THE BENEVOLENT LORDS OF SOMETIMES ISLAND

Four teenage Texans find themselves stranded on a forbidding, inaccessible island in this novel.

William Flynn and his friends Brian Johnson, Randy Moss, and Miguel Gonzalez are subject to repeated bouts of bullying from the local Thousand Oaks Gang. One day, a school security guard intervenes when the gang attacks, and the bullies flee, leaving behind a rucksack containing a large quantity of money and marijuana. William hides the bag at his house, and when the gang comes looking for it, he doesn’t answer their questions, which inevitably leads to further violent encounters. On a camping trip, the boys meet Tony and Victoria, two 18-year-olds who work on the lake, and they strike up a friendship with them. The boys later spend a weekend at the lakeside in an old abandoned mansion that William calls the Cabin of Seclusion;when members of the Thousand Oaks Gang arrive, however, the kids are forced to flee by boat, which, due to poor navigation, finds them stranded on an island surrounded by jagged rocks. A possibly poisonous snake bites Randy, Brian can’t swim, and without shelter or an obvious source of food, all of the boys find themselves in a very bad situation. In an afterword, Semegran makes no secret of his admiration for William Golding’s classic 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies and Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body, on which the popular 1986 film Stand by Me was based. It shows in his own work, as he puts the dynamics of adolescent friendships at the heart of his story, although the narrative doesn’t really carry the same weight as Golding’s. The group dynamic doesn’t shift significantly on the island, either; there are no power struggles, divisive politics, or moral dilemmas, which saps some of the narrative’s power. The novel’s pacing is somewhat inconsistent, as well, with a long buildup to the island scenes and a relatively lengthy where-are-they-now coda. Overall, though, this is an absorbing, nostalgic, and polished story that will likely find its readership.

An entertaining, if somewhat lightweight, coming-of-age adventure.