Amazon Description:

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

The Light Between Oceans is exquisite and unforgettable, a deeply moving novel.

Thoughts:

What to say about this novel? It is certainly moving. And impressive. Ambitious, even. And difficult to get through. Had it not been for my book club I would not have been able to get through it. It is a harrowing and difficult read without a lot of characters to root for.

I feel that ultimately in the end the book is about the choices you make and what they speak about your maturity and understanding of self, and right and wrong. My book club and I had a wonderful discussion over it, and I highly recommend it for that purpose, but I probably wouldn’t read it again. The devastation that is in this book made me so incredibly sad, and I just can’t handle Isabel’s characterization and her ultimately flawed but sympathetic nature. It is difficult not to feel sympathy for many of the characters in this novel, but it is not so simple as that–everyone makes grievous mistakes, and it is just so upsetting to read.

I mean, yes, I did spend a lot of time being angry, hating Isabel and the wrong things she was doing… but then one does stop and think… what if I had had the hope of pregnancy and childbirth with my husband, the love of my life? What if I had miscarried that hope three times? Could I have resisted this beautiful child who seemed to appear from nowhere? I’d like to think I could have, but her life was so full of sad things, and people she’s lost already…. that I cannot help but feel a little bad for her even as I judged her and hated her character for what she did. 

The world building was quite delicate and thoughtful, and the prose articulate and compelling. I particularly loved the long, winding descriptions of Janus, the island that the couple resides on. It really seemed like another world. The characters are flawed, three dimensional, and utterly believable. It is a beautiful book but perhaps I am not mature enough to read something so sad. I do highly recommend it, but it is a heavy book that leaves one very melancholy.

Overall Rating: 

A

Purchase on Amazon: Hardcover   |   Kindle

Publisher Description:

Sometimes discovering the truth can leave you more hopeless than believing the lies…

That’s what Sky realizes after she meets Dean Holder. A guy with a reputation that rivals her own and an uncanny ability to invoke feelings in her she’s never had before. He terrifies her and captivates her all in the span of one encounter, and something about the way he makes her feel sparks buried memories from a past she wishes could just stay buried.

Sky struggles to keep him at a distance knowing he’s nothing but trouble, but Holder insists on learning everything about her. After finally caving to his unwavering pursuit, Sky soon finds that Holder isn’t at all who he’s been claiming to be. When the secrets he’s been keeping are finally revealed, every single facet of Sky’s life will change forever.

Thoughts:

I’ve been curious about this “New Adult” genre for some time now. What does that even mean? Apparently it is a book intended for the same kind of readers as Young Adult books but skewing the 17+ range, including usually adult content. I’ve been curious but not had a chance to work it out—as it turns out it wasn’t that bad, and the subject matter (as far as the explicit parts go) was not any more intense than your average romance/chick lit, really. I decided to check this book out because it topped the New York Times Best Sellers list last week, so read on for my thoughts on it.

Before I continue though, I feel it is my duty to offer a CHILD ABUSE AND RAPE TRIGGER WARNING for this book, even though that may be a spoiler for you. Amazon doesn’t do these trigger warnings, but I do. Sorry.

Anyway, the book. In many ways it read like a typical YA romance, and the “adult” aspects of the novel weren’t really that adult (as in, this is pretty soft-core as far as erotica goes, in my opinion–the “sex scenes” were mostly cute and fade to black, unless the plot forward moving scene dictates otherwise). The first half of the novel was a sweet romance, and being right in the target range (17+ through 20s) for this novel, I really did like Holder as the leading man. What’s not to like? He is gorgeous and sensitive and kind and amazing. But it turns out these characters were somewhat more layered than I believed and had some really interesting back stories and secrets (don’t they always?).

The secret is in the execution though—it is not an uncommon plot but it had some uncommon twists and some lovely character building in it. The world was pretty ordinary, but the characters were anything but. I enjoyed Hoover’s characterizations so much I was willing to overlook the clunky and uneven prose. I believed in Sky as a narrator, and I believed in Holder as the leading man.

