Aquamarine is the story of a woman named Kirsten who helps her fiancé find her killer through the power of a crystal seven years after her disappearance. Strange, you might say? Wait – there’s more. Shea McKenzie, a woman fitting Kirsten’s description, shows up in Liberty, Idaho seven years later and teams up Kirsten’s fiancé, Teague, to ease Kirsten’s father’s pain, who blames himself for her disappearance years before. Together, Teague and Shea set out to piece together the mysteries of murder, betrayal and desire before the murderer catches on to their farce.

On the surface, the intentions of this book are good. My interest was tweaked when I read the back cover of Aquamarine; but about 20 pages into it, I was lost and bored, but determined to see it through to the end. What can I say, I hate putting a book down in the middle of a chapter. (This would’ve been a good book to make an exception, though.) Although the author has attempted an ambitious plot line here, I found much of it contrite, confusing, and corny. Who would have guessed people’s lives were so shallow and non-descript? If I were Shea McKenzie, I would’ve kept on driving out to California once I got a taste for what Liberty had to offer.

The book left me with too many questions concerning the characters, the plot and the realism of all of this happening the way it did. Yes, in a paranormal romance one must suspend disbelief, but there are still ways of describing supernatural events without leaving the reader scratching his/her head and saying, “Huh?” My confusion only grew when the end of the book came roaring by. The author tried to tie everything together with a very neat and tidy bow before the last sentence ends, but I wasn’t having any of it.

While the author does a hatchet job on the suspense sub-plot, the love story between Teague and Shea was mildly entrancing. But since it is the only part of the book described with clarity and understanding, I couldn’t enjoy it to its fullest. When I open a Loveswept novel, I want to be swept away with the romance, desire and sexual tension between the primary characters. In this one, I would have to say my feet were constantly rooted to the ground.

Overall, Aquamarine wasn’t an entirely excruciating experience (at least I got to laugh at the obvious ending), but neither was it an entertaining experience. This is only Mulvany’s third novel, and since I’ve heard such good things about her debut novel (Upon a Midnight Clear), I can only guess that this was a one-time aberration. Better luck next time, but I don’t think I will read it.