Book Review: Just Between You and Me

Just Between You and Me by Jenny B. Jones is one of the most fun books I have read in a long time, yet it is not without depth: the subtitle is “A Novel of Losing Fear and Finding God.”

Maggie is a cinematographer who has traveled all over the world and loves to challenge herself in her spare time by sky-diving, exploring caves, etc. Yet the thought of returning to her hometown of Ivy, Texas has her quaking in her boots…not that she’d admit it to anyone. But a family emergency calls her home, and she finds a serious situation with a sister who refuses to take her meds for her bipolar condition and her niece, Riley, left behind with Maggie’s widowed father. Riley has seen too much and been left too much on her own and is totally out of control, and the last person she wants to tell her what to do is an aunt who is basically a stranger.

Riley does respond well to the local vet, Conner, but Maggie and Conner butt heads over…just about everything. Conner begins to find that his first impressions of Maddie may have been wrong, and Maddie finds that helping her niece entails facing her own fears.

The dialogue just zings in this book — talk about witty repartee! And the bits between the dialogue aren’t bad either. Here are a few samples:

John’s hand strokes along mine, and my stomach does a little flip. Not the good kind that makes you want to break out into a show tune. More like the sort of quivering that happens when you’ve swallowed one too many bites of questionable sushi (p. 6).

I go directly to the aisle with candy. It’s like I have the gift of sugar prophecy (p. 13).

“Well, thank you, Dr. Phil. I appreciate the parenting advice. If only it were that easy for the rest of us.” I walk toward the door, my shoes slapping the tile. It’s hard to make a dramatic exit when you’re wearing flip flops (p. 186).

From a message about Jonah: “Fear is the opposite of faith, and where does that get you? Swimming in the guts of a fish. You can’t outrun God. But you know what the good news here is? You also can’t out love him” (p. 209).

From what I can tell, it looks like most of Jenny’s books are Young Adult fiction, but I’ll be seeking out her other books for adults and looking forward hopefully to more. I may even try one of the YA ones. This was my first Jenny B. Jones novel, but it won’t be my last.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)