There were a lot of good things about The Lighthouse Keeper. Unfortunately there was just as much if not more that didn‘t work for me, but I‘ll start with the good. 

The setting of west coast America in the late 19th century was lovely, and the writing style was also great. 

Liv Rancourt‘s writing is witty, engaging and easy to follow, which made the book very readable till the end. 

I also enjoyed the cast of characters. Vincent was a fun protagonist (I do love a pretty man obsessed with the sea), and so was Margaret, despite her character depth coming a little too short in comparison to Vincent and Rafe. 

However, as much as I liked the characters on their own, the pacing of their relationship developments felt off at times.  Margaret and Vincent‘s friendship evolved very quickly without many actual moments between them to establish their bond. There was also a lot of telling rather than showing, leading to some of the relationships feeling inorganic. 

Vincent‘s frequent mention of his attraction to Rafe got incredibly repetitive after a while, the same applies to him talking about how he‘s sure there‘s a gentler side to Rafe. 

Don‘t get me wrong, I like the ‚hard on the outside, soft on the inside’ and pining tropes as much as the next guy, but there‘s only so many times you can hear it without it getting old. 

This also wasn‘t the only instance where repetition became apparent. Both moments in the story as well as certain expressions were noticeably frequent. As an example, „Upsetting the power balance in China“ was mentioned multiple times when characters were doing magic, and don‘t even get me started on how uncomfortably often the word prick was used. There was no need to describe how Vincent‘s „prick swelled“ just because he was watching Rafe eat, in public mind you. 

Furthermore, I felt the book was lacking some exposition when it came to the magic system. It felt like there was supposed to be a more established system to the magic, judging by the fact characters were talking about their gifts being a particular type of magic. That was never expanded upon or concretely explained during the novel, but rather dealt with in an ‚explain as you go’ manner. Whenever a new character was introduced that had a gift we hadn‘t encountered yet there was a quick mention of what it was, but the lack of pre-existing set up sometimes led to it seeming like there was little rhyme or reason to it, and had moreso been come up with on the spot in accordance with what the plot needed at that moment. 

Like I said in the beginning, the book isn‘t all bad. The writing is great and the premise and characters themselves have a ton of potential. The book just lacks a lot of polish when it comes to exposition, repetition, as well as the occasional typo and continuity issue, and could‘ve overall benefited from more editing.