Where do I even start with C.J. Cooke’s, The Lighthouse Witches? Witches, spells, historical references with modern day relevance, and a lesson that doesn’t feed into dismissing magick—all within a single piece of fiction? Yes, please.
The book is about a single mom, Olivia, who rips her three children from the lives they knew in a hurry and moves them to an isle in the Scottish Highlands where she has taken on a commission to create a mural in an old lighthouse. Soon after moving, Olivia learns that the tight-knit village still holds on to old myths while navigating strange occurrences in the lighthouse, which was built on top of a pit where people accused of witchcraft were tortured and held before trial. Trying to fit in, but also stay rooted in mundane explanations, Olivia quickly learns that something is very wrong on this island.
Told from multiple perspectives, the story keeps you on your feet from the very beginning. Cooke does a really good job at keeping the tension and suspense swelling for the majority of the book. It’s really difficult for me to stay interested in a book from the very beginning. I usually have to force myself to get through the first few chapters in order to finally get through the meat of the story (or, if it’s too much effort to maintain my interest, I would abandon the book altogether). However, I devoured this book.
I particularly liked how Cooke took various perspectives to tell a single story. As you read, it becomes clear that Cooke is intentionally having the perspectives speak to each other instead of separated viewpoints that eventually come together. I think this gives the story an added layer to consider who the narrator is in each chapter and what worldview they are experiencing the story with and through.
Cooke skilfully maintains the character development of each character without blurring the narrative of the story. Like, I knew when Olivia was telling the story versus when Saffy was telling the story—and no, it wasn’t just because the title of each chapter told you whose narrative that part of the story was coming from. After a while, I stopped even checking the titles of each chapter because of how seamless the character arcs were.
This complexity helped make the characters feel so real and keep me guessing about the story. You could never really tell or completely trust each individual character and their point of view. What you learned from one characters perspective was quickly dispelled by another perspective who had just that little bit of extra context that changed the entire understanding—and ultimately who the reader might empathise with. I cannot go on about just this aspect of the book, enough. There were so many different aspects that I loved, but this is the one that was emphasised for me the most.
The entire story has consistent loopholes that keeps you on the edge until the very. Last. Page.
And I cried at the end of the book. A lot.
It spoke so much to me about what it means to be cursed, to runaway from and eventually accept Death, Fate, science and technology, and how the human condition under our current paradigm forces us to become enmeshed into a frenzy of fear—and the strength it takes to fight against cultural norms. The story forces us to question what we mean by ‘community care’, and how do we cultivate it?
I don’t really have anything I disliked about this book. If I’m really trying to look for something to dislike, I would say that I didn’t like the trope of witches’ using human bones in spellwork without consent from the being that witches’ are taking the bones from. The reason I say this is a push to dislike is because the trope is almost inevitable when you consider that, to this day, witches’ are considered to be fanatics, mad, or any range of ‘disconnected from reality’. Knowing that witches’ being considered in this way is connected to patriarchy (and, the alienation of non-men from being considered human), it makes sense why this trope persists. Because, no matter how much evidence we have of witches being complex just like any other identity group where some are healers and provide services for the good of people, and others vie for power over others—there is no way to convince people that maybe you’re rationally ‘mad’ under a paradigm that dehumanises mad people.
Having said that dislike, I still give this book 5 stars and would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys gothic fiction. Give it a miss if exploring true untold stories that humanises those who were once made into villains isn’t your thing (yes, this is tongue in cheek, because I think everyone should read this book to reorient their understanding of what creates cultural beliefs, and what it means to (re)conceptualise our understanding of something that was previously villainised). And please, please, please do not skip the Author’s Note at the end of the story!
Content Warning: Please know that Cooke does explore community violence, PTSD, loss, and so on. So, there are times where there is detail about murder, death, and abandonment.