Brigid Kemmerer, Thicker than Water, Allen & Unwin, Jan 2016, 338pp., $16.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781743318638
This novel is a combination of teenage lust and pressure to behave as society expects. It opens with James’s mother’s murder, with James the prime suspect. Before his mother’s funeral James meets Charlotte, whose father and brothers are detectives and police officers. They are (unsurprisingly) always ready to shoot anyone they think may have done anything even slightly unlawful. This is America, after all. For instance, when James carries Charlotte out of the woods, she unconscious in an hypoglaecemic coma, he is greeted by two policemen pointing their guns at him.
Charlotte’s behaviour is strictly monitored by her parents, grandmother and brothers, and she appears to be as pure as the driven proverbial, but throughout the book she chases James, drooling over his abs and pecs, his tumbled hair and come-to-bed eyes. As the blurb says ‘For readers who like their YA a little on the sexy side…‘.
After various twists and turns, a little paranormal weirdness, and the threat of further adventures to come, James and Charlotte find each other to everyone’s satisfaction, except perhaps this reader.
In many ways Thicker than Water touches on all that is wrong with contemporary American society. Too many guns are wielded; sexism is rife; appearances are more important than the truth; sex is on everyone’s mind. Not that there is any criticism of that state of affairs – it is largely seen as normal, with Charlotte expressing only a faint objection to domestic slavery.
Kemmerer flounders in her management of the plot. The actions of the main protagonists repeatedly appear to be too stupid for words, inviting trouble at the expense of common sense, and the introduction of the ’empath’ seems a desperate attempt to bring it all together.
Reviewed by Stella Lees