Book Review: The Lighthouse

Title: The Lighthouse

Author: Jessie Newton

Date: 2020

Publisher; JEN

Quote: "Joel Shields had died, and surely heaven had paused for a moment to welcome him with open arms."

The five Seafaring Girls who were introduced in Memories, reviewed earlier this week, are now middle-aged women. They have not kept their old vow to gather on the island every summer, but this year they're doing it because one of them has just become a widow. One of the grown-up girls is still happily married. The grieving widow was happily married. The other three come home to lay their old friend and neighbor to rest. As they help sort out his things, they learn more about him...They all find themselves going back to the lighthouse where they used to go when they wanted to be alone. The one who's always been a crier is surprised why how much she cries; the one who's not been is surprised to find herself crying in the lighthouse.

This is a novel, not a romance, and I can't say men come off well in it. One of the main characters has hated her husband, for good and sufficient reason, since right after the children were born and is gathering her nerve to demand a divorce. The other two are in quieter phases of middle-aged love, but their men aren't exactly heroic. The man who still seems to be a satisfactory husband isn't much of a Partner for Life; in fact he's a fisherman who is usually out at sea, and he seems to be little more than a sex object when he's at home, though some young men do say they'd like to be seen as just sex objects.  Another husband who wasn't too bad died young. Joel Shields turns out to be a puny male version of Zenia, the Ultimate Worst Friend in The Robber Bride. Everything you want your friends not to do, this type of character does, to everyone who claims the character as a friend. This is sort of the way mature women see men, but at the same time, I repeat, there are good ones. I think having grown up among good ones helped me find and attract good ones, actually. But, taken on average...

That's one reason why we find ourselves turning back to women friends. The other and more important one is that, in real life, men die young.

This novel of friendship may not be a classic of world literature in English, but there's a reason why fans have kept the series going through thirteen full-length novels and a prequel. The characters are believable, relatable, likable, and the island is a delight to read about. The author known as Jessie Newton and by various other pen names, one for each genre, pulls her 175 e-books together into the category of Feel Good Fiction, even if part of the good feeling seems to be a sense of the general superiority of women.