The House of Water: a captivating and addictive domestic thriller with an unforgettable twist

by Fflur Dafydd

Iona was just a standard teenager, thoughts occupied only with her latest crush. Until that fateful night.

The night she turned the key to her front door to discover her family had been killed and her father nowhere to be found. Her house, entirely submerged in water, and a strange girl found dead in her bed.

The police declare her father the main suspect. And Iona is forced to confront how much she really knew about the man who raised her. Could he have been capable of such a crime? And who is the mysterious girl left behind?

A gripping thriller that will have you hooked from the opening page.

Genres: Thriller, Mystery

286 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2025

About the author

Fflur Dafydd is a novelist from Carmarthen who publishes in both Welsh and English. Since publishing her first novel, Lliwiau Liw Nos in 2005, she has published six fiction volumes. Two of her Welsh-language novels, Atyniad (Y Lolfa, 2006) and Y Llyfrgell (Y Lolfa, 2009) have been awarded the major fiction awards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales, the Prose Medal (2006) and the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize (2009), making her the only female writer, and the youngest writer to date to have won both awards. Her first English language novel, Twenty Thousand Saints (Alcemi, 2008) – an innovative reworking and adaptation of the Welsh-language novel, Atyniad, also won the inaugural Oxfam Hay Emerging Writer of the Year Award at the Hay Festival 2009. As a result of these successes, she was chosen by the British Council as the first ever Welsh participant in the prestigious, world-renowned International Writing Program at Iowa University. She also holds an MA in Creative Writing from UEA, a PhD from Bangor University, and currently lectures in Creative Writing at Swansea University.

She is also a prominent singer-songwriter, who has produced 4 albums to date – and she was awarded the title of ‘Female Artist of the Year’ in the BBC Radio Cymru awards in 2010. She performs regularly in Wales and has also appeared in major festivals in America and Europe.

Reviews

[Heather Coffee_Kindle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this story that weaves a thriller into the precious history of Cymru, using true events to frame a fictional world.

It made me emotional, it had me gasping in shock and hooked to keep listening to find out what was happening in these families lives.

Such tender and wonderfully interesting characters, who above all else are trying to do the best they can in his life for those they love.

Cofiwch Dryweryn

[Tracy Fenton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not often left speechless, but The House Of Water has basically left me struggling to write a review that will give this book the praise it deserves.

Firstly, this isn’t like any book I’ve read before. It’s a combination of literary fiction, slow-burn mystery and psychological thriller all wrapped up in beautiful prose.

It’s atmospheric, haunting, emotional, raw and in my opinion simply stunning.

Set in the fictional Welsh town of Sulyn, the story begins when 18 year old Iona Griffri returns home to find her entire family dead, the house submerged in water and a strange girl dead in her bed. Her father is missing and soon becomes the prime suspect in this horrendous and tragic crime.

Throughout the novel, there are chapters from an encyclopaedia of Wales that the father was working on which slowly reveals what may have happened to the Griffri family.

As well as being lyrically beautiful, the author brings the characters to live with real depth and clarity.

There were several times in this book that I gasped out loud, shocked at the unpredictable twists, turns and surprises. Just when you think you know what is happening the author reveals another layer of intrigue.

I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending this book and it goes straight into my Top Ten books of the year.

Recommended for:
Readers who enjoy slow-burn mysteries, literary thrillers, and stories rooted in cultural and emotional landscapes.

[Anschen Conradie]

#TheHouseOfWater – Fflur Dafydd
#HodderStoughton
#JonathanBall

The letters J, K, Q, V, X and Z are traditionally absent from the native Welsh alphabet. They appear only in loan words. Creating an alphabetical encyclopaedia of Wales is thus no simple task. The ambitious academic author, Eurov Griffri, therefore declared this his work “…will not be a conventional encyclopaedia of Wales, but rather a compilation of those aspects of Wales that have been integral to my own life” (15) with the title page boldly stating that it is an encyclopaedia of Cymru, the country also known, erroneously, as Wales.

