Holy Crow, Batman!

I've been reading more books than usual this summer. A couple of camping trips have helped, also waiting for the scout meetings to get out, and sitting by a child as he makes the transition to sleeping in a toddler bed. Anyways, I feel compelled to let you know what I've been reading. I'm not sure why.

The Mist of Quarry Harbor by Liz Adair. I picked this little number up over at the Goodwill, for a buck. It's published by Deseret Book, and yes, all of the main characters are LDS.

The main character is Cassie Van Cleeve. She's smoking hot, completely self-sufficient, and single as the book opens. It's important to note that she's not single because no one's interested. She has to fend off a pesky marriage proposal within the first 20 pages of the book. Later, a casual FHE basketball game leads to fisticuffs between her two suitors. She eventually makes a choice, although her emotional and mental abilities in the face of a little romance reminds one of Bella Swan.

But that's not the main part of the book. Cassie's questionable judgment when it comes to men eventually lands her on an island in the Puget Sound, where she begins searching for clues to her husband's mysterious past. It's a decent mystery, although not really a page-turner. There's a lot of boat talk, which can get a little boring if you're not a boating enthusiast. Most readers should be able to figure the big twist out before it is revealed in the book.

The writing is a little awkward in places and the dialogue often doesn't sound like something a person would say in the 21st century. At one point when Cassie needs to leave, she says that she had "better get to whistling." Another character frequently exclaims, "Holy Crow!" And one of the strangest parts of the book was when the author attempted to chastely describe Cassie's wedding night. It was quite vague, to the point where you weren't sure if she was talking about sex or describing an alien abduction.

As an LDS person, you kind of have to suspend your disbelief a little bit for the book to make sense. Which I guess is fine, because it's fiction. The character of Cassie isn't really internally consistent. Right off the bat, we're told that she went through three sets of missionaries before she was sure she wanted to join the church. And then a few pages later, she's diving into a marriage with a guy without any due diligence whatsoever. The author probably realized this and danced around it by making Cassie a member of only six months, thus not yet eligible for a temple marriage. Because if you're not getting married in the temple, it's okay to just go for it.

But without the random marriage, there's no mystery, and no book. So if you read it, just sit back and don't think too hard about it.