Book Review: Island of Lost Things

Title: Island of Lost Things

Author: London Clarke

Date: 2025

Quote: "They, of course, though we were having a hot night of sex.  I couldn't possibly tell them I was picking glass out of his wound..."

Ridge and Lainey go together like a mountain ridge and a country lane. This story is a new achievement for London Clarke: not horror, but a sweet Christian romance. But its atmosphere is murky, because for the first twenty years they're not doing what some Christians call "walking in the light they have." 

How many times people think "If I'd been in that situation with that person..." and fail to imagine why the person they envy was in that situation. At that particular point in their relationship Lainey and Ridge had been hanging out on the beach like the old school friends they are, but not spending whole nights together. She spent the night with him because a call from the child he's never been fit to rear upset him, and he got drunk and smashed glass into his hand. By the time Lainey picked out the splinters Ridge had passed out. Lainey stayed to watch that he didn't choke before he woke up.

At first she was a nice girl from a good family, though it was an adoptive family, and he was a troubled boy with an abusive stepfather. Then she had a bachelor's degree, and instead of going on to a master's degree she stayed at home and worked with the uncle who had filled in for her father, as a mechanic, while he was becoming a rock star. Then the drugs and alcohol he used to support his "star" career got ahead of him, and she was sad but sober while he was drunk. Then.... 

The suspense in this story is wondering when these two will admit that, while telling themselves they can't be a couple, they've been best friends and Partners for Life since college. For a romance Island of Lost Things is an excellent study of friendship. 

Some people may subtract points, and some may add points, for Clarke's having the characters talk about "the way we were raised" instead of their "personal relationships with Jesus." Can Ridge and Lainey consistently make better choices without God's help? Doubtful. Can their prayers for God's help take place behind doors, just as their sex lives, most of their sins, and their digestion do? Yes. In a novel that leaves what people eat, what each individual body part is doing when they're in bed, and whether they have hangovers after getting drunk, to the readers' imagination it seems appropriate that their prayers are also left to our imagination; we don't know which denomination sponsored the college. This is not a Sunday School book. Going back to the way they were raised almost certainly includes becoming regular members of a church but we're not told which one. So, probably not Evangelical.

The effect of not focussing on the specifics of their faith is to make the story accessible to readers of any faith tradition. The characters happen to be Christians. They happen to live on the Carolina coast. A character who's tried being a nun but not succeeded, and a Christian college with a zero tolerance policy for marijuana, are part of the setting, like sand dunes and Spanish moss. Nobody in this book is going to tell readers "If your religious background is something else, you should reject that and become a Christian now." 

So, just about anyone who is interested in a romance that stirs up feelings of empathy rather than carnal passion is likely to enjoy this book. (Carnal passion comes into the story...as one of this couple's obstacles to True Love.) Prospective readers' question was probably "Can Clarke do tender affection as well as she does horror?" and the answer is YES.