The Lightkeeper's Daughter

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Author(s)
Age Range
14+
Release Date
May 11, 2004
ISBN
0385729251
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Three years have passed since Squid McCrae last saw her parents and the remote island where she grew up. She returns now at seventeen, a young woman with a daughter in tow. The visit, she knows, will be rough. Lizzie Island–paradise to some, a stifling prison to others–brings an onslaught of memories. It is the place of Squid’s idyllic childhood, where she and her brother, Alastair, blossomed into precocious adolescents. But Lizzie Island is also the place where Alastair died.

Now the past collides with the present as Squid’s homecoming unleashes bittersweet recollections, revelations, and accusations. But nothing is what it appears to be. No one possesses the complete truth, and no one is without blame.

From the Hardcover edition.

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2 reviews
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4.0
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Bittersweet
(Updated: June 04, 2026)
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5.0
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Reader reviewed by Babyangel07

This book is bittersweet. It eludes your mind and plays tricks on you sometimes. Once you start reading you won't want o put it down until you finish it. It has alot of symbolism in it. It's a good book and I would suggest anyone to read it. It has a good message and even though not everything in it goes the way you would hope for it reaches your heart. By the end of the book you feel as though you really know the people inside of it and you long to get to know them more.
G
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Weird!
(Updated: June 04, 2026)
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Reader reviewed by bookworm9

Seventeen-year-old Squid is returning to Lizzie Island with her young daughter Tatiana. Squid grew up on the island, alone except for her parents (Murray and Hannah) and older brother, Alistair. Her father, Murray, is the lightkeeper there. The book deals with the family's extraordinary relationship, both in the present, as Murray and Hannah meet their granddaughter for the first time, and in the past, when Alistair and Squid were kids. Meanwhile, they tiptoe around the subject of Alistair's death and the pregnant Squid's departure several years ago.

This book was strange, and not in a good way. Lawrence takes an unimaginable situation (living in isolation, with only your family for company), but does not sufficiently enlighten his readers on the psychological aspects of such a situation. Also, Tatiana's origins are hinted at throughout the entire book-- I suspected who her father was from chapter one-- and are then never explained. If Lawrence wants to leave it so ambiguous, he should have made his hints less heavy-handed. Discerning readers will pick up on them early on and be disappointed when their suspicions are never actually confirmed, and readers who don't pick up on the hints will wonder what the whole point was. ctually, the book really was kind of pointless. It hovers somewhere between YA and adult, and never attains a true form within either.
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