The Brighter the Light

I hope that you enjoy this book as much as I have - I was unable to put it down and read it it as fast as possible. It was a joy to read and the best piece of fiction I've read in a while.The story follows Ruth in 1950 and Ivy in 2020.Ivy returns to Outer Banks, North Carolina, after her grandma (Ruth) has died to settle her affairs.She finds herself looking into her family history, trying to find answers through the things Ruth left behind.The 1950 timeline explains what happened, mainly through Ruth's viewpoint, whilst the 2020 features Ivy living her life as she discovers all of the family secrets that she wished she could have heard directly from Ruth.The story is very well written, well-paced and a joy to read. I had to finish it as soon as I could.It doesn't feature sex scenes - it's acknowledged that some characters have had sex, but you're not given any description of the act - I appreciate too much information puts off some readers.There's some bad language, but it's infrequent.✳️Important✳️There's something at the end of the book that explains things, if you've had trouble getting your head around the revelations. However, please don't read it until you have finished the book, as it will spoil the unfolding story.I received this book free as part of Amazon First Reads

Oooh, my Kindle First choice this month, and a good one but it lost itself a star with a couple of real spelling howlers, one which made me gasp aloud !! Sorry, but it's not good enough and ought to have been picked up. Simple as that.A lovely cover on my copy.....it is a pretty good story but take it from me, you need to REALLY concentrate as there are a lot of characters and differing timelines and trying to figure out who was related to who and remembering who lived where in which timeline is hard work, so you do have to pay attention. I did and still had to flick back 'n' forth quite a few times to remember who was who and who they were married to, etc....Also, some secrets never did get resolved, which I guess you can choose to do yourself, but I'd prefer the author tied up all the loose ends.But the errors I happened upon really should have been tidied up by any decent editor. She writes french not French, more than once, venders not vendors (my gasping moment) and cord not chord.She wrote about a rearview mirror in a car catching a nervous smile but the other person wasn't sitting in the back, as all their worldly possessions were there, we were already told. The dialogue on the same car journey from a 4 year old didn't ring true, either. I don't have kids but I don't know any child that young who is that voluble but makes sense !! A couple of characters, such as Ivy's mum, didn't even get a namecheck till we were quite a ways in (255 pages), which also irritated me a little.I needed to Google sticker shock as I'd not heard of it. It sounds a lovely area, the Outer Banks and she certainly described it well to us and took us along for the ride. The sea-wreck was fascinating, in that it often disappeared for decades. We have one on my local beach but it only disappears beneath a high tide, and is always there at low !!I think I'd read another by her but not again if I happened upon howlers like I saw here.

The storyline over 2 generations were generally interesting & unpredictable. Many reviews give positive feedback on that. But it took a lot on concentration to remember what happen to each character & who is who - esp since all the husbands and fathers died - it was a bit too convoluted for my liking. Another small thing - I didnt like that every chapter started with date AND TIME - it made me feel like the time at some stage will be critical & I really need to focus on that, but in the end it was irrelevant.

Surprised this book was rated as 4 stars, and although the first few pages kind of draw you in with some lovely writing, it soon becomes extremely slow going. Had to sometimes read a few passages twice to ensure I understood it all. The story jumps from character to character and back and forth in time. Even at 10% into the book there still was no clear storyline developing. There's really nothing much happening up to that point. The characters lack depth and credibility. Found it also quite unbelievable how a 4-year-old child (Ivy) had such a grown-up dialogue going on in her head! There are some inconsistencies such as Ruth"s hair early in the book being described as dark but later it was suddenly blonde (when she met her future husband) as well as the male puppy thing that someone else mentioned in their review. Overall I would not recommend this book.

The story shifts across three generations with lots of twists and turns. You have to concentrate on the family relationships to remember who gave birth to which baby and who was adopted. The family tree was helpful (at the end in kindle version) to consolidate the relationships. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, but it lost a star for a major genetics inaccuracy. As a scientist, it really disappointed me to find that the author stated the father was not the father as both he and the mother were O positive blood group and the child was AB negative. This confused me as it is impossible for an O blood group mother to have an AB child. I had to re-read several bits of the story to see if I'd missed crucial information about the mother, but I hadn't and the family tree confirmed this. If the author had said the child was either A or B blood group, this would have worked. I was surprised that this fundamental error was not picked up before publishing. However, apart from being confusing, it didn't detract from the story which is a good read.