I think this is a great book for readers who enjoy emotional, multigenerational stories like Red at the Bone, Betty, or The Mothers. However, I struggled to keep track of all the characters which made it slightly less engaging for me.

A wonderfully complex story! The House of Deep It's about women building new lives in spite of racism, class and gender inequality. It’s about how relatives can know each other better than anyone else and still remain strangers. It’s a very enlightening and entertaining read. I loved it. I highly recommend it.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

The prose and lyricsm in The House of Deep Water got me right away. Jeni McFarland’s debut novel is a masterclass in how to do a slow reveal River Bend is expertly rendered, a place was happy to escape to time and again in this uncertain point in history.

I have a soft spot for multigenerational stories, and THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER felt like the multigenerational story of an entire community. I loved this book.

Such a beautiful story! Multi-layered stories are my favorite and The House of Deep Water was no exception. Heartbreaking and beautiful, with perspectives from various women in a small town in Michigan.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this gifted copy. All opinions are my own

I had a lot of hope for this book but unfortunately it just didn't work for me. There were so many characters that I had a hard time following the story and keeping everybody straight. It was hard to become invested in any one character and made the book feel really long and it didn't really seem like a lot happened throughout the book.
Thanks to Netgalley and Putnam for the e arc

Unfortunately I DNFed at 16%. Not a bad book at all - I was just finding myself bored, confused by all the names, and not connected to any of the characters.

This is an engaging read, full of gritty and flawed characters. I found myself excited to see what happens next despite some cringey moments throughout, but that's what makes it so deeply relatable. At the heart is a story of familial dysfunction in a small town and the unlikely relationships that form. I grew up in this area so it was also really comforting to read about it!

34 // @putnambooks #partner THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER released today 🎉

this debut novel is about three women who return to their hometown, facing their past decisions, relationships, secrets, and traumas. it’s a small town, which means everyone is related or in love or in each other’s business, so throughout the book there are a lot of different voices that bring the story to life. I enjoyed the premise of the book and the themes of motherhood and facing the past, but I found all the different voices a little crowded and hard to follow. 3.5/5 ⭐️

Thanks to Netgalley and Putnam for the e arc. Also thanks to Goodreads for a physical copy of this book.

I liked the premise of the book- different women and family members in a small Michigan town. However I had a hard time following the story in some parts and overall it seemed like there were too many characters. This is compounded by the fact that there is an extensive chart at the front of the book to help you remember who is who. The book should’ve talked about maybe 3-4 characters and that’s it. It was hard to care about some of the characters when you didn’t get a chance to really learn about them. I was frequently confused while reading this.

I did like how the author wrote and wished the book had been just a little simpler.

This is a lovely quiet novel sent in small town Michigan. Reading the comparison’s to the books above, I can most align this to Kent Haruf’s Plainsong trilogy. There are a lot of character’s in this story that make this book flow.

You will meet Linda, who has just left her husband and is moving back to this small, town. Paula, who has never left and is staple here, and Beth, a divorcee with two kids, she also happens to be the only black person in this town. Each woman is striving to start over and will come together, not necessarily because they want to, but because they are forced.

This is a very raw look at these women’s lives and how they need to confront long time demons. Though you will spend time with each character, and more, Beth is the glue that holds this story together. At times the writing is sparse, but beautiful. To watch these women discover themselves was just so nice.

If you love literary fiction this will be for you. This is not heavy on plot, but the character development is superb.

Thank you NetGalley and G.P. Putnam Sons for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The House of Deep Water by Jeni McFarland
Published April 12, 2020 / by Littoral Librarian

Publication Date April 21, 2020
I was in the mood for a character-driven novel, with strong women working to find out who they are, blah blah blah. Reading that Jeni McFarland’s book The House of Deep Water was reminiscent of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and explored “… trauma, love, loss, and new beginnings found in a most unlikely place: home,” I was super grateful to Penguin Group Putnam/G.P.Putnam’s Sons and NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for this honest review.

I inferred from the blurb that the book looked at the stories of three women who return to the small southern Michigan town each had left some years ago. I was prepared to look at those characters and follow their stories, but I was NOT prepared to have to prepare a flowchart-style family tree for the dizzying number of characters introduced quickly in the first few chapters. But they were intriguing, and their backstories were interesting, so I kept on.

Maybe my brain is full from coronavirus angst, or maybe it’s just that three-plus weeks of sheltering in place has rendered me incapable of following multiple storylines with alternating points of view that also jumped back and forth in time, but I was really struggling with following things. It didn’t help that one of the main characters was known by both Beth and Eliza…but I kept on.

