The Ordinary Gospel of Isabella Jenkins
A high-concept YA crossover novel (70,000 words) that reads like The Good Place meets The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: a heartfelt cosmic comedy about a stressed teen blogger, a frustrated Messiah, and the sacred struggle of being ordinary.
Seventeen-year-old Isabella Jenkins’s five-year plan is simple: survive her Black and Latina family’s financial stress, ace her Stanford application, and maintain her cynic’s reputation through her incisive high school blog, The Human Codex. It does not include being recruited by heaven.
But when conflicting, viral hashtags like #HustleCultureJesus and #AlphaJesus—born from the complete lack of documentation about Christ’s teenage years—begin to corrupt the celestial machinery of compassion (the “Empathic Resonance Grid”), a celestial bureaucrat named Miguel appears. His mission: Operation Second Draft. His demand: Isabella must become the official scribe for a limited, observational re-incarnation. Jesus is back. He’s sixteen. His name is Joshua “J.” Joseph, and he’s starting at her high school on Monday.
Isabella’s assignment is to document everything—the acne, the algebra, the awkwardness—to create a definitive “Ordinary Gospel” and recalibrate a world losing touch with what divine humanity actually looks like. But J.’s divine constraints are shaky; his profound empathy leaks out as “efficient kindness,” sparking a school-wide movement. This attracts two dangerous kinds of believers: Pastor Chad, a tech-bro megachurch leader who wants to brand J. as the face of his “#EfficientGrace” sermon series, and Father Dominic, a rigid theologian who sees J.’s influence as a dangerous, modern heresy.
As Isabella fights to buffer J. from these threats using satire, scholarship, and sheer stubbornness, she finds him forming a tender, human connection with Lena, a quiet library aide—an anchor that makes his mission matter, but also threatens to emotionally overload his fragile divine vessel. With the celestial “extraction window” set to close at the peak of the Starfall Semi-Formal dance, Isabella must shepherd J. through a minefield of live-streams, doctrinal interrogations, and his own overwhelming heart. If she fails, the gym doesn’t just risk a bad prom; it risks a “Pentecostal Prom”—a localized, chaotic outbreak of unintended miracles.
The Ordinary Gospel of Isabella Jenkins is a funny, poignant, and deeply original novel about the stories we tell to understand the divine, the quiet courage of being kind, and the transformative power of paying attention. It’s for anyone who has ever wondered about the missing years, struggled to be seen for who they truly are, or believed that the most sacred thing we can do is show up, imperfectly, for each other.
IndianaJThomas · Teen
Honestly this is such an immersive book, the way the author puts you in the world around Jenkins its extraordinary, the main character Jenkins is incredibly relatable, honeslty this is a most read.