I am giving this book 4 stars, but I am rounding up. There were parts of the book that I really enjoyed, parts of the book that felt disjointed, and parts of the book that I did not like at all.
The main story begins when Liv shows up at a remote lighthouse, apparently to take a commission to paint a mural on its wall. The lighthouse is decrepit, the sketches of the proposed mural are strange, and an eerie feeling permeates the landscape. Nevertheless, Liv is determined to do her job, despite the strangeness of some of her new neighbors and the growing hostility of her oldest daughter Saffy. Meanwhile Saffy has discovered a grimoire, written by a man named Daniel in the 17th century, detailing the witch hunts that went on in the area. When hints of their new home's dark past begin to be revealed, Liv is not sure who or what to trust.
Twenty-two years in the future, Luna, Liv's middle daughter has carried on the search for her missing mother and two sisters, and feels called to return to the island lighthouse when Clover, her youngest sister, suddenly reappears. But Clover looks just the same as she did 22 years ago--she is still seven years old. Luna, just as her mother all those years earlier, is not sure who or what to trust.
I enjoyed Liv's storyline, even though at times I didn't agree with her reasoning or decisions, I also really enjoyed Luna's storyline; once she "reunited" with Clover it was quite creepy.
I had the biggest issue with Daniel and his storyline. It really didn't feel like it flowed with the rest of the threads of the story. I realize it was supposed to explain some of what was going on in the present-day, and add some background information as well as motivations for what was happening to Liv and her girls, but it just didn't weave into the other threads of the story in a logical or organic way. And--without giving away any spoilers--at the end, when Daniel's fate was revealed, I just got mad. After all the things he had been through, and all the things he had witnessed, for him to make the decision he did regarding what to do with the rest of his life was, to me, not only disappointing, but also cowardly. In the light of Daniel's actions at the end, the whole "wildling" aspect was truly horrifying--and not in the fun "I am reading a scary book" way, but in a truly repugnant way that really bothered me. That really left me with a bad taste in my mouth about the whole book.
I'm not sure if I would recommend this book. I know I would NOT recommend it to anyone who has lost a young child. I think if Daniel's storyline had been reworked, or if he'd been left out completely and all the reader had from that time was the grimoire, the book would have been much better.

The thought and care that went into forming this plot line, absolutely blows my mind. I loved this book, although at times I had a hard time following who I was reading about. That might have something to do with the fact I was listening to the book instead of reading it, but I loved it all the same.

The author has woven so many wonderful characters that bring their own charm and wonder to the story. Each little part they play, intricately woven into the story, brings to life a crazy tale of magic and murder. Time travel and superstitions. I can normally figure out what is going to happen long before the ending, but this book took me on a riveting adventure.

This is a must read for the witching season as it will give you the good creeps. Loved it!

My review will be live on my blog Book Confessions on 10-7-21.

My second witchy read of the year! There is something about fall that makes me crave stories with spooky, atmospheric, and witchy vibes. The Lighthouse Witches was the perfect fit and would be a great rainy day read. Filled with plenty of Nordic folklore and covering the witch trials during King James VI’s reign in Scotland, this story is a solid combination of mystery and paranormal.

The story is divided into 3 timelines and perspectives.

1998: Liv and her 3 daughters as they arrive into a small coastal town in east Scotland. Liv, an artist has been commissioned to paint a mural. We follow Liv and the girl’s as they become familiar with their new surroundings and stumble onto the Wildlings myths of the island.
2021: Luna, the middle of Liv’s the three girls has lived the past 22 years searching for answers. She was the only family member to not disapear in 1998. Now, expecting her first child, thinks she has found her youngest sister, Clover. Except Clover is still 7 years ago, and exactly the same as when she went missing.
A mysterious grimoire with a mysterious past.
Even though there are 3 timelines and POVs it’s fairly easy to follow the storyline within these pages. They all tie nicely together and the transitions between each are clear.

