Eight Twenty Eight

 My Reading Reviews: Eight Twenty Eight       Authored by: Ian and Larissa Murphy

When this book was published, this couple had been married for about four years. I believe Ian and Larissa were in their mid-to-late twenties when they married, and are currently in their thirties. I believe this is the only book authored by Ian and Larissa Murphy, although a little bit of research shows that they have had speaking engagements, and other opportunities of sharing their story. You can check out their website, ianandlarissa.com, although it did not appear to be updated recently.

The book, Eight Twenty Eight, is a love story that includes a terrible accident and brain injury, years of slow healing, a strong commitment even before marriage, and entering into a marriage with someone with a disability. Both Ian and Larissa were followers of Christ when they met, although Larissa states that her faith was not as strong as Ian's at that time. Their journey of faith, hope, trust, fear, uncertainty, and love from when they first met to all the way through the accident, coma, battling through a brain injury, and physical handicaps to the point of getting married and defining their "normal" is the basis for their story. There are several very real-life aspects covered throughout this book, such as Larissa praying for God to take away her love for Ian if their relationship was supposed to be finished. Or her confession to Ian that she was "tempted to lust after an able-bodied man."  Yet their ever growing faith leads them through the extreme, and normal, difficulties of a dating and marriage relationship. This book is not a biography, or memoirs, but just the true story of their love for Christ and following Him, their love for each other, and how it carries them through their life together.

I had never heard of this book, or of Ian and Larissa Murphy, until a month ago. Eight Twenty Eight was on special at the store at which I work, and it seemed to be a pretty popular sale. I picked it up a few times, read the back, and started reading parts of it. The story intrigued me because I personally know someone with a brain injury, and physical handicaps, as the result of an accident, and I wondered how someone could enter into marriage with that situation and make it work. With all the struggles fully functioning Christian couples have, how could they make it last. I finally decided to get myself a copy and read it. I was personally struggling with some things in my own marriage relationship, and I was hoping to gain some wisdom from this couple's love story.

The book was a fairly fast read for me, but not exactly the easiest read. It wasn't deep, heavy, hard to understand stuff, but the flow of the book did not work well for me. It would jump, kind of abruptly and sometimes without warning, between the story leading up to marriage and the present day marriage relationship. It was a little confusing at times, but not super difficult to figure out. While the authors did not really sugar-coat things, pretty much all through the book I kept waiting for the "this is real life" aspect to come through. And it did, a few times, but not near as much as I was anticipating, and as a result, I think, the deep, real-life, "this is how we got through" aspect never hit me. I'm not sure if I was looking for something different than what Eight Twenty Eight covers, or if the author just never quite gets to the "meat" of the matter. Even still, the core of the book is that love is a choice, not just a feeling, that you sometimes have to make every single day. Or even multiple times a day. And choosing, and learning, to love like Christ is the ultimate love that we can show, even in our marriage relationship.

After completing this book, and feeling a little let-down because it didn't seem to offer what I was anticipating, I pondered whether I would consider it a good book. And, I've come to this conclusion: it's an "ok" book. I think Eight Twenty Eight carries an amazing story of two people's commitment to Christ and each other, but, as I mentioned earlier, the flow of the book didn't really work for me. I'm not going to discourage people from checking it out; in fact, if someone wants to read it, I will be more than happy to pass my copy on to you. And, if you do read the book, I'd be interested in your thoughts on it as well. Feel free to comment below if you want me to send you the book (I only have one copy, so the first person gets it), or to share your thoughts on the book!