This was so atmospheric. I could feel the constant oppression from the presence of the water. The anger of Welsh valleys being flooded to provide water for the English is real. Great story. I want to read more from Fflur Dafydd
Thanks to Netgalley.

I loved this intriguing tale of a little Welsh village under threat from flooding and being completely overtaken by water in the future. When a young woman comes home she finds her house flooded and the bodies of her family inside but there is one problem, her father is missing presumed responsible and there is a young woman’s body in her bed and no one knows who she is. As she tries to uncover the truth it opens up a long buried secret that will tear her life apart. A great read.

I enjoyed The Library Suicides and was looking forward to The House of Water. However, I found it a little difficult to get into - possibly because the opening scene confused me. I didn't feel much connection to any of the characters, nor did I really care about them. I'm not sure why this is. There is nothing wrong with the writing but it just didn't gel for me. Maybe it is a little too death oriented for me at the moment.

I'm sorry to have this response as I really did want to like it. I see others have greatly enjoyed it, so maybe it was simply a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me.

Never have I ever clicked on "request" so quickly on Netgalley. Nobody writes like Fflur Dafydd. Nobody gives us such unusual, intense characters and makes us believe in them 100% without being aware that we are needing to suspend disbelief.

The House of Water is about death, and birth and about what it is to belong - to a family, a country, a language and, ultimately each other.

It's out tomorrow. Do yourself a favour and order a copy. As Sarah Ward says in her pull quote, "I doubt I'll read a better book this year."

On the night before she heads to university Iona has spent her time with her boyfriend, on her return home she finds the house flooded, her brother, little sister and mother dead. Most strange there is a girl in her bed, one she has never seen before, and her father is missing. Her father, Eurov is now the prime suspect for killing her family, Iona struggles to take all this in.
She finds friendship and help with Cain, the morgue attendant and leader of the local grief group. Together they try to understand what has happened.
This is well written with some unexpected twists. My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for for s for the arc.

Teenager Iona returns home from an evening with her boyfriend and discovers her home is full of water and her mother, brother and sister are all dead. Even more shocking is that she also discovers the body of a girl in her bed. She is a complete stranger. As the investigation begins it is realised her father is missing and is the number one suspect. The book alternates between the current investigation and the lives of the family in the days leading up to the tragedy. Iona’s father was working on an encyclopedia of Welsh linguistics and history and was quite obsessed with it to the exclusion of his family especially his wife, Lisa. After the tragedy Iona goes to live with her aunt and finds friends can no longer relate to her. She befriends Cain, who works at the morgue and has suffered his own personal tragedy. The story gradually unravels to reveal the truth of that fateful night but with an enormous twist that throws everything into question. A fast paced book that has some interesting Welsh facts but never becomes boring. I previously read The Library Suicides from this talented author and this book enhances my appreciation of her.

The Griffri family suffer the most unimaginable of tragedies- the mother and children found dead in their home and the father Eurov is missing- the presumed perpetrator. The deaths were also caused by the house being submerged in water- hence the title. Their eldest daughter Iona has had a lucky escape as she was out and came home to the horrific scene. But all is not what it appears as there is a body of a young woman in her bed. Who is she and what was she doing in Iona's bed? This book is immersed in Welsh culture, folklore and language and interspersed with an A-Z manuscript that Eurov was working on. A clever dark tale that ebbs and flows with emotions. Keeps the reader guessing to the end.

Lisa (18) can’t get into her home because of pressure against the door, because the house is full of water – and the bodies of her family. The small Welsh village is flooding, but that isn’t the problem here, because this house was located on the hillside specifically to be above the risk of flooding to which the valley is prone. After the water is released the source of the water is found to be the mains pipe which has been smashed deliberately. The bodies are those of her mother, her older brother, her toddler sister and an unidentified young girl, not known to Lisa. Preliminary evidence suggests they were all killed before the flood. Significantly, the one person missing from the scene is her father, a fervent nationalist university lecturer working on the compilation of an Encyclopaedia of Wales. He originally hails from the valley of Tryweryn, deliberately flooded to create a reservoir in 1965. A fanatical and obsessive man with a flood fixation, he has ‘suspect’ written all over him, but has disappeared. A quartet of mysteries then: who killed the family, why was the house flooded, where is the missing man, who is the mystery girl. Lisa teams up with the local morgue attendant, Cain, who was her brother’s friend, and attempts to find her father and thus explain these events.
On the surface, this is a murder mystery and a psychological thriller, but beneath lies a philosophical novel of what it means to be Welsh; the recurrent presence of water in the lives of the characters being, I think, a metaphor for the submersion of Wales and Welshness. The writing is strong and lyrical and the story is clearly Metafiction in the sense of being suffused with extracts from the encyclopaedia, and self-referential. The resolution of the various mysteries is neat, hard to spot, and provides the intellectual challenge that readers of that genre seek, but the enjoyment of the story is much wider than that.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.

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.