The Lighthouse Witches

Product Information

When single mother Liv is commissioned to paint a mural in a 100-year-old lighthouse on a remote Scottish island, it's an opportunity to start over with her three daughters - Luna, Sapphire, and Clover. When two of her daughters go missing, she's frantic. She learns that the cave beneath the lighthouse was once a prison for women accused of witchcraft. The locals warn her about wildlings, supernatural beings who mimic human children, created by witches for revenge. Liv is told wildlings are dangerous and must be killed. You must be careful not to take hands with your other self -(wildling) If you do-the two of you will become one … In 1965, 22-year old nurse Pearl lost everything after the “shame” of her pre-marital pregnancy got around town. Desperate, and knowing she won’t be able to take care of the baby, she turns to Lichen Hall for help.

I followed her gaze to an old-fashioned oil lamp in the windowsill, which I'd assumed was for decoration. I caught Isla rolling her eyes as it became clear that no, I didn't know how to manage an oil lantern. Olivia Stay has just left her home in northern England, dragged her three daughters with her, and headed north on an hours-long drive to a remote island off the east coast of Scotland. She is an artist, with a commission to paint a mural on the inside of a 149-foot-tall lighthouse, which is in less-than-stellar condition. Her mysterious employer has left drawings for her of what he wants. She and the girls will be staying on the lighthouse property, in a small house, called a bothy. The lighthouse has an intriguing name. “You’re staying at the Longing?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Quite a history, that place.” Will Pearl ever succeed in freeing herself and her new friends from Nicnevin’s grasp or has she already been infected with the very thing that surrounds the grounds? C. J. Cooke is an award-winning poet and novelist published in twenty-three languages. She teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow, where she also researches the impact of motherhood on women’s writing and creative-writing interventions for mental health. Her previous novel is The Nesting. This chilling tale weaves a web of superstition and truth that fans of Gothic horror won’t want to miss."— Library JournalThe Picture Company co-founders Andrew RonaandAlex Heinemanwill executive produce the series with Studiocanal’s Ron Halpern and Shana Eddy overseeing the production for the studio. It was brought in by Studiocanal’s Leena Lancashire Iglesias.

I received an eARC of The Lighthouse Witches from Berkley in return for casting one or two minor spells. Thanks to EK, and NetGalley for facilitating. Olivia (Liv) is our first-person narrator for much of the book. Other chapters offer third-person POVs from Luna and Saffy. A second first-person account is historical. That one provides interceding chapters made up of passages from a book, left in the bothy, referred to as a grimoire. But it serves less as a source for studying the dark arts than it does as a memoir. Written by someone named Roberts, presumably an ancestor of Liv’s employer, it serves mostly as a fourth perspective, offering first-person exposition of historical events the book’s author lived through, events that inform the present. Mysterious and terrible events have happened on this island. It started with a witch hunt. Now, centuries later, islanders are vanishing without explanation. Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found—but she's still the same age as when she"disappeared" The secrets of witches havereached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting. Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found--but she's still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting.The author has seamlessly woven a story between the past and the present involving witch’s curses, wildlings, superstition and folklore that has kept the villagers living in fear since 1662. When an ancient book belonging to the descendant of an islander, a ‘Grimoire’ is discovered which details the witch hunts and the unjust treatment meted out to those suspected of witchcraft, the creep factor goes up even more as the actions of the accusers and retaliation of those accused will cast their shadows on the island for generations. Published in 2021 by Penguin Random House, the book follows young mother Liv and her three daughters who arrive on a mysterious Scottish island to run a decrepit lighthouse. In the middle of Ghost Woods in Scotland is Lichen Hall, a huge house with mysterious members, rooms, and incidents. It is a place where unwed girls go to give birth and hand over the child to adoptive parents. It is supposedly a better place than the ‘institutions’ that serve the same purpose. Luna is the main character from the contemporary storyline. She’s an adult now, and pregnant. The pregnancy is very much wanted but she’s torn over her relationship. We learn that she’s been in rehabilitation for many years after what happened on Lòn Haven. Like her mother, Liv, she’s tough, but she also needs to confront things. She was abandoned at the age of nine and has never worked out why. It haunts her.

