Changing gear this week I have been reading
Lighthouse Short Stories by Carol Carroll. The book comprises of four short
stories set in different times and different locations. Yet they all revolve
around the central themes of love and lighthouses.
My favourite story of the four had to be the first
one - Light of My Life. The plot was a little different, which made it
interesting and the characters had a lot of emotion behind them. It tells the
tale of sixteen-year-old Emily who is packed off to marry a stranger, Darcy the
lighthouse keeper, in 1902 after her mum dies.
The Last Chance was a decent story though I felt the
characters were a little wooden. I did quite like Rock Island Light but the
ending was a bit disappointing and did not quite make sense given all the
earlier paranormal happenings in the tale. The Sloop was again a decent tale
but I didn’t really feel like it went anywhere.
All in all this is a decent read if you enjoy
romance novels or are not keen on reading an epic tome like Game of Thrones or
other such books that are so fat that it takes ten years to finish reading
them.
The storytelling was done well, though there could
have been more emphasis on the settings. My biggest gripe though has to be with
the dialogue. I found a lot of the characters overstated what they were doing
or about to do, which wasn’t necessary when most of the time it was so obvious
anyway. It just seemed a bit robotic in places - people don’t really talk like
that.
This was a decent, short set of stories; ideal for a gentle read.
Lighthouse Short Stories gets 6/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment