Waist Deep cover art

Waist Deep

Discover the Scandinavian sensation and hottest read of 2026

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Waist Deep

By: Linea Maja Ernst, Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg - translator
Narrated by: Montserrat Lombard
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £12.06

Buy Now for £12.06

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

A luscious summer novel about friends, lovers, and friends’ lovers

Five friends from university; seven summer days in a lakeside cabin in Denmark. A chance to swim, sunbathe, flirt, read and recreate the magic of their youth.

At least that’s what Sylvia had hoped. But then her friends arrive with real jobs, kids and partners. Worse, Esben (her decades-long crush) and Karen announce their plan to get married at the end of the week. As desire and anxiety swirl, and the wedding day approaches, will the group achieve their arcadian dreams or will everything come tumbling down?

‘Delicious and provocative’ Esther Freud

‘Five friends, one cabin in the forest and a whole load of tension’ Vogue

‘Sun-soaked…playful and sensual’ Dazed

‘Clever, wry and incredibly sexy’ Susannah Dickey

© Linea Maja Ernst 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025

 Contemporary Denmark Family Life Friendship Genre Fiction Small Town & Rural World Literature Dream

Critic reviews

Waist Deep is an enjoyable page-turner, a sympathetic and perceptive examination of the importance of moving on and letting go ... an evocative debut about the fragility and fluidity of adult friendship
A beautiful and sensuous book that stayed with me long after I read it
Waist Deep trembles and flashes with hot emotion, confusion and pangs of longing. I loved its cast of characters and their reaching towards what their lives might be together, and alone (Amy Key)
Waist Deep is such an enjoyable read: clever, wry, and incredibly sexy. In Linea Maja Ernst's gorgeous prose, translated superbly by Sherilyn Hellberg, the clotty intersections of desire, ideology, and ennui are explored in the most vividly luxuriant surroundings. I was totally besotted with these characters, and desperate for a dip in a lake by the end. (Susannah Dickey)
Sensuous and vivid. Simmering with sexual tension and with an undercurrent of deep longing - for a different life, for each other - there is something here that every adult with a group of friends will recognise (even if they won't admit it). A book to devour and enjoy every minute of (Laura Kay)
Delicious, and provocative (Esther Freud)
I devoured it in a day and absolutely adored ... I loved spending time by the lake with these characters watching them fall in and out of love with each other (Brydie Lee-Kennedy)
Hot, heady and beautifully queer, Waist Deep pulls you under and doesn’t let go. I felt every breath, every touch, every impossible desire. It’s a novel that lives in the body (Lotte Jeffs)
An intense, confrontational and in every sense interesting novel about the fragility and (for some) fluidity of identity
Linea Maja Ernst writing about opulent dinner parties and the heady magnetism of midsummer forests is sensory and atmospheric
All stars
Most relevant
Woke
Could not finish more than 50 per cent unfortunately. Wrong audience for me

If you want woke surface-level, then this is for you

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.