Review: The Accidentals by Sarina Bowen

Synopsis

Never ask a question unless you’re sure you want the truth.

I’ve been listening to my father sing for my whole life. I carry him in my pocket on my mp3 player. It’s just that we’ve never met face to face.

My mother would never tell me how I came to be, or why my rock star father and I have never met. I thought it was her only secret. I was wrong.

When she dies, he finally appears. Suddenly I have a first class ticket into my father’s exclusive world. A world I don’t want any part of – not at this cost.
Only three things keep me going: my a cappella singing group, a swoony blue-eyed boy named Jake, and the burning questions in my soul. There’s a secret shame that comes from being an unwanted child. It drags me down, and puts distance between me and the boy I love.

My father is the only one alive who knows my history. I need the truth, even if it scares me.

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Amazon Global Link: http://geni.us/ACCAmazon

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About the Author:

Sarina Bowen is the USA Today bestselling author of many things, including: the True North series, Him/Us and the WAGs series with Elle Kennedy, The Ivy Years series and the Brooklyn Bruisers. And more!

Are you looking for a friends-to-lovers story or maybe even a secret baby book? You can read a list of Sarina's books broken out by trope and style.

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REVIEW

The Accidentals by Sarina Bowen

Title: The Accidentals
Series: Standalone
Author: Sarina Bowen
Release date: July 10, 2018
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 4.5 stars[Yes (hide spoiler)]

I'm a big YA fan, so I was thrilled when I heard that Sarina Bowen was venturing into one of my favorite genres. She's one of my auto-read/auto-buy authors in contemporary romance, and has been for some time. What I especially loved about this book was that she really went outside of her norm by placing the father daughter relationship at the forefront of the story, and the romance was just a sub-plot in the background. I love romance, but the lack of it in a story never affects my reading enjoyment at all. In fact, I may get stoned for saying this, but I could have even done without the romantic element completely in this case. As much as I loved Jake in all of his nerdy glory, Rachel and her father needed their time to heal and work on their relationship. They were starting from rock bottom.

Rachel has just lost her mother to cancer, and her entire life has been turned upside down and shaken with a vengeance.

    My life in Florida is coming abruptly to an end, like a familiar song shut off right in the middle of the chorus.

At seventeen, her mother is the only parent she's ever known and she's not sure that she wants her father waltzing in after being ignored for so long. Financially, he has always given his support