Blog Tour: The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter

Today’s stop on the blog tour for Cherry Radford’s The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter is – you guessed it – right here. Check out previous posts about this work of fiction from this very blog tour by browsing the bloggers on the poster below, and be sure to visit The Secret World of a Book Blog, another host for today. I want to thank Love Books Group for sending me the ebook copy of The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, and as always, the thoughts I put down in this post are all my own. With that said, let’s get into it.

Synopsis:

There’s someone out there, and an unforeseen, irresistible connection…

After the break-up of her marriage, Imogen escapes to her aunt’s converted lighthouse on Beachy Head. Writing for a tedious online magazine but hoping to start a novel, she wants to be alone until she finds an entrancing flamenco CD in her borrowed car and contacts the artist via Twitter. It turns out that actor-musician Santiago needs help with English, and is soon calling her profesora.

Through her window, the other lighthouse winks at her across the sea. The one where her father was a keeper, until he mysteriously drowned there in 1982. Her aunt is sending extracts from his diary, and Imogen is intrigued to learn that, like her and Santi, her father had a penfriend.

Meanwhile, despite their differences Imogen is surrounded by emotional and geographical barriers, Santi surrounded by family and land-locked Madrid their friendship develops. So, she reads, did her father’s but shocking revelations cause Imogen to question whether she ever really knew him.

Two stories of communication: the hilarious mistakes, the painful misunderstandings, and the miracle or tragedy of finding someone out there with whom you have an unforeseen, irresistible connection. 

REVIEW:

The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter is a story full of suspense, love, and family. As layered as it is, author Cherry Radford manages to keep a lighthearted tone that floats the reader across each page, taking in every detail while staying strongly on track. Juggling a multitude of characters with similar but distinctive personalities can often make a book feel heavy handed, but in this case the story flows more smoothly with the dialogue and interactions between each character.

Imogen and Santi’s (our protagonists) interactions occur mainly via Twitter, which on the surface may seem corny, but it offers a unique look at the way we process our feelings when presented with a message of text, rather than a face-to-face meeting. Insecurities flare up – almost immediately and yet subliminally – without the markers of voice inflection and body language, and yet the experience of butterflies, missing someone you talk to frequently, and the “traditional” sensations of a spark of a romance are all still there. This is an interesting contrast to the diary entries Imogen reads from her father; they are much longer than Tweets and digital messages, but the parallels in how Imogen reacts to the two mediums are hard not to notice.

Amidst this flourishing relationship is a family secret, tragedy, and the internal barriers a few of the characters (including Imogen) put up. The language barrier – apart from a geographical one – is also an interesting device used not just to further Imogen and Santi’s relationship, but to uphold the feeling that perhaps a seemingly impossible situation (or connection) can be remedied (or fulfilled) with patience, inquisitiveness, and by taking life one day at a time.

It was a pleasure reading this book, and I hope you get the chance to read it as well. You can learn more about the author, Cherry Radford, by visiting her website, and you can get a copy for Kindle or a paperback version by clicking here.