Review: THE HOUSE IN THE WATER, Victoria Darke (aka Victoria Scott)

• 
  this edition, large print, supplied by my local library
  
• published by Boldwood Books 2024
• ISBN 978-1-83561-692-5
• 498 pages 

Synopsis (publisher)

A secluded house. A lost notebook. A wartime secret.

1942: Young Irish nurse Ellen arrives at May Day House, tasked with helping the men there rehabilitate. But there’s something strange about the house, surrounded by water, on its own island in the Thames. And then there are the men: traumatised by their experiences of war, and subject to troubling methods in a desperate race to get them back to duty. As Ellen gets drawn into the world of May Day House, she starts to realise this will be no place to hide away from her own troubles…

2013: Philip and Meredith are the proud new owners of May Day House. Following a string of tragedies, the couple have moved to the area in search of a new start. But all is not what it seems in the riverside community. As their plans for the rundown house meet resistance from the neighbours, Meredith finds herself slowly unravelling: she hears voices on the water, sees figures where there can be no one there. When she finds an old notebook from the war, she seeks solace in the stories about the former patients of the island.

But will shadows from the past threaten her future happiness – and even her life?

My Take

The publisher refers to this story as a "Gothic timeslip novel", the first time I have seen that term used. It is set in two time frames, 70 years apart, around a house on a small island on the Thames, used as a hospital during World War II for soldiers suffering from the trauma they experienced in the war.

The new owners of May Day House are hoping to renovate it and bring new life to it but local residents are very much opposed to their plans. There are overtones of memories of the past reaching out into the present. This aspect of the story is very well done.

Meredith is certain that there are things that her husband Phillip is not telling her, and his absences as an airline pilot put additional stress on her already fragile mind.

Recommended.  

My rating: 4.5

About the Author

Victoria Scott has been a journalist for many media outlets including the BBC and The Telegraph. She is the author of three novels published by Head of Zeus. Her first book for Boldwood is a Gothic timeslip novel, The House in the Water.