Fast Facts:

Book Title: There You’ll Find Me

Author: Jenny B. Jones

Genre/Audience: Religious fiction; teen drama/coming-of-age/romance; travel

Rating: 8/10

Worth the read?: Yes

Book 46: “There You’ll Find Me”

This book is no literary classic. It’s no deep, theological coming-of-age story with ubiquitous lessons for all young people. It’s no Romeo and Juliet. All that said, I can’t stop loving it anyway.

The ideal reader for There You’ll Find Me would be a young teen, and it’s clear when reading that the book doesn’t transcend that reader well. As a twenty-something, reading this book (my third read, but first in a couple of years) was a bit of a struggle in certain parts, primarily the parts with heavy religious language. I expected that rereading this book would have me cringing at the theology, and although it wasn’t profound, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as cringe-worthy as expected.

Dynamic story

To the credit of author Jenny B. Jones, the story is a lot more than just a teen love story.

Finley Sinclair is a senior in high school on a mission to rediscover God in her year studying abroad in Ireland, where her brother, Will, once studied. When Will was killed unexpectedly two years prior, Finley spiraled into a pit of grief, coping through partying and her music. With an upcoming audition for an elite school of music, Finley hopes Ireland will finally provide the end to her audition song. Along the way, she meets Beckett Rush, an actor who is staying at Finley’s host family’s bed and breakfast while in town filming a movie. But it isn’t just Beckett who changes Finley’s life—it’s Ireland and everyone she meets along the way.

Final thoughts

This is a guilty pleasure kind of book for me. It’s cheesy and unbearably “Christian” at times. But the characters are dynamic, something often missing from religious fiction, and the author seemed to have really done her research about Ireland. It’s a book that makes me want to book a flight and simply go for the mystery of a place.

By the time I’m 30, this book probably won’t read well enough anymore for me to continue clinging to it as a guilty pleasure. But for now, Finley is still relatable enough for me to hold on. Even when I age out of this book, I think I’ll keep it around.

Happy reading!

Nikki