A review by literaryweaponry
The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine

emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Do you ever pick up a book and you aren’t sure exactly what drew you to it, why it called to you, but you find your brain won’t focus on any other story until you read that particular one? That is what happened to me with The House Between Tides and, honestly, I am still unsure why precisely this book called to me so loudly. I’m a self professed reader of mainly fantasy and sci-fi. Sure, I dip my toes into other genres and typically enjoy them but I usually have a reason for reading them. 

This one? Well, this one I just had to. It wouldn’t let me rest until I did.

This book is written in both a contemporary setting in the year 2010 and historically in 1910. Multiple timeline stories don’t always work but in this story it was well executed. It was easy to tell when you were and who you were with from the tone of the chapter even if you hadn’t glanced at the chapter heading that told you what character you were with and what year they were in.

That aside, The House Between Tides absolutely swept me away. From page one I was invested in this story with it’s fascinating location and varied cast of characters. In 2010 we spend our time with Hetty, the unexpected inheritor of Muirlan House. Muirlan is a wreck. The floors are rotted away, the roof leaks and is missing in places, the walls are cracked, and overall it is more a ruin now than an actual house. Then in 1910 we find ourselves in the same house, in pristine condition, with the outwardly reserved yet inwardly passionate Beatrice who has a strained relationship with her new husband but wants nothing more than to find joy in her life. 

Oddly, the house was something I really loved about the story. It had its own story and it felt almost like an active spectator to the drama and household tension. The house saw all and knew all and it had moods from dark and drab to sunny and airy. Muirlan may had been the setting of this story, but she felt real and alive and very much like an unwilling observer of the lives that teemed within her walls across the years. 

The story itself was also very well thought out. No matter which time frame you were in, the stories and the character’s actions wound together seamlessly. You could watch a scene happen in 1910 and feel all of the emotion and tension that came with it and then see how it affected something in 2010 or watch as Hetty discovered an incident, action, or how it somehow affected her in 2010. I felt that the writer’s planning and execution of those transposing scenes were very well done.

This book had tension, feeling, and heart and overall I absolutely loved it. Even being able to take a fairly reasonable guess at the mystery did not detract from my enjoyment. Overall this was a very enjoyable read and I’m grateful to whatever force was at play trying to get me to read this.