“Perhaps I should have read something into the fact that when I first laid eyes on Sam some girl was yelling at him, and when I first met Kevin he nearly killed me...”

Jo’s summer is off to an interesting start. Now all the teenager needs is a job, future plans and a few goals for her life. No big deal right?

She’d also like to know why no one talks about the horrible accident she witnessed last summer at Cornerstone church. But as much as she wants to know the truth, someone else wants to keep it a secret. Can she handle creepy stalker guys, death threats and her crazy love life without losing control?

For Jo, unravelling the mystery and piecing her life back together will mean discovering if God really listens—and if he cares enough to answer.

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So If Only You Knew is actually the second book about teenagers and love I’ve read in three months. And I actually thought this was a lot better. The characters are a lot more believable, the plot has more interesting twists and turns, and there are simply more interesting ideas, put together in intriguing ways.

 

On one level the book is about Jo, the main character and the two guys she’s attracted to—Sam and Kevin.  Sam’s supposedly ex-girlfriend keeps showing up, and Jo isn’t sure who Sam prefers. The other one, Kevin, seems to have a lot of secrets, and sometimes his cell phone seems more interesting than Jo. So the story is partly about how she figures out which one is better for her. We figure it out quite early, and just keep our fingers crossed that she’ll come to the right conclusion too.

 

But there are other characters too who are very distinct and very real: there’s Nate the mysterious youth worker from the church (something has happened to him, but why will no-one talk about it?); there’s Jo’s cousin Kat the vet, stable and wise and supportive; and there’s Lisa, the pastor’s adopted daughter who’s a bit of a motor mouth but actually has more depth than you’d guess; and there are two sinister guys who seem to be stalking Jo in their red pick-up. Are you hooked yet?

 

But there’s a whole other layer here, and this is what makes it more than the average teen romance. And that is, that Jo and Kevin and Sam and Lisa are all teenagers trying to figure out their spirituality. By that, I don’t mean they’re trying to decide whether to be religious—although a lot of the action does happen around a churchy event called the Gathering. I mean they’re trying to figure out who they are, whether people like them, what they’re any good at, where they’re going, and just why they’re here in this world. And I would say those are all questions about spirituality.

 

Which means that there is an invisible, silent character in the book—and that’s God. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but it’s very difficult to make a character interesting who’s invisible and silent. It’s even more difficult to make God an interesting character. In the 1600’s, John Milton wrote a long poem Paradise Lost, about the creation of the world, and Adam and Eve, and how things went wrong in the world. And one of the main criticisms of Milton is that the God he portrays is quite unpleasant—old and boring and wordy and severe, and frankly not a God you would describe as wonderful and loving, not someone you would like to hang out with. In fact, in Milton, Satan is a much more believable and attractive character—which is not exactly what Milton intended.

 

So I think one of the things Mags does well (if it doesn’t sound too weird) is to make God an interesting character, a character you might even get to like. How does she do that? Kierkegaard said life is understood in retrospect—that is, you only understand it when you look back on it. So, in If Only You Knew, I think you only become aware by the end of the book that God has been there all along—helping people ask their questions, working in the middle of the difficult situations they get into, helping them face the truth about themselves, and even answering some of their questions (but not all of them).

 

So I like this book for its honest treatment of growing up, but particularly for doing this very difficult thing, of describing people figuring out what to believe, and getting to know God, in a way that is not syrupy or clichéd and (even—if it doesn’t sound too odd) very religious. That’s quite a feat.

 

So thank you Mags. This book is a great gift—specially to those trying to figure out the God thing and decide what to do with their spirituality—but for all of us, old and young.

And if you didn’t like Twilight, you’ll like this one. And if you did like Twilight, you’ll like this better. And if you’ve never heard of Twilight—forget it: just read If Only I Knew. You’ll love it.

 

John Bowen, director of the Institute of Evangelism