One of the main stories focuses on Beth/Eliza, the biracial daughter of Ernest DeWitt. She has returned to River Bend, Michigan, with her two teenaged children, to start over. Eliza used to babysit Linda, another main character, who has left her comfortable live with her husband, Nathan, in Houston, and returned to River Bend. As she drives into town, her car breaks down and she is assisted by Ernest, who quickly moves her in with him and gets her pregnant. When Eliza/Beth and her kids also move in, the house seems damn crowded. Beth quickly picks up where she left off years ago, sleeping with Steve, the town alcoholic bad boy, who is married Linda’s aunt Deborah. Steve is a drunk and a dog who was sleeping with both Deborah and Eliza back before Eliza left town for college, and apparently everyone knew but it was one of those small-town things. I’m sure I wasn’t the only reader who kept thinking, “Beth! You can do so much better!” but of course Beth’s lack of self-worth is key to the story, and its relationship to both race and childhood trauma are slowly revealed.

Deborah’s brother Jared lives with their mother Dinah on her farm, along with his kids, at least two of whom were left for him to take care of when his wife Paula walked out some years back. Now that she is ready to marry someone else, Paula comes back to town so she can divorce Jared and get on with her life. Her kids (whose heads must be spinning) are intertwined in multiple ways, and then there is the scandal that breaks when, just as the women are returning to town, the local perv is on trial for crimes against children. The trauma that resulted from those crimes that have been going on for years engulfs several of the main characters in different ways.

So we have Beth/Eliza, Paula, and Linda, all back in River Bend, a classic dying Midwestern town. The characters, both those who stayed and those who return, all seem to want everyone to think the best of them, while everyone in town is thinking the worst of everyone else. It’s quite sad. Possibly because I’ve never had children of my own, the motherhood crises and themes didn’t really resonate with me. The inherent racism that affects pretty much every character in the book is well-drawn, as are the struggles to escape being stuck in River Bend. The battle against poverty affects both those who managed to escape as well as those who couldn’t…I found it depressing and thought-provoking, as well as being a bit of a challenge to follow until I drew up my family tree/cheat sheet. I’m glad I stuck with it, and recommend it for book groups, as there is a ton of stuff to discuss. Four stars.

River Bend, Michigan, is the sort of town people imagine leaving. It's the sort of town I grew up in, left, and returned to, so I was really able to identify with Linda, Paula, and Beth. Each of these women have reasons not to want to return home and face their pasts, and each of them are so well-developed and interesting that it took me a while to realize that Beth is at the center of everything.

The House of Deep Water was engrossing. I couldn't pull myself out of it. Honestly, I found myself snapping at my husband for things a character's husband had done. The characters are so real, and the dialogue so cutting, that it's difficult not to feel for them. They spend forever trying to connect to each other and bouncing off. It's only through the narration that they seem to connect, as the point of view shifts continuously from one character to another. I wondered how the author was going to pull them all together in the end, but she managed it.

The book covered so many issues that are deeply familiar to me, and so many that are blessedly foreign. Mental health issues, casual racism semi-hidden by Midwestern Nice, sexual abuse, child abuse, infidelity, what it means to be mixed in a town full of white neighbors and to never know where you belong . If you can relate to any of those things, you will want to read this book. If you can't, you NEED to read this book.

Beth fought tooth and nail to escape her hometown of River Bend, Michigan, where she grew up in the town's only black family. But when she returns with her two children to live with her father, her painful childhood and messy past relationships come back to haunt her. THE HOUSE OF DEEP WATER is a haunting tale of the painful clash between the person you were, the person you are, and the person you want to be.

River Bend is portrayed in part as the villain of the story, a poisonous place that keeps calling its children back against their will. Beth is a deeply flawed protagonist, and her grim return to her hometown is often hard to watch. Each character in River Bend assumes the worst of others while hoping others see the best in them, an eye-opening contrast that builds with each new voice added to the story. It took me a while to get into this one, but the slow building tension led to a powerful finish, so I'm glad I stuck around.

This is a glimpse inside a set of families intricately tied together and all trying to keep afloat, featuring three women forced to return to their small town of River Bend, in Southwest Michigan. There is Linda who is leaving her husband (who she never should have married) to return to her step-grandmother’s home, Beth a biracial divorcee with two teenage children and moving back in with her white father who didn’t protect her as a child, and Paula, the estranged mother of Linda and her two sisters, who is hoping to finally divorce her husband. With their returns secrets will be kept, shared, and shouted to the world as each woman tries to understand love and loss—be it between parent and child, siblings, or romantic. This one’s for fans of Anissa Gray, Brit Bennet, and Celeste Ng.

This was a very impressive debut novel.
I loved the way the Author developed and intertwined the characters.
Looking forward to more by this Author

I was lucky enough to win a copy of this digital ARC in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you for the early look at this title, I can't wait to dive in!

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A novel about a small town and the varios pains felt by its inhabitants. Crimes were committed, children were hurt and abandoned, people healed, and life went on. I loved the book. It is realistic and identifiable.