This one just didn't work for me, but thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read an advance copy.

As Laura nears the age that her mother was when she disappeared, she can’t stop thinking about her. Spurred on by a phone call from the detective who has been on her mother’s missing person case for the last thirty years, Laura returns to Italy to discover just how much she never knew about her mother’s life and her own family. Mary Morris takes her readers on an emotional journey between the present-day and war-torn Italy during World War II, in a search of understanding and connection between mothers and daughters. I really enjoyed Morris’s descriptive style, bringing both the scenery and the characters’ thoughts and emotions to life. A great book for readers who like historical fiction, unsolved cases, and exploring the challenging emotions that come from dark and difficult human experiences.
Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for an early reader copy!

I feel the loss of those I never knew. I mourn people I didn’t know existed until now. I am surrounded by ghosts. from The Red House by Mary Morris

Laura is forty-two, the same age her mother was when she disappeared. Laura’s marriage is in crisis. She impulsively decides to leave for Italy to search for her mother’s untold history. She knew where her parents met. She knew they were in love. And that her mother loved the Pine Barrens. And painting, especially of a mysterious red house.

We are all mysteries to ourselves. from The Red House by Mary Morris

Laura tracks her mother’s past from Brindisi where she was born, to Castellobello and the Red House, to Naples where her parents met. Laura uncovers her mother’s life of privilege before WWII, and then internment where a canary was treated better than human. She suffered the loss of a loving family and made horrendous choices to survive. She discovered how love and art kept her mother alive. And learned how her mother could not escape the ghosts of the past, the guilt of surviving, the betrayals endured and committed.

The story reveals the little known history of Jews under Fascist Italy, heartbreakingly told through a loving family’s plight. It is a tale of intergenerational trauma.

The further I read, the harder it was to put this haunting book down.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

The Red House by Mary Morris is a touching and eye opening novel, The Red House, is a compelling story about a woman’s search for her lost mother. Laura’s mom, Viola, left her husband and two young children with no explanation. It’s unclear if she was abducted or left voluntarily.

The book takes place in two different time periods. The first is during the time that Viola lived. The second is during Laura’s adult life. Laura has issues of her own to deal with. When Laura is in her forties she impulsively decides to figure out what happened to her mother. She starts at the beginning where her father and mother met and lived in Italy.

Laura learns about the past her mother never shared. She is hoping that this will lead to her finding or figuring out what happened to her mother. The book bounces back and forth between Viola and Laura. The story is written in the style of stream of consciousness. I learned a lot about Italy during World War II. While the story is sad and gives Laura some answers, there are still questions about Viola and Laura at the end of the book. I enjoyed the story and Ms. Morris’ writing style. I will be looking for more from this author.

Thanks to Mary Morris, Doubleday books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC of this novel. This was a quick and propulsive read, but unfortunately it didn't quite work for me. It felt formulaic and like something I've read many times. The writing is fine, but the plot wasn't anything memorable.

I loved The Red House. A moving story that will mesmerize you. A daughters search for her missing mother will transport you back in time to World War ll. A mystery that had me guessing until the end. I enjoyed this Authors writing and would like to read more of her work.

I give The Red House 5 stars for its great story with unforgettable characters.
I would recommend this book to Fiction fans.
#NetGalley # #PRHPartner @DoubledayBooks

This is a story of Laura who is trying to understand more about her mother Viola who has been missing for 30 years. Her journeys lead her to a red house that her mother painted, and labeled with an Italian phrase. Laura goes on a journey and learns more about her mother's upbringing during WW2, including a man who new her as a teenager.
The writing style is unique and some short chapters help draw you in and keeps the story moving at a quick pace.

I couldn’t put The Red House down. Did I love it - in places no, as it sometimes seemed convoluted and confusing. Did I love it - in places yes, as the mystery of Viola was compelling and fascinating to me. It didn’t start as a WWII story which I would have avoided (weary of them) but it ended up as one and much, much more.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday books for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Laura’s mother disappeared 30 years ago, and now Laura has taken off to Italy, where her mother grew up during WW2, in search of answers.

This book was odd. I struggled with deciding on a star rating because I didn’t like it enough for a 3, and a 2 seemed harsh, but after I thought it over, 2 feels right. I typically love a WW2 story, but this one was not great. At times, it felt downright gross.

