The House of Hidden Letters Summary: A €1 Greek Escape
TL;DR: The Quick Briefing
A crumbling stone house on a windswept Greek island, sold by lottery for a single euro, sounds like a holiday fantasy.
For Skye MacKinnon, it is something closer to a last resort.
Izzy Broom’s novel The House of Hidden Letters follows a woman who leaves London with more secrets than luggage and takes possession of an abandoned hillside property in Ano Meria on Folegandros.
What she finds inside the chimney flue — a bundle of yellowed wartime letters — pulls her into a second story that unfolded on the same island eighty years earlier.
The book moves between 1940s occupation and a present-day restoration project, tracing two women whose lives are separated by decades but tied to the same walls.
- Two timelines, one island. Wartime Folegandros under Italian and German occupation sits alongside a 2025 renovation summer in the same hamlet.
- A €1 escape. Skye MacKinnon, a former schoolteacher, wins a municipal scheme offering ruined post-war houses to newcomers.
- A hidden archive. Letters from a soldier named Stefanos to a woman named Katerina turn a building project into a historical investigation.
- A threat that follows. Skye’s abusive husband tracks her down after a newspaper article exposes her location.
- Community over isolation. Neighbors, fellow lottery winners, and Skye’s mother form the wall that Martyn cannot break through.
- Core themes: domestic abuse and self-reclamation, female resilience under occupation, grief and memory, and rebuilding from ruins — literally and emotionally.
▶ Listen to The House of Hidden Letters Recap On Youtube
Who’s Who in Ano Meria
| Character | Role |
|---|---|
| Skye MacKinnon | A 34-year-old former primary school teacher from London who wins a €1 house on Folegandros. |
| Katerina Sideris | An 18-year-old farm girl in Ano Meria in 1940 who marries Stefanos and lives through the Axis occupation. |
| Andreas Vithoulkas | A 35-year-old local contractor who helps lottery winners restore their properties and translates Katerina’s letters. |
| Stefanos Lazaridis | A 21-year-old soldier and resistance fighter who writes the letters hidden in the chimney. |
| Martyn Lockhart | Skye’s husband in England, an airline pilot who tracks her to Greece. |
| Joy Monroe | An Australian artist and widow who becomes Skye’s next-door neighbor. |
| Leni Sideris | Katerina’s elder sister, who runs a secret classroom and bakery during the occupation. |
| Cassandra MacKinnon | Skye’s mother, a former divorce court professional. |
| Esther | A 14-year-old Jewish orphan brought to Folegandros by Stefanos and hidden with local families. |
| Lio | An Italian occupying soldier billeted near Ano Meria. |
| Ingrid Wolff | The German wife of General Wolff and a former nurse. |
| Dafni and Giorgos | Elderly neighbors in Ano Meria during the war. |
| Theo and George | A Greek-British writer and his nine-year-old son, a lottery winner who becomes close to Skye. |
| Mia, Dusty, and Louisa | Three sisters from Bristol who win a lottery house. |
| Victoria and Adam Beaumont | An American fitness instructor and her English lawyer husband, winners of the largest property. |
The House of Hidden Letters Summary: The Full Story (Spoilers Ahead)
Katerina, 1940–1942
In July 1940, eighteen-year-old Katerina Sideris carves the letter “K” into an attic beam of her family’s hillside house in Ano Meria. She soon meets Stefanos Lazaridis, a bold twenty-one-year-old who wins her heart.
When war reaches Greece, Stefanos leaves with Katerina’s brother-in-law Michalis to join the fighting forces on the mainland. His letters home describe the brutality of battle and urge Katerina to hide provisions and valuables inside the house’s stone walls.
Axis troops take Athens in April 1941, and Stefanos secretly returns to Folegandros with Michalis. He brings Esther, a fourteen-year-old Jewish orphan, and hides her with neighbors.
Before leaving again to lead resistance work elsewhere, Stefanos marries Katerina in a secret ceremony at the hilltop church. Italian forces then occupy the island, requisitioning livestock, boats, and food.
General Wolff and his wife Ingrid take over a neighbor’s home, and an Italian soldier shoots Katerina’s golden goat, Chrysí. Famine tightens across Ano Meria as Katerina discovers she is pregnant and conceals it under heavy clothing.
Katerina’s sister Leni endures repeated sexual violence from an abusive Italian soldier named Lio in exchange for food. In December 1941, Lio corners a heavily pregnant Katerina on a dark ridge.
She strikes him on the head with a heavy rock and kills him. With Phaedra and young Esther, Katerina removes his dog tags — belonging to a soldier named Giulio Muti — buries his saber in an abandoned garden, and throws his body from the cliffs into the sea.
She returns home to find that Leni has died of starvation. Grief sends Katerina into labor alone on the hillside during a freezing storm.
Ingrid Wolff and Dafni deliver the baby, but the infant girl dies from umbilical cord complications. Katerina buries her daughter beside the goat Chrysí in her own garden.
In March 1942, unable to stay where her losses happened, Katerina poses as Ingrid’s nursemaid and boards a military transport to Athens to find Stefanos. She leaves her unsent diary-letters tucked inside the chimney.
