Penny, a young woman who has just finished university and in need of a job that pays, takes a position at a lighthouse. But on her first night there, she sees a figure on the island, despite her colleague Matthew telling her that, along with Colin, they are the only ones there…

The Lighthouse by Amy Cross continues a run of books by authors that are either unknowns to me, or ones that I have heard of, but have never read any of their work before. I have to say this is one of the benefits of using an device like a Kindle, along with the opportunity via the Amazon site (other book buying sites are available) to get books for the device either for free, or at a lower price than you would otherwise have to pay for them. To be clear, I do buy a lot of books in paper or hardback versions, but the Kindle books do save a good bit of money, which is good.

As a consequence, this does make it easier to take a chance on authors that I haven’t, as yet, read before such as Amy Cross and depending on how I get on with these new authors, I may end up buying physical copies of the authors other books, should I decide to read more of their work.

But back to The Lighthouse.

The story is told in the first person, from Penny’s point of view. After an intriguing prologue that works well, ending on a very surprising note, the story begins with Penny arriving on the island and cuts between the ‘present day’ events with those of a month earlier as Penny seeks a job to get on with her life after university, not wanting to go home, determined to avoid getting into debt at all. To her the job at the lighthouse is the first step in her future.

The events on the island itself take place over a couple of days as Penny suspects the island is haunted, but also is concerned with Colin and his obsessiveness in writing in his notebooks, everything he does. Matthew is very talkative, but doubts Penny saw anything on the island.

Penny herself has been on tablets since she saw,something when she was a child, however she comes to suspect that event is linked to what is happening now on the island.

How this plays out is well written by Amy Cross, the style of writing not too bad. The ghost aspect of the story is done very well, the end impressive and a very effective epilogue.

However, I did think the reveal itself, of what secrets the island holds was a bit of a left field turn. I’m not saying those kinds of turns can’t work, I just don’t think it worked well here.

However, for most of the book, I was enjoying it and while that turn didn’t work for me, it didn’t detract from that enjoyment.

As a book then, there was a lot to like in The Lighthouse. Certainly enough there to make me want to try another novel by Amy Cross at some point.

Not a bad read at all.

Rating: *** out of 5