The Vacation House
A Novel
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4.3 • 19 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The Edgar-nominated, #1 internationally bestselling author of The Daughter and The Playground weaves a breathtaking tale of betrayal, family, and secrets from the past in this crackling novel of psychological suspense.
Two women. Two secrets. One terrible night.
PAXOS, GREECE
The vacation house is a luxurious getaway for a wealthy English family, windows open to sun and the sea, a sparkling swimming pool, and a verdant garden. One hot summer night, while the parents and their friends drink wine and amuse themselves, a young woman—the teenage daughter of the Greek caretaker—ventures for a walk on their private beach. Her life will never be the same again.
LONDON, ENGLAND, TEN YEARS LATER
Julia is the perfect spouse and mother. Slender, blonde, expensively dressed, she’s the classic “yummy mummy” of high society: cook, organizer, arm candy, and speechwriter to her influential husband.
But behind her winning smile is a stifled woman trapped in a gilded cage, stricken with anxiety and perfectionism. When Julia meets Laurel, a therapist who promises to help her find fulfillment, Julia opens herself up to the hope of a different future.
BOUND BY THE PAST
What happened in Greece all those years ago that binds these two women together? And will uncovering the truth destroy everything… or set them free?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This engrossing tale of psychological suspense from Shemilt (The Patient) centers on Sofie, a Greek girl living on the island of Paxos, and Julia, the daughter of a wealthy English couple who own a vacation home there. Sofie and her family are caretakers serving the needs (and whims) of Paxos homeowners and their guests. In the summer of 2003, while Julia's family is vacationing on the island, 13-year-old Sofie is assaulted on the beach. Twenty years later, Julia is the apparently perfect yet deeply unhappy wife of James Grenville, headmaster of an exclusive English boarding school, having traded her dignity and independence for the financial security he offers her and their daughter. At a school event one evening, Julia meets Laurel, a therapist with links to her past that Julia can hardly imagine. Laurel senses Julia's displeasure and promises to help her find fulfillment. Shemilt alternates Sofie's perspective in 2003 with Julia's in 2023, keeping the suspense at a steady simmer that gradually builds to a roiling boil by the conclusion. This tale of revenge and rebirth rivets.
Customer Reviews
Fast but ultimately unsatisfying read
This is a fast read - I read it in one day on a weekend - but I finished the book feeling regretful I had spent the time on it.
Details follow **with spoilers** - The way the book is structured, the reader gets Julia’s first-person perspective from 2023 and a third-person perspective sharply colored by Sofie’s perspective from 2003. The reader spends much of the time with Sofie reading of her self-blaming victim’s perspective on things that happen, and then after Sofie starts to heal her perspective is completely dropped from the narrative and it’s exclusively Julia’s perspective. So readers get dumped with a ton of Sofie’s horrendous experiences and her resulting self-blame and self-hate but never get to see Sofie heal and recover.
I had sincerely thought that Julia had believed that Angel was probably assaulted but felt that it wasn’t appropriate for her to publicly say so given that her husband was headmaster, so when she said near the end of the book that she had believed her husband when he said that Angel hadn’t been assaulted, I was shocked at just how naive she was, especially given her own history, and I felt glad her former best friend had dropped her over it all. This was especially inexplicable to me given that Julia seemed to define herself as a victim. Readers also never learned why Julia had abruptly left the island and her parents’ lives; all readers ever learned for sure was what another character said early in the book - that the the boys had encircled her tauntingly in the water and the boat trip had ended early as a result - but Julia never thought or talked about it so we don’t know whether that was what had happened nor whether that was why she had left.
Readers seeing the last several chapters through Julia’s perspective also meant that, at least for me, I figured various things out a long, long time before Julia did. It also meant that a number of key plot points that Julia didn’t know were withheld from the reader until nearly the end of the book, when they were suddenly dumped on Julia and the reader through the exposition of other characters.
Julia came across in the book as privileged and naive, and I finished the book realizing I didn’t like her and wishing I hadn’t spent a day in her company. I can’t stop thinking about how adult Julia remembered teenage Julia thinking jealously about how Sofie was called to the kitchen by her mother from her quiet time reading by herself and how in Julia’s mind that meant that Sofie was more loved than Julia. Even as an adult Julia never stopped to consider that what this actually meant was that young Sofie had to work for a living serving Julia’s family at all hours, even interrupting Sofie’s quiet time.