I have no words to describe what this book did to me; it surprised me in the best way possible.
Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, and truly unforgettable, it’s a story about family, identity, and the long shadows of war, all set against the haunting beauty of Italy. Through Laura’s journey to uncover her mother’s past, the novel explores love, loss, and the secrets we carry. A compelling blend of mystery, history, and emotional depth. I couldn’t put it down.

What if your mom just walked out one day? Just disappeared? What would you do?

“… a mother's sin is a daughter's burden” (Jane Yang, The Lotus Shoes) ... I could not help but see this quote in my mind’s eye as I read Mary Morris’s latest novel, The Red House!

In her dual timeline novel, Morris explores generational trauma and the atrocities of the WW2 internment camps as she unearths a bit of little-known Italian WW2 history, blending fact and fiction surrounding what happened not only to Laura’s mother in 1972, but also at La Casa Rossa, The Red House, just outside the Italian town of Alberobello during the war.

I loved how Morris easily whisks the reader away to the Adriatic seaboard of Italy, conjuring up the sights and sounds of the Italian coastal villages (and villiagers) of Brindisi and Bari. Though I had a bit of a hard time with the pace of the novel, I appreciated the thought that went into the profound quandaries and predicaments both Laura and Viola faced.

*UPDATE*
Thank you @netgalley for the opportunity to listen to The Red House, narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan. What a difference it made listening to this version! I found myself drawn deeper into the story, and felt more sympathetic towards the two FMCs (Laura and her mother, Viola). Bresnahan’s voice brought me right back to my visits to the tiny towns along the Italian Adriatic. Definitely give this a go if you are interested in WWII history and Italian travel!

This is a lovely yet tragic story of a woman who's mother disappeared when she was twelve years old never to return. It has scared her life and she has never recovered from this maternal loss. As an adult she travels to Italy to her mothers birthplace to try to piece together the mystery of what happened to her. As she explores and investigates she is uncovers information she had no idea of. One being that her mother was an Italian Jew who was forcibly relocated and held with her family at an old orphanage by the fascists. Mussolini is in power and Hitler is at war with the world. It is also a story of hope, healing and forgiveness. The author takes us on the journey which helps explain the mystery of why and how the mother, Violeta disappeared. The story line weaves between the two timelines of 1940's wartime and the present and that part was well done. I listened to the audio version of this book and the narrator was excellent. This is a heartbreaking story but it is told with such love and care I could not help but fall in love with it. Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.

Many thanks to Net Galley and RBmedia | Recorded Books for a chance to listen/read an ARC version of this book.

“𝘞𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴.”

Thank you Doubleday Books for the gifted finished copy and Recorded Books for the audiobook via Netgalley - this one released last month!

I had never read any of Morris’ works before so I didn’t know what to expect but I was intrigued by the premise. It is both a story about a modern day woman in search of her long-missing mother and a historical fiction of a young woman in a worn torn Italy. It’s about family, coming-of-age, young love, art, survival, resilience, loss, grief, secrets, and the truth of our lives.

While Laura eventually learns the truth about her heritage and ancestry, there wasn’t as much character growth in her as I had hoped by the conclusion. She begins to see her mom in a new light but there isn’t really any revelation she has about herself, any internal development during her journey in Italy and what that could mean for her whenever she returns home to the US and to her estranged husband. For that I was disappointed but in a way the ending left potential for growth open-ended. That said, there were a lot of things tied together by the end that I did think were well done. Overall I did enjoy and will likely look into Morris’ backlist.

The “chapters” are quite short and it had a good pace to it, so I never felt bored nor rushed. I was curious about what happened with Laura’s mother Viola and it was really interesting to learn her backstory; that although this story is fictitious, it does paint the actual history of displaced and imprisoned Jews in an Italy at war (I hadn’t known of these facts, so I felt educated and prompted to research more!). Content includes parental abandonment, antisemitism, concentration camps, a few sexual scenes (mostly vague, some briefly rough that takes place late in the story), mild profanity, and with mentions of brief miscarriage, infidelity, suicide, prostitution, and executions.

For those who enjoy slow burn historical fiction, family mystery, Italian scenery, featuring strokes of artistic elements and characters that grapple with their identity and desires, I’d recommend this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Recorded Books for this advanced readers copy <3

The Red House is a WWII historical fiction (hf) about a woman on the search for her long missing mother. What she uncovers is a sweeping, tragic history she knew nothing about.

