Pearl is found as a newborn floating in the River Thames in London and saved by Tip Thomas, who takes her to the House of the Mermaids, a high-class brothel, where she is raised. When she is fourteen years old, her fate is decided when she is sold to the highest bidder.
Lily, and her twin brother, Elijah, were abandoned as babies in the Foundling Hospital, until rescued by the publisher Frederick Hall and adopted by the siblings' grandfather.
When Pearl, Lily and Elijah are teenagers, their paths cross once, but their lives will be forever shaped by the encounter.

Told in alternating points of view by Pearl and Lily (the male characters mainly consigned to the sidelines), the interesting premise of 'Deep Waters. Dark Secrets' soon lost its appeal, and I really struggled to finish. The prose and choice of vocabulary reflect well that of Victorian literature, but there is a fine line between atmospheric descriptions and sentences that are overly descriptive and long winded. I could never entirely identify with Pearl or Lily, despite feeling empathetic to Pearl's plight, or buy into the love story between Pearl and Elijah, seeing as they hardly spend any time together, and the chemistry between them is described but not felt. While the novel genuinely illuminates the fate of women, in particular those who are – or are said to be – mentally ill, and explores the hypocrisy inherent in nineteenth-century society, it also resembles nothing so much as those Victorian penny dreadfuls that are ridiculed at one point in the book, in particular the last 100 or so pages where one dramatic revelation is followed by another that is even more outlandish and harder to swallow, and which made finishing the novel a real challenge.

I believe the author is genuinely interested in the period and seems to have done her research well – as attested by the fairly extensive notes in the Appendix – but I simply could not engage with any of the characters, and a few, especially the men – Elijah in particular – stayed pale and lifeless. ( )

What started out as so-so got better towards the middle then, about three-quarters through, devolved into the rediculous. The dramatic showdown falls flat and the book pootles along for another hundred pages it could have done without.
Too many "dramatic" revelations and bizarre plotting.
That said, I'm not completely put off trying The Somnambulist, so this was probably less bad than I'm making it sound. ( )

A gripping mystery involving characters from the well off and the seedier side of Victorian England. A good read - hard to put down at times. ( )

Since she was found as a baby, floating in the Thames one foggy night, the web-toed Pearl has been brought up in a brothel known as the House of Mermaids. Cosseted and pampered there, it is only when her fourteenth birthday approaches that Pearl realises she is to be sold to the highest bidder.
Meanwhile, the orphaned twins, Lily and Elijah, have shared an idyllic childhood, raised in a secluded country house with their grandfather, Augustus Lamb. But when Lily and Elijah go on a visit London, a chance meeting with the ethereal Pearl will have repercussions for all of them, binding their fates together in a dark and dangerous way...
My Thoughts:

When a book is really good I find I struggle what to say about it. I can find more when it is not so good and I can have a good moan about it. This book was really good and all I can say is the usual good story line, great descriptions and good characters. A real page turner of a book that drew me in instantly and wanting more.

But…. My only niggle is the ending. There was a lot going on with lots of reveals and secrets being found out. I found that it was if every character had to have an ending and there was just too many revelations. Some of the mysteries wouldn’t have hurt left unsolved and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the story.

The book is still a good read and brings the seedier side of the victorian era to life and had it not for my own thoughts with the ending I would have given this book 5 stars, hence I feel that I can only give 4 stars. ( )