While not scary, there is a spooky atmosphere to the story. Especially with the Wildling / Changeling folklore and Icelandic mythology that is encapsulated within the story. I enjoyed that while the story has to do with witches, it’s less about them practicing, and more about the history of witch trials, the magic that is naturally in the world, and how local lore can influence a community

Personally, I’m not a huge Gothic fan, as I tend to find them to be more character driven and lacking in a sufficient plot. This is not the case with Cooke’s writing. There is a clearly cut mystery that ties into the story. Which makes this the perfect Gothic read for us plot driven readers.

This was my first read by C.J. Cooke, but because of the originality and the excellent writing, it sure won’t be my last.


The Lighthouse Witches comes out October 5, 2021. Huge thank you to Berkley Publishing for my advanced copy for my honest review. If you liked this review please let me know either by commenting below or by visiting my Instagram @speakingof_books.he-lighthouse-witches/

Did I like this book? I don't know.

Liv is commissioned to paint a mural on a Scottish island. In the middle of the night, she takes her three children with her to the island. There she starts hearing about wildlings and disappearing children. Twenty years later, one of her children, Luna, might have discovered one of her missing sisters. Luna has to go back to the island where she last saw her sisters and mother.

The setting is fascinating and creepy. There's magic in the island, but the question becomes what is the nature of this magic? The characters themselves weren't that particularly interesting. There were times when a teenage character annoyed me because she was stupid, and Liv thought it was a good idea to hide having cancer.

Review based on an advanced reader copy provided through Netgalley for an honest review.

A digital copy of this book was given to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This book alternates between 1998 and 2021. It also tells the story of the witches in 1662. In 1998, Liv is a commissioned painter who travels with her 3 children from York to Lon Haven, Scotland to paint a mural inside a lighthouse. Sapphire (Saffy), Liv's oldest daughter is 15. She dislikes her mother and wants to run away. She finds an old grimoire in the bothy where they are staying and starts to learn about the witch trials that took over the island. One day, Saffy and Clover, Liv's youngest daughter go missing. Not long after, Liv is missing. Fast forward to 2021 and Luna, the middle child is searching for her sisters, when she receives a call that Clover has been found. When Luna goes to get her, she is shocked to find that Clover is still 7 years old, instead of 29. Luna and Clover go back to Lon Haven to try to find answers. Scattered throughout is the story taken from the grimoire that explains about the 12 women that burned at the stake. I will say that they is 1 detail in the beginning of the book, slightly describing the torture of one of the witches and then again towards the end there is a scene that made me squirm in pain to read. That being said, I found this to be a very good story that I was eager to finish to find out the mystery of where Clover has been for 20+ years and how she is still 7 years old. Thank you NetGalley, CJ Cooke and Berkley Publishing. I will be posting this review on Goodreads, Bookbub, LibraryThing and Instagram on 9/28/21.

This is an emotional, mysterious, and atmospheric story. The pacing is done very well and the different point of views and timelines are seamlessly connected.

The Lighthouse Witches is the perfect mysterious and spooky read for this time of year. Take a remote Scottish isle with a history of witchcraft and magic, add in missing children, and you have all the ingredients for a good book. I was so intrigued by this one that I couldn't put it down. This story is told through multiple perspectives, both past and present. It took a few chapters to get into the rhythm of the writing, but the tale Cooke weaves is captivating. 4.5 stars

What an interesting read. I totally wasn’t expecting that to end in the way it did but I was glad it was tied up nicely. The story was tragic, spooky, and unique and I really enjoyed it! Thank you Netgalley for my free copy.

There are witches, real witches, in this novel by C J Cooke. The Lighthouse Witches is spooky and perfect for fall.

Atmospheric is a word that gets thrown around a lot but Cooke’s writing embodies it.
She does a great job building a whole story around a place. Paying homage to the culture of those places, the folklore that surrounds them. The Lighthouse Witches cast a spell on its reader. Set in multiple timelines and points of view, the story tells the tale of a family torn apart and the desire to be together again.

