My favorite spooky read this year. The story has 2 protagonists separated by 100 years but both intimately involved with a house built on an island in the Scottish Outer Hebrides. A unidentified body, a series of unsettling paintings, and the destructive power dynamics of colonial empire are all woven into a story that deeply moved me. Provocative and poignant, my mind has returned to this tale many times since finishing it. Truly “haunting.”

[b:The House Between Tides|25814507|The House Between Tides|Sarah Maine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469968851s/25814507.jpg|45671195] is a dual timeline novel. Hetty’s story is set in 2010 and Beatrice’s in 1910. The novel was mostly focussed on Beatrice’s time - I would have liked to read a bit more of Hetty’s timelime.

Both women had tragedies in their lives. Hetty’s are mentioned in the book but not elaborated on, but her history causes her to rely on the male characters in her timeline to make her decisions for her. Most of the problems Beatrice faced are detailed in the book, but they make her stronger and cause her to fight for the things she believes in.

I felt that even at the end of the book,

Spoiler

Hetty had just swapped Giles making her decisions for her to letting James do it instead

.

Despite my ambivalence to Hetty, [b:The House Between Tides|25814507|The House Between Tides|Sarah Maine|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469968851s/25814507.jpg|45671195] was a really enjoyable read.

See my review here:

https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2022/03/30/review-1827-the-house-between-tides/

British author, Sarah Maine, delivers an atmospheric mysterious and suspenseful debut, THE HOUSE BETWEEN TIDES —a compelling mix of historic, Gothic and contemporary. A mystery of two women a century apart.

From 1889 (Theo), 1910 (Beatrice) - 1945 to present, 2010, (Hetty) a woman returns to an inherited home and discovers a hidden secret.

A crumbling mansion, an estate in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. With the intentions of renovating and selling it as a hotel. Hetty begins her journey.

However, the old house, has secrets, history, and a sordid past. Harriet Deveraux (Hetty) sets out to unravel the secrets and mystery surrounding it’s former owners, Beatrice Blake and her husband Theo, a famous painter (also with a hidden life).

The Muirlan House. It was huge. Much larger than Hetty had been expecting. A sign, danger, unsafe, deep out. Private property. She could not wait to see the inside. The place was now hers. An abandoned house. She knew nothing of restoring houses or running a hotel.

The island as her grandmother had described, on the edge of the world. She had been warned. The lawyer acting has her grandmother’s executor had told her the place had been empty for many years and would need work. A nightmare! Some called it a “death trap.”

Local assessor James Cameron finds a skeleton beneath the floorboards. There were bones. A corpse. An oval locket on a gold chain. A woman.

In 1910, Beatrice Blake, a young bride, and her husband, a painter, Theo Blake, travel from Edinburgh to Theo’s estate on Muirlan island, the remote Muirlan House. He had a deep bond with the place and inspiration for many of his early paintings. Their marriage does not last. Betrayal.

Theo had brought her here to his dream world, eager to share it but his passion had turned aside. Inward, excluding her, darkening to something she could not understand and she had become lost.

Alternating between timelines, between 1920 and 2010, with copyeditor, Hetty Deveraux, arriving from London to the Muirlan House.

Grief. Her parent’s death. An accident, but sudden and violent, and now three years later. Loss. A failed takeoff, a crash just beyond the runway. Then her grandmother’s death two months previously from dementia. She felt like she had been sleepwalking ever since.

Hetty had never had the sense of belonging. Her father’s job with the foreign office had meant that home was not a place, but a transient. Her childhood had been spent flying back and forth from boarding school.

An old crime with dark shadows lurking over Hetty’s new start.

Theo Blake was something of a recluse, with his last twenty years alone in the house, letting it fall apart around him. It was always said the Blakes left the island together, although she never returned.

Since inheriting the house, Hetty had been trying to learn more about the mysterious Theodore Blake. While his artistic achievements were well-documented, there was little written about his personal life and his later reclusive years were unrecorded except for the fact that he had drowned as an old man while crossing Muirlan Strand.

Maine takes us back to the history of young Beatrice, her family and meeting Theo Blake, the strikingly handsome man. Thereafter a mystery. What drove the couple apart? A connection.

Mystical, moody and dark. Mysterious and intriguing. Richly psychological, the author weaves secrets from both past and present with an evocative setting and story, both haunting and romantic.

For fans of Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, Karen White, Sarah Jio, and Kate Morton!

I also purchased the audiobook, narrated by Justine Eyre for a captivating performance. Looking forward to more by the author.

A special thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

JDCMustReadBooks

See my full review at https://topplingbookpile.wordpress.com/2022/06/05/the-house-between-tides-by-sarah-maine/

I was definitely more invested and interested in Beatrice's narrative.
For probably the first time in a long time, I wanted two characters to be together.
I loved the setting, time, and descriptions of everything. Cameron's passion and, Beatrice's character.
Hetty's chapters were OK. She was just kind of there.
It started off slowly. But once you get hooked, you really are.
3.5 stars

I'm a bit torn. I liked this quite a lot, even though it's a quite sad because of the tragic love study at the heart of it. Only 3 and not 4 stars, because to me the story meandered too much for me in some parts and the solution in the end was in contrast almost too quick.

3.5 Stars
Historical and present day fiction. Mystery. Scotland. Great combination of elements and an enjoyable read.

I enjoyed this up to about the first third of the book when I became supremely bored. The plot slowed way down, Hetty our main protagonist had the personality of a wet flannel, and the romances were badly written. There was a scene which i assume was meant to come across passionate but to me it read like a rape.

There was too much sexism and not enough correction of it on the page, which made me uncomfortable. Comments like one man threatened to beat his wife if she carried on with her suffragette work during a happy little picnic and no one batted an eye.

The only saving grace for it was the setting in the Outer Hebrides and the descriptions of the beautiful landscape.

Trigger warnings for sexism, threat of domestic violence, animal cruelty, several animal deaths on the page, loss of a loved one, elitism and miscarriages.

I didn’t love this book as much as Women of the Dunes, but Scotland will get me every time. The story was a little slower and took a while for me to get into it. I was sad that it was Cameron after all.