The Lighthouse

By: Fran Dorricott

Narrated by: Kate Louise Okello, Imogen Wilde, Beth Eyre

Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

No one expected them to go there. The question is: will any of them leave?

Six friends travel to a remote island north of the Scottish Highlands for an old school reunion. They’ve rented the Lighthouse—a stunning, now abandoned building that was once notorious for deaths at sea.

On the first evening, someone goes missing. The group search all through the night to no avail. But when the five remaining friends return to the lighthouse early the next morning, they are shocked to find James inside. He’s looks terrified—but won’t say a word about where he’s been.

The party vow to put the strange night behind them and enjoy the rest of their stay, but when more unexplained things begin to occur, tensions escalate. It’s clear James knows something, but nothing will persuade him to give up the secrets of the island. Is he protecting his friends from a terrible truth or leading them into more danger?

A chilling and powerfully atmospheric suspense novel with a gothic edge, perfect for fans of The Hunting Party and The Sanatorium.

©2022 Fran Dorricott (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Such a strong sense of place that you will be genuinely confused when you look up and realise you’re reading on a train and not on the bleak, isolated island that the author paints so vividly and beautifully." (Caroline Corcoran)

Great Book, Ruined By The Ending

I fell in love with this book immediately.
The location, the set up.
The cast of characters, all of whom I found interesting, although a little shallow.
But the location, the plot, and the beautifully descriptive language made this one hard to put down.
Also, there was initially real potential for a thoroughly scary experience.
One character disappearing and returning perplexed and changed in intangible but undeniable ways, a group of lifelong friends with one new addition whose motivations appear to be questionable.
There were so many reasons that this should have been completely exceptional.
But there is no real follow through.
All of these potentialities hover in this place of noncommittal nonsense.
It is so good for the first half, and then you begin to see that so much is just unfinished, not explained, and (at times) ridiculously unrealistic.
Without giving too much away, there is no way on earth that six people, all in great physical shape and basically in the prime of their lives, couldn’t swiftly dispatch of ONE person.
That entire sequence was absolutely ridiculous.
What initially made this story compelling, a story you want to finish, was all of the history of the island, of the lighthouse and the people over the course of a century who’ve inhabited it, the ghosts (real or metaphorical) of that past.
There were like three or four historical elements that come up repeatedly and half of the reason you remain engaged in this story is because of the implied promise that these questions will be answered.
Not only are they not answered but the last couple of chapters actually confuse the reader even more, and I can think of nothing more irritating than finishing a book and realizing that literally not one of those things were answered, not one aspect of these fascinating curiosities has any conclusion in any way, shape, or form.
And furthermore, what might be worse than that is listening to something for nine hours only to realize that no one gets what they deserve, and you find that the characters are even more unlikeable at the end of the book than they were in the beginning.
I am so totally disappointed by this.
I don’t ever recall loving 3/4 of a story so much only to find myself truly hating that same book because the ending is so poorly orchestrated.
It didn’t do the characters any Justice, it cheapened the entire experience.
You’d be better served by listening to the first six hours and just walking away, before you get the gut punch that the last five or six chapters present.
The narration was exceptional.
All of these performers were phenomenal.
Zero complaints there.
But please, next time…
Finish the story in a way that helps the reader understand what happens, and why.
And finish the story in a way that helps us at least understand the characters more, even if we don’t like them more, we should understand them more, we should feel like we’ve learned something about why they do what they do.
But that ending was abhorrent, totally implausible, actually silly.
And we learn nothing about these characters, we learn NOTHING about this beautiful and creepy place and why it is the way it is.
It was awful.
Worst ending ever.
The only reason I’m giving this book 3 stars is because it really is delightful for the first three quarters of the book.
I was in LOVE, I thought I’d found my next repeat listen book of 2022.
I felt totally mislead when I saw where this was going .
After the first 3/4 just turn it off, spare yourself what I just went through.
I hated these people because of the ending and couldn’t make any sense of why they made the choices they did.
If you’d wrapped things up in any real way, the reader can at least leave with a better grasp of WHY.
There are no answers here.
Just empty promises and a book that could have been out of this world good (it seemed like it was going to be SOOO scary) but instead turns into a shallow, self serving circus of nonsense.
It pains me to review this book poorly.
This author clearly has a ton of potential and the writing itself is indeed, beautiful.
But things should’ve been finished in a way that respects the story, the characters, and the reader.
It felt like FD was under pressure to just finish the book rather than taking the time to bring the same integrity to the ending that we see at the beginning 😢
I’ll still read her next offering, in the hopes that this wealth of potential is fully utilized next time.
Fingers crossed 🤞🏼

Really?

So I endure hours of listening to this where nothing happens. Just having to listen to these people whining and complaining about everything.

Then the couple hours and ending take hard turn into wtf. If she was going for believability this was not the way to go. Actually made me laugh, just a ridiculous ending to a dull novel.

Slow Burn… Atmospheric

Don’t expect galloping thrills, and action packed chapters.
This is an insidiously creeping tale of diverse grown friends on a reunion weekend.. all culminating in an inevitable ending…… Quite good for the patient gothic reader..