The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman

"Tom and Isabel live a quiet, isolated life on Janus Rock, where Tom is the lighthouse keeper. Their attempts to start a family have been met with tragedy and they've all but given up hope of having children of their own until one day a boat washes ashore and in that boat, is a perfectly healthy, baby. They're faced with a decision and the one that they make will cause a ripple effect that will alter the course of not just their lives but everyone around them. This was a deeply emotional, heart-wrenching novel about love, grief, morality and the impossible choices people make for those they love."

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

Pros: Tom such a good, kind, gentle person who would do anything for Isabel/The Piano tuner at the end of Part One, like ❤️😢

Cons: The choice that Tom and Isabel make isn't necessarily the right one but I completely understand why they did what they did/The ending wasn't the ending I wanted but it worked, in a gut wrenchingly realistic way.  

Full Review:

Tom Sherbourne is the lighthouse keeper on Janus Island. He's accepted the job after returning from WWI, trying to keep the horrors he saw on the front at bay. Shortly before shipping off to Janus, he meets a young woman, Isabel, who decides to start a correspondence with him. When he's given shore-leave a few months later, he calls on her and they start a relationship. 

When they're married and Isabel goes to live with Tom on Janus, they're very much in love and life seems full of possibilities. Their dreams of children quickly seem to be just that though, dreams, since Isabel suffers one miscarriage after another. 

It seems that children aren't part of God's plan and Isabel's trying her best to accept that until one day, she hears the sound of a baby crying. At first she dismisses it, thinking it's just the wind but when she hears it again, she runs to the lighthouse and meets Tom, who's come down, saying he's seen a boat offshore. 

There is indeed a boat and in that boat is a dead man and a baby. The baby is perfectly healthy and though Isabel and Tom try to figure out what turn of events could have possibly transpired to bring this baby to them, Isabel is convinced that its Gods way of giving her the child she's always wanted. Tom knows he has to report the boat and the dead man, that it's his job, to not do so would be against the law. But he can see how much the baby means to Isabel, how alive she is now, after being a ghost for so long. His heart wins and and he never report its. 

That decision will come back to haunt them, years later, when they learn that the child's mother, Rachel Hoennfeldit is very much alive and has been searching for her missing husband and child for the last four years. 

After a dry spell in reading, this book was a much needed spark that had me eager and excited to sit down and read again. This was one of those rare books that actually had me tearing up at the end because though it wasn't the end I was hoping for, it was one that worked, in a completely beautiful, if somewhat heart-wrenching way.