432
pages
Publisher:
MIRA
Release
Date: April 1
The blurb
She has nothing to live for in the present, but
finds there's something worth dying for in the past…
From Tiffany Reisz, the international
bestselling storyteller behind The Bourbon Thief and The Original Sinners
series, comes an enthralling new novel about a woman swept away by the tides
who awakens to find herself in 1921, reunited with the husband she's been
mourning for four years. Fans of Kate Morton and Diana Gabaldon will fall in
love with the mystery, romance and beauty of an isolated South Carolina
lighthouse, where a power greater than love works its magic.
My thoughts
“The night mark is the pattern the light
flashed. Some lighthouses had a steady beam. Some lights flashed. That’s how
navigators told lighthouses apart.”
Surely I don’t need to tell you that Tiffany
Reisz tells amazing stories. Her imagination is a thing of wonder and her
characters are always, not so much larger than life, but painted with such
clarity they come to life.
The Night Mark is a very emotional story. When it starts and we
meet Faye she is only surviving. Four years after her soul mate, Will, died,
she’s still buried so deep in her grief that it felt almost as if it was the
only thing that kept her going. Grief is Faye and Faye is grief and while she’s
making an attempt to kick start her life again, it seems as if that life will
have to fit around that grief, accommodate it, because when Faye lost Will, she
lost her reason for being.
“Whoever first said it was better to have loved
and lost than never to have loved at all had neither loved nor ever lost.” – Faye
Then Faye almost drowns and when she comes to
she thinks she’s been reunited with her Will, or at the very least that she’s
experiencing the most lucid dream she has ever experienced. Except that the man
isn’t Will, and she isn’t dreaming. Instead she finds herself almost a century
in the past, and in the company Carrick, who closely resembles, but isn’t Will.
I’m not going to say a whole lot more about the
story itself. Twists and turns kept me turning the pages as secrets were
revealed, and surprises kept me guessing. This is a love story in its purest
form. A ‘love-overcomes-all’ sorta story. The wording is both lyrical and at
times introspective, but never too much of either. And both the main and the
secondary characters we’re fascinating and so well portrayed I felt I knew them
on a personal level.
I loved how this story played with time. It is
not impossible that time-travel purists will have one or two questions relating
to whether or not history should or could change, by the time the story ends. I
just lost myself in the romance of it all and decided that I would stick to
Carrick’s theory.
“To think I spent my whole life believing time
only went in one direction, (…). Thought it was a river. Turns out it’s an
ocean. Waves come in. Waves go out. Sometimes those waves take us with them.” – Carrick
While Tiffany is an all-round fabulous author,
there is one thing she does better than anyone else I’ve ever read; she writes
the best priests ever. Pat Cahill in this book proves that once again.
“My job entailed turning wine into God’s blood,
so I don’t think I can judge you too harshly.” – Pat Cahill.
I received an ARC of this title through
Netgalley and while it pains me to do so I have to say that I hope this wasn’t
the final version. I came across issues both with both formatting and editing. Nothing so major
or shocking it took me out of the story, never mind put me off reading it or
even made me mark the story down, but enough of them to make me sit up and
mention them here.
To summarize: The Night Mark only confirmed
what The
Original Sinners books had already told me; this author possesses a
rare and wonderful form of genius. And while the Original Sinners will, in
all likelihood, always be my favourite stories and characters by this author, I
now know, without a shadow of doubt, that she can write just about anything she
puts her mind (and fingers) to. And I will continue to greedily devour those
words of hers.