On the eve of her leaving for university Eurov’s daughter, Iona, arrives home late at her parental home in Pont Sulyn, Wales. “Placing that key in the lock was the last ordinary moment of her life.” (3) Inside mayhem awaited. Her mother, Lisa, brother Urien, and baby sister, Briall, are all dead, the house sandbagged from the outside and flooded on the inside, all water pipes having been brutally axed. In Iona’s bed is the body of an unknown girl. The notebook of Eurov’s encyclopaedia, waterlogged as it is, is floating around, but the pages referring to the letters P and Q are missing, as is Eurov.

Iona joins forces with the young mortuary attendant, Cain, in the search for her father, the identity of the dead girl, and the answers to the tragedy that had occurred, attempting to establish whether the bizarre flooding was aimed at destroying evidence, or a cleaning ritual of sorts, or something completely different.

Water plays a central role in this unusual whodunnit. The town is under threat of a flood at the time of the tragedy, Cain has lost his immediate family to the local river, Eurov and his sister “…had to leave the village they grew up in because the valley was flooded to provide water for a city over the border, and they had to leave their dead father behind in his grave in a drowned cemetery’ (119), Pont Sulyn was named for a saint who drowned during a botched baptism, and the town itself is also due for decommissioning, destined to be evacuated, bulldozed and flattened.

The chapters follow three distinct patterns. One features Lisa as protagonist, counting down from thirty days before the tragedy, the second employs Iona as third-person narrator in the present, and the third comprises first-person narration by Cain, mainly set in the present, but including a few nostalgic throwbacks to the recent past.

The novel is a fast-paced thriller examining the consequences of impulsive decisions, the effects of long-term trauma, and what it is like to leave a place “…so tightly bound to who you are. How those streets will always be knotted up with your intestines, so you don’t know where you end and (it) begins.” (226)

#uitdieperdsebek

[Sian · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) This is a real page turner. The major twist half way into the book came as a complete surprise and was a real game changer. I also enjoyed the extracts from the very selective and subjective encyclopaedia of Cymru that Eurov was writing . These gave a fascinating insight into Welsh culture and identity, and slowly help to reveal what happened to the family.
I shall definitely read more by this author.

[Denis Wheller · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Laurel Bradshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 blue stars

This book defies description a bit. Can we call it a literary, cultural, domestic, psychological mystery? It isn't really a thriller - it is too slow-moving, maybe like a river slowly rising and threatening to inundate everything you know. And that is kind of exactly what this is all about. The book is deeply imbued in Welsh culture, language, and history. Certainly some knowledge of Tryweryn would be helpful for the reader. The writing is also deeply philosophical. About death and dying, about nature vs. nurture, about what it means to be connected to a family, and a place, and then to have all of that taken away. The mystery wasn't terribly surprising. I had figured out early on, perhaps from the beginning, that Eurov wasn't going to be the killer, and by halfway through (when nothing much had happened yet) there had been enough clues to tell me that there were two girls somehow switched at birth. I did think that Eurov was the father of both girls, so maybe that was the only surprise... So it wasn't the what of the story being told, so much as it was the slow peeling back of the why. A book that I will be thinking about long after reading it. And I want to read more by this author, either in English or in Welsh...

Description: Iona Griffri returns home one evening to find her family murdered and her father, Eurov, missing. Her family home is entirely submerged in water, and a strange, unnamed girl lies dead in her bed. As the police declare her father the main suspect, Iona is forced to confront how much she really knew about the man who raised her. Could he have been capable of such a crime? And who is the mysterious girl left behind? With the help of the morgue attendant looking after her family''s bodies, Iona goes on a journey to uncover the truth behind those final weeks of her family''s life. Hidden in the fragments of her father''s final manuscript, recovered from the flood, an unimaginable secret slowly rises to the surface. A terrible sin finally revealed...

[Paul Chambers · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

This was an ARC through NetGalley. Thank you for the privilege of reading it.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dark and disturbing read that is classified as a mystery/psychological thriller but it’s more than that certainly literary fiction but also quite philosophical on the question of all things Welsh. Told from multiple POV’s this is a story of the Griffri family. It opens with 18 year old Iona finding her home flooded, her mother and siblings dead alongside a strange girl dead who is laying on her bed, and her father Eurov missing. I did find it a bit slow at the start but the mystery soon took over and a compulsive read ensued.