Skye, June–July 2025
Skye MacKinnon arrives on Folegandros to claim her €1 lottery house, having fled Martyn Lockhart, her controlling and physically abusive husband in England. She funded her escape partly by selling his luxury Rolex watch.
On her first day she meets Andreas Vithoulkas, the contractor assigned to help the winners restore their properties. While demolishing her ruined fireplace, the two find a twine-bound package of more than twenty Greek letters hidden in the flue.
Written by “S” to “K,” the letters belong to Stefanos and Katerina. Andreas translates them, and the shared work draws him and Skye closer.
Skye also bonds with the other lottery winners: Joy, the Bristol sisters, the Beaumonts, and Theo and his son George. Complications arrive when a summer storm erodes her garden wall and exposes a hollow containing animal bones and human infant remains.
Dusty then unearths an Ottoman saber in an adjacent garden. A Greek national Sunday newspaper, Proto Thema, runs a sensationalized feature with Skye’s photograph, full name, and property location.
The article allows Martyn to find her. He arrives on the island with Cassandra, Skye’s sharp and pragmatic mother, and tries to pressure Skye into returning to England or repaying the Rolex proceeds.
Instead, Skye’s neighbors, her mother, and the wider Ano Meria community close ranks. Using evidence that Martyn was involved in luggage thefts at his airline job, Skye and Cassandra confront him in Chora.
He agrees to an uncontested divorce and leaves the island. An earthquake shakes Folegandros soon after, and forensics later confirm the buried infant is Katerina’s daughter, while the animal bones belong to the goat Chrysí.
A separate body found beneath a fallen lime tree in the neighboring abandoned house is identified as an Italian soldier aged forty to forty-five. The dog tags hidden in Skye’s wall belonged to Giulio Muti, the man who drowned after Katerina threw his body from the cliff.
Skye reads the final translated letters and learns the full extent of Katerina’s losses. Andreas then reveals that his grandmother Elpida is from Folegandros and has finally begun sharing her wartime memories after seeing photographs of the letters.
On the mountain ridge above the Aegean, Skye and Andreas confess their feelings for one another.
They plan a life together on the island and agree that any future son will be named Sotiris, after Andreas’s late brother, and any daughter Katerina.
Continue Reading: The Celebrants Summary: Steven Rowley’s Living Funerals
The Ideas Beneath the Ruins
| Theme | How the Book Presents It |
|---|---|
| Trauma, domestic abuse, and self-reclamation | Skye leaves London in a state of constant vigilance and gradually rebuilds her confidence and voice through the renovation, her neighbors, and the confrontation with Martyn. |
| War and female resilience | Katerina, Leni, Dafni, and Esther survive starvation, requisition, and sexual violence through mutual protection and underground networks. |
| Community as sanctuary | The lottery winners and island locals form a protective network that stands between Skye and Martyn, contrasting with her isolation in England. |
| Grief, memory, and buried secrets | Hidden letters, buried bones, and wartime artifacts surface across both timelines, and each discovery forces a reckoning before healing can follow. |
| Fresh starts and rebuilding | The restoration of houses abandoned since WWII mirrors the emotional recovery of several characters, including Skye, Joy, and Louisa. |
Book Details at a Glance
- Genre & Subgenre: Commercial fiction; dual-timeline historical and contemporary drama with a romance thread.
- Core Narrative Tropes: One-euro property regeneration; epistolary discovery; small-island sanctuary; healing from domestic abuse; wartime tragic romance.
- Tone & Atmosphere: Lyrical, sun-drenched, melancholic, and reflective.
- Primary Conflict: Skye must withstand the threat posed by Martyn while uncovering Katerina’s wartime fate through the hidden letters.
- Pacing Style: Methodical, alternating between Katerina’s 1940–1942 chapters and Skye’s summer 2025 renovation.
- Book Structure: Sixty chapters, with no formal parts, plus dedication and acknowledgments.
- Publisher: Berkley.
- ISBN-13: 979-8217190386.
- Pages: 400.
Books Like The House of Hidden Letters
The Island by Victoria Hislop: A dual-timeline novel set on a small Greek island, uncovering hidden family history and generational tragedy.
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières: A historical novel about the impact of WWII Axis occupation on a quiet Greek island community.
The Olive Tree by Lucinda Riley: A multi-generational dual-timeline story about secret pasts and healing in a Mediterranean setting.
The Greek Island Villa by Patricia Wilson: An escapist novel about a fresh start on a remote Greek island, woven with WWII history and self-discovery.
The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes: A dual-timeline romance built around discovered correspondence between two eras.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: An epistolary novel set during and after the WWII occupation of an island community.
Lines from The House of Hidden Letters – Izzy Broom
“All that was broken, she would rebuild. One small piece after another.”
“Slowly, slowly, the unripe grape becomes honey…”
“The people we truly love become part of us… It doesn’t matter how far we go from where they last were, because they’re still here, living quietly in the folds of our hearts.”
“War is not glorious, it is barbaric.”
“Fear builds higher walls than whatever it is waiting on the other side…”
“When you step through, there’s no going back. But that’s all right. Because it’s warm in there. It’s safe. It’s home.”
You May Also Like: The Correspondent Book Summary: Grief, Letters, and Late-Life Change
