“On The Island” is the quintessential beach read, offering sun and sand inside its pages for those of us who aren’t reclining on a warm and picturesque shoreline this season. After reading a handful of novels with serious subject matter these past few months, it was the just the kind of fun summer fluff I needed and didn’t know I was looking for. Telling the story of two people who survive impossible odds, it offers a stirring (and slightly controversial) romance that quixotic souls such as myself crave.
30-year old schoolteacher Anna Emerson is at a crossroads in life: her relationship with longtime beau John doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and a trip to the Maldives to think and make some difficult decisions while tutoring is just what she needs. Accompanying her on this trip is T.J. Callahan, a 16-year old boy in remission from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma who is trying to catch up academically and socially to the rest of his friends and classmates after missing an entire year of school. Both of their worlds turn upside down when the pilot of their chartered plane has a heart attack and they crash into the middle of the ocean, Anna and T.J. surviving the dangers of sharks and exposure only to face desert island living once they reach shore.
“On The Island” is predictable in many ways and gives its characters one too many lucky coincidences but I took the book at face value – I knew what I was getting going into it. For a book that originally was self-published, it's done much better than anyone expected. What enticed me to read it originally was its grabbing opening lines and its undemanding and swift narrative that I perused through a downloaded sample. Once in, I was turning pages fast, the story never slowing and possessing chapters that were brief but gripping.
Author Tracy Garvis Graves alternates her POV between T.J. and Anna for each chapter. I’ve heard complaints about female authors not writing in a convincing male voice and vice versa but I thought Graves did an admirable job accounting for both T.J.’s mentality and age/maturity level. She also managed to write her voices in a way that the reader could easily distinguish who was speaking regardless of the heading at each chapter.
T.J. and Anna are easy to root for, likeable, and mostly believable - I wanted things to end well for them. The story of their survival is interesting but lacking in greater detail, descriptions on their hunting and gathering abilities sacrificed for building of sexual tension and emotion. Their romantic entanglement is inevitable once T.J. reaches the age of consent but what isn’t so certain is whether their relationship will weather the storm that family, friends, and the media will rain upon them if and when they are rescued.
There may be a few readers out there who take issue with the relationship between the two characters but they are few and far between. Anyone who finds descriptions about sex offensive should not read books in this genre (I don’t mind it all and Graves does it tastefully).
“On The Island” is a lightweight and absorbing read, a guilty pleasure that readers can gobble up in between heavier and more exemplary literature. Keep your expectations in check and you’ll breeze through this one with a smile.
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