What I liked:
-The story felt original compared to a lot of other WWII hf in many respects, from our FMC's journey to find her mom, telling this from the perspective of Italian Jews during that time in history --- so often these stories are told from Polish, German, Austrian, etc. POVs, so I was intrigued by this lesser known (to me) story line.
-Mary Morris's writing was excellent, and the tone of this book sometimes gave of thriller vibes.
-The ending!

What needed improvement:
-Not sure if this is just because I read this via audio, but I felt the time jumps a little confusing. We could have used date/place stamps at the beginning of each chapter. As well as a family org. chart.

Mary Morris’s The Red House doesn’t just tell a story—it uncovers one, carefully and compassionately, from beneath decades of silence and survival. It’s a novel steeped in buried truths, where a daughter’s search for her mother leads into the heart of one of World War II’s least-known atrocities—and forces us to confront how trauma refuses to remain in the past.

At the center is Laura, a woman adrift in the shadows of her mother’s disappearance decades earlier. When a detective’s phone call reopens old wounds, she follows a trail left not in words, but in brushstrokes—Viola’s haunting paintings of a mysterious red house. What Laura uncovers in Italy isn’t just family history, but a fragment of Holocaust history almost forgotten: the internment of foreign Jews in southern Italy, caught in a purgatory that historians have too often passed over.

Morris renders these experiences with an intimacy that’s hard to shake. The red house—once a literal prison, now a metaphor for inherited suffering—anchors the story in place and memory. Scenes move fluidly through time, mirroring the disjointed way trauma lives in the mind. And through her vivid, often lyrical prose, Morris brings to life a cast of characters defined not by their era but by their endurance.

Laura’s journey is deeply personal. Her work staging perfect, impersonal homes for sale feels painfully ironic beside her own struggle to feel rooted. Her complicated romance with the detective who reopened this chapter adds emotional grit—not always flattering, but always honest. And Viola, once a cipher, emerges as a woman of impossible choices, hardened by war and softened only by the faint hope of beauty.

This novel shines not because it sensationalizes the past, but because it insists on honoring it. The cruelty is quiet but cumulative: hunger that doesn’t fade, choices that leave permanent scars, and dignity that is ground down, then mourned. Even in liberation, the world doesn’t become safer—only more morally complex.

Yes, the novel has its flaws. The pacing slips at times, especially in the present-day threads. And some readers might crave a tidier resolution. But in a story that’s about how much can never be fully known—or healed—that ambiguity feels earned.

The Red House is history not as a textbook lesson, but as inheritance. It’s about how the past lives in our homes, in our relationships, in our silence. And it’s a reminder that while art may not give us answers, it can give us a way to begin asking the right questions.

This is a well read audiobook. A woman travels to Italy looking to find or understand her mother who vanished when she was a child. The story is told in alternating voices, the daughter and the mother as a child/young woman in Italy during WW2. It's an interesting story, and I liked it, but I just didn't fully connect with it in the end.

This was an emotional and layered read that weaves together family mystery, postwar history, and a daughter’s search for answers. The Red House follows Laura, who returns to Italy decades after her mother disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only a purse, a few cryptic paintings, and unanswered questions. The writing moves fluidly between past and present as Laura tries to piece together her mother Viola’s hidden life and make sense of her own.

The book blends elements of historical fiction with a touch of true crime, and I appreciated how it explored the impact of generational trauma. That said, the pacing felt a little uneven in places, mostly due to frequent time and narrator shifts. Still, the atmosphere, the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship, and the haunting mystery at the heart of the story kept me invested.

If you enjoy novels that are slow-burning and introspective with a strong sense of place, this one is worth picking up.

A story of a daughter searching for her mother, Viola, who went missing in Italy thirty years ago. All her mother left was a painting of a red house, with a cryptic note scrawled on the back.

As an adult, Laura returns to Italy to try to decipher what truly happened to her mother. When Laura meets a man who knew her mother, we are plunged into Viola’s past in Italy during World War II, and all the secrets and sorrows begin to tumble forth.