In 1996, Liv takes her daughters - Sapphire, Clover, and Luna - to a remote island off of Scotland. She’s running from her life and herself and goes to where she has a commission to paint a mural on an ancient lighthouse. The island’s history is steeped in distrust of others, witch’s curses, and a belief in wildlings - taken children replaced with uncanny replicas.

In the present day, a grown Luna still longs to make sense of the disappearance of her sisters and mother when she receives word that her sister Clover has been found. Her joy is replaced with confusion and fear when she sees that Clover is the same age she was at her disappearance, with no memory of the time between her disappearance and today.

Shifting between Liv, Sapphires, and Luna’s perspectives, readers discover the events of the past, while trying to make sense of the present. It is an engrossing read with a great conclusion. I loved it and will be reading whatever Cooke writes next!

C.J. Cooke’s The Lighthouse Witches is a book that melds witchcraft, Scottish folklore, with a touch of Viking mysticism together to create a story about a family that gets torn apart while living on an island , Lon Haven, that is filled with superstition.

Liv and her three daughters move to a remote island, so that Liv can complete a commission on the lighthouse. Its owner wants her to paint a series of runes on the inside. While working, Liv encounters many things that scare her: bones, grimoires, and apparitions that seemingly are tied to the lighthouse. Liv finds out that it is tied to some witches who had been burned at the stake in the lighthouse. It is told that they cursed the island and its inhabitants while they died.

Shortly after, one by one, her daughters go missing. Frantic to find them, she seeks the help of the villagers who tell her the tales of other missing children who seem to come back, but as “wildings”. Wildings are fairy beings whose goals are to kill off bloodlines. The only way to rid yourself of a wilding and get your child back is for the parent to kill and burn the wilding.

Cooke not only feeds into every parent’s fear of losing their child, but also manages to instill actual frights throughout. My favorite part of The Lighthouse Witches is the use of gothic elements. It is set at a lighthouse on a stormy remote island off the coast of Scotland. Even without its dark history, a secluded lighthouse has a romanticism about it. This is a relentless page turner. It is thrilling and frightening; I read it in one sitting.

This year I've made a concerted effort to get my Halloween celebrations started early and to get as much spooky reading in as I can! It seems that, without any planning on my part, I've picked books mostly about witches. I love a good witch film/show/book, but honestly, they can are very hard to pull off, usually falling on the side of cheesy instead of creepy. Happily, that is not the case in C.J. Cooke's newest book!

I was immediately drawn to this novel, set on the mysterious isle of Lòn Haven, Scotland, not only because of the fabulous backdrop but because it promised mysterious disappearances and lighthouses and witch trials (did you know that Scotland experienced four major witch hunts, between 1590-1727?), all things I'm absolutely crazy about. Told through various sections, from the POVs of single mother to three girls, Liv, who has arrived on the isle to paint a mural in the crumbling lighthouse in 1998, Sapphire, also in 1998, her eldest daughter, and Luna, her middle child, now pregnant in 2020. Luna is still desperately searching for her two sisters who went missing all those years ago on Lòn Haven, along with their mother, and can't reconcile her few, happy memories with the woman who abandoned her -- and possibly, killed her sisters.

But then the impossible happens. Luna gets a call, saying they've found Clover, only she's the not grown woman she's expecting, but a little girl, the same age she was when she went missing twenty-two years ago. Could she be one of the fabled wildlings, faeries disguised as missing human children, borne of a witch's curse hundreds of years earlier? Or is there an even stranger explanation?

The Lighthouse Witches is not only teeming with beautiful writing, evocative of the beauty and wildness of Scotland, but is a thoroughly enjoyable story with a bittersweet ending that had me almost tearing up! I really, really enjoyed this one, and highly recommend you pick it up this Halloween season.

**Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for the prepublication copy**

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's an atmospheric thriller that combines historical fiction, mystery, and horror into a compelling read.

