Moonlight Rising: The Lindisfarne Series #2
Book 2 of the Lindisfarne Series is set in October 1715, as the Jacobites are mustering. We return to Lindisfarne (Holy Island), where the well-to-do Blake family is living in Highfield House, their ancestral home, abandoned years before when their mother, Abigail, fled with her young children to London. Questions surrounding their mother’s actions that night continue to haunt the now-adult siblings. Since the death of his older brother, Nathan bears the weighty responsibility of seeing his sisters, Eva and Harriet, suitably married. Harriet has found cold security of a sort with Edwin, but certainly not love, and she’s guiltily ambivalent about her baby son. Eva has eschewed the chosen fiancé in favour of marrying the ruggedly handsome Longstone Island lightkeeper, Finn Murray. Harriet, harbouring a secret jealousy of Eva and Finn’s evident connection, cannot envision her sister ever being happy on a remote island with no amenities. Selfishly, she wants her back to offset the stiflingly dull evenings with her brother and husband at Highfield.
The novel’s progression explores how different the sisters are, as family loyalties are stretched to breaking. Harriet’s emotional conflicts deepen as she veers towards recklessness, endangering herself and others. Meanwhile, nervous distrust runs rampant amongst the Blakes and the native islanders, as Eagle, Henry Ward’s privateer-turned-pirate ship, awaits ominously off-shore. Motivations for the characters’ tangled secrets are very well-drawn, balanced against the Jacobite sympathies of most of the islanders, the dark and terrifying times, and diverse connections to Ward. Craven handles the complexities with aplomb in an absorbing and atmospheric read, amidst imaginative descriptions of windswept shores, sighing sands, and ink-black seas. The novel is tightly plotted with a balanced romantic edge, creating an addictive read, which ends far too soon!
