Mercury by Amy Jo Burns is about seventeen year old Marley West, who is trying to find a place to belong. In 1990, Marley and her mother arrived in the small river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. Marley and her mother are constantly moving city to city looking for work. Marley felt like a loner and is looking for a community and a place to belong.
When Marley arrives at Mercury, she sees three men on top of a roof. She isn’t able to make out who the men were as only their silhouettes were visible from the sun. Later, when Marley decides to watch a local baseball game, she runs into one of the Joseph brothers and is later introduced to the rest of the family.
Marley receives an invitation to join the Joseph family for dinner and eventually leads to a standing invite. It started as a simple dinner but it led Marley to be intertwined with the entire Joseph family and eventually she married into the family. Marley finds the connection and family that she has been searching for but, she realizes that it comes at a steep cost.
I thought the book was a dull read. I thought there was going to be a mystery around the dead body but it wasn’t until almost halfway into the book that it was even mentioned. I felt like there wasn’t much going on in the book and a lot of the drama was just drummed up or exaggerated to make it seem like more was going on. I didn’t understand what the point of the book was. Was it to show how consuming a small business is? Or should we be careful about what we wish for?
While the plot was moving as slow as molasses, I didn’t find any of the characters to be enjoyable. I found it weird that Marley wants a family of her own, when she is barely an adult and has a very supportive mother. Instead, she jumps headfirst into building connections with a highly dysfunctional family and continues to stay with them even though she has her reservations about them. No one from the Joseph family seemed remotely interesting. Elise Joseph, the mother, seemed to be welcoming, but then cold at times. I wish we were given more information on her behaviors along with the other members of the family. The entire family just seemed selfish and unbalanced. Readers who enjoy reading about people’s everyday lives and family drama, might find this more entertaining than I did.
