The Lamplighters

 The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex.  I read a galley - 340 pages

Summary from Goodreads: Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week.

What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?

Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them. He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface . . .

And here's what I thought: I often felt like I couldn't quite get into this book. The pacing is a little uneven and there were so many viewpoints, often going quickly from one to another, that I felt I should have made a chart of sorts to keep track of who's who. Add to that going back in forth from the past to the present, and I just couldn't quite connect with the story.

I did enjoy the mystery elements of the story and how the story slowly reveals itself through the different characters' viewpoints and stories. Because you have this mysterious event right at the beginning, you know it's going to be a slow reveal through the story. There is a lot in this book about love, and grief, and misunderstandings. And, with the very realistic details of what it's like to work on one of these lighthouses (which, by the way, is not on a nice little slice of land, but is right out there in the water, where it's very dangerous), sometimes gave the book a claustrophobic feel which heightened the atmosphere of the story. 

However, I often couldn't keep the characters straight and as a result, didn't quite connect with any of them. I also found it difficult to find many of them to be sympathetic, so I sometimes just didn't quite care what happened to them. Interesting story and maybe I'll have a different reaction to it if I read it again.