My Unexpected Love

by Heidi McLaughlin

The second book in the series that gives us a peek into the lives of the kids from the hugely popular Beaumont Series but now the kids are all grown up, striking out into the big wide world and spreading their wings, but were they living the lives that I as an avid fan of the original series, had hoped they would?
The book revolves around Elle, twin sister of Peyton (and I must admit I liked the fact that the author gave us more of Peyton and Noah in this story too) and daughter of Harrison (who I quite simply adore and Katelyn) and if I am being honest, I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about Elle…she’s a complicated one.
Living with her brother Quinn whilst she attends college means that she has the opportunity to live life to the beat of her own drum for once, but she seems to be out of tune with everything that is good for her, she burns the candle at both ends, resulting in her studies suffering and she seems oblivious ( and at times downright rude) to her longtime best friend Ben who is at UCLA with her.
I found myself fighting the urge to skip through the paragraphs were she thought it was acceptable to bleat on about how tough she was finding life after the incident with Peyton, I could have shaken her for being so melodramatic, I get the fact that she was finding it tough to reconcile the fact that  her sister could have died but she seemed willing to forget that she didn’t!! Peyton wasn’t using what happened as an excuse to flunk classes and drink herself into oblivion, so what the heck was going on with her…I just wanted Elle to wake up and remember what she had and not continue to dwell on what might have been, it was helping no-one. But could see or was she too far down the rabbit hole of self-pity?
Ben has always had Elle’s back, her best friend forever, he has been by her side through thick and thin, he has hidden the fact that as the years have gone by his friendship has turned into more…he has loved her for longer than he wants to think about, but will she ever see him, the way he longs for?
I was rooting for him and hoped that Elle would see that the best thing in her life was ready to walk away. I hated that she took him for granted but then again, Elle took most people for granted, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. She is 100% certain that he will always be the guy that she can rely on, the man that she can turn too when she needs a shoulder to lean …but what about him?
Will she stand by him when he makes a decision that could very well mean that she no longer has him by her side?
Will she be happy for him as he moves on? I hoped that it wouldn’t come to it, but I couldn’t help but think that sometimes if you love someone you have to cut them loose…but was that the case here?
In their own way they both loved each other, I had my fingers crossed that they could find a happy place to allow that love to settle, but it was far from straightforward and far from easy.
As you would expect from Ms McLaughlin this was beautifully written, it had an easy pace and was evocative of the series as a whole.