Did you know there are books with no pictures or word balloons? Written by real people for other real people to read? Sometimes they don’t even have cyborgs or time travel or any of the other 49 shades of grey? Crazy, right?!

There’s A Hula Girl On My Dashboard
How I Left Faith Behind And Learned To Embrace Life
By Logospilgrim
(Henceforth known as Hula Girl for the sake of brevity, and to protect my tweeting thumb)

Hula Girl is a touching, life affirming story of self discovery, exploration, faith, and leaving faith behind to live here, now, and appreciate the life you are living. Or should I say the authors journey to that point. I really didn’t know what to expect from the book, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to connect so much with the book.

It’s not all sunshine and unicorn farts, and more importantly, it’s not a bitter condemnation of religion or religious people. It’s a human story. It’s a story about the author trying desperately to fit in, constantly seeking a place to feel accepted. We all know that feeling. It’s part of what made the X-Men so popular, either as an allegory for race or an exploration of Queer identity and acceptance, or lack thereof. And it’s sure as hell a familiar story to alcoholics or addicts. The restlessness and searching is something we know all too well.

I learned things, I felt things, I had to Google the word “genderqueer,” I sent a message to the author to ask which, or if I should use gendered pronouns here. That’s not me being self deprecating, it’s my way of saying that, though we are very different people, I felt much more in common with Logospilgrim than any differences.

There is also some great stuff in the book about Robert Englund that made me legitimately tear up.

This isn’t so much a review as it is a sincere thank you to the author for sharing this journey with us. But if this were a review, I’d give it 4 hula girls, a Freddy sweater, and 2 Orthodox churches.

You can find this book and other things by the author over at logospilgrim.com

-Kris