Rebecca Laurelson has been working as a trauma surgeon in a field hospital in east Africa, a wartorn area. When she becomes exhausted and takes a month's leave, she goes to her aunt Julia's house on the coast of the Indian Ocean. A bigger contrast could not be imagined. From a fearful, food and medicine deprived area where terrorists could strike at any moment, Rebecca goes to a house of wealth and parties where anything one desired could be had at a moment's notice.

Rebecca and her mother had never been close so she has never met her aunt Julia and the family. Regardless, they open their house and welcome her. Julia is a bit scary with her parties and jewelry and sense of entitlement. Bill, her uncle, seems affable yet everyone is afraid of him. Her cousin Lucy doesn't have much time for Rebecca, off with her own friends on a daily round of shopping and fun. Storm, her other cousin, is a male with his own friends and pursuits such as surfing and fishing.

Yet the break is good for Rebecca. She has left the hospital exhausted. She has secrets of her own and needs time alone to integrate her past experiences. As time goes on and she is ready to reach out, she forms a relationship with Storm and unfortunately, it turns into an affair. But worse than that is happening. The terrorists are moving towards this rich enclave and the upcoming elections may bring more change than the white community is prepared for. When an attack happens, the secrets everyone are hiding emerge with their fallout.

This is the second book I've read by Jean McNeil. She describes the most horrifying scenarios matter of factly, only slowing revealing the secrets and horrors underneath a calm exterior. The characters are murky at first and only when Rebecca returns to the country two years later are all the secrets revealed. McNeil's writing is descriptive and the reader can picture the events vividly. This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will enjoy.

A young woman is a doctor on the edge of a war zone. Her daily job, faced with her own possible death and the reconstruction of others bodies faces the world with calm determination. However, when she visits her maternal family in a part of East Africa that is facing election and religious strife, her world is upended in mysterious ways that she could never predict.

This was an intriguing book. The main character, the setting, and the writing are all quite unusual and well done. Rebecca Laurelson is an English surgeon working in an area of rebel conflict on the east coast of Africa (in an unnamed area, probably in or near Kenya). She and her colleagues are in a remote place near the fighting, treating both soldiers and civilian victims. We learn gradually, vaguely, that she is also secretly providing information about the conflict to the British intelligence.

She has been a surgeon for about 10 years and is now in her late 30s. She is highly skilled and confident, works long hours, and is respected by her colleagues. This is not her first posting in a war zone, and she has already learned some Arabic. At the beginning of the novel she has just completed 4 months of work and is on hiatus for an unspecified but apparently traumatic reason.

Rebecca uses her break to visit her aunt and the aunt’s family, who live on the coast not far from her posting. Because her mother and her aunt were estranged for most of Rebecca’s life, she has never met her Uncle Bill or her cousins Storm and Lucy. The family seems to welcome her for the planned 2-month visit, but they are reserved, as is Rebecca, so she doesn’t really feel at home with them. In particular she feels that Storm, the 20-something son, is almost hostile towards her, though she is immediately attracted to him despite the fact that he is 14 years younger.

Currently this book has a terrible average rating on Goodreads (below 3), which I find puzzling. It’s not an easy book; even by literary standards, the Dhow House is a bit difficult. It jumps forward and backward over 3 time periods – the present, 2-3 years after Rebecca’s visit to her relatives; the time of her visit; and her prior months at the medical posting near the front lines. Most of these time changes are well marked and explained, but occasionally there are sudden flashbacks. Characters and relationships are not clearly laid out by the author; the reader must infer personalities from people’s words and actions. There is little plot; what there is mostly concerns relationships; and even that progresses slowly. Much of the book consists of graceful descriptive sentences. An occasionally annoying quirk is that the author simply uses ‘her’ to refer to Rebecca even when there is another woman in the same paragraph, so sometimes it’s not clear who is saying or doing what to whom. However, apart from the generic use of ‘her’, the writing style is similar to other literary novels and the book should get higher ratings. Amazon.co.uk gives it 4 stars, so perhaps it is closer to what British readers of literary works expect.

The publicity makes the book sound much more suspenseful and action-filled than it is. The Goodreads blurb refers to gilded lives under threat, Islamist terror attacks, violence encroaching on seductive lives, a past that Rebecca doesn’t dare to divulge. Most of this is technically true, but the book is not the romantic suspense novel that the description would lead you to expect. There is really very little sense of suspense, and even when the terrorist threat arises, it is background to quiet day-to-day experiences and Rebecca’s relationships to her relatives. The strength of the book is its literary-ness. It shouldn't be promoted as a suspense novel.

Thanks to netgalley for an advance e-book in exchange for an honest review.