Three men stationed at a remote lighthouse off the coast in Cornwall disappear without a trace. The doors are locked from the inside and the clocks stopped at the same time. A writer investigates the disappearance by interviewing the wives who who were left behind. The story alternates between the present day interviews and the men at the lighthouse before the disappearance.

I was absolutely enthralled with this book. I loved the format and the way the author revealed tantalizing little tidbits about the men and their wives as the novel went on.

Based in true events of lighthouse keepers that went missing in 1900, this story moves along at a slow pace. Told in different time periods, the readers are given glimpses of life in a lighthouse. I felt the supernatural aspect did not add to the story as readers attempt to solve the mystery. Vivid descriptions of animal and child abuse were not appreciated.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group - Viking for this free ARC

I first found out about this haunting story from The Supernatural Podcast with Ashley Flowers. I highly recommend listening to it if you want more of a background on this haunting mystery. Emma does a great job recreating the story and not making it to fantastical. I usually find it hard to read books that go back and forth between time period's. However, Emma did a great job keeping the story flowing. I'm excited to see what else she has in store.

I'm kind of going back and forth about how I feel about this book so I think it would be best to break it down into a pros/cons list.

Pros: This book is wonderfully atmospheric and you can feel the melancholy dripping off the pages. The descriptions of the sea, the fog, the mist, the cold are so vivid that you feel like you are there, at the lighthouse or in the little seaside town. I immediately felt transported. It also employs two of my favorite storytelling devices: 1) takes place over two different time periods, and 2) told from multiple different character's perspectives. There is also a pretty solid mystery which left me stumped right up until the end.

Cons: I struggled to keep up with whose part of the story I was reading at a time. I kept having to go back and see, is this Bill? Arthur? Vince? and so on. For the most part, the characters were not very distinct from one another with the exception of one or two of them. At times the story became confusing and I had to reread passages. There are parts that I am still not sure about and wonder if they actually happened or were figments of the imagination. Once the solution to the mystery was revealed (and I don't want to give anything away here so I will tread lightly), I still had several questions.

It was an entertaining book and it kept me wanting to know more, but at times it was confusing. I am eager to see what other people will make of it once it is released and how they will interpret certain parts.

** “People will believe anything, and given the choice they prefer lies to the truth because lies are usually more interesting.” **

Based loosely on the 1900 mystery of the Eilean More lighthouse, Emma Stonex’s “The Lamplighters” tells the story of three lighthouse keepers who disappeared from the Maiden Rock light in 1972, and the 1992 pursuit of the mystery’s solution.

When keepers Arthur Black, Bill Walker and Vincent Bourne disappear from a rock tower lighthouse closed from the inside, with several other curious clues, people speculate what happened to the men — drowning, kidnapping, aliens, taking off with assistance for a brand new life. Twenty years later author Dan Sharp decides to look into the story, talking to the men’s wives and girlfriend. (“Occam’s razor, it’s called. The law that says the simplest solution is usually right. If you’ve got a mystery, don’t go complicating it beyond the sum of its parts.”)

“The Lamplighters” reveals the story by alternating chapters of the men’s lives on the tower, told from each’s man’s perspective, and chapters from the women in 1992 — either told from the point-of-view of them reminiscing about their past or from their side of their conversation with Dan Sharp.

With this method, Stonex allows us to see their stories leading up to the disappearance, what occurred that directly led to the disappearance, and life for the women after the event.

Stonex does a good job of slowly building up the mystery, allowing the reader to guess until the very end as to what exactly did happen to the three men. She throws in several other twists that add to the plot.

As a “work of fiction based on actual events,” “The Lamplighters" is an interesting suspense/thriller/whodunnit novel that delves into the power of secrets, honesty and understanding. It will appeal to fans of mysteries, the paranormal, tales of the sea and lighthouses, and historical fiction.

One disclaimer: this novel, which is due out March 16, does contain coarse language throughout.

Four and a half stars out of five.

Viking provided this complimentary copy through NetGalley for my honest, unbiased review.

I listened to a podcast about three lighthouse keepers stationed at a lighthouse on an uninhabited Scottish island of Eilean Mor who disappeared without a trace in 1900. This sounded similar to the The Lamplighters, a fictionalized story about 3 men who also disappeared from a lighthouse. The story is told from the men before their disappearance and then 20 years later when an author interviews the women they left behind. It seems almost everyone in the story is hiding a secret. The author does a good job portraying how life is in a lighthouse, the predictable days, the solitude, the lack of fresh food and the desire to return back to land. The story kept me guessing how the men disappeared.

Interesting read. Pros: evocative prose, interesting premise, I liked that it went back and forth from 1972 and 1992, good mystery, and good summation. Cons: too many characters and none that were particularly empathetic, very slow pace, story seemed to spend a long time setting up all the red herrings and then the telling of the actual events was very quick, and one sided narration was a bit hard to follow at times.

In this literary suspense novel, three men go missing without a trace from a lighthouse off the coast of Cornwall, leaving their loved ones in a state of limbo for decades. The sense of isolation and the power of the sea are vividly portrayed in a slow-moving but tense narrative. The state of mind of each of the men in the days leading up to their disappearance is gradually revealed through alternating perspectives, while the women they left behind offer additional clues looking back on the incident from 20 years later. The reader is given a plausible explanation for what happened, while a sense of the great unknown remains.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex.

Three lighthouse workers disappear while on shift at the Maiden Rock, a lighthouse situated out in the sea fifteen miles. When the relief crew shows up the building is empty and they have vanished without a trace.
The story alternates between 1972 before the men disappeared and twenty years later as a writer interviews the family members of the lighthouse workers and tries to figure out what happened to them.
As the writer interviews the wives of the keepers it becomes apparent that there are secrets surrounding the incident.

Without giving too much away, I was glad that there was a definite solution given to their disappearance. I was worried that it would leave the reader hanging to come up with their own conclusions. There is just a touch of supernatural throughout the book that made me think it was heading that direction, but then, back to reality (or was there something supernatural involved?). You will need to read the book to find out. It was a bit of a slow start but once I got into the rhythm of the writing it really became a page-turner and I couldn't wait to find out what happened. The descriptions of the loneliness and isolation of being on a lighthouse are fantastic as are the taut, nerve-wracking interactions between the lighthouse workers as it gets closer to their disappearance.

I did find this book to be slightly slow in pace, with a lot of clues to throw the reader off of what was really happening. The longer I read the less interested I became. I was not engaged in the way the chapters were portrayed - they seemed to lack depth and were like reading an essay. But, it could be just my take so I don't want to be too harsh

Stonex turns the true story of three lighthouse keepers who disappeared from an island off the Cornish coast at the turn of the last century into a late twentieth century mystery. It’s 1972 when a supply boat arrives Maiden Rock Lighhouse with food stores and a relief keeper. The men an=board the boat are greeted by silence, the three keepers are nowhere to be found. Food is left on the table, the clocks have stopped at 8:45, the lighthouse and island have become a sort of Mary Celeste. The story becomes legendary and twenty years later, a writer approaches the wives of the three keepers, hoping to research and write a book that will solve, once and for all, what really happened on Maiden Rock. Eerily fascinating, this book kept me reading, I simply could not stop.