Briefly, although the police are investigating and Eurov the prime suspect Iona can’t believe it and needs to find her father and she finds help in the form of morgue attendant Nico. Eurov is a university lecturer and a nationalist and has been writing an Encyclopaedia of Wales, although parts of this have gone missing.

The twists in this are really good and quite difficult to spot, although I guessed one of them. The characters are well fleshed and I particularly liked Nico and Iona’s aunt Anna, both a little damaged but both good and caring people. The theme of water is quite emotional and you see how events in the past coloured Europe’s vision. A fascinating literary mystery.

3.5⭐️

[Pauline Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Hannah Wilkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

While on the surface a thriller, this book packs a lot in between the pages: language, nostalgia, grief, forgiveness, family issues and displacement.

There is depth and exploration that really pulls this thriller into a unique, but devastating narrative. The building of the characters, the explorations of their thought, emotions, processing, connects way more than your standard thriller does. I found myself feeling for the characters, caring about them, being devastated and crying along rather than just purely feeling shock.

I liked the academic element to it- particularly the ability to use the encyclopaedia in such a brilliant way- connecting it to a confession of sorts. Very clever.

The exploration of Welsh culture, language and identity was another factor I loved and appreciated- I live in Wales, and am an outsider to the culture; I learnt a lot more about the country I live in and that was a reward in of itself. This is a book which helps pass this on to others, while displaying a deep connection to the country and its roots.

[Christine Harman · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Bodies in the Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

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."

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Rhys Shorney · Rating 5 out of 5]

House of Water by Fflur Dafydd is a gripping and beautifully written story that’s easy to get lost in. The book mixes mystery and emotion with a strong sense of place, drawing you into the wild, coastal setting. I was intrigued by how Welsh culture and language was weaved in—it really adds depth and gives the story a unique, authentic feel. It’s a powerful, haunting read that will stay with me long after I've finished finish.

[Lyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dim i fi. Methu’n glir a mynd i mewn i’r stori, a heb law am y clwb darllen ni faswn i wedi cario ‘mlaen i’w ddarllen. Doeddwn i ddim yn poeni llawer am y cymeriadau, roeddwn i’n gweld y stori braidd yn dwp - gymaint o wendidau ynddo. Er hynny mi nes i hoffi pennod olaf Carol. 1/5 (jyst oherwydd Carol)

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gripping and full of twists and turns narrated by the main characters in turn. Iona returns home to find her home flooded from the inside and her mother and siblings and a strange girl dead. There is no sign of her eccentric father. The tale is told in the present as well as in the past before the gruesome deaths. A flowing narrative makes you want to read on and on. A brilliant read

[Diana Febry · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and ambitious read, but for me it slightly missed hitting the mark it was aiming for. Beautifully written, and I did appreciate the Welshness of the book. Likely to appeal more to a reader who enjoys literary fiction than a straight mystery.

[Rhian Dafydd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Babs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

[Natisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the blurb for this, had me eager to pick this one up, and after reading I learned that it was based on the flooding history of Cymru – the Welsh name for Wales.

This story was a quick read, but the twists were intense. I loved that they tackled issues like mental health and post-natal depression, and difficulty in conceiving. Your heart bleeds for Iona, who goes from a normal teenager, who is about to go to university the next day to an orphan with her father being accused of killing her family.

As you delve deeper, more secrets are revealed until the heart-breaking and shocking conclusion is reached. Where Iona’s entire knowledge of her family is shaken to the core, did she really know her father?

I loved how you learned a Welsh word or phrase in every chapter that related to the story, which truly tied you to the enyclopaedia that Iona’s father, Eurov was writing, that became his obsession and an unspoken bone of contention between her parents.

The focus on Capel Celyn being flooded to serve as a reservoir, had me learning about how Wales, being unable to fight against stronger powers, had to resign themselves to being displaced while their homes were flooded to serve as a reservoir. How heartbreaking must that have been for the residents?

This novel challenges you to think beyond the perception of self, and questions the essence of what makes family, family, if not, what makes a person a person. It looks at the pressures placed on a woman, the stereotypes and the pressure to be a certain way.