Review: "Living on Nothing Atoll" by Theresa Kelly

 

Living on Nothing Atoll by Theresa Kelly
First published 1999
★★★

Cass likes her life—until her mother remarries and uproots them from Tennessee to the Marshall Islands. Living thousands of miles from home on an island just a few miles long isn't Cass's idea of a good time, and her new stepsister Tabitha doesn't help matters. But it looks like she's stuck with her lot until college...

I guess I'm back to reading 90s teen issue fiction. This is the first in a series about Cass and Tabitha (and their mostly white American friends) on Kwajalein; I'm unlikely to read the full series, but I was curious and...well, that's all it ever takes, really. This is very much Christian fiction, but it's actually a lot more understated than many of the Christian fiction series I've stumbled across over the years. Oh, don't get me wrong: Cass and her mother start a youth group on the island, and her not-very-religious peers are immediately enthusiastic and can't wait to talk about the finer points of the Bible; there's a fair amount of impassioned conversation about figuring out what God's plan for one's life is and following it; Cass uses Bible verses liberally to try to navigate her new family configuration; the entire thing is squeaky squeaky clean. Maybe understated isn't the word I'm looking for—it's more that, although it's pretty preachy, the religious focus (at least in this initial book) is more on the religious characters following (their interpretation of) God's will than on them converting anyone else. (If this seems minor, you haven't read very much 90s Christian teen issue fiction.)

I was surprised to enjoy Cass and Tabitha's conflict as much as I did. Again, enjoy is the wrong word here—but it's genuinely pretty funny how un-self-aware they each are (and how aware the author is) about their hypocrisy as they duke it out in a battle of pettiness and jealousy. Because this is 90s issue fiction rather than, e.g., a contemporary YA dramedy, there's no big drama where Cass dates the boy Tabitha likes or Tabitha shoves Cass into a lagoon full of sharks or whatever, and it was sort of refreshing to have just...teenagers being teenagers.

"What a weird relationship we have," mused Cass. "I wonder if all sisters are like this."

"Who knows?" Tabitha popped another chip into her mouth. "This is the first time I've ever had to deal with a sibling. Obviously I'm not very good at it," she concluded with an unconcerned shrug. (252)

Not sure how I ran across this in the first place, but it was a fun read.