You know a book was great when you want to dedicate an entire post to it.
I recently finished Unexpected Lessons in Love by Lucy Dillion and it was such a beautiful read.
Little synopsis:
What happens when ‘I do’ turns into ‘I don’t know’?
Jeannie always wanted to fall in love, and now she’s finally got the whirlwind romance she dreamed of. Dan’s gorgeous, he’s a successful young vet, and he flew her to New York and proposed on Brooklyn Bridge. Jeannie has to remind herself this is actually her life. It seems too perfect, too magical, to be real. Yet it is.
But now she’s on her way to the wedding she can’t shake off the tight sensation crushing her chest. Is it just nerves . . . or is this all happening a bit too fast?
Jeannie has one last chance to shout, ‘Stop!’ But just as she grabs it, a twist of fate throws everything she knows into the air like confetti. What Jeannie learns about Dan, about her own heart, and about the power of love itself, will change her world for ever . . .
*From this point onwards there will be SPOILERS you have been warned! *
I LOVED reading this, could not put this down I simply had to know what happens, it took all of my strength to not flip to the end and find out whether Jeannie gets her happy ending.
The book starts of very sweetly, we get an insight into the wonderful relationship between Jeannie & Dan- we even get to ‘see’ the proposal!
The narrative then shifts to Jeannie on the way to her wedding with her dad, barely able to breathe in her dress, anxious and certain she is making a mistake. I loved the fact that Jeannie felt like she could confide in her father, often we find the main protagonist only has a good relationship with one of their parents, whereas in this book Jeannie has a good relationship with both. We soon find out that Dan has had a horrible accident.
While Dan lies in a coma, Jeannie is faced with a brutal reality- she hardly knows the man she was about to marry. She didn’t know any of his friends, hardly knew anything about him and after a while she realises he knew hardly anything about her. Their romance moved rather quickly, after 5 months together Dan proposed and the rest of their free time was consumed by wedding planning.
We then meet Rachel who works at the vet practice with George, the man Dan was supposed to work with before the accident, and the two ladies form a strong friendship.
One of the things I loved about this book was the representation of love. We meet lots of characters who describe their love for their partners and no stories are overly sugar coated or over the top magical. They are real and raw and genuine and I loved that. I really enjoyed the idea of Racheal, Natalie & Jeannie gathering wedding dresses as charity donations to raise money for the rescue puppies. I loved that each dress had a story, some sad & some happy.
Throughout the book you definitely feel Jeannie is trying to understand herself and her reasoning for not wanting to marry Dan, she is desperately trying to learn as much as she can about him so that when and if he awakes she can be there to support him. Granted a lot of her feeling are based on guilt, she did leave him a voicemail to say she wanted to cancel the wedding and she think this was the voicemail Dan was listening to when he was hit by the bus. In her eyes, Jeannie is trying to do the right thing, hoping that somewhere along the road she may fall in love again.
I loved Jeannie’s growth throughout the book, over the course of time and thanks to Owen, she slowly became a bit more confident and a bit more open about how she truly feels.
Also, can we take a quick moment to talk about the friendship between her and Owen? These guys are the cutest and I actually appreciated that the author didn’t force them together by the end of the book, she just allowed everything to happen naturally.
This was such a lovely read, it will have you emotional, there were a few occasions where I almost started sobbing on the train, this book really pulls on your heart!
I feel like I need to stop here otherwise I will just tell you everything about this book and then you’ll miss out on reading it!
So what are you waiting for? Go read it!
Let me know if you read this and what you thought!
Kamila 🙂
A Moment in Life 