Lighthouse Bay

I actually did write a few drafts of some of the books I read in the last year…here are some of my thoughts immediately after reading this.

New baby = not a lot of time to read. I don't get a lunch break these days and our apartment has been so stifling hot that J has been staying up super late. Her room is by far the hottest in the house and by the time I tuck her in, feed C and possibly wash the dishes, it is time for me to go to bed so I can get up around 4:30 for C's middle of the night feed. Which is a long way of saying I don't get to read before bed anymore.

But I need to read. That's just who I am, so I decided I'd pick out a book for myself at the library when I took J last week. I stood there contemplating the books and the nice lady next to me loaded me down with 3 books. I went in looking for an easy and walked out with The Book of Negros, which I read a long time ago, and two totally unknown books. It turns out they were both written by Australians. I started one as soon as I got home and couldn't put it down and then I got distracted by this book.

Lighthouse Bay tells the stories of Libby and Isabella. Libby's lover had just died and she returns home to Australia from Paris to live in a cottage he bought for her near her childhood home. She has been gone for 20 after making a tragic mistake that her sister may never be able to forgive her for.

Isabella arrives at Lighthouse Bay in 1901 after washing up on shore, the sole survivor of a ship wreck that kills her husband. She has to fight for her survival and figure out how to get out of Australia.

This is the kind if book I like to read when I don't want to concentrate too hard - I didn't have to draw a family tree or make a character list, so that was good and it made this a perfect book to read while C was eating or when I had an extra 15 minutes. I liked that the two stories, while loosely linked were independent of one another. I found it interesting that the author chose to write the older story (Isabella's) in the present tense while Libby's present day story was written in the past. Isabella's story was more flushed out and more detailed, but to me that made sense. Her struggles have bigger consequences than Libby's did. A wrong decision or mistake by Isabella and her life could have been over...Libby was never at risk of losing her life.

I will probably see if I can find Wildflower Hill next. It seems to be the better liked novel of the two by people who have read both.

(July 2013)