The Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman

I should have prepared myself. I should have known about 20% into this book, when two people, tending a lighthouse on a desolate island, far off the coast of Australia, find a baby in a boat. A tiny, helpless, perfect baby.

And decide to keep it.

I should have prepared myself then. I should have known I would cry. But instead, I drove 5 1/2 hours to Cincinnati to run a 1/2 marathon and the entire way, listened to this book on audio. And cried. Cried so much my sunglasses remained on in the gas station where I stopped in Kentucky and was worried people would think I was crazy. Cried so much I ran out of Kleenex somewhere in Northern Kentucky and then had to go into the exhibit hall to pick up my race packet with my eyes feeling puffy and raw.

It's hard now, to read stories about loving and losing children that don't get to me. The way my own two have planted themselves firmly in my soul, in my heart, in my mind and everything in between. Imprinted.

So in this story, Tom and his wife Isabelle man the light station on Janus rock. A lonely island out to sea that sits between to oceans. After three heart-breaking miscarriages, a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a baby. And from the second it does, I knew Isabelle would want to keep the baby. Keep it and pass it off as her own. And she does. Even after learning that the baby is really the child of a local woman who has mourned and longed for her child, just as Isabelle has done for her own dead children. Because by then, how could Isabelle let go? There are no real winners in this scenario and the book is all the more heartbreaking because you cannot cheer for any of the characters. There is so much loss to pass out.

So if anything, the book gets 4 stars because when I cry this much, I'd like to be happy at the end, and really, I never was lifted from this state. The book could not have ended or gone any other way, I see that, but all the same, it's a sad read, even if it is wonderfully written.

4/5 Stars.