There You’ll Find Me by Jenny B Jones
Reviewed by Lori Twichell, Radiant Lit
Genre: romance, Christian, fiction, YA
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Publication Dates: October 4, 2011
Finley Sinclair has what many would call a charmed life. At the ripe old age of 18, she also knows what life is like in the spotlight. Her father owns a huge hotel chain and her brother is a CNN reporter, so she’s used to people knowing a lot about her business. Unfortunately, her big plans for the rest of her life (to attend the Manattan Music Conservatory) get derailed when her brother becomes the victim of an overseas terrorist attack. After his death, she loses herself in the debilitating grief for a while and in a series of bad choices, becomes a wild child. Pictures of Finley get spread across the tabloids and the internet, showing off her spectacularly bad decisions and choices. It places her family in the spotlight in a negative manner all over again. Finally, after coming to the conclusion that she couldn’t keep going the way she was, she decides that she’s going to follow her brother’s path and see if she can find God in the same place that he did: Ireland.
Will’s travel journal, given to her shortly after her brother’s death, is packed with not only his thoughts at each place he visited while he was there, but also photos as well. She decides to follow Will’s path – quite literally – and sets out on the journey.
On the plane trip overseas, she’s surprised to get bumped to first class and into the open seat next to Hollywood’s hottest heart-throb, Beckett Rush. Beckett is in the middle of filming another of his box office blast vampire films and it happens to be in the exact same city where Finley is going to get away for a while. She is not impressed with him, but that is definitely not how he feels about her. For the first time he can remember, Beckett’s drop dead gorgeous smile and cute pick-up lines aren’t having any affect whatsoever on the girl sitting next to him. It surprises and intrigues him all at the same time. When the two of them end up at the same Bed and Breakfast, it doesn’t take long for them to bump into each other. Repeatedly.
Jenny B. Jones has crafted a beautiful story of grief, loss and hope. She also explores how someone who feels separated from God can find their way back into His presence. Finley’s character, far from a one dimensional caricature of a teenage girl (that you often find in YA literature) is rich, deep, complex and her issues are well handled by Jones. Beckett is a typical misunderstood Hollywood bad boy with his own family issues, but when the two characters collide, their stories are pulled together in a fun easy to follow way that keeps the reader engaged and intrigued. The plot moves quickly and the pacing is tight. There’s not a lot of fluff or needless rambling in the book. In fact, it is far from the case as it seems that on every single page Finley is dealing with something that’s deep, desperate and altogether too large for an 18 year old girl. With her parents on another continent, we don’t get to see a lot of parental guidance, but we do get parental figures (Mrs. Sweeney – an adopted grandmother with a lot of her own bitterness and pain, the music teacher, and the mother in Finley’s host family) that are all present during Finley’s trials.
POTENTIAL MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD…
The topic of an eating disorder is handled well. As someone who had a family member that dealt with anorexia, I recognized the symptoms immediately, but I loved how Jones built it into the story as part of Finley’s loss and separation from God. It was an attempt to control her life (as eating disorders usually are). My only issue with the storyline is that ‘we’ got to experience the build-up of the illness, but we didn’t get to see how Finley worked through it. I could easily have seen this being a two or three book series as Finley got back to her parents, got the help she needed, and tried to juggle her grief on top of making a romance with a Hollywood heart-throb work. There’s definitely more than enough plot in the book for more stories and I felt like everything in the story built to literally, the last couple of pages and then POOF. It’s all wrapped fast, neat and with nearly dizzying perfection. I would have loved a little more.
That said, I need to reiterate that I loved this book. The characters drew me in immediately and I read it in less than 24 hours. (I home school three children and run a business – so that’s saying something!) I would highly recommend this book for tweens, teens or those who happen to enjoy Hollywood, Ireland or the vampire craze. Actually, it would work for someone who loves unique love stories. Or good romance. Or if someone’s dealing with a loss. Or…yeah. Pretty much if you know a teen girl or woman, this book’s a good one for the Christmas list.
RATED PG-13: It could be considered PG, but some of the topics are a little bit deeper, so I’d recommend for those over 13.
**Review copy provided by Wynn-Wynn Media. We love your recommendations! Thank you and keep them coming!
