Emma's TOP 5 of 2025 | Waist Deep - Linea Maja Ernst

Emma says... Waist deep is a gorgeously sensory and sensual novel about friends and lovers, love and sex, beautifully naiive optimism and the pain of disappointed hope- and the many, often shifting and fluid but sometimes stuck parts of our identities. Unfolding over a week in an idyllic lakeside, forest setting, old friends sunbathe, swim, cook and flirt - but times have changed and anxieties and desires are of more consequence now...  

--

Five friends from university; seven summer days in a cabin in rural Denmark. A chance to swim, sunbathe, flirt, read and mess around like in the old days. At least that’s what Sylvia had hoped.

But when her friends arrive with real jobs, kids and partners, Sylvia is left wondering what happened to the radical ways of living they embraced at university. Worse, Esben and Karen announce their plan to get married at the end of the week, striking a blow to Sylvia’s simmering, decades-long crush on Esben – a crush that her monogamous girlfriend Charlie would definitely not approve of. Whilst the group swim, sunbathe, cook and flirt their way to midsummer night, desire and anxiety swirl in equal measure.

As the wedding day approaches, will they achieve their arcadian dreams or will everything come tumbling down?