And in the end, in a teen romance, that’s what really matters. On top of that, this had a moving family story in the second half (which is where the trigger warning is, really), and I really enjoyed navigating all the clues and twists and plottiness.

Overall Rating:

Great characterization, and out of the ordinary plot for the romance genre, but with uneven dialogue and prose.

B+

Purchase on Amazon: Paperback or Kindle

Earlier this year I read a lovely young-adult novel, called The Fault in Our Stars. I had some trouble vocalizing my feelings on the novel and its subject matter, but for some reason this one really stuck. Since then I’ve read two other John Green novels but it is this one that continues to simmer and bake in the back of my mind. And now I am finally sitting down to write about it in hopes of figuring out why I care so much.

For most of my life I have really disliked cancer books, just as the main cancer-afflicted heroine of TFiOS seems to. The reasons are obvious–most cancer books, especially those written for children or teens, are overly sentimental (not to mention tear-jerking), highly romanticized, overlong, and neatly summed up into “but love cures all” or some sort of Moral of the Story. It was infuriating to read. The Lurlene McDaniel novels about chronic disease had been highly addictive for me in middle school but as I grew a little older, I realized how futile these novels were. They were worthless to me, in every possible way. And I couldn’t figure out why.

John Green’s tremendous novel certainly was not worthless to me. I read it back in January of 2012, and for some reason I haven’t been able to really even think about it much until now. Perhaps it was because I did not want to admit to loving a “cancer book,” which I’ve detested for so long. And perhaps I was embarrassed to even contemplate the idea of being so affected by a young-adult novel. But then, that is a stupid notion because really, I am just as affected by other novels written for a similar age range, such as Kristin Cashore’s equally beautiful Fire, and of course the entire Harry Potter series.

So perhaps I enjoyed TFiOS so much because it transcends its genre, or at least I’d like to think so. It is speaking to us about the basic sadness of the human condition, of things that happen in life that break us down and make us think about the very meaning of life. Sad stories aren’t inherently more profound; at least, I don’t think so. So why are we drawn to tragedy and sad things and all the angst in the world?

Lev Grossman and John Green touch upon this in their panel together at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2012. I quite agree with Green when he said that (and I’m not quoting exactly) sadness in books like this are necessary. I think that there is a sort of need in the human condition that seems to draw us to sadness. Books that are sad are not inherently more profound, but perhaps because it is the saddest things in life that make us think and reflect, looking for meaning in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. We look for meaning in our sadness.

This novel speaks to us because of, as Lev Grossman put it in his TIME magazine review, “the pleasures and consolations” that we are seeking from fiction (I really like the way he put that). Sad stories like this are important and needed because we as humans desperately seek to find meaning in our sadness. The Fault in Our Stars is brilliant in that way because it is brutally honest in its characters’ search for greater meaning.

Hazel and Gus are refreshingly straightforward, honest, unafraid to feel… and they unapologetically look for meaning even as they make light of situations that they might not know how to cope with (and who does?). This is what makes them so lovable and why we take these fictional teenagers into our heart, where they become real to us. TFiOS works because Green has tapped into genuine human feelings, rather than generated ones designed to tear-jerk and create all the feels. But in tapping into genuine feelings that are universal to anyone who’s ever been through, you know, a Really Sad Thing (i.e. pain, loss, disease, etc), he has created something extraordinary that transcends its genre both as a young-adult novel and as a “cancer book.”

And in that kind of honesty we find consolation. In characters like Hazel, we find a heightened and stylized but never over-dramatized set of real feelings to deal with, and that is what made this novel work so well for me.

All in all, these are the thoughts that have been simmering in the back of my mind regarding John Green’s very excellent and compelling novel, The Fault in Our Stars

More on this book: 

John Green’s site: http://johngreenbooks.com/the-fault-in-our-stars/
Lev Grossman TIME review: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2105454,00.html#ixzz20BnJZ5mo
John Green and Lev Grossman at the LA Times Book Festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hieuuwew7U