Adam's Story

January 19, 2004
Weyland, a bestselling author in the Mormon market whose novel Charly
was recently a major motion picture, offers a lighthearted next-generation sequel to Charly
and its successor, Sam
. Here, Charly's grown son, Adam Roberts, serves a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Jersey, and his curiosity about his deceased mother leads him to break mission rules and leave his area to call on his maternal grandparents. Desperate to have a connection with their only grandchild, they agree to listen to his beliefs and predictably accept them. But their conversion is ancillary to the story, which is primarily a romantic comedy, with sparks flying between Adam and a prickly sister missionary, Brianna Doneau. The tension between his freewheeling approach and her meticulous severity follows them when they both finish their missions and return to their regular lives, where she is a successful attorney and he can't decide on a career. Brianna's quick transformation from a tense, lonely sister missionary to a loving, confident friend and romantic interest is not terribly believable. And because the novel is so heavy on dialogue and short on introspection, a promising subplot involving Adam's struggles with the temptation of pornography is resolved too quickly and easily. Weyland often resorts to telling rather than showing, resulting in a book that sometimes feels more like a teleplay than a novel. However, it's an entertaining read with likable characters, several funny scenes and a good heart.