It is two different stories, Laura's and her mother's, brought together in one book, but the weaving is not as smooth as in other books that do the same type of time period jumping while telling a story. And, especially in the book's last quarter, some random chapters are thrown in that have no relevance to the story.

Having finished the book, I don’t think I would choose to read it if it were presented to me again.

Also, note that there are trigger warnings of suicide and underage prostitution.

3.0 stars
LUKEWARM recommend

This book was described as a missing-person mystery with blah-blah descriptive language and a passing mention of WWII. This is an inaccurate description! This book was focused on WWII! The missing-person mystery angle was extraneous and unnecessary. This could have been a historical fiction novel and all about the Italian Jews during WWII! It felt like a very disingenuous description.

I knew very little about the treatment of the Italian Jews during WWII. However, I would have liked to know more especially their lives AFTER the war.

The writing, character development, and storyline were mediocre and could have been much more.

Read this book for the treatment of the Italian Jews during WWII.

Goodreads: - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7022420938 - posted 3/28/2025
StoryGraph: - https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/abfe53fe-e9c7-41f6-bb77-40f48f6e985d?redirect=true - posted 3/28/2025
booksbydorothea Blog: - https://booksbydorothea.blogspot.com/2025/03/review-red-house-earcebook.html - posted 3/28/2025

The book description for The Red House, a new novel by Mary Morris (to be published in May 2025), claims that the novel blends elements of true crime and “settings that evoke Elena Ferrante” so I was eager to read an ARC copy. After all, I’m a big fan of Elena Ferrante.

Sadly, while the novel’s concept was interesting, the execution as a whole didn’t quite work for me. And although it's true that the novel was set (partially) in Naples (á là Elena Ferrante), it was more “unsolved family mystery” than “true crime.” Character development was decent, and the book was fairly compelling and easy/quick to read. The sections and chapters alternate in time, but not in a clear or predictable way, so it wasn’t always obvious where you “were” as a new chapter began. (It resolved quickly, but it was a distraction.) There were a couple of superfluous plot twists that never resolved and didn’t work to forward the story.

Overall, I feel like this one didn’t quite work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 13, 2025.

2.5 stars, rounded up to 3

I really wanted to like this book. Ultimately, I didn't love it.

The story has two plot lines. One follows a middle-aged woman who runs away from her life and marriage seeking she-doesn’t-know-what in her long-missing mother’s homeland of Italy. Misadventure ensues.

The second plot line chronicles her mother’s (long before she was a mother, or missing) and her family’s brutal experience in a detention center for Jewish immigrants during WWII. Plus an illicit love affair with an Italian guard. Plus… mural-painting.

Misadventure continues.

Lots of Italian-American women (and men) seem to romanticize returning to their ancestral homeland to find answers to their modern existential problems, as fictionalized in the fun beach read The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza and countless other works. It’s a familiar heartwarming story except when it isn’t, as in Season 2 of White Lotus.

Another familiar romanticization - or fixation - that features in The Red House: the disappearing mother. Is this a writer thing? In early drafts of my own novel, I had the mother crawling out the window, running away, leaving her kids to fend for themselves, never to be found again. Even in the current draft, she has a tendency to flee.

Do we write these stories because it’s so often the fathers in real life that disappear, physically or emotionally, and we want to fictionalize our lives by flipping everything inside out? Is it an attempt to work through our own lived experience?

Or is it us writers living vicariously through our maternal characters, escaping the mundane realities of daily life so that we can finally find that long-sought-after, impossible-to-fully-attain PEACE AND QUIET?

Whatever the case may be, I can’t help but wish the book had been written from the perspective of the fugitive mother herself. As it is, we’re left on the outside of two stories looking in, wondering what’s really going on in there.

As a fledgling Substacker and an experimental book reviewer, I have to ask myself what purpose a post like this serves. I don’t want to say negative things about any writer or their work, but I also want to be honest and engage in a real way with the books I read.

So I will send this out. Maybe the description will pique someone’s interest, and they will enjoy the book more than I did. What I would still like to read at some point is some of Morris’ non-fiction travel writing. So stay tuned for that.

P.S. Preorders help authors and their book sales. The Red House comes out in May.

When Laura's mother goes missing with no sign of why she left or where she went, Laura's family spends the next many, many years wondering what happened to her. With her own adult life in shambles, Laura decides to go Italy, where he mother grew and and lived through the horrors of WWII hoping to get some clues as to what happened to her mother. Follow Laura along as she learns about her mother's secret past and all she suffered.

