When Dave Beckstrom returns home from his mission, he assumes his life will pick up as he left it: he’ll get married to his high school sweetheart, Abbie Tucker, take over his parent’s hardware store, and live happily ever after. But time has a way of changing things, and Dave’s plans change in ways he wouldn’t have dreamed of.

Dave Beckstrom is your classic small-town nice boy, and all he wants when he comes back from his mission is to marry his high school sweetheart Abbie, live in his hometown of Ririe, Idaho, manage his parent’s hardware store, and raise a good Mormon family. But when he gets home after his 2-year absence, he finds that hardly anything is the same. Sure, his parents still need his help with the hardware store, but his girlfriend has moved off to New York to become a nanny, and Dave feels like he has to go there to see where their relationship stands.

He finds that when he arrives in New York, Abbie is not the same person. Impatient and headstrong; she even looks different. Worst of all, she’s found a new boyfriend. It becomes Dave’s goal to win her back, but he quickly realizes that it’s a different world in New York, and it’s a world where Abbie doesn’t want to marry him anymore.

I have loved Jack Weyland’s books since I was a preteen. He has such a way of knowing teenagers’ issues and writing in the same voice that they use. As Always, Dave follows Weyland’s classic theme: a single adult working through a problem they never expected. As usual, I was excited to read As Always, Dave, but as the book wore on, I found that it took a meandering path that wasn’t all that interesting, and the end definitely marred the whole book for me. I don’t want to give away the details of the book, but I think this is one of the first times in reading a Jack Weyland book where I thought, “No way would someone do this.” Usually he’s so on the mark with portraying real-life situations, but things just seemed a little bit…fairy-tale with Dave putting down roots in New York.

If you’re a die-hard Weyland fan, you’re going to read As Always, Dave no matter what I say, but if you’re just in to Mormon fiction, I might choose something else (try out Charly or Lean on Me if you’re looking for some good Jack Weyland).

You can find As Always, Dave at a Deseret Book store near you, or on the web at www.DeseretBook.com.