Official Review: The Unexpected by Lexie LaMonica

[ALynnPowers]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Unexpected" by Lexie LaMonica.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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In her debut novel, The Unexpected, Lexie LaMonica introduces us to Hannah, a sheltered college freshman who is going out on her own to experience the world for the first time. In this young adult romance book, we also catch glimpses of themes about friendship, coming-of-age, trust, and loss. Though the characters in the story are college-aged, with brief mentions of under-aged drinking and rape, I feel like this book would be appropriate for a younger audience. High school students could just as easily relate to the characters and their situations.

Hannah grew up with over-protective parents. Without leaving her home very much, she only experienced life through the pages of the books she read. But now, at age 18, she breaks away from her parents’ control and sets out on her own for the first time in her life to attend college, against her parents wishes. Not only does she have to deal with meeting people and making friends for the first time, but she also has to find a way to survive, as she’s been cut off from her parents’ funds as well. Fortunately, her dorm-mate Monica is there to take care of the friendship part, and there is one other guy, Jordan, who always seems to show up just in time to save Hannah from some unfortunate experience. Hannah doesn’t like Jordan, who obviously comes from the wrong side of the tracks, but he just won’t give up or go away.

This book is fast-paced and very easy to read. I read it in just a few sittings totally maybe two hours; the plot moves quickly and is simple enough to follow without much effort. While I do appreciate that the simplicity of the story makes for a fast read, it could also be considered a downside to the writing quality. Because of the simplistic writing, the characters and their actions sometimes came across as a bit immature for their ages. I could more easily picture fourteen-year-old characters saying and doing the things in the story, which is why, as I previously mentioned, I believe that younger readers would more easily enjoy this story and would serve as the target audience for this book.

The title of the this book is “The Unexpected,” but to be quite honest, there is not much unexpected about this story at all. It’s a pretty typical young adult novel: good girl meets bad boy; she hates him; he likes her and tries to win her over. If you’ve ever read any other young adult novel, you pretty much know how it’s going to end. There were a few twists and turns here and there, but overall, it’s a rather predictable story.

This book could also use another round of editing to clean up some random punctuation errors and word choice errors. Overall, the technical aspects of the book were pretty good with merely a missing word or comma here and there, but the biggest detraction from the story was the tricky word choice errors (e.g., set/sat, amount/number, lay/lie, further/farther, to/too, ran/run, base/bass, etc.) that were very common throughout the book, and a professional editor would have been a big help in pointing out such errors.

Due to the predictable story and excessive word choice errors, I give this book a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. Had the story not contained so many errors, I might have have forgiven the other “problems” I saw with the book and given it a full 4 stars with a warning to potential readers of the predictable story-line. However, as it is at the moment, this book just isn’t ready to compete with the standard of so many other books on the market.

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The Unexpected
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Like ALynnPowers's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Kia]

This book sounds like it had so much potential, it's too bad about all the errors. But as it's the author's first book, hopefully they will be able to take the constructive criticism to heart and do better next time. Thank you for your honest review.

[Shelle]

This book sounds like it had so much potential, it's too bad about all the errors. But as it's the author's first book, hopefully they will be able to take the constructive criticism to heart and do better next time. Thank you for your honest review.

This is what I got from the review too. Lots of potential, less-than-stellar execution.
Hopefully the author connects with a strong editor and cleans the book up.
Great review!

[ALynnPowers]

As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that I have read books with much worse typographical nonsense scattered throughout it, and this one is actually still quite good compared to some others I have come across.

[ZandraLynn]

Just wondering how I could get a hold of this book to read?

[ALynnPowers]

Just wondering how I could get a hold of this book to read?

There is a link at the bottom of the review to direct you to the Amazon page.

[Clifora]

Perhaps the author could have made the plot more 'unexpected'. It definitely has potential to be a good book but it's a shame the story had quite a number of errors. However, thank you for the great review!

[ayushiyakshi]

The Unexpected by Lexie LaMonica is really very good book.
Regards
Assignment help

[Kdonegan91]

This book caught my attention because it has a very interesting title and cover. However, after reading your review, I think I will pass on this book. Thank you for the well-written and honest review. I don't think I could handle reading a book that is for such a young audience.