"A Good Concept"

Holly O'Mara is an herbalist spending the summer house-sitting for a friend. The location on an island off the coast of Washington is great -- she spends her time collecting seaweed and plants, concocting the herbal remedies she sells. She also keeps an eye open for "Caddy" the Loch Ness-type sea monster who's due for his every-37-years visit to the island. On one of her seaweed collecting trips, she finds a red plastic gas can -- with a genie named Ted inside. Ted can't leave until he has granted her three wishes, and Holly can't decide what to wish for (Ted explains that "world peace" or "an end to hunger" are not options). She also cannot get more than a few feet from Ted, which means she must carry the gas can everywhere with her. And, of course, no one else can see or hear Ted, except Holly's cat.

Also on the island for the summer is Luke Nathan, the son of the friend for whom Holly is house-sitting. Luke's a lawyer, and Holly distrusts lawyers. Luke is planning to disprove the existence of Caddy, and certainly would not believe in a genie. But despite their differences, Luke and Holly are strongly attracted to each other. Luke is willing to taste food that might have seaweed in it, and Holly manages to eat delicious cooked crab even though she saw those particular crabs alive just a short while ago (apparently she'd never before thought about the fact that crab legs come from someplace before they get to the kitchen).

The first half of this book showed real promise. The genie, the possibility of a sea monster, Holly's "talking" cat -- lots of opportunity for interesting things to happen. Unfortunately, the author only managed to come up with a few ideas -- and then kept repeating them over and over. Holly and Luke seem to spend most of their time eating or discussing eating. Holly can't remember not to talk aloud to the genie that no one else can see or hear -- a few times would have been believable, but after numerous weeks she and Luke are still having misunderstanding when she converses with the genie and Luke thinks she is talking to him. (Has the woman got any brain or any control over her tongue?) Holly keeps lugging the gas can everywhere with her. Luke keeps lugging heavy sacks of seaweed around for Holly -- very helpful and nice of him, but enough is enough.

The story then fell into the kitchen sink syndrome -- throw in everything you can think of. The author dragged in Holly's sisters, Luke's brother, British nobility, various little kids, a mean nanny, competition for the affections of both hero and heroine, a few phobias, and anything else that came to mind. All this is crammed into a short section of the book, and never developed enough to make any sense or have any point. These chapters could have been totally eliminated without affecting Luke and Holly's relationship or the ending of the story at all. Little things introduced in the first half of the book also drop out of the story with no explanation or resolution. I could wrap up an awful lot of packages with the loose strings left at the end of this story. The book is aptly named.

Luke was an annoying hero. I found his character rather flat and undeveloped -- we are 'told' things about him, but he doesn't act like a three-dimensional person in the story. And his reaction any time he and Holly started to get close was to run away for a while (a day or a few days). Holly comes out of the bathroom and he's gone; Holly starts to cook dinner and he's gone; he makes her breakfast, then leaves it in the oven and is gone. Come on, doesn't this guy know any other way to act? And she always "understands" and forgives him! After the first time, I'd have dropped one of those heavy seaweed bags on top of him to keep him in place.

I made myself finish this book, even though I was bored and annoyed, just because I wanted to see if the sea serpent ever showed up. And even that was anticlimactic. My recommendation for this story is "Don't Bother".

Raelene G. / PNR Group Member

Reviewed by Raelene Gorlinsky
Posted September 18, 2001