The Light Between Oceans: The heartrending Sunday Times bestseller and Richard and Judy pick

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He has accepted their heartbreak as some kind of retribution for the killing he did in the Great War, but he can’t understand why Isabel should have to suffer. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. It gets into your heart stealthily, until you stop hoping the characters will make different choices and find you can only watch, transfixed, as every conceivable choice becomes an impossible one.

When he dreams about those years, the Tom who is experiencing them, the Tom who is there with blood on his hands, is a boy of eight or so. It's about a good man who is a vet who tries to do the right thing, plagued by what he saw and did during the war. Most people had home births and the technology we take for granted today to support women with endangered pregnancies didn't exist. A few months later they get married and begin their life together as the only two inhabitants of Janus Rock.The decisions the characters had to make and the options they are presented with range from totally awful to not all that great. It was interesting to read a book that felt the entire way through like there is no chance for a happy ending. Looking for restoration and peace the couple move to an isolated lighthouse where they try to rebuild their lives and long for a child that never comes. And as the author says in an interview: If I was going to sum up my book in a small phrase I would say it is about a balance between love and duty; how we find redemption when we have done things we can't undo. Can’t believe it’s a debut but not surprised at the awards it’s won or that it’s been made into a film.

And darkness seeps into the sky second by second, until the shadows no longer fall but rise from the ground and fill the air completely. Sublimely written, poetic in its intensity and frailty…This is a simply beautiful story that deserves the praise and wide audience it’s receiving.Here was a beautiful girl, begging to be kissed, and the sun was gone and the weeks were up and he’d be out in the middle of bloody nowhere this time tomorrow. Anzac day, April 25, 1926, in Port Partageuse, on the south-western corner of the Australian continent.