wow. you felt alot like you were swimming,bobbing and under water at different points throughout this book. it was so smoothly and smartly written. the content just filtered through and slipped in the cracks like the water in the house it submerged.
i was instantly feeling shook. because imagine being a teen doing teen things, coming home all sneaky like and finding your whole family dead. WHAAAAAAT!!! what the hell would you do, anyone do. this is one determined young woman though and she decides she has to find out how her family died and who did it. and then theres the other thing. the other thing being in her bed was a person that obviously wasnt her...dead.
this book is horrifying and brilliant in equal measure. we follow different characters bringing us to the past before the deaths and right into the present. its just such a good plot, such good writing, and explained all so well. its whip smart this one and i really enjoyed it.

What a stunning book. The prose flows just like the water it depicts. A strange and eerie but totally compulsive literary book. We loved it.

Initially I found it difficult to understand the house being full of water, but as the truth unfolds and the characters become more 3 dimensional the bizarreness of the situation Iona finds herslef in fades into the background compared to the compelling writing that will have you reading late into the night to reach the conclusion!

Loved this book so much.

Whilst this is a mystery/thriller type novel, the lyrical prose is beautiful and would recommend this to all

I'm utterly and completely haunted by this book. I have been since the moment I started reading it, and even more so every moment I wasn't reading it. Now I've finished it, I'm bereft. It's a book drenched in water. Every character is linked to water, Wales and death; and I cannot begin to put into words how beautifully intelligent it is and something I think that will stay with me for some time.

The narrative switches between several characters all linked by trauma and tradegy. It;s part whodunnit, very much whydunnit and a whole lot of wtf.

It begins with a family, all murdered bar one teenage daughter out doing teen things with her boyfriend, thus avoiding certain death. The town they live in is doomed to flood and be decommissioned - and a storm accompanies the murders - a theme of water prevailing at all times.

The police think they have found a wholly dead family, but one of the victims is neither known, nor can be named. The daughter teams up with the local morgue worker (also a friend of the murdered brother) and the truth trickles out, increasing in speed until we are swept along in a torrent of a tale that leaves you gasping for air.

A literary masterpiece that isn't my usual genre, but stunning all the more for that. Top marks.

I was disappointed.

When I read Fflur Dafydd'searlier book ,The Library Suicides, I was impressed and wrote a review, giving it five stars. Consequently, I was looking forward very much to reading this book, but sadly, it does hit the heights for me that the other one did.

The underlying story is very good. A family has become disfunctional in a town that is being threatened with being forcibly abandoned and left to the devices of the nearby river that has become prone to flooding. There are also mental issues arising with the parents.

However, it is the way the story is presented that, for me, let the book down. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, the eldest daughter, the son, and his friend Cain. It sometimes got confusing for me which one was being featured. Further, when there was a quote from "The Encyclopedia Of Cymru," it is not clear that the comments that follow the initial definition are from the father's perspective and are not always related to the definition. The whole thing is further complicated by having two timelines.

What I did enjoy was the content of the father's work on the encyclopedia, where he has the official version he was writing for his university and his unofficial one. Fflur Dafydd gives readers several examples of Welsh words, the history of both the country and the language, and that is a book I would like to read.
The way the underlying story develops is very interesting and overcomes to an extent my negative comme is.

This is the story of Iona Griffri who comes home to find her family dead and the house full of water. It is a captivating story with many twists and turns as we follow Iona in the days that follow the discovery. I was totally taken by the characters and as one with them, almost as if I knew the people and they were friends. Although the story went back and forth between the present and the days leading up to the deaths the story still flowed well. I loved this book which had a gentle feel to it. I did not expect the ending that we got. But it felt right somehow. Totally.recommend this book which was so easy to read.