are nothing short of INSANE. I found myself researching between chapters just because of the sheer amount of underwater diving knowledge and then laid awake at night thinking how I could live underwater. Because this was so out of my realm of normal thinking, it took some time for me to really understand what was going on in some parts, but the author did an incredible job weaving it all together. Aside from the physics/engineering/science components, these characters had me rooting for them in ways I couldn’t believe. A great read for anyone who’s looking to expand their way of thinking, feeling and navigating grief or wanting to explore the beauty of forgiveness and HOPE.

[Georgia Meagher · Rating 5 out of 5]

52 book challenge for a book that cost me nothing cuz it’s an ARC: thanks to the publisher for allowing me to read this early :)

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three decades ago a town was flooded to create a lake when a dam was installed, drowning about 200 people who refused to leave their homes. Unfortunately, the lake is unusable in any capacity due to high lead levels in the water, caused by the paint factory that closed instead of unleading their paint. What people don't know is that the people in the flooded town didn't drown, they reinforced their homes and installed pipes for air and moon pools for entering and exiting their homes. For three decades people have been living, or rather surviving, under the water.

Otta is a failed marine biologist turned deep sea welder who returned home after the death of her one and only friend, and she carries the blame of his death. May, a stranger to Otta, comes to her door and begs for help finding her daughter. She claims daughter is lost in the lake... And alive. 

Otta and May dive to find May's daughter in the lake and encounter groups of people who have lived in isolation. What this isolation has done to them and how they react to the outsiders searching where they don't belong. For some, they dream of escaping back to the surface, but are unable to due to the depth and pressure they've been living under for so long. For others, the isolation has only intensified their worst qualities and mania. 

How far will Otta and May go to find May's daughter? They'll push their bodies to the extreme while dealing with their own fears, traumas, and lack of control in their lives. 

Atmospheric, haunting, and damp, this novel keeps you turning the pages to find out what happens next. I flew through this, finishing in just one morning. I needed to know how the story would unfold and had a hard time putting this book down. I would recommend to anyone who likes writing that deals with religious extremism and trauma, the ways parents can let you down, and the effects of isolation on humanity. 

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Haunted Lake, a Bad System, and One Very Overworked Dehumidifier
In “Underlake,” Erin L. McCoy builds a drowned world so vivid it nearly overfurnishes itself – and still makes the descent worth taking.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 21st, 2026


A Lie That Still Delivers Air – A calm lake glows over faint pipes, rooflines, and borrowed light, distilling “Underlake” into the image of a buried world that has not died so much as learned to keep breathing.

A lake is supposed to finish the argument. It covers the road, the church, the factory, the houses – evidence and blame. Water can make disappearance look like weather. In Erin L. McCoy’s “Underlake,” the water does not end the argument. It pressurizes it.

Before anyone dives, the book has already made pressure moral. “Underlake” has a premise with a trapdoor under it: beneath a poisoned lake in rural Kentucky, a town long presumed drowned has survived for decades in sealed buildings, tubes, chimneys, air pockets, and myth. A hook-spending novel would have turned that discovery into spectacle. McCoy chooses the slower danger. She treats the drowned town as infrastructure. It is uncanny because it is maintained. Someone scrubs the algae, guards the water, changes the bulbs, teaches the children the authorized story, opens the hatch, tells the lie again. The thing McCoy gets most right is that her metaphor has plumbing.

Above water, Otta Coates has come home to the place she once mistook distance for escaping. She wanted to become a marine biologist. Instead she became a commercial diver, then returned to Steels after a deep-sea accident that leaves no usable comfort behind. Ethan, her closest companion, is dead. Otta’s mother, Eugenia, is ill, hoarding, cognitively unstable, and still ringed by the old town-stain that has followed her for years: the belief that she helped finance the deluded People’s Council that refused to leave Paintsville before the valley was flooded for a dam. Otta arrives with the story she has used to make Eugenia bearable. This, in fiction as in basements, is usually when the mold begins talking.

Then May appears at Otta’s door. She is awkward, watchful, oddly dressed, and almost unbearably sincere. Her daughter Daphne, she says, has gone missing. She believes Daphne is under the lake, alive. Otta initially hears this as malice, madness, or some local hybrid of the two, another small-town ghost story gnawing at Eugenia’s disgrace. But May is not inventing the Underlake. She is from it.


May at the Door – May’s arrival at Otta’s threshold turns local rumor into living testimony, the ordinary doorway becoming the first opening between surface grief and the impossible world below.