The dichotomy of Laura’s modern timeline with her mother’s WWII life and times was a nice balance, though Viola’s plight grabbed my heart. While a somewhat somber story, the writing was pensive, thoughtful, and lyrical, with vivid descriptions placing you alongside the characters. Although historical in nature, this had a very literary feel to me.

Thank you to @suzyapprovedbooktours @marymorriswriter and @doubledaybooks for the gifted book.

Thank you @recordedbooks #RBmedia for the gifted audiobook via #NetGalley narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan. The audiobook was a great production; it enriched the story by making it feel more intimate and up close.

A haunting story of Laura searching for her mother interwoven with Laura’s Mom’s story unfolding as a Jew in Italy in WWII.

My heart broke for Laura that even as an adult the hold her Mother’s disappearance still had on her.

I was really engrossed in Viola, Anna and Joseph’s story as they tried to survive as a Jew in Italy. What the red house was, the kindness of people they met along the way and just how devastatingly heartbreaking it all is.

The trauma at the time and the trauma that passed to the next generations.

I connected and related to Viola as she is trying and resourceful. I didn’t connect as strongly with Laura which could explain my pull to the WWII portion.

It’s a little bit of a slow burn but a compelling story with a slightly different angle on what happened to Jews during the war.

I don't often pick up WW2 historical fiction for various reasons, but when I saw a review of this book that stated this was a family mystery, I was intriqued.

The story follows Laura, who at present is trying to move on from the disappearance of her mother who grew up in Italy and emigrated to the US after eloping with her father at the tail end of WW2. Growing up, Laura's mother Violet (Viola) kept her past guarded, with only a few details of what her life in Italy was like. One day Laura's mother failed to pick her and her sister up for school, leaving behind a half eaten sandwich and all of her belongings.

Over the next several decades, Laura is trying to piece together what happened to make her mother go away and if she was still alive somewhere. After a failing marriage, a disasterous relationship with the detective, and now a world away in Italy, Lauara is trying to fit together the broken narrative she has of her mother.

This book has dual timelines from Viola's growing up years at a prison camp in Italy during the Second World War, to Laura finding out about her family secrets- it is very good but also dark (you have been warned). This isn't a fluffy historical fiction and shows the darker trauma war has, especially on youth. It is about Jewish history and the aftermath of WW2. It also features exploring one's sexuality and how often it is used as an escape for trauma.

This was gritty, but I am so glad I read it. A huge thank you to Double Day for my physical copy and to RB Media (NetGalley) for my audiobook copy! Admittedly, I used more of my physical copy than the audiobook- but I thought the audiobook was great! It was easy to keep the characters straight admist the timeline changes.

I learned about Italy during WWII. I never really thought about their involvement. Lots of tiny chapters. The audiobook didn’t have clear definitions between the period changes and that was a bit confusing to me sometimes.

Thanks NetGalley for this ARC.

Laura's parents met and married in Italy, and she spent part of her childhood there before the family moved to America. Her mother Viola had always insisted that she had no family as such, so when she suddenly went missing some years later there was no way to contact her relatives to find out where she might have gone.

The family was left traumatized by this event and Viola was never found. An artist, her work often featured the theme of a red house - something she never explained.

So, when Laura travels to Italy years later she is determined to try and figure out what the significance of the red house might be. Her search for answers takes her far from her original home in Italy to the province of Puglia. But is she prepared for what she will find out?

Morris gifts us an intriguing tale that includes the mystery of a missing mother and complex family dynamics, throwing in an atmospheric setting for good measure. All in all, a satisfying piece of story telling, this gets 3.5 stars.

My interest in reading The Red House came from the settings in Italy where the story takes place and I enjoyed the descriptions of the lesser known area of that country in Bari and Brindisi. The main character, Laura, is trying to sort out and understand what happened to her mother who simply disappeared years ago when Laura was a child—and this has troubled her for a long time. Her search takes her back to WWII as it was experienced in Italy, in particular the Bari/Brindisi area, and it uncovers the experience and the hardships of her parents and grandparents during that time. I have read numerous historical fiction stories that center around Germany and the Holocaust but The Red Door gave me another perspective from a country that felt the effects of that horrible time in a different way.
I thought the narrator (Alyssa Bresnahan) did a super job of delineating the characters and the timeframes which went back and forth from present to WWII days and her portrayal of Laura felt real. Through the process, Laura finds out how WWII and the Mussolini era specifically impacted her family, specifically her mother, and offers insight on what her mother had to endure just to survive. Sadly for Laura, her mother’s demons remained buried for many years during her happy marriage to Laura’s father—only to resurface so strongly that she had to escape somehow. It is a sad story but it allows Laura an understanding which brings her some peace.
Thanks to RBmedia for providing access for me!

