Cathy Bissette is a plain girl who is home in small town Swan Quarter for a summer vacation away from her editting job at a publisher in NYC. She's got a manuscript by Teak Helm to read while she's there and she may be taking over as Teak's editor later in the summer. But her peaceful idyll is ruined when Jared Parsons and his secretary Erica show up with a rather large yacht which needs repairing and her father estimates it will take 10+ days to fix. Lucas Bissette takes a liking to Jared and a liking to oogling Erica and invites the pair over for breakfast, dinner and even an outing on the shrimp boat that her father works.
Cathy is most distrubed by this, mainly because of how much she is affected by Jared's presence and how her dog Bismarc is so enamored by him. Plus she has a tendancy to fall into/get stuck in the water around him, which he interpretes as a need for rescuing. Cathy makes it clear though, when Jared tries to rescue her as she is skinny dipping, that she's saving herself for marriage and doesn't want to mess around with him. Of course proximity being what it is, she soon regrets expressing that and regrets it even more that Jared appears to be respecting her! Eventually Cathy has to go back to NYC though when she gets that author to be Teak's editor; her father tells her he gave Jared her address. Will Jared look her up? Will the notoriously unresponsive Teak respond to her suggested edits on his sub-part book?
Ok I don't think is going to spoil anything for anyone when I say that I guessed that Teak Helm was going to be a pen name for Jared before we even knew Jared existed (well, apart from the back cover copy). The book did throw a wrench into things with the question of plagarism (which had me guessing whether Jared could possibly be Cathy's father's age as it isn't stated - he's not - and therefore be both Teak and Lefty Rudder). The main thing about this book though is the heavy emphasis on Cathy's pureness compared to other girls (and is she making the right choice, but what choice does she have!) and Cathy's tendancy to burst into tears, which she does at least once a chapter and sometimes more than once a day. Despite all that I did enjoy the first say 3/4 of the book, under my "it's ok because it was written before I was born" exception (older authors can get away with a lot with me!), but the ending wasn't really what I wanted. I guess in summarizing events, it highlighted all the little things that bothered me in just a few pages, which sort of ruined my enjoyment. I mean, Teak just happens to finally take some constructive criticism? Jared just happens to fall in love with the first girl who doesn't want to sleep with him before marriage? But alright, they both end up happy so I guess I'm happy for them.