At the time we were still living in Whitley Bay, north-east England (we moved to Scotland a year ago) right beside a lighthouse that we often walked by and the setting certainly found its way into The Lighthouse Witches. And the more I researched folklore, the more I came upon historical information about witches. As we were preparing to move to Scotland, I happened upon the Scottish witch trials. It was stunning to learn that the beautiful place to which we were relocating hada terrifying history of witch hunts, and I saw parallels both with the current moment (particularly the #MeToo movement) and my thinking around wildness. We follow Liv as she is introduced to the island, and the local oddballs. (and wonder why she suddenly dropped everything and dragged her kids north several weeks ahead of the appointed time) But when she sees a small, almost feral-seeming white-haired child on the property, and the police do not seem to take her seriously, things get more interesting. Local lore has it that condemned witches, in league with the fae realm, created wildlings, copies of island children, who would suddenly appear out of nowhere, intent on wiping out family lines. Locals hold that any such beings must be killed ASAP. Then two of her daughters, Saffy and Clover, disappear. Can you imagine your long gone sister you haven’t heard from for 23 years appears at the same place where she was missing? But the strange thing about this not only the way how they found her after all those years, she’s still 7 years, she hasn’t aged for a day after she got missing. Well, did you get intrigued? You might be, because things will get more complex and crazier at each chapter. Go on! It’s so exciting! Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.For me this was a pleasure from beginning to end. It had the right amount of atmosphere, Gothic vibes, and mystery to keep me engaged and wanting more. Do you come from Shetland?" Clover asked, running her fingertips along the stubbly wood-chip wallpaper. Wood chip was her favorite texture. Pearl Gorham arrives to the crumbling Lichen Hall in 1965, one of many a woman to be sent to give birth under the shadows to stay clean of scandal and society’s judgements and it isn’t long before Pearl suspects the proprietors are hiding something and when she meets a strange mother and her young son who live on the grounds, it’s only the beginning of what she is to uncover among the dark and twisted history of this once grand estate. From the first word, the story throws you into the fray of long ago women being accused of witchcraft, with no chance of them being judged anything but guilty. So be it, as the aggressors, and all that come after them, are cursed, the curses to be carried out by wildlings. There seems to be no escape from this curse as those cursed do the unthinkable. The sense of foreboding and danger is constant and it seems impossible that things can ever change for the better. Set over two timelines and told from three perspectives – mother Liv and eldest daughter Sapphire in 1998 and middle daughter Luna in 2021, The Lighthouse Witches is a haunting and atmospheric story set on a remote Scottish island, Lòn Haven. Liv is an artist and has been engaged by the reclusive current owner to paint a mural on the inside of the Island’s lighthouse ‘The Longing’– she is also fleeing from something, at the time we don’t know what; a decision which has fractured her family.

Okay, I’ll admit it, I was officially creeped out by this book. It is set in the late 1950s - mid 1960s in Scotland where being an unwed mother and her unfortunate illegitimate child was still very much a stigma. We’ve all heard of the horrific Magdalen laundries which only closed down far too recently for any reasonable person’s thinking. In this story, Lichen House, a truly massive gothic mansion in a remote Scottish location abutting some very dense woods seemed like a humane alternative for many families. The house has a dark past but we don’t believe in witches and ghosts - do we?The Lighthouse Witches is told from varying viewpoints in the years 1998 and 2021, with a subplot set in the 1600s. The story is about a single mother, Liv, who is contracted to paint a rather strange, and possibly Satanic, mural on the inside walls of a lighthouse called The Longing on an island off the eastern shores of Scotland at the end of the 20th century. Tagging along are her three children, teenaged Sapphire (or Saffy for short), and Luna and Clover, who are just little girls. Flash forward to the future, and a thirty-something (and pregnant) Luna is looking for her mother and two sisters who vanished off the island in 1998. When Clover is found, she is still seven years old. She has marks on her that take the form of a date, 2021, and the legend of the island is that this means that the child is a wildling or an imposter who looks like Clover but is a fairy in disguise. In any event, Luna takes Clover to the island to find out the true reason for the events of 1998 and why Clover hasn’t aged. In the 1998 timeline, Saffy reads from a grimoire that is left in the home near the lighthouse where the family is staying, and it is partially a diary written in the 1600s that details witch burnings on the island. Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found–but she’s still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches havereached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting.