Book Review: The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was such a beautiful book. It was touching, heart-wrenching, and enthralling. It will have you feeling conflicted from the very beginning.

This book is especially applicable to parents, but it is also a beautiful love story.

I love the writing! In many ways, this book reminded me of the writings of Charles Dickens. I love how Stedman introduced one set of characters, made us fall in love with them, and then brought in another set of characters, told their story, and weaved to two sets together. Also similar to Dickens was Stedman's beautiful use of imagery. She didn't just tell you that men went off to war and didn't come back. She showed you, and she made you feel it.

There was one section at the beginning of Chapter 2 that I especially love for how eloquently it is written. Here is just a snippet:
"Like wheat fields where more grain is sown than can ripen, God seemed to sprinkle extra children about, and harvest them according to some indecipherable, divine calendar.
The town cemetery had always recorded this truthfully, and its headstones, some lolling like loose, grimy teeth, told frankly the stories of lives taken early by influenza and drownings, by timber whims and even lightning strikes. But in 1915, it began to lie. Boys and men from across the district were dying by the score, yet the graveyards said nothing."

That's just a part of the section I love the most. The writing is just masterful. There's so much more about this book that makes it good, but you just have to read it to see for yourself.

This is one I think I need to buy.