MORGAN MATSON – The Unexpected Everything

For my first of my ‘quickie’ book reviews I bring you this YA novel from Morgan Matson.

Andie is a 17 year-old whose life is planned to perfection. At the surface level all seems ideal – she has a pre-med summer program lined up at a prestigious university, her future career prospects look good, she has the best friends a girl can have, and her Dad is a prominent congressman.

But when a scandal rocks their world, she has to readjust her entire way of seeing out her summer, the people around her, and her world. Insert the most amazing and happy-go-lucky season of her life… but as it ends will all the good around her end too? Will she revert back to her old self, or take her learnings into her new future?

Gripes: There is heavy overexplaining throughout, teenage cringy/typical at parts and some chapters, particularly the first half of the book, were sooo long, I wondered how the hell they weren’t divided up into two.

Pros: It deals with the whole gamut of teenage experience, from broken down family, friend conflicts, boy lust and love, issues of identity and fears of failure. It has it all, and it has real heart too.

This YA novel aligns itself with the type of books I used to read growing up, but despite the happy and hopefulness present, it is also surprisingly real, not everything tied up in a neat little bow. This initially impressed me, but pondering on it I felt there could have been more closure with some plot points, especially seeing as it isn’t a series. Maybe that’s why it bugs me, I want to see them again, to check in and see what they’ve done since.

BANG. When you like the characters, you know it’s a win.