The Red House by Mary Morris is a beautifully told, character-driven novel that reflects on the lasting effects of WWII in Italy through lyrical, graceful prose. At its heart, it’s a story about what war leaves behind and how, even in silence, trauma can echo through generations. The novel offers a unique perspective on one woman’s WWII experience and how it shaped both her life and her daughter’s.

While the book is described as having mystery elements, readers should be aware that it isn’t a traditional historical mystery. It’s an introspective novel with a strong focus on character over plot. I recommend it to readers looking for a deeply literary and emotionally resonant story. A beautiful novel from Mary Morris.

This started out really slow for me and was quite boring, however once I got past the first third/quarter things started picking up and I really got into the read things got interesting. This wasn't a monumental or life-changing read but it was very fun and very entertaining, I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a fun and quick mystery audiobook to read.

Thank you to both NetGalley and RBmedia / Recorded Books for this advanced listing copy of The Red House.

I didn't know what to expect with this novel and felt much like Laura, I was surprised, saddened, and eager to learn more along the way. The author seamlessly shifts between the various characters we follow across multiple points in time. This is no small feat as we regularly see (or in my case hear) a character reminiscing then 'snapping' back to their present.

The first 'major reveal' was unexpected and let me know this story was more like an onion, with multiple layers of discovery that kept me guessing (and usually wrong). While the subject matter is often not enjoyable, this book was engrossing, and I felt compelled to get to the core of the story. As the story lines continued to resolve (in one way or another) there was an uneasy closure that at least gave me the sense I heard the 'whole' story. This will not be for everyone, but I feel it is a well-crafted and executed story that brough me in close, lets me drift along like a ballon on a string until I was finally let go, strangely relieved.

I throughly enjoyed this book that I was gifted by Net Galley. I read a lot of historical fiction, mostly World War II and Holocaust, but this is the first book I have read that was based in Italy. The story line was very compelling and I appreciated how the author wove the story line back and forth from the present back several generations. Highly recommend!

I have a WWII recommendation for you today that won’t feel like your typical war story. THE RED HOUSE by Mary Morris swept me away instantly, and I think fans of historical mysteries will have a similar reaction. Take a peek at this quick synopsis:

“𝘈𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥-𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘺, 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘰𝘧-𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦-𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘞𝘢𝘳 𝘐𝘐 𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘭𝘺𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘧𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘺, 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺, 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦.”

Laura, a 40-something woman goes searching for clues about her mother’s disappearance from over thirty years ago. She travels to Italy in search of a “red house” that appeared in her mother’s paintings. The tidbits she discovers about her mother’s past are quite heartbreaking and dark. Through these difficult family secrets and history, Laura begins to understand how her mother’s past experiences shaped her and likely impacted her decisions later in life.

READ THIS IF YOU ENJOY:

- WWII stories
- Historical mysteries
- Multiple POVs and timelines
- Mother/daughter relationships
- Missing person cases
- Slow-burning mysteries
- Survival stories
- Coming-of-age stories
- Family secrets
- Emotional reads

Overall, I was very impressed by this novel full of mystery, love, history, and family. I can’t wait to read more from Morris. 4/5 stars for THE RED HOUSE! It’s out now!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an Audiobook ARC of The Red House.

This book is a combination of mystery and historical fiction. Laura's mom disappeared decades ago, and now we are following her journey in Italy to find clues about why. In her mother's paintings is The Red House and she is trying to find it to at least put some of the puzzle pieces together. As that is happening, we are going back in time and learning about her mother, Viola's, life as well when she was younger and what she lived through during WWII. As you can imagine, it was not an easy time during fascist regimes and we find out some family secrets that were still being covered up today. All in all, it was a fascinating story, however, there weren't great distinctions on who's POV we were reading from at the beginning of chapters and also some of the narratives could have been cut down. It really slowed down the story at times and I found myself trying to decide if I wanted to keep reading.

Rated 3.5, rounded down to 3.