Review: Worth Reading
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 2, 2012
The Lure of Shapinsay is a tale of romance between a selkie male and a human female.  This in itself was enough to make the book interesting, as I've never before seen a novel that features a selkie.This book fits the typical romance structure - romance novels are formulaic for a reason, though, so that's not a bad thing.  I did feel like the plot spun in circles in some places and was a bit thin in others, but overall the storyline was interesting enough.  The characters were believable, and some of Holle's descriptions were the sort that set you right down in the middle of the story.On the minus side of the equation, I'm not all that fond of the forced attraction plot device.  That's a personal preference, though, and I realize that not all readers would have a problem with it (and therefore it has no impact on my rating).  The bigger problem here is that a decent story ended up getting buried under an avalanche of adverbs.  One to two `ly' adverbs per sentence is just too many.  They ended up detracting from the book in a major way, making it very difficult at times for me to keep reading.  I believe that this novel could benefit from a little editing.Overall, The Lure of Shapinsay was a decent enough book, but I feel it could have been better.