To begin with, it's no surprise that I enjoyed this book: I'm a big fan of old houses, dual timelines, and complicated secrets. The House Between Tides delivered on all of these fronts.

I really liked the pacing of this novel. It was a slow burn that pulled you in; probably as slow as it could be without making you bored. My only criticism is the balance of chapters between 1910 and 2010 could have been a bit more even, because at times I felt cheated by both parts of the story.

I loved the characters. Beatrice was a highlight - an Edwardian lady, sympathetic to modern thought (anarchism, unionism, suffrage), but caught in a disappointing marriage that stifles her. Theo was the archetypal mad artist, but as an art historian, I really enjoyed the psychoanalytic detail of raw talent vs mental state vs fashion. James Cameron was a brooding delight with secrets of his own. Even Giles: I liked that he was really a bit of an idiot, and not a bad person. They all had nuance.

I can see from other reviews that Hetty is often seen as being passive and blah, but I disagree. I think she was wonderfully realised: a relatively young woman who has gone through a tremendous amount of grief in a short period, and is a bit numb to the world. This allowed her to be taken advantage of by Giles's good, if utterly selfish, intentions. She'd gotten used to the paralysis of grief but I liked how the author took us on her journey of realising who to listen to, what to do, and most of all, what she wanted. She had a nomadic childhood and was wanting for connection, but didn't know how to recognise it when she found it. I loved her journey.

Overall, it is a quietly dramatic book, and I appreciated how, as the reader, we could see how the threads of different lives across time were intertwining. The Hebridean setting is outstanding and I'm surprised I'm not a little salt-stained after losing myself in their world.