Publishers Weekly
First-time author Morrison offers her take on the theme of forbidden romance in this moving novel. Leesie, a devout Mormon, lives by her church's teachings ("No parking. No necking. No petting. No fornication") and is looking forward to attending Brigham Young University, where there will be "thousands and thousands of the hottest guys on the planet who all live by the same rules." But that's before she falls in love with "outsider" Michael, a scuba diver. Michael awakens a passion in Leesie that she doesn't know she possesses, and Leesie provides a soothing distraction for Michael, who still has nightmares about the hurricane that killed his parents. Through Michael's dive-log journal entries, Leesie's poetry and online chats, Morrison conveys underlying tensions that threaten the teenagers' relationship and test their moral codes. By contrasting Leesie and Michael's often opposing backgrounds and points of view, she handles the topics of religion and premarital sex gracefully without passing judgment. The message has less to do with religion than learning to respect and cherish others while staying true to one's own beliefs. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)
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Children's Literature
- Uma Krishnaswami
The tensions of a seemingly impossible romance constitute the core of this YA novel told in two voices. The first voice is that of Leesie, self-described "Mormon Ice Queen," whose life is dedicated to keeping the rules. She wants to get into Brigham Young University. She wants to keep her faith. Her story unfolds through chat logs and a series of briefly lineated unrhymed poems in "Leesie's Most Private Chapbook." In less capable hands this combination could have come across as happy naivete, but Morrison blesses Leesie with conflict from the outset, her Mormon identity at odds with the grabbing hands of jocks in the school hallway and the exhortations of her chat-mate Kim ("...you can't stay Virgin Mary forever.") The second narrative voice is Michael's, delivered in sections of taut prose each prefaced by a dive log entry. He is in recovery from the loss of his parents while diving in Belize. The storm that killed them is evocatively named for a 2002 hurricane, Isadore, incrementally personified as the story moves forward. In stark contrast, the first-person pronoun in Michael's narrative is almost invisible, subsumed to his grief and expressed in lowercase in a voice that is intense and anguished. Leesie's episodic text also feels genuine, and the choice between beliefs and the tugs of adolescent love will feel real to many teen readers. Structure serves content well in this debut novel. Taken By Storm reads easily and showcases characters both realistic and larger than life, their fervent hopes and desperate needs heading for inevitable collision in its pages. Reviewer: Uma Krishnaswami
School Library Journal
Gr 10 Up—Leesie is a beautiful, straight-laced Mormon desperate to escape high school and the boys who torment her there. Michael is a scuba diver whose parents were killed on a dive trip. He desperately longs to dive again, but terrifying flashbacks of the hurricane that killed his friends and family plague him. Leesie is drawn to Michael's brokenness—she feels she can save him. He is attracted to her purity and beauty. Soon, all the rules Leesie has found easy to obey in the past (no hot-and-heavy kissing, no dating an unbeliever, no sex) are no longer cut-and-dry, and her plan to attend BYU no longer seems so important. Both Michael and Leesie must figure out what matters most to them. This book explores the teens' relationship through poetry, instant messages, and journal entries. Although the format is clever, the author doesn't fully commit to sharing this story in the characters' own words. Leesie's poetry is full of emotion and does a great job of expressing her feelings, but Michael's journal entries are unconvincing as the writings of a grief-stricken teen. Also, he is selfish and disrespectful of Leesie's beliefs, and she is too willing to forgive him when he has sex with a classmate. Their relationship is uncomfortably codependent, and when the teens split up at the end, it is a relief.—Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO
Kirkus Reviews
In this debut novel, after a belief-stretchingly unexpected hurricane kills high-school senior Michael's parents while on a diving vacation, he's sent to his grandmother's in Washington. There he encounters Leesie, a devout Mormon targeted by every obnoxious boy in her small school, mostly because of her determination, following church rules, to remain "morally clean" until marriage. The narrative alternates between his grief-stricken yet hormone-ravaged point of view, in the form of his "diving log" (an overworked gimmick), and hers, through her poetry and Web chat. His sexual enthusiasm seems implausible given his disabling level of grief. Angst abounds, sex drive periodically besting self-control, as the stock characters, hunky boy and driven girl, seek resolution. Possibly of concern is Michael's use of apparently hyperventilation-like deep breathing-"venting"-to free dive, a technique that may be dangerous for the inexperienced and is sometimes connected with shallow-water blackout and drowning. Teens seeking a dose of religion and romance may enjoy this superficial tale, but a warning to untrained swimmers would be welcome. Many readers may want to just swim by this mundane effort. (Fiction. 12 & up)