Without posting spoilers, I will say there are a few things that remain unexplained that I could've used a bit more on (some of Clover's mysterious behavior, for instance) but, in general, this was a unique story full of interesting characters.

This book jumps between POVs and time periods so if that's a turnoff for you, be aware.

All in all this is a great addition to the genre. Very twisty and will keep you guessing until the end.

This was an interesting novel.. It was a bit slower than I thought it would be. I wasn't totally invested in what was going on. I think a lot of readers are going to enjoy this though.

I knew the moment that I read the summary of this book that it would be one I would enjoy, and boy did I. The Lighthouse Witches was the perfect book for me to kick off my Spooky Season Reading with.

Liv and her three daughters are staying at a lighthouse on an isolated island on the east coast of Scotland. The girls and mother are separated from each other and only Luna is left. 23 years later Luna is trying to cope with the drama and loss of the events when she gets a phone call from the police saying they have found her sister Clover- but here is the kicker- Clover is 7 years old, the same age she was 23 years ago when she went missing. So Luna heads back to Scotland to find out the truth of what happened.

The story is told in three timelines… 1998- through the voice of Liv, the mother of the story…2021- through the voice of Luna, the sister that was left on her own, and from the words in a diary from 1620, which honestly was my favorite part of the entire book.

The events in the book are dark and a bit creepy. The book was well written and will grab ups instantly and keep you reading late into the night, even as a reader on the slow side, I whipped through this book. It is full of superstitions, Nordic myths, and folklore from Iceland, Oh and I can’t leave out witch trials. Could a book be more perfect? More gothic?

The entire storyline of the wildings was fascinating to me, I have read a few things in mythology-type books about them, but never have I seen the idea in a book. The imagination and creativity that the author used in the story was over and beyond.

And like any good gothic story, you have to have a location that is fitting, almost a character unto itself, and the isolated island, with the waves crashing against the old lighthouse, and the wind whipping around it was perfectly written. You felt cold as you read, and isolated. It is exactly how you should feel reading any great gothic story.

The Lighthouse Witches need to be added to your Spooky Reading list now.

This story starts off slow and you think it will be about a family living on an island while the mother is working on a painting job. Then you flash forward in time and realize 2 of the 3 sisters went missing on the island and this is the story about what happened to them. It's creepy and a little supernatural, but the writing is solid and the ending is satisfying. Saying anything more would just be giving away too much.

In 1998, Liv, a single mother of three daughters, takes on a project involving the painting of a mural in a lighthouse on an island in Scotland called Lon Haven. She soon learns of a local legend involving the killing of women accused of witchcraft and the wildlings that were rumored to take over the bodies of missing children and destroy their families. Although Liv doesn't initially believe these crazy stories, she begins to wonder about them when two of her daughters disappear, and one returns bearing the branded numbers that are said to differentiate a wildling from the real child. The story changes perspective from Liv to her daughter, Luna, twenty years later. Luna, now grown, is still searching for her sisters. When she is contacted with the news that her younger sister, Clover, has been found after all this time and is at a hospital, she rushes there expecting to see a woman close to her own age. Instead, she finds a young girl who seems to be Clover but hasn't aged. How can this be? The book answers this question as it goes back and forth in time. I found the explanation an interesting twist. My only criticism of this absorbing book was that it sometimes was difficult to keep the characters and time periods clear. Other than that, I found the writing compelling with realistic characters. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys supernatural novels that take place in different time periods.

"Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found - but she's still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting.

When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it's an opportunity to start over with her three daughters - Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she's frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed.

Twenty-two years later, Luna has been searching for her missing sisters and mother. When she receives a call about her youngest sister, Clover, she's initially ecstatic. Clover is the sister she remembers - except she's still seven years old, the age she was when she vanished. Luna is worried Clover is a wildling. Luna has few memories of her time on the island, but she'll have to return to find the truth of what happened to her family. But she doesn't realize just how much the truth will change her."

A spooky Scottish lighthouse? Sign me up as an armchair traveler, because I am SO not going there in person!

The Lighthouse Witches follows Olivia and her three daughters as they make their own in a remote Scottish village, haunted by folklore and tragedy. I'm not a fan of the varying POV's and alternating timelines in narration that now seems to be the popular literary trend of recent years. Cooke executes this a bit neater than most, but I found this choice didn't necessarily aid a plot that was pretty straight-forward and simple. The mythos that inspired the novel- wildlings, witches, and inter-generational curses- are interesting enough, but this novel just feel a bit short for me. It was fine. on the level of horror and engagement with dark folklore, Cooke could've gone much further and much darker, but that simply wasn't in the cards with this book. Overall, no strong feelings about this novel- it didn't impress or shock me, but I didn't hate it either. It just isn't what I'm looking for in a novel.

I love a good gothic tale, and this one delivered. I thoroughly enjoyed the folklore elements, the setting was eerie, and the pace was suspenseful, but not rushed.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC to read and review.

I honestly don't really know what to say about this book or how to rate it. This was, for me, honestly just a complete mess of a story. I feel like the guy from the Bachelor Australia who had no idea what to say when someone replied that they were a Gemini after he said he was an astrophysicist. Complete and utter bewilderment.

Let's just go straight into the details on why I had such a reaction to this book. Based on other reviews I have seen though, I seem to be in the minority, so you can judge for yourself whether or not this is a book for you.


Writing:

I don't have any issues with the writing itself, but where the fault lies, for me, is with the format of the story. This is a multi-timeline and multi-perspective book. Part of the story is also told through the use of a book on the town's past. Because the plot is divided this way, the story felt very fragmented. I understand the point in using multiple timelines and perspectives as each one tells a different part of the story, but I found that by the time it got back around to a certain character's perspective, I had already forgotten what happened last with them.

The story was just too spaced out which made it feel disjointed and like it was a series of different stories. Another aspect of the format that I found made the story very disjointed was the subchapters. Each chapter was divided into sections labeled by roman numerals. The abrupt transition between each subchapter made the story stop in place instead of continually flowing.


Plot:

The story was at best a hodgepodge, and at worst, a mess of plotlines that didn't blend well together. Once everything was starting to be revealed, I sat there confused because I had no idea why that was the direction the author chose to go in. While I am sure a lot of people would enjoy it, the plot twist for me came out of left field and made no sense in relation to the rest of the story. It was almost like all the plotlines were meant to be from separate stories, but were thrown together without any cohesion between them. I honestly felt a bit cheated by the time I finished the book because I didn't get what I signed up for.

The way information was being dispensed was a bit too casual and offhand at times and, as I said before, the use of the multiple timelines and perspectives made it a bit confusing to follow along. There were also added bits of information that I felt added nothing to the narrative except to fill up space. For example, did the reader really need to know how Luna aggressively ate tomatoes like apples, no, no they did not?


Characters:

I had no feelings really for any of the characters as they all fell flat for me. The exception to this would be Saffy, but it isn't a good exception. Saffy, or Sapphire, had no personality and was more or less just one big ball of teenage angst and bad decisions. Her relationship with pretty much every single character in the book wasn't healthy, and I found myself questioning her motives time and time again.

The relationship dynamics between all of the characters were a bit messy. Because we don't really get a general sense of how long the family had been staying at the Longing, all of the relationships felt very rushed. You didn't get to see them getting to know each other, it was just one second they were strangers, and the next they were being rather intimate.


Conclusion:

This was just one long trip into the land of confusion. Nothing about this book made any sense to me really. I would recommend you a TV show to watch instead, but it would be a big giveaway for the latter half of the book. I would also still recommend that you try this book out for yourself to see if the story works for you or if you came out just as baffled as me.

Nevertheless, thank you NetGalley and Berkley Books for providing me with a copy for review.