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A review by tandewrites
The Lamplighter by Crystal J. Bell
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
When a girl disappears after two lamps go out on Tempe’s watch, she scrambles for answers, hindered by the village authorities' call for her to be removed from her lamplighting work. More villagers vanish under her watch, and she discovers unsettling truths about the village's famous figureheads and her father, the former lamplighter. Her warnings are ignored, and she faces the choice to look the other way or risk speaking out and dooming herself and her sister to the missing girl's fate.
I had two main issues with this book, and both of them are the selling points in the official book description: the fog and the figureheads. They are the most prominent aspects of the book, yet somehow the most forgettable.
The town is infamous for people disappearing into the nightly fog, and the lamps being lit are synonymous with safety and protection. The atmosphere is eerie and poetically described, and the bare bones of the storyline's mystery were creative, so I thought I was going to be enthralled by some mystery fog as I have often been in the past. However, the fog just...didn't seem important. People seemed to disappear purely due to poor disability and not being able to find their way home if a lamp went out. However,it is revealed that the local sentient people-eating forest released the fog to lure in victims , and I am all for a plot twist, but I didn’t feel as if the book laid out the groundwork for this to be a believable twist. It came out of nowhere, and the lack of explanation and development due to how late it appeared in the plot made it fall flat for me.
The town is famous for its lucky ship figureheads. To my memory, we don't find out a huge amount about why they're lucky, or any particular desire for them, or really any mention of their significance outside of the plot twist. The girls who go missing get turned into the figureheads. How? I don't really know. There's a figurehead-in-progress in a workshop that looks vaguely like it's been carved to look like a girl, but it briefly comes alive to show that it is the girl. I don't know if they turn into wood, or if the carving captures their spirit somehow. Also, the other missing people are found in the forest getting consumed by tree roots . Are the forest and the figureheads connected? I don't actually know. I couldn't get a firm grasp on what was being said on the page, and any twist that could connect them happened so late in the story there was no time left for development and clarity.
Overall, this is one of the first times where I don't think I enjoyed anything about a book, so it's one star for me finishing it, and another because I've read books that physically pained me to read, and this one wasn't quite that bad. The characters were insufferable and made constant illogical decisions. The pacing was inconsistent, and therefore, so was the suspense. The conversations on misogyny (and later assault survivors) were poorly handled, and overall circular thinking became very tiresome.
But still, there are worse books out there.
When a girl disappears after two lamps go out on Tempe’s watch, she scrambles for answers, hindered by the village authorities' call for her to be removed from her lamplighting work. More villagers vanish under her watch, and she discovers unsettling truths about the village's famous figureheads and her father, the former lamplighter. Her warnings are ignored, and she faces the choice to look the other way or risk speaking out and dooming herself and her sister to the missing girl's fate.
I had two main issues with this book, and both of them are the selling points in the official book description: the fog and the figureheads. They are the most prominent aspects of the book, yet somehow the most forgettable.
The town is infamous for people disappearing into the nightly fog, and the lamps being lit are synonymous with safety and protection. The atmosphere is eerie and poetically described, and the bare bones of the storyline's mystery were creative, so I thought I was going to be enthralled by some mystery fog as I have often been in the past. However, the fog just...didn't seem important. People seemed to disappear purely due to poor disability and not being able to find their way home if a lamp went out. However,
The town is famous for its lucky ship figureheads. To my memory, we don't find out a huge amount about why they're lucky, or any particular desire for them, or really any mention of their significance outside of the plot twist.
Overall, this is one of the first times where I don't think I enjoyed anything about a book, so it's one star for me finishing it, and another because I've read books that physically pained me to read, and this one wasn't quite that bad. The characters were insufferable and made constant illogical decisions. The pacing was inconsistent, and therefore, so was the suspense. The conversations on misogyny (and later assault survivors) were poorly handled, and overall circular thinking became very tiresome.
But still, there are worse books out there.