A great performance by Nicola Victoria Vincent
I’m trying to tackle my long TBR list and this book seemed the perfect choice to start. The fact that the audiobook version is narrated by Nicola Victoria Vincent, an outstanding British narrator, made it hard to resist.
Business owner Dale McGuire’s life is upended when a 10-year-old boy appears on her doorstep claiming that he’s her biological son. Rebecca Harper is still bearing the emotional scars from her father’s crimes and is guarded and distrustful. But when her son brings her egg donor home, she slowly starts to let her walls down accepting that maybe there is an unexpected family in the making…
Jenny Frame has written in different genres, mostly paranormal and romance and her specialty is butch-femme relationships. Unexpected is a traditional romance with a definitely not traditional trope for the f/f genre. Ms. Frame adapted the “lost child” theme of m/f romances – when a character suddenly appears and turns out to be a long lost child or a child the father didn’t know he had – and makes it work organically in this story. Kudos to the author to achieve this.
The romance is nicely done, both main characters are likeable and have good chemistry together. Jake, the 10-year-old boy, is fantastic in his role as the catalyst of the relationship between the mains. He’s a great secondary character. My only complaint about the romance is that it falls a bit in the insta-love (and insta-family in this case) category.
Additionally, there is a bit of intrigue thrown in the mix in the form of one of the characters’ past generating present trouble. I thought this was the weakest part of the plot as the resolution felt too easy.
The audiobook is narrated by Nicola Victoria Vincent who did a fantastic job. Her performance of Dale, in all her Scottish and butch glory, is spot-on. Her posh accent for Rebecca is great too as well as her voice for 10-year-old Jake. I think that 50% of my appreciation for this story comes from Ms. Vincent’s performance. 4 stars.
Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
