Cameron, Sam: Mystery of the Tempest
Mystery of the Tempest: A Fisher Key Adventure (2011)
Written by: Sam Cameron
Genre: YA/Mystery
Pages: 244 (Trade Paperback)
Disclaimer: This book was received by the author for the purpose of review.
Why I Read It: At the author's request, I'm not sharing the author's real name. This is a pen name that the author is trying to keep separate from her other work, which I've read and enjoyed and reviewed in the past. And I broke a personal rule here: I had decided I would no longer accept free copies for review, but when I got the email for this one, I had to say yes. No, I'm not the target audience and no, I don't really read that much mystery. But I'd been hearing so much about the author's gay YA novel that I had to see what she was up to, so accept I did.
The premise: ganked from publisher's website: Twin brothers Denny and Steven Anderson love helping people and fighting crime alongside their sheriff dad on sun-drenched Fisher Key, Florida. Steven likes chasing girls. Denny longs to lose his virginity, but doesn’t dare tell anyone he’s gay. Steven has a secret of his own. He lied to everyone, including his own brother, about being accepted into SEAL training for the U.S. Navy.
On the day they graduate high school, the twins meet the handsome new guy in town, a military veteran with a chiseled body and mysterious past. Meanwhile Brian Vandermark, a gay transfer student from Boston, finds himself falling for closeted Denny but hampered by his shyness. When an antique yacht explodes in Fisher Key harbor, all three boys are caught up in a summer of betrayal, romance, and danger. It’s the Mystery of the Tempest--and it just might kill them all.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay. It's a new book and a short one at that, so spoiling the story would be a gross injustice to the book. Read on without fear, unless you're in a hurry or something, and then skip to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
I'll be honest: not being the target audience means this book is a little difficult to review. While reading, I kept trying to imagine how I would've responded to this book had it been released when I was an actual teen, but I keep coming up short. Probably because teen-me would've hated the cover (more on that later), but also, I was never one of those girls who read fiction geared towards boys. Not that fiction should be geared for one gender or the other, mind you, but my teen-self would've argued that. I was a Sweet Valley girl to the core, as well as a huge fan of The Babysitter's Club. As I got older, a fan of Cherie Bennett's Sunset Island books. Oh, yes, I got sucked into the rabid joy of reading R.L. Stine and some Christopher Pike horror novels, which were geared to both genders, and I did enjoy a good mystery. Anyone remember the old Charisma, Inc. series? I loved those books!
So the mystery might've appealed to me. It's hard to say. But I would've wanted a girl protag to latch onto, and I didn't get that. But having a gay boy protag would've been a huge eye-opener, and I'm sure teen-me would've felt scandalized somewhat (though I give teen-me credit: first time I met someone who opened up to me about being gay, I hugged him and we talked for hours), but would've kept reading.
Long story short, I still don't know how I would've liked this as a teen. As an adult, I was keenly aware that this book wasn't for me. While the twin boy protags had just graduated high school, something about this book felt young for me, maybe the younger end of YA. That may be attributed to the writing style, which was less visceral and immediate than I care for, especially in YA. There's a scene toward the end of the book were something MAJOR HAPPENS, but the writing style was such that I read the paragraph and started to turn the page and had to go, "Wait, what . . . ?" because it didn't sink in that what had just happened was life-threatening. Of course, that could be my own fault. My brain could've been in a weird place while reading.
But I'm not a teen, and I don't have the experiences of being a teen boy, let alone a gay teen boy. But also, there's not a lick of speculative fiction in this book, and since I read very, very, VERY little mystery, I felt quite removed.
That said, I definitely appreciated getting a teen boy protag who's gay. All too often, we get YA where a guy/girl is pining over the opposite sex, and all they have to deal with is bad vampires, werewolves, angels, battle arenas, etc. Sure, those are obstacles, but it was nice seeing what kind of obstacles gay teens have in real life in terms of coming to terms with who they are, who they want to love, and balancing that with the fear of rejection or something worse. I thought it was a rather brilliant move (though I admit: I wonder if this can actually happen in identical twins; surely there's studies) that one twin, Denny, was gay, but the other twin, Steven, was girl-crazy.
That said, a part of me is convinced that Steven is gay, or at least bi, and doesn't know it. How else to explain his overt need to show he's straight, his insecurities about whether he's good in bed or not?
Okay, maybe that's just normal for a sexual active teen boy. I don't know. And given that Steven knew his brother was gay, he may have been overcompensating or something.
But I did like that for the most part, there was genuine affection between the brothers. There's a few times where Steven's a shit to Denny, but that had less to do with Denny being gay and more to do with the fact that Steven can be a shit.
Plot-wise, I admit I didn't see how everything fit together in terms of the mystery, and in hindsight, I probably should've. I'm not sure if that's my own fault as a reader or to credit the author for the way she put the story together. I did have a few believability questions, like how the twins helped their dad solve cases and how Denny had a boat but couldn't afford a car (that said, he may have had a choice: used car or used boat), then there was Kelsey advertising her future sexual exploits on her Facebook and detailing her preparations, which struck me not only as totally weird, but dumb to do: if she'd made a public pledge to stay a virgin, why was she worried that her Facebook status would get back to her dad?
It was also interesting that this book was written before the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was revoked, which I'm not as well-educated on as I should be, but at least I didn't miss that headline. Hopefully, Cameron will be able to explore the implications of that if the series follows Denny into the Coast Guard.
My Rating: Worth Reading, with Reservations
Being an adult who reads mostly speculative fiction, I definitely wasn't the target audience for this. The straight up mystery was interesting enough, but the real selling point of this book is the twin boy protagonists, one who's gay, the other who isn't. Seeing a gay protagonist fall in love while struggling to accept his own sexuality (struggling in terms of officially coming out) was rather compelling, and it's a sweet story besides. There's more here than gay romance though, and the mystery was pretty entertaining in and of itself with some fun nods to Shakespeare. I think if you're a reader who enjoys reading mysteries, and/or a reader who's dying for more gay protags in fiction, this book is right up your alley. I can't comment on how well received this will be for young readers, or whether or not gay teen readers will relate, but I hope they do, and I hope the book (series) does well. Personally, I prefer the author's speculative fiction (which reminds me, I still have two of her books to read in my TBR), but that's a matter of preference. I'm glad this is out there.
Cover Commentary: This cover makes me want to cry. It looks like a the cover of a bible-study devotional book I'd seen once in the nineties. Seriously, Times New Roman for the font? The green half-circle on top? This design is absolutely hideous, and this cover isn't going to do the author any favors in terms of selling books. To top it off, the inside credits just give the designer's first name and email addy (because THAT'S the mark of a professional, there!), and I'm sorely tempted to use that email addy to tell the designer to either go to school for a design degree OR, if he/she already has one, to give it back to the college they received it from with apologies for how badly this art makes their program look. Yes, that's harsh, but dammit, I've been dating/engaged to/married to a graphic designer for nearly 13 years. You're lucky HE'S not the one critiquing the cover! This cover's so bad I couldn't stand to look at it for over a week after receiving my copy, and I'm not joking. I could go on and on, but I'll stop here and say I really wish the cover was more appealing, because I suspect this is going to be a hard book to find anyway due to it being published by a small press, but the cover isn't going to entice anyone who does find it. Also, it doesn't scream gay YA when you've got a girl groping a shirtless guy from behind. I mean, seriously.
Next up: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke