11 Haunting Books Like Our Wives Under The Sea By Julia Armfield

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“To know the ocean, I have always felt, is to recognize the teeth it keeps half hidden.”

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If you loved Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, you know how haunting, tender, and unsettling a story can be when it explores love, loss, and the unknown. Miri’s struggle to reconnect with her wife, Leah, after a mysterious deep-sea mission creates a tale that is equal parts queer romance, psychological tension, and literary fiction. For readers searching for books like Our Wives Under the Sea, finding novels that blend emotional depth with surreal or speculative elements can be a challenge – but there are plenty of incredible options. Whether you’re pulled toward LGBTQ+ fiction with dark, atmospheric undertones or novels that examine grief, trauma, and the fragility of relationships, this list has something for you. From haunting love stories to thought-provoking literary fiction, these similar books capture the same emotional resonance and slow-burning tension that made Armfield’s debut so unforgettable. 

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Our Wives Under The Sea Summary

Miri thinks she has got her wife back when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought a part of it back with her, onto dry land, and into their home. 

Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realise that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp. Our Wives Under the Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep, deep sea. 

The Lamb – Lucy Rose

First up on our list of books like Our Wives Under the Sea is Lucy Rose’s gripping queer horror story, The Lamb. Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot isn’t at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies. 

But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own dark desires, and make a break for freedom. With this coming-of-age tale, Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts – and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it. 

The Luminous Dead – Caitlin Starling

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she would be mapping mineral deposits and that her biggest problems would be faulty malfunctions and cave collapses. Instead, she got Em. Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials. And Em has secrets too… 

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies – missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations – drive her out of her depth. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, Gyre needs to overcome more than just dangerous terrain and the Tunneler, which calls the underground its home, if she wants to make it out alive – she must confront the ghosts in her own head. 

I Who Have Never Known Men – Jacqueline Harpman

One of the most defining feminist thrillers of all time, Jacqueline Harpman’s I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, minimalist novel similar to Our Wives Under the Sea. This unsettling piece of literary fiction follows a young woman, known only as “the girl,” who lives underground with thirty-nine other women, all imprisoned by silent male guards. When the opportunity to escape presents itself, the novel shifts into a meditative, post-apocalyptic exploration of freedom, identity, and what it means to be human. 

Harpman’s timeless work captures surreal horror, feminist undertones and mind-bending questions, memory and isolation. It’s a chilling, thought-provoking tale for anyone who loved Julia Armfield’s novel. 

Sunburn – Chloe Michelle Howarth

It’s the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she’s always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn’t appeal to her at all. Not even with the handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy starts to make sense of herself during a long, hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates into an all-consuming infatuation, and then into a desperate, devastating love. 

Fearful of rejection from her small, conservative community, Lucy begins to live a double life, hiding the most honest part of herself in stolen moments with Susannah. But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people, and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. 

Catherine House – Elisabeth Thomas

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Nestled in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, it has produced some of the world’s best minds. For those lucky enough to be selected, tuition, room, and board are all free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years – summers included – completely removed from the outside world. 

For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had, and her serious, timid roommate, Baby, soon becomes an unlikely friend. Yet the House’s strange protocols make this refusal increasingly feel like a gilded prison. And when Baby’s obsessive desire for acceptance ends in tragedy, Ines begins to suspect that the school might be hiding a dangerous agenda that is tied to a secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most mysterious curriculum. 

Hungerstone – Kat Dunne

Another one of the most gripping queer horror books like Our Wives Under the Sea, comes from Kat Dunne with her new 2025 horror novel, Hungerstone. Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry. Henry’s ambitions take them out of London to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside. The preparations take a strange turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore’s life. 

Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night. Carmilla, who stirs up a deep hunger within Lenore. Soon, girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger. Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and Carmilla’s ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and, in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household which will place her at terrible risk… 

Monstrillo – Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses, curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care, threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life. 

Similar to Our Wives Under the Sea, Monstrilio is a thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, it’s an LGBT horror tale that offers an unflinching portrait of being human.

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Check Out These Queer Horror Books That Will Haunt You

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Mothering – Ainslie Hogarth

When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying to become parents themselves. But Laura isn’t interested in bonding with her daughter-in-law. She’s venomous and cruel, particularly to Abby, and life with her soon proves to be hellish. 

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost haunts Abby and Ralph in different ways. Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is terrorised by a force intent on destroying everything she loves. With everything on the line, Abby comes up with a chilling plan to rescue Ralph from his tortured mind and break Laura’s hold on the family for good. 

Victorian Psycho – Virginia Feito

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines and the more she learns of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan. 

Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrific compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning. 

The Unworthy – Agustina Bazterrica

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find – discarded ink, dirt, even her own blood. A lower member of the Scarlet Sisterhood, deemed unworthy, she dreams of ascending the ranks of the Enlightened at the core of the covenant and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe. 

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past – and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. In this searing feminist horror and dystopian tale, Agustina Bazterrica explores the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, perfect if you loved Our Wives Under the Sea. 

Big Swiss – Jen Beagin

Another one of the best contemporary Queer books like Our Wives Under the Sea, comes from Jen Beagin with her global bestseller, Big Swiss. Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she takes to calling Big Swiss. 

One day, Greta recognises Big Swiss’ voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware that Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain their relationship…

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Check Out The Best Books Like Big Swiss 

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