For some reason, I never submitted a review of this book. However, I do remember finding it a decent read.

I see this is on my shelf from 2012, but I must have missed it. Sorry, but I did not read or review it. Thank you anyway for giving me the opportunity.

The Light Between Oceans is a riveting book, full of moral questions and emotional torment. It was one of those books that I found physically uncomfortable to read because I found the story so painful at times.

The Light Between Oceans opens with an Australian WWI vet who escapes his painful childhood and terrible memories of the war by taking a position as a lighthouse keeper. He strikes up a correspondence with Isabel, a young woman he met before moving to the island, and they ultimately fall in love and get married. Two weeks after Isabel delivers a child stillborn, a boat washes up on shore at Janus Rock. There is a dead man on the boat, along with an infant, who is miraculously alive.

Isabel, blind with grief from her recent losses, falls instantly in love with the baby girl. Tom feels a strong duty to report the incident and the discovery of the baby, but Isabel begs him to wait. The lie becomes more and more ingrained every day, as Tom, Isabel and Lucy cement into a family, and Isabel into a mother. When Lucy turns two, the family returns to the mainland. On their last day there, they finally learn who Lucy is and that she has a mother who is grief-stricken and looking for her.

I don’t want to say more about the story and how it is ultimately resolved. Most of the characters in the book are in impossible situations with incredibly painful options. I felt deeply for each of them. Have a box of tissue near.

I loved this book.