"the lightkeeper's daughter" by colleen coble

I have recently become a fan of Colleen Coble’s writing. I read Lonestar Secrets as a book review blogger selection, and I’ve since read a few of her other books. So when I learned of an opportunity to read and review her latest book, The Lightkeeper’s Daughter, I jumped at the chance.

Addie Sullivan’s world is rocked when a man claiming to be her uncle appears and tells her that the people she believed to be her parents were really strangers who took her in when she washed up on shore by the lighthouse her “father” kept. Her uncle takes her to live with her real father, one of the wealthiest men in Mercy Falls, under the guise of becoming a governess for her nephew Edward. As Addie tries to figure out who she is and how she fits into her father’s world, she runs headlong into a conspiracy surrounding her mother’s death and her own abandonment at sea.

First, the good: I greatly enjoyed the mystery surrounding Addie and her mother. The story took twists and turns that I wasn’t expecting and kept me on my toes. Coble does a great job (as always) of keeping you guessing until the end.

Now, the bad:

• At the beginning of the story, I had a hard time keeping the characters straight. When characters spoke to one another, they referred to each other as Mr., Mrs., and so on, but in the narration, characters were referred to by first name. I felt like I needed a cheat sheet to keep everyone straight.

• Normally, I’m all for a romantic plot line. This one, however, was actually too sappy for me. I found it unlikely how quickly Addie and John (Edward’s father) fell for each other, though I suppose it could happen that fast. More aggravating, though, was the sappy dialogue between the two. Perhaps people do speak that way to each other in real life, but it just served to give my gag reflex a good workout!

While I would not recommend this book, I still highly recommend the other Coble books I’ve read (Lonestar Sanctuary, Lonestar Secrets, and Anathema), and I look forward to reading more of her writing in the future—but I think I’ll stay away from the rest of this series.

***I received a free copy of this book to review through an offer in Coble's e-newsletter.***