---
title: "The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor | Book Review"
description: "The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor is my favourite summer read so far. The debut novel, and winner of Canada Reads, is a beautifully written, compelling story about two teen girls who become..."
url: https://somisguided.com/2026/06/23/the-cure-for-drowning-by-loghan-paylor-book-review/
date: 2026-06-23
modified: 2026-06-29
author: "Monique"
categories: ["Book Reviews"]
tags: ["canadian", "debut", "fiction"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor | Book Review

[![](https://somisguided.com/wp-content/uploads/the-cure-for-drowning-loghan-paylor.jpg)](https://www.amazon.ca/Cure-Drowning-Loghan-Paylor/dp/1039006450)

[The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor](https://www.amazon.ca/Cure-Drowning-Loghan-Paylor/dp/1039006450) is my favourite summer read so far. The debut novel, and winner of Canada Reads, is a beautifully written, compelling story about two teen girls who become friends and lovers during a time when gender rules were rigid and difference was not rewarded. It’s 1939 and the world is on the brink of a war.

Kathleen McNair, known as Kit, has lived on her family’s Ontario farm all her life. She is a tomboy, a daredevil, and the middle child of a struggling Irish immigrant family whose land has never quite given them enough. Kit is also afflicted, or maybe gifted: water spirits, fairies, or family legend speak to her. She hears and sees things that others do not, and her mother carries the old stories like warnings.

Kit loves racing her horse against the trains coming into the village. This is how she is first seen by Rebekah Kromer, who arrives with her German father and Québécois mother. Dr. Kromer is the town’s new doctor, and Rebekah is immediately drawn into Kit’s orbit.

The two become fast friends, then more than friends. Their dalliances by the river are tender, secretive, and charged with positive energy. But as anti-German suspicion grows, the Kromers no longer feel safe in town and return swiftly to Montreal. Too swiftly for Rebekah to speak to Kit. The injury is full on heartbreak for Kit, who runs away from home and eventually joins the air force disguised as Chris, a boy she convinces to go home to his own family while she takes his kit and his place.

What I liked most about this novel is the writing. The story itself is propulsive—family secrets, queer first love, wartime fear, misdirection, longing—but the standout is Paylor’s prose. The rural Ontario setting feels like a familiar place. The magical elements feel rooted in family history rather than added on for magical effect. And Kit and Rebekah are such a compelling characters: stubborn, reckless, brave, lonely, and always pushing against the life other people are trying to assign to them.

This is also a Canadian historical novel that does something more interesting than simply place a romance against the backdrop of war. It looks at belonging: to a family, to a body, to a country, to a story that may or may not have room for you. Kit and Rebekah’s relationship is moving because it is both intimate and impossible. They are young, in love, and pulled apart by societal forces. The question is what they will do to survive, which seems like such as Canadian story.

*The Cure for Drowning* deserves its praise and awards. It is evocative without being fussy, romantic without being sentimental, and historical without feeling dutiful.

If you liked *[The Pull of the Stars](https://somisguided.com/2021/01/05/the-pull-of-the-stars-by-emma-donoghue-book-review/)* by Emma Donoghue or *[The Nightingale](https://somisguided.com/2025/06/25/the-nightingale-by-kristin-hannah-book-review/)* by Kristin Hannah, then you’ll enjoy *The Cure for Drowning*. It has a similar vibe with strong female characters and a backdrop of war but, most important, stellar writing.