A review by chalkletters
The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Though there’s not a lighthouse on the cover of The Light Between Oceans, it’s very much a lighthouse book. It might even be the book to kick off the trend of historical lighthouse books, especially as it was made into a film. For this reason, the setting is an automatic win for me. I just love books about lighthouses, and I especially enjoyed seeing Lucy reflect that love right back out of the pages. She calls herself ‘Lulu Lighthouse’, which is adorable, and talks about the light being a star. It even inspired me to make a soundscape.

The Light Between Oceans is a very well-structured book and the story is compelling, especially once M L Stedman gets to the inciting incident which introduces a tension between Tom and Isabel that just keeps winding tighter and tighter until the climax. I would have liked a bit more of the courtroom drama that was hinted at, but there’s enough there to whet the appetite. 

The character development is exceptionally well-paced. Just as I had decided I didn’t trust Isabel to do the right thing, M L Stedman inserted a scene to soften her just enough that I was genuinely unsure which way she was going to go. Both times I’ve read this, I’ve cried at the ending, which is heart-wrenching, but not so unjust that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

Unfortunately, despite all these good things, I just couldn’t get past the prose. The narrative starts several sections in the present tense, then slips into the past tense in the middle of a paragraph. Since third person past tense is my default for narrative fiction, every time M L Stedman switched back into the present, it brought me out of the story. This happened all the way through and, while I’m sure there was a stylistic justification, I couldn’t track when the different tenses were used. There were issues with the perspective, too, jumping back and forth between characters. Early on, I noticed that we’d jumped from Isabel’s head to somehow knowing how cold Tom felt. I’m not sure if that persisted, perhaps I just stopped noticing it. 

The Light Between Oceans is a good book, but I am uniquely qualified to say that it’s not the best lighthouse book available. At least for now, Skylarking by Kate Mildenhall remains my favourite book with a lighthouse on the cover. That said, The Light Between Oceans does give us the perspective of the lighthouse keeper, rather than one of his family, and it gets extra points for that.
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