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Book Review: A quest for THAT (elusive) FROG

Despite this being an actual “ode” to the lovely Trish Ryan, it will not be written in prose.  Sorry to disappoint.  Over the weekend I didn’t get much sleep; I could blame it on my allergies, or the freak cold spell, or being stressed out by x, y and/or z.  The thing is that’s just not true.  In actuality I was curled up with a bunch of pillows and a fuzzy blanket completely enthralled by Trish Ryan’s first book He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.  Page after page after page I found myself laughing, crying, laughing again and crying again.  I know that Trish didn’t write her book specifically for me, but I felt like it was written for me.  After I finished I wrote an email to Trish (at 3:30 in the morning, mind you) telling her how much I adored her novel…and then I read it again.  Yes, it really is that good.

Admittedly, I have never read a Christian-based love story; or a Christian-based becoming-an-real-life-adult story…actually, the only Christian-based anything I’ve ever read is more along the lines of the Bible.  I was a bit skeptical, I was not really looking for a “Come to Jesus” type of novel; I am completely content with my own Jesus, thankyouverymuch.  I knew that Trish would be talking about boys, so despite it’s catchy subtitle -A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After- I hoped that her book would be mostly talking about boys and keep the Jesus stuff to a minimum. 

Let’s start with the boy stuff, shall we?  Most single women in their twenties or thirties have a battery of failed relationships, bad relationships, a few nuggest of incredibly humorous moments with a boy (whether they were intended to be funny or not), and a whole lotta filler-space.  Hello!  I can relate!  Reading about Trish navigating the rivers of unappropriate men and bad relationships was like a trip down memory lane…albeit, a trip that may have triggered unpleasant memories from a whole slew of exes, making me even more thrilled to be able to classify those (enter favorite curse word here) relationships as “over”.  It was fascinating to read about Trish’s experiences as a quasi omnipresent figure, able to see the flaws of a relationship and have my own opinions on how to rectify those problems…and even more fascinating to realize that Trish, like many women -myself included, couldn’t always identify those problems while she was smack in the middle of previously mentioned relationship.  Her honesty and self-reflection (at times self-scrutiny) over herself and the men she dated or married made me realize that I probably would benefit from a similar dose of scrutiny.  (Note to self: write super-fantastic memoir on previous dating disasters and -here’s the important part- the lessons learned.  Thanks for the tip Trish.)

Shortly after her wedding, Trish found herself quickly spiraling into one of those “empty shell” people; a person I am only too familiar with myself.  I couldn’t help but shed a tear or thousand as Trish recalled the familiar, frightening aspects of such an unhealthy, destructive marriage.  I read her thoughts, her fears, her debating on whether or not to bolt and I was reminded of a similar period of my life.  I think the mark of an excellent author is one who can relate her own experiences to those of others without forcing it down her readers throats.  (Excellent Author Criteria: Check).  I had such an emotional response to this book; I think anyone who makes it through a life-crisis and finds another person on the planet with a similar crisis will feel a connection.  At any rate, back to Trish; you get enough of the ramblings on my life simply by subscribing to my feed. 

After her escape, Trish became a wanderer, quite literally.  Homeless and living under an assumed name, she tried to disappear.  Hello, gutsy!  I doubt that she felt gutsy at the time, but the fact remains that standing up for herself, siezing her life as her’s, and then following through on the steps to reclaim the parts that were destroyed…that, my friends, is definitively Hope.

And now we get to the Jesus part, the reclaiming (or finding for the first time) true happiness.  Happiness is different for everyone and does not follow any kind of general rules.  For Trish, her instincts told her that happiness came from some kind of higher power.  So she set off to find her happiness, she looked high (astrology and horoscopes) and low (crystals and energy from the earth) and everywhere inbetween.  In the end, she found what she was looking for in a Christian church that met in an school gymnasium.  Again, happiness comes in all sorts of different mediums for different people.  After a lot of searching, a few doubts, a little bit of religious indifference, and then some more searching, Trish decided to turn herself over to God and believed that in return He would send her a fantastic husband.  Seems like a pretty good deal, no?  For those of you that are spiritual and/or religious, you will recognize this kind of deal, and the actual honest-to-goodness believing that goes with it, is Faith. 

As I said earlier, I was worried about the Jesus part of this book; I have more-or-less steered clear of Christian literature and wasn’t sure how I would react to a churchy novel.  I was pleasantly surprised to find myself relating to Trish, learning from her, identifying with that spiritual hunger that drives many people to look for something more in their lives.  Throw in a  bunch of bad-date tidbits, relationship gems, and a prince-turned-frog scenario at the end to give a real-life Happily Ever After. 

You can order this book at Amazon.com; pick it up at your favorite bookstore; or if you are really lucky and live in New England you may be able to catch Trish on tour (if so, tell her I said “hi!”).  Buy it, Read it, Love it, Rinse & Repeat.

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