The Lighthouse Witches: The perfect new haunting gothic thriller you won’t be able to put down

Product Information

Daisy Ridley To Star In Survival Thriller From Zak Hilditch, The Penguin Empire and Campfire Studios; Neon & UTA To Shop At AFM Cooke manages to set a compelling timeshift mystery in a very real world, where believable people navigate authentic problems … surprising and inventive’ Sarah Burton The grimoire’s story was my favourite, though it was the most horrifying at times. The idiotic thinking behind the witch hunts were written very well.

The Lighthouse Witches – HarperCollins Publishers UK

But she gets a call from officers informs her: her little sister Clover is found! But she’s not an adult. She’s still the same seven years old girl she got missing. Could she be a creature acting like her sister or she’s suffering from the same disease Benjamin Button had. Though there were multiple timelines and character perspectives to follow, the narrative felt pretty smooth to me. The writing keeps you hooked.An intricate story about women and witch trials but with a delightful timeslip element that really works. It’s a compelling story and very satisfying how the threads are woven together’ Kate Sawyer Twenty years after that dark year on Lon Haven, Luna is still haunted by questions – what happened to her sisters, to her mother? To find out, she must return to the lighthouse on Lòn Haven, the one place she promised she would never revisit… Seething with gothic menace, The Lighthouse Witches interweaves myth, superstition and history in a way which feels strikingly relevant and gripping’ Caroline Lea Like a lighthouse roving atmospheric waters, its secrets are revealed glimpse by tantalising glimpse’ Cari Thomas

The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke | Waterstones

Y'all, The Lighthouse Witches gave me exactly what I was looking for. If you read the synopsis, and it sounds incredible to you, have no fear, that is what you are getting; you will not be let down. When two of her daughters go missing, Liv can no longer ignore the folklore, and what follows is a tale that is creepy but utterly compelling. Featuring three different timelines - 1662, 1998, and 2021, this is an ambitious but wonderfully engaging novel. The characters were perfect in their parts, one could easily place themselves in their shoes, and the island and lighthouse added a dimension that transformed them into a very important and scary part of the storyline. So much has gone wrong for mother of three, Liv. She's run away to a remote Scottish island where she has a commission to paint a mural in an old lighthouse. The old house where she and her daughters will be staying is old, dark, and damp and the lighthouse is full of dank water and bats and is falling to pieces. The mural Liv is commissioned to paint is a line drawing of symbols and the person who commissioned the mural is somewhere on the sea. Little did Liv know that she would end up losing seven year old Clover and fifteen year old Saffy, and attempting the unthinkable with nine year old Luna. A complex and haunting story, beautifully told. It is such a brilliant take on Scotland’s witch trials of the 1600s, an inventive reimagining of the consequences of the imprisonment and murder of so many women. Tense, unsettling and ultimately incredibly moving’ Amanda Mason Thank you so much to the publisher, Berkley Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review.

I really enjoyed the way the audiobook was done as well, and each viewpoint has a different narrator so there is a full cast. The narrators are Eva Feiler, Lesley Harcourt, Jess Nesling & Joshua Manning, and I have to say I loved every single one of them for their characters. Besides the multiple viewpoints, there are also different time periods which at times was fairly confusing on audio. I'm glad I had an eBook so I could make sure I wasn't missing anything, but I would have loved a physical copy as well. Cooke is such a master at world-building and bringing different settings to life, and I loved getting a taste of this remote Scottish island The Lighthouse Witches is set on. Highly recommend it if you are looking for a moody winter read with plenty of tension! Midway I questioned how dark it was going to go and whether I needed to grab a cushion to hide behind, but it made me use my imagination for the darker moments which may have made things worse. The tension grew towards an unexpected and satisfying conclusion. Would I recommend? Liv is a single mum of three girls, Sapphire, Luna and Clover, she’s finding it tough financially, so when she’s commissioned to paint a mural in a 100 year old decommissioned lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, she doesn’t hesitate.