Unexpected by Jenny Frame

Unexpected by Jenny Frame

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books in exchange for an honest review.

For various reasons, this is a difficult review to write. Partly because I'm writing immediately after finishing the book and . . . stupid book made it difficult to see.

Title of the book is 'Unexpected'. That was definitely an unexpected result. Finding myself with wet eyes. Unexpected.

Book stars Dale McGuire and Rebecca Harper - though there are three point of views. With the third point of view that of Ashley, bitch reporter (in many many ways). All three are near the end of their third decade of life on Earth, though the only one whose age I know is Dale - 36.

There's a mix of cultures here - Dale, Scottish, and from the East end of Glasgow (which I think is supposed to imply something like the working class section or something, I don't know Glasgow), Rebecca 'Becca' Harper - English, and as Dale noted, even though Rebecca currently lives in a run down house, she's still 'posh', or upper class.

Both of the main characters, and I'm not including Ashley in 99% of this review, have 'issues' that they faced long ago, and the ramifications of those issues still haunt them. I don't want to give everything away, of course, so I'll just note that Dale is quite good at picking up women (without trying), but doesn't believe she's good enough to be in a relationship because of her past; while Rebecca can't allow herself to be in a romantic relationship because her trust was broken long ago, and the woman she was with after that couldn't stand the idea of children. And Rebecca needed children.

Which is how Rebecca and Dale meet up. They didn't bump into each other in a bar, dance floor, or the like, like Dale normally ends up meeting women, no, they meet up through a little fella named Jake. 10 year old Jake. Jake, you see, has seen how . . . poorly his mother, Rebecca, has been recently and has gone looking for help. And has turned to Dale - just turning up on her doorstep (well, at her place of work). For, you see, Dale got a little bit of extra money about 11 years ago when she donated eggs to a fertility clinic. And Jake, with his massively high IQ, had hacked the place and gotten Dale's name. The 36 year old who never thought she'd have children or deserved them has a ten year old demanding help from her.

Naturally Dale, knowing Jake's family must be worried about him, rushes him back to his house in a small village nearish (by about 20 minutes by car) to London. The mother she meets there, Rebecca, wants nothing to do with Dale and demands that she leave.

Dale had made a promise to Jake though and . . . well, complications ensue. Not just because of that promise, of course.

Meanwhile, in a side thread, Ash is hooked up with the daughter of an owner of a newspaper - and circulation is down. Ash is going to need to come up with a big story to justify her existence and big salary. So she's hunting around for a story and 'lucks' upon a photograph that shows Victoria Carter -the Carter story, that Ash broke, 'made her'. If she could just track Victoria down again . . . she'd be set.

And yes, the two plot lines converge . . . eventually.

Of note:
sex - occurs and is graphic.
characters - there are more people of importance than those I've already mentioned, including Sadie (next door neighbor to Rebecca), Val & Sammy (Dale's friends; along with their kid Mia), and Trent - Rebecca's lawyer and ex-lover. This is in addition to Rebecca (and Jake), Dale, and Ash (and Ash's girlfriend who I haven't named).

Rating: 4.55

August 7 2017



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