Books with the Same Vibe: The Lamplighters and The Lighthouse Witches

And so we return to my very occasional series, 'books with the same vibe', in which I compare and contrast two books that for one reason or another, have a great deal in common in subject matter, theme, and marketing style.

In this case it's The Lighthouse Witches [CJ Cooke] and The Lamplighters [Emma Stonex] which I read back in 2022. Both are female-focused stories about a group of people who vanish from a lighthouse, and both books switch between the current day and the past to tell their stories, and between multiple POVs. 

People going missing from lighthouses is a common trope, following the real life Flannan Isle mystery, with The Lamplighters being a retelling of that story in a new era, and The Lighthouse Witches certainly taking some inspiration from it. 

Naturally the covers both prominently feature lighthouses, with my preference being the night-sky reds of The Lamplighters over The Lighthouse Witches lovely but rather misleading design. I was under the impression it was a twee story in the vein of Practical Magic until about twenty pages in. 

The Lamplighters is, more or less, a drama with a few elements of mystery and a possible supernatural stinger that you can either believe or ignore. The Lighthouse Witches is more cautious with it's genre, misdirecting the audience towards dark folklore to cover it's true sci-fi nature until the final twists are revealed. The first book examines the complexities of marriage, the latter motherhood. 

In The Lamplighters, three lighthouse keepers vanish from a lighthouse in the seventies. Thirty years later, a writer attempts to interview the three widows, bringing back old memories and unlocking the women's secrets. It's rich with emotional depth, but the plot itself is more about their interwoven history than any complex locked room mystery. 

The Lighthouse Witches follows a single mother in the early nineties, who brings her three girls to an old lighthouse for an art commission to paint a mural. We spend time in the present day with the only surviving daughter, as we learn that her mother and two sisters all vanished from the lighthouse. She is forced to reopen her old memories when her youngest sister is found alive, but without having aged a day. Their stories weave together with the historic witch hunts in the area and the local belief in wildlings - aka changelings. 

For all their similarities, these are very different books and in many ways their problems are the antithesis of each other. The Lamplighters revels in the emotion to the point that the actual plot revelations are somewhat underwhelming. The Lighthouse Witches is so stuffed full of plot that the author can't allow events to unfold naturally and has to really force some characters into position towards the end of the book. 

Where both books succeed, it's in their impeccable vibes, which are again at opposites. The Lamplighters is a book devoted to the sea, and to the isolation inherent to the job of being a lighthouse keeper. If you like books about the ocean, or the intensity of being trapped in a small space with others, or even the aching beauty of being the one to wait for a loved one to return, this is a book for you.

The lighthouse in The Lighthouse Witches is actually superfluous to the story - it could have been a castle, or a ruin, or literally any old building in any isolated country location and the plot wouldn't have changed an iota. Where it succeeds is in the folk horror: the forest, witch burnings, changelings, and the creeping local mythology that brings The Wicker Man to mind. 

At the time of writing, The Lighthouse Witches has the higher rating on Storygraph, whereas I personally lean towards The Lamplighters being the stronger, more polished book. I actually gave the Lamplighters 3.5 stars (in late 2022) and I gave the Lighthouse Witches 3.75 in January 2024. This likely reflects my more generous grading curve over time, and I think The Lamplighters has grown on me with reflection, in a way I suspect the latter won't. 

My suggestion would be to make your choice based on the following: do you want the ocean, or the forest? I know which one I generally want when picking up a book about a lighthouse. 

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