The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke

 

The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke.

Published 30th September by Harper Collins.

From the cover of the book:

Upon the cliffs of a remote Scottish island, Lòn Haven, stands a lighthouse.

A lighthouse that has weathered more than storms.

Mysterious and terrible events have happened on this island. It started with a witch hunt. Now, centuries later, islanders are vanishing without explanation.

Coincidence? Or curse?

Liv Stay flees to the island with her three daughters, in search of a home. She doesn’t believe in witches, or dark omens, or hauntings. But within months, her daughter Luna will be the only one of them left.

Twenty years later, Luna is drawn back to the place her family vanished. As the last sister left, it’s up to her to find out the truth . . .

But what really happened at the lighthouse all those years ago?

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Liv Stay arrives on the remote Scottish island of Lòn Haven, with her three daughters, fifteen-year-old Saffy, nine-year-old Luna and seven-year-old Clover. She is trying to escape the chaos of their lives, and hopes that their stay here might offer some respite from the tough choices she is going to have to make very soon. The artist's commission that has drawn Liv to this island is a strange one - she has been employed to paint an arcane mural on the inside of a half-ruined lighthouse named The Longing. and their home for the duration is a bothy perched high on the clifftops beside the lighthouse. 

It's an eerie, windswept place that evokes unsettling feelings, and although Liv doesn't believe in superstitious talk about fairies, ghosts and witches, the history of the site cannot be denied - for this was where local women were imprisoned under the ground on which the lighthouse now stands,  while awaiting execution during James VI's witch hunts. This is a place that is said to be cursed, and whatever the truth, islanders have been going missing without explanation ever since. Within months, Liv, Saffy and Clover have disappeared too, leaving Luna all alone...

Twenty years later, Luna receives a call that leads her back to Lòn Haven for a reckoning. The time has come for her to dig deep and recall those forgotten memories, to try to get to the truth about The Longing and what happened to her family all those years ago...

The Lighthouse Witches is a fabulous immersive tale that swallows you up with its creepy Gothic vibes. The story plays out in three timelines - the history of the witch trials and what followed in their wake hundreds of years ago; the months that Liv and her daughters live on Lòn Haven; and the events that bring Luna back to the island twenty years later. All three weave together like a spell, bringing in delicious threads of folklore; witchcraft; dark tales of cursed children; and the strange otherness that clings to such remote communities, where everyone knows each other's secrets and the shadows of history linger long into the modern day.

I can't say too much about how the secrets of The Longing are uncovered, of the startling truths that are revealed, without giving away too much of the game, so you will have to discover these for yourselves - and trust me, you really, really want to. Cooke spins this story out in a way that I have not seen before, starting with a solid base of the Gothic kind and gradually transforming it into something else entirely, by combining a classic witchy yarn with modern domestic noir, and then heading off in the direction of Black Mirror country. It works superbly well and kept me enrapt from the first page to the last. The location is breath-taking perfection, right out of you nightmares, and the way Cooke uses the backdrop of a wild and remote Scottish island is a delight too.

If you are looking for one book to read this spooky season that will give you chills, thrills and unique surprises, then this, dear readers, is the novel you need. This is seriously good!

The Lighthouse Witches is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats, from your favourite book retailer.

Thank you to Harper Collins for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review, and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.

About the author:

C. J. Cooke (Carolyn Jess-Cooke) lives in Glasgow with her husband and four children. C J Cooke's works have been published in 23 languages and have won many awards. She holds a PhD in Literature from the Queen's University of Belfast and is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, where she researches creative writing interventions for mental health. Two of her books are currently optioned for film.