Reading Rambles: The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman

Content Warnings (book, not review): miscarriage, stillbirth, xenophobia, sexual assault/attempted rape

I feel like I say this way, way too much, but it’s true—I had a love-hate relationship with this book. On the one hand, it was a beautiful and heart-wrenching story that I felt ended in a realistic way—not too perfect, not too depressing. On the other hand, though, it was rather uneven in pace—always too slow or too fast, in my opinion—and lacking in depth (which felt weird to me because it had such deep, emotional premises and themes).

My biggest problem with the book is that it spends so much time on side- and back- stories that could have been shortened a lot and still had the same effect. In this way, it reminds me of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, because it is definitely overall a great story, but there is so much filler.

For example, I personally thought that it went back in time too far after the prologue. I couldn’t care less how Tom and Isabel met, because that’s not what even matters for this story, and I didn’t care about the characters enough anyway that early in the story. Their back story could have easily fit sprinkled in through a focus on their life/early days on the island rather than the focus on how they met and got together and blah blah blah. Basically, part one (about eighty pages) felt largely unnecessary. This is, of course, just one example.

I am of the opinion that a limited perspective would have garnered more emotion from readers (like me!), but the heartstrings pulling was still done very well. It was often very hard to sympathize with Isabel, though, because we get glimpses into her emotions, but not very many glimpses into her thoughts—we get both with Tom. This aspect reminded me a little bit of The Time Traveler’s Wife, but this novel was definitely better at female character development than that one. I just wish we heard her thoughts as well as her emotions!!!

Overall, I think that I would recommend this to anyone interested in gray areas in life. It’s not a stupendous read, but it is far from awful. And it is nice to read a book with an unconventional, but still “happy,” ending.

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Rachel’s Rating: ★★★☆☆