Back to the Beach

When I read "Those Who Save Us" by Jenna Blum, I was hooked from the first sentence. I especially loved the way Blum portrayed each character's multiple facets; kind and cruel, good and evil, strong and weak. I have recommended this book to everyone.

In my "beach book" mode this summer, I have read far too many books with one-dimensional characters. So, when I saw that Blum had written a new book, "The Stormchasers", I was thrilled. This time, Blum tells the story of twins. When the book opens, they have not seen each other for twenty years, much to the dismay of Karena, a reporter. She is always searching for her brother Charles, a stormchaser who is bipolar and refuses to take medication. She cons her paper into sending her on assignment with a group of stormchasers in order to find Charles. First, Karena finds love with stormchaser Kevin, and then she finds Charles. The scenes between Kevin and Karena are tender and sweet, and their romance is easy to feel. The book never succeeds for me, however, because I found nothing to care about in Charles. It goes without saying that anyone who suffers from severe mental illness has a tragic life. And Blum makes Charles unable to tolerate medications, so that his illness is life-long. But,even when Charles is on his "good" behavior he is not a character I could care about. In fact, I found him boring, and hoped he would get lost for another twenty years.

A few years ago, there was a great holiday movie, "Love, Actually". It was comprised of all kinds of love stories and one of them concerned the devotion a sister has for her mentally ill brother. I remember thinking, when I watched it, that the sister was simply avoiding her own life by being so devoted to her brother.

I felt the same way about Karena's obsession for Charles. As Blum portrayed him, he simply wasn't worth all the time, love, worry, and angst that Karena spent on him. He also constantly addressed her as "sistah", which was as annoying as Kevin calling her "Laredo". These are perhaps small points, but they kept the characters one-dimensional, the last thing I would have expected from Jenna Blum.

So, I went back to the beach, specifically Nantucket, and a new book by one of my favorite authors, Nancy Thayer, called "Beachcombers". This is Thayer's twentieth published novel. Her writing is smooth and comfortable, her characters are people I want to meet, the places she mentions are places I want to see. Take this one on your vacation, no matter where you go.