I received an ARC from NetGalley; however, my review is my own opinion and done of my own volition.

A lyrical and evocative novel about loss and discovery and self and otherness. Morris, of whom I've long been a fan, writes a story about the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that is both monumental—taking in war and displacement and massive upheaval and death—and intimate—about parents and growing up and place and habits. Laura's mother disappears when Laure is young, and Laura, after years of uncertainty, steps into her own investigation of who her mother was, traveling to places where her mother lived and finding lives with whom hers intersected. It's an elegant work about family and about despair, a eulogy and a cautionary tale all braided together. Highly recommend; I think it's a great novel to discussin book groups or classes.

Mary Morris’s novel, The Red House, is a compelling story about a woman’s search for her lost mother while coming to terms with her own life’s issues and relationship challenges. Laura’s mom, Viola, left her husband and two young children with no explanation. It’s unclear if she was abducted or left voluntarily. Thirty years later, Laura impulsively decides to follow some clues about her mother’s prior life by tracing her existence in Italy. She learns about her mother’s painful past as she tries to understand more about what led to her mother’s disappearance. The book bounces between Viola and Laura’s stories and is written in a stream of consciousness style. I enjoyed the book although the storyline is quite sad and the reader is still left with questions at the end. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC for this book.

I am a very big Mary Morris fan! Her newest novel "The Red House" did NOT disappoint! A tragic, melancholy tale, spanning the US and Italy, as a daughter, now an adult, retraces her mother's life in order to achieve closure. Was so vivid, surprising and astounding. An excellent book! Thank you NetGalley, the author and publisher for the review copy. All opinions are my own.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

The Red House by Mary Morris - unfortunately this book was a DNF (did not finish) for me. I struggled through a third of the book without the element essential to my reading enjoyment established, I did not care (or know) anything about the protagonist.

Strong character development provides the "hook" that makes us elect to read this ONE book before all the others in our coffers, and The Red House, sadly, never provided this essential ingredient.

This was a depressing book but it was written well. We are taken to different settings in current and WWII Italy and introduced to the people there — some kind, many not. In each place, Laura learns more about her mother, Viola, and what she went through, with her time in the red house giving Laura a lot of insight.
What doesn't make much sense is that her mother put on a great show while she raised her children, and she appeared to be a loving, happy wife, and she fooled everyone. Realistically, I don't think that is possible.
There is one part of the book that rushes through many years of what Viola did after the red house, when it feels like it should have had a similar pace to it. Then we come back to the present day and finally understand what happened to Viola.
I suppose true literary fiction is slow and steady prose about realistic stories. This book is a fairly good representation of the genre. 3.9/5

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Red House.

This is a story about Laura's mom Viola who went missing 30 years ago. Now in her early 40s, and her missing mom's whereabouts still unresolved, Laura embarks on a personal journey of self-reflection and painful truths from her past and her mothers.

Armed with few clues, including her mother's mysterious paintings of a red house, Laura travels to Italy and retraces her mother's footsteps to a past she never wished to talk about.

When she discovers her mother's painful secrets and the harsh truths that led to her disappearance, Laura is finally able to face her own life and what needs to be done to get back on track.

As some readers noted, there is no distinction between the chapters; sometimes we're reading Laura's POV and other times from Viola but that's not made clear. There are no chapter headings/titles to distinguish whose chapter it is.

I enjoyed the writing; deep, thoughtful, but very stream of consciousess-like as chapters flip flop from Laura's investigation and remembering something from her childhood; an aspect of her mother she's recalling or an event from her childhood or the case into her mother's disappearance and the strain it put on her, her sister and dad.

Not surprisingly, I found the most interesting character to be Viola; strong, determined, a survivor.

I didn't dislike Laura, but I didn't like her; despite the narrative being carried by her POV, I found her character development lacking.

But this is really about Viola and how the time she spent in the Red House changed the course of her life forever.

I was hoping the narrative was more of a straightforward mystery, not something that traced back to the atrocities of WWII.

I'm not a fan of narratives with war themes but I'm grateful for the opportunity to read a novel from an author I've never read before.

I found myself getting distracted with this one.
I wouldn’t say it was the story itself, but I just wasn’t in the mood for this thriller.