I’m falling a bit behind in my posts, so The Light Between Oceans has to get short shrift. It initially reminded me of Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden, which also featured a foundling and an Australian setting—although that book sweeps around both in time and between Oz and Great Britain. But The Light Between Oceans didn’t offer the same level of complexity and that sense of living inside a book, which, of course, makes for the very best reading.

I appreciated what this novel did offer: the sweet love story of WWI veteran Tom and Isabel, an impetuous girl who lost her two older brothers to the same war—and M.L. Stedman’s wonderful evocation of life in a lonely lighthouse off Australia’s southwest coast. But it just wasn’t quite enough story for me.

Here’s to more novels with devious plot twists, a swirl of settings, and a cavalcade of characters.