The search is simple enough to act as ballast: Otta, who can barely bear to dive after Ethan’s death, must help May look for Daphne beneath a lake no one should swim in or trust. Under that search waits the question a rescue plot would rather not answer: what kind of church, factory, mother, and town would make a child think she must go under to find good water? Daphne is not only the missing girl. She is the test case, the child whose disappearance proves that every kept secret in the Underlake has become part of the air supply.

Below, survival has splintered into rooms, rules, and borrowed air, each one mistaking endurance for order. The Chimneys, May’s home, is governed by Reverend Jewell’s theology, family “fates,” purity doctrine, and the claim that stories belong to those with authority to name history and sin. Henry Weber’s factory chills the premise into machinery: labor, inheritance, water, and obedience locked together. Water clean enough to become power turns into currency, proof, ransom. A daughter’s body becomes collateral. The past becomes something not remembered but serviced.

McCoy writes with a diver’s suspicion of air: every breath matters, and every sealed room has a cost. Her paragraphs gather silt, rust, mold, and grief, then tighten around a blunt fact. Otta’s language often reaches for gauge-lit precision: depth, heliox, decompression, umbilicals, search procedures, the hard math of bodies in hostile environments. She wants fact to discipline terror.

May’s language is the book’s bolder feat. Her narration carries the marks of a world with guards posted at the vocabulary: doctrine, invented terms, religious cadence, deprivation, wonder, and a grammar shaped by having been “storied” before she was ever allowed to tell. McCoy does not use May’s voice as costume. She uses it as evidence of rules lodged in grammar and of a woman learning to speak without permission. May’s syntax is a room she was born in and a tool she is slowly sharpening from the inside.


Rooms With Borrowed Air – A sealed Underlake room holds the tenderness and terror of survival, where doctrine, domestic life, and borrowed air have taught people to mistake endurance for order.

That doubleness matters. Otta and May are both survivors of rooms built by rules they did not choose, though only one of them has instruments to name danger as danger. Otta has lived inside grief, debt, class shame, academic failure, professional risk, and the long bruise of her mother’s silence. May has lived inside an underwater theology that made ignorance holy and hierarchy breathable. They need each other not because the novel mints instant sisterhood, but because no one in “Underlake” leaves a false world alone. Freedom here is not a door. It is a sequence of sealed compartments, and someone has to wait while you breathe.

The form follows that need downward. “Underlake” is organized in three parts, with titled sections that move among Otta, May, later Daphne, and depth-marked passages that act as gauges, plaques, and field notes from rooms that should not still exist. The bracketed Otta sections around Ethan’s death and the diving world give the search bodily knowledge: the terror of procedure continuing after hope is gone. The depth-marker sections cut the lake open, showing not a hidden town but several little regimes: who works, who drinks, who marries, who is believed.

The book descends by stages, not by drop. A ghost story becomes real. A real place becomes allotments, rites, and locked doors. A rescue becomes a reckoning. A mother’s crime becomes something more complicated than family legend allowed. The structure does not merely contain the ordeal; it conducts it. Descent is movement through water, but also through the stories each woman has used because no better story was available: Otta’s blame, May’s faith, Daphne’s secrecy, Otta’s belief that leaving Steels meant being free of it.

The opening image of Paintsville Dam and the drowned valley does not remain scenery. It becomes the beam under the floorboards: dam, placard, lake, poisoned fish, sold-off acres, unrecovered bodies, family shame. The book asks what happens when the past is not buried but inhabited by the living. More exactly, it asks what happens when the living have mistaken that occupancy for home.

This is where “Underlake” makes its impossible premise pay rent. It has some of the saltwater grief of Julia Armfield’s “Our Wives Under the Sea,” some of the expeditionary dread of Jeff VanderMeer’s “Annihilation,” and some of the underwater memory-pressure of Rivers Solomon’s “The Deep.” Yet McCoy’s gift is more logistical than those comparisons suggest. She is interested in the impossible, yes, but also in the maintenance ledger of the impossible. This underwater settlement is less wonderland than workplace, which is exactly why it unnerves. It is a bad order that has learned how much to feed people.

The reader’s world knocks from inside the walls. “Underlake” speaks to clean water, displacement, dams, contamination, property, closed doctrine, and the politics of who gets to tell the official story of a place. Its relevance is not announced. It is built into the rooms: a key, a pipe, a faucet, a map no one is allowed to unfold. Power often resides in access: who holds the valve, who guards the room, who names the dead, who decides which water is safe and which body is expendable. If the novel offers a prophecy, it is a practical one: look for the valve. The future will not be decided by ideals alone. It will be fought over gates.


The Valve Room – Pipes, locked water, and cold industrial light render the book’s sharpest moral question in physical terms: who controls access, and who is made to live downstream of that control?

That thoroughness, inevitably, has a cost. McCoy’s imagination keeps producing underwater rooms, small tyrannies, rituals, and improvised republics, and while many are vivid, not all are equally necessary. Some are chambers; a few arrive glass-fronted. The middle can feel overfurnished: another warped household, another emblem of preservation or control or poisoned inheritance. At its best, the novel discovers these spaces. At its weaker moments, a room arrives with its thesis already unpacked, little lamp glowing on the mantle. Henry Weber’s factory is the most revealing example. It gives the book a frightening concentration of water, property, labor, and family money, but Weber sometimes feels like several American failures buttoned into one villain’s coat. The coat fits. It is still a lot of coat.

The sentences pay the same price. McCoy is so good at intensity that the book occasionally forgets the use of lower pressure. Nearly every object arrives charged, damp, symbolic, alive with implication. The result is often remarkable, but the reader may sometimes long for one plain chair permitted to be merely a chair, not a small tribunal of inheritance and rot. Occasionally, the atmosphere could use a dehumidifier. The dehumidifier would, naturally, know a secret.

Still, the excess comes from appetite, not drift. “Underlake” overreaches because it asks one premise to carry a grief novel, search narrative, cult history, ecological parable, family reckoning, labor critique, and mother-daughter myth. That should not work as well as it does. The reason it does is May. Her love for Daphne is desperate, flawed, secretive, and brave. She saves her daughter by breaking rules and hiding good water from her, but that secrecy gives Daphne a terrible inheritance of knowledge. The book is most bruising where it lets love save and harm in the same gesture. Love may save a child. Love may also keep the child inside the room where the parent first learned to survive.

Daphne’s late testimony sharpens the point. Her disappearance is not a mere lost-child device. She leaves because she knows clean water exists and understands, with a child’s dreadful directness, that her own survival has been purchased by secrecy while other children have died. When she is found, the novel does not turn rescue into applause. Daphne has seen enough to know that getting out is not enough if everyone else is still below. She wants to return truth to the Chimneys.


Daphne’s Good Water – A child stands before clean water as if before knowledge itself, carrying the book’s most painful truth: survival can become another inheritance of secrecy.

That desire could have curdled into nobility in a weaker book, but here it is thornier. Daphne is not choosing martyrdom so much as refusing the comfort of abandoning everyone else to the lie. She understands what adults in the novel learn late: the truth is not finished when it frees you. Sometimes that is when it starts making demands.

Otta’s arc is quieter but just as necessary. Her grief over Ethan is not a decorative bruise. It is procedural before it is sentimental: the failed search, the deep water, the possibility that hope becomes performance after ten minutes, the terror of knowing too much about how a body dies underwater. These details make her reluctance to dive again feel earned. Her return to the water with May is not therapeutic in any tidy sense. It is a reentry into risk, guilt, competence, and action. By the end, she cannot save Ethan retroactively. The novel is merciful enough not to offer that insult. But she can learn the difference between the dead she cannot recover and the living who still need her strength.

Eugenia, too, is made less tidy without being excused. The town’s story about her, and Otta’s story about her, have been incomplete. Learning that Eugenia’s supposed crime involved an attempt to help people escape rather than a simple act of delusion or theft does not transform her into a sainted misunderstood mother. It does something better. It shows how partial stories become rooms people are forced to live in. Eugenia remains difficult, withholding, damaged, and damaging. She also becomes someone who tried, failed, hardened, hoarded, and carried a story no one had the patience or language to receive. That late adjustment gives the family plot its ache. It does not absolve. It restores proportion.

The ending satisfies because it refuses to be clean. Daphne survives. May reaches the Overlake. Otta begins clearing the house and swimming again. Clark tries to send water below. Snow and rain refill the tank for now. Yet the Underlake remains. Joan, Arthur, the Chimneys, the factory, and the people still living inside bad stories do not vanish because the protagonists have surfaced. This is rescue with work still attached. A lesser ending would have confused escape with resolution. McCoy gives us rescue, then hands back obligation. Rude, honestly. Also correct.


Surfacing With Work Still Attached – The surface offers no clean release, only a colder kind of hope: the recognition that rescue is incomplete while the world below still needs the water moved differently.

My final rating is 87/100, which corresponds to 4/5 stars on Goodreads. The score fits the book’s scale, and its strain: a high-four-star debut with water in its lungs and architecture in its bones, daring enough to make a search plot wait while a civilization explains how it learned to breathe. It drags in places, and its symbolic rooms can be too eager to introduce themselves. But the book is far too original, voiced, and built so its sections descend, stall, flood, and surface to be treated as merely promising.

The hook lingers: a town alive beneath a poisoned lake. The mechanism lingers longer. “Underlake” understands that a false world can be tender, intricate, functional, and fatal all at once. People do not stay only because they are deceived. They stay because someone they love is there, because the air still comes through the pipe, because the old story explains the pain.

In “Underlake,” the past is not a corpse under glass. It is a working system. A lie that still delivers air. The terrifying thing is that it still functions. The hope is that, once someone sees how the water moves, it may become possible, at last, to change where it goes.


Compositional Thumbnail Sheet – Early thumbnail studies test the balance between lake, orb, pipe, and negative space, showing how the final image began by choosing restraint over spectacle.


Color Swatch Sheet – Cover-derived washes of deep teal, smoky cyan, pale aqua, foggy mint, and near-black green establish the cold emotional weather of the finished watercolor.


Faint Pencil Underdrawing – The pale pencil structure places the orb, waterline, pipe, chimney, and border before the washes blur them into memory and submerged atmosphere.


Pencil-Plus-First-Wash Stage – The first thin washes begin turning structure into mood, letting the lake, hidden architecture, and air-pocket glow emerge through pigment rather than detail.


Light / Orb / Reflection Study – Studies of the central glow explore whether the orb reads as moon, bubble, lamp, breath, or memory, preserving the ambiguity that gives the final image its quiet unease.


Watercolor Border Study – Border tests translate pipes, hatch seams, depth marks, and waterlines into a hand-painted frame that suggests containment without becoming decorative.


Character Scale / Rejected Figure Study – Small figure studies show what the finished emblematic image deliberately withholds, allowing absence, architecture, and water to carry the human story.


Pipe and Submerged Architecture Detail Study – Architectural fragments, softened pipes, and ghosted rooflines show how the final image balances literal anchors with enough blur to preserve the mystery below.

All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.

[Paula Rae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Underlake is like no other book I have ever read. I went into it knowing nothing, the first sentences pulling me in. Before long, I was captured by the stories of Otta and May, told in Erin McCoy’s beautiful and often poetic prose. The world she creates is totally unexpected and yet within the bounds of reality. The relationships between the women will touch you and leave you wanting more novels from this author!

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Underlake is an atmospheric, tender, and imaginative debut with shades of the world building in Piranesi and Rivers Solomon’s The Deep, and the mix of grief with the natural world in Charlotte McConaghy’s novels. It took me some time to adjust to the rhythm and the structure; there’s a watery consciousness to the first half of the novel that blends the present with memory, making the first half as much backstory as it is plot, and thus, may be better for readers with patience. But, towards the midpoint, this blend of past and present cumulates into an emotionally powerful sequence about mothering in ecological crisis, and in the second half of the novel, the plot becomes quite propulsive and difficult to put down. The world building is throughout is impressively rendered and the thematic considerations of this novel quite poignant in today’s age of resource scarcity, ideological control, and fear of the other. A great novel for well established readers looking for something fresh, and I look forward to McCoy’s next work.

[Sara B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! There’s SO MUCH in this book. Cults & mourning & scuba & friendships & the weight of history on a small town & adventure near the end that got me bouncing in my chair I was so worried for the women I had grown to love.

The language is beautiful. Rich and terse at the same time.

I’m still mulling it over like a David Lynch film. It’s really interesting. I wish I had read it for the first time with a group of friends.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an interesting read. I was intrigued from the start and it kept me hooked the whole time. It reminded me of “The Other Valley” by Scott Alexander Howard - not in plot, but in style, vibe, and overall feeling of the book. So if you liked that one I would recommend this book too!

I thought it was super interesting that the residents of the Underlake’s English and grammar was different. It definitely made it feel like a different world and lent itself well to the idea that living in these secluded communities drastically altered the people themselves.

I really enjoyed May’s character. Her tenacity, curiosity and love for her daughter was really palpable. I was drawn to her character immediately! I think the author did a wonderful job with all the characters in general too.

