The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This is a slightly better than OK story about a teenage girl, Andie, who find her plans for the summer go out the window when her congressman dad gets pulled into a scandal. She finds herself doing things she never would have dreamed of, spending time with her father, taking a job walking dogs and starting a relationship that could last more than her previous 5 week record.

I have to admit I struggled at the start of this story. There were too many characters, strange names (for me at any rate) and I just couldn’t warm to Andie. Even her friends Toby, Palmer and Bri describe her as a Type A personality. She’s an overachiever with her whole life planned out who needs to be in control of every situation including her relationships. It’s kind of understandable given her father’s job and the fact that she’s always in the spotlight but it does make her a difficult character to like.

I found myself not having much sympathy for her when things started to go wrong. What she viewed as a major crisis didn’t really seem like the end of the world to me but that may have been partly due to me being tired and stressed. I also found myself getting frustrated about how she dealt with things. Rather than just accepting and moving forward she bottled everything up and refused to accept it. The opportunities she got, like being offered a job as a dog walker, she viewed as beneath her. Honestly, I kind of wanted to give her a reality check and say welcome to the real world.

Anyway, it was probably around a third of the way through that this started to turn around for me. When Andie is faced with a real problem, when she starts to relax and form a real connection to someone, that’s when I began to finally engage with the story.

I do think it’s a little on the long side and a bit slower than I would have liked but there were some really good moments and some real emotions. I did find myself in tears on a couple of occasions and some parts made me smile (scavenger hunt and emoji bet). While I did think the romance and the dog walking was cute probably the best part of this story for me was the relationship between Andie and her father. It’s quite unusual to find any parents in YA/NA reads so I liked that this was a big feature of this one.

Overall a good story that I enjoyed but probably a little too long and dragged out to justify more than 3.5 stars.

Blurb

Andie had it all planned out. When you are a politician’s daughter who’s pretty much raised yourself, you learn everything can be planned or spun, or both. Especially your future. Important internship? Check. Amazing friends? Check. Guys? Check (as long as we’re talking no more than three weeks).

But that was before the scandal. Before having to be in the same house with her dad. Before walking an insane number of dogs. That was before Clark and those few months that might change her whole life. Because here’s the thing—if everything’s planned out, you can never find the unexpected. And where’s the fun in that?