The prose and style of the writing was beautifully done.

Overall this book was a really great read. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction! Or if you’re a fan of Emily St. John Mandel I think you’d really like this one too!

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and statements are my own.

[Lily Weiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

you don’t read this type of book every day. beautifully written with an incredibly unique concept. Halfway through I had to remind myself that people actually can’t live underwater because that’s how bought in I was to the plot.

[Laura Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Underlake by Erin L. McCoy is a solid 3.25 star read for me, mostly because of the atmosphere. The underwater descriptions feels surreal, muted, and slightly off in a way that adds to the unease. The descriptions are where this book really stands out. There’s a quiet, almost eerie quality to the way the world is written that pulls you in.

I just wish the world-building had gone deeper. The idea of an entire town existing underwater is so interesting, but the logistics felt a little brushed over. I kept wanting more detail about how the houses were actually waterproofed & as much detail to the undertake as was put science of the diving. It’s such a strong concept that I wanted it to feel more fully realized.

Overall, I enjoyed the mood and the uniqueness of the setting, but I was left wanting a little more substance behind it. Thanks NetGalley and Doubleday for allowing me to read this ARC.

[Christine Sturman · Rating 2 out of 5]

In Erin L. McCoy’s book, “Underlake”, Otta Coates returns home after losing a close friend in a deep diving accident. While Otta’s home she is approached about teaching a woman, May, how to dive. May’s daughter has gone missing and May thinks she is being detained in the town that was flooded when the nearby dam was built. There’s an urban legend that thinks some of that town fortified itself and survived. Most of the people from area towns don’t believe that could have happened. But what if it’s true? What if that’s where May’s daughter is?

Ms. McCoy’s premise about a town fortifying itself against being flooded by a dam is interesting. I wonder if there is science to support this theory. It’s interesting how the way the different groups of people interact. Leaders with egos butt heads. People who don’t follow social norms for their groups are shunned and stigmatized. All the things that one sees in social norms of our world. What was disconcerting and distracting to me was the way the points of view and timelines changed without much warning. This made it difficult for me to follow the storyline so I could finish this book. Readers who like SciFi would enjoy reading this book.


I wish to thank Doubleday Books for the complimentary eARC of this book and for selecting me to review it on NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

#Underlake
#DoubledayBooks
#NetGalley
#ScFi&Fantasy
#WomansFiction

[The Page Ladies Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

What if the past didn’t drown it just waited beneath the surface?🌊

From the very first pages, I felt completely submerged in Otta’s world. She’s raw, messy, and carrying the kind of guilt that clings to you like waterlogged clothes. Coming back to her small town after failing her dream hit hard, but it’s the eerie pull of the underlake that really hooked me. A drowned town people still living beneath the surface yeah, I was instantly all in.

The atmosphere? Absolutely chilling in the best way. The deeper Otta and May go, the more unsettling everything becomes. It’s not just about finding a missing girl, it's about confronting buried truths, control, and the dangerous comfort of refusing to move on. I loved how the story blurred the line between reality and delusion. It kept me questioning everything.

And the relationship between Otta and May? Complicated, intense, and quietly emotional. Their bond added this human anchor to an otherwise surreal and claustrophobic journey.

This isn’t a fast-paced thriller, it's more of a creeping, psychological unraveling. But if you love eerie settings, emotional depth, and stories that linger long after you finish this one absolutely delivers.

Final thoughts: haunting, atmospheric, and deeply introspective Underlake pulled me under and didn’t let go.

✨️Thank you Doubleday Books and Erin L. McCoy for sharing Underlake with me!

[Janine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An underwater dystopian world is created when the Paintsville Dam was completed in 1979. But those in Overlake or Steels as it is known to those who live there, when the dam came and people stayed in their homes, 240 people were lost.

This is a compelling start to a very original story. Otta, a marine biologist and resident of Steeles, has returned to care for her mother and grieve the lost of her diving partner, Ethan. One day when Otta is at the home of the local handyman/ teacher, May appears wanting to learn how to dive so she rescue her daughter, Daphne, a who lives in the Underlake.

There’s a lot going on in this novel and because it’s not a linear novel, it’s confusing at times. There are competing story lines well: that of Otta’s, May’s, Daphne’s and Underlake itself. It takes concentration to read iand separate these out. I think the message is about relationships.

I think the writing is magical - the author is a poet and this is reflected in the writing. The underwater descriptions of the fish help create an aquatic sense. This is more of a character driven novel. It’s definitely a book for people who enjoy magical mystery fiction.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Doubleday for allowing me to read this ARC.

[Emma Quirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immediately the blurb for Underlake and the beautiful cover drew me in. I love science fiction and was intrigued by the idea of a brand new society existing underwater and what that would look like. Underlake lived up to my expectations and McCoy was able to capture such a perfect atmospheric vibe through her storytelling and she has a very talented way with words that make you really feel like you're experiencing everything firsthand.

The highlight of the book to me was the well thought out world-building and all the questions this underwater society raises. McCoy clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this novel and it shows. The only knock for me was that at times the story dragged a bit, there was a lot of focusing on some technical details at parts when I wanted to dive a little more into the setting or interpersonal relationships to flesh everything out a bit more.

Thanks NetGalley and Doubleday for the ARC!

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Underlake is one of those stories that, because of how it floats between genres and defies established labels, can be difficult to explain in a manner that does it justice. On one hand, its about a mother from a forgotten underwater community searching for her daughter, amidst themes of belonging and religious extremism. But on the other hand, the story is also about a professional diver deep in her grief and loneliness after the traumatic death of a close friend, and her inability to reconnect with the world.

Both May and Otta are fantastic protagonists, so different, but the perfect reflection of each other and goals. It's clear McCoy did her homework, considering the incredible amount of diving knowledge used here, as well as all the detailed descriptions of aquatic engineering—AND somehow manages to write it in a way that feels like poetry. Impressive.

Thank you to NetGalley, Doubleday Books, and the author for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

[domsbookden]

DNF 58%

I got about halfway through this and started skimming until I was three quarters in, then I realized that if I felt it necessary to skim, I probably should just quit while I'm behind.

Underlake is very slow-placed and literary, and while the premise was sounded so cool to me, the execution was focused more on the characters, and I wanted a more plot-focused dive (pun intended) into the underwater town.

I think readers who enjoy Charlotte McConaghy's work, All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall, or more character-driven stories with light dystopian/speculative elements will have a better time with this read.

[Josh Escandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Doubleday and NetGalley for an eARC of Underlake by Erin McCoy. I enjoyed this literary sci-fi novel dealing with loss and guilt in the guise of a mysterious lake. The world that both Otta and May inhabit is wonderfully hypnotic and atmospheric, which kept me reading to see what would be encountered next. However, while the novel has incredible atmosphere, the first two-thirds of the novel do move fairly slowly, but once it picks up, the ending is magical and gives Otta and May a fitting conclusion.

[Madelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an exceptional, unique and emotional read! The intense anticipation throughout kept me so engaged. It explores so many different themes, family, culture, family ties. All of which I felt were interesting and displayed in a very well written way. It was such a unique story, unlike anything I have read before. I only wish I got a little more from the ending, but I was still satisfied with it. Absolutely worth the read!!

Thank you to Doubleday Books | Doubleday for providing me an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for my review.

[Lauren Mathews]

Hey there!
I just finished reading your story, and I’m completely blown away! Your writing is so captivating, and I couldn’t help but picture how amazing it would look as a comic.
I’m a professional commissioned artist, and I’d be super excited to bring your story to life in comic form. no pressure, though! I just think it would be a perfect fit.
If you’re interested, hit me up on Discord (laurendoesitall). Let me know what you think!
Cheers
lauren

[Sophie R]

DNF’ed at 25%. This is a case of “it’s me, not the book”. I’m just not connecting with the story or characters enough to continue right now, but I might pick it up again later. Gorgeous writing and premise, I’m loving the descriptions of the multiple layers of lake societies. Very dreamy writing and atmosphere, which many will enjoy (including me, just not now).

My thanks to the author and publisher for providing me with an eARC via NetGalley!

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautifully written and paints a picture of a stunning underwater world. The story is fascinating and inventive, and I’ve never read anything quite like it. The relationship that develops between Otta and May is genuine and sweet. I couldn’t put this down for the last quarter. Highly recommend!

[Mo Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐️ RU.

[Leelee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truly stellar. Unique and empathetic and gripping. Underwater cults are preeettty up my alley...

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Underlake is surreal, haunting, with unique but fully realized world-building and well-drawn characters. It will leave you pondering long after you’ve finished.

Thanks to Erin L. McCoy and Doubleday for the gifted copy. All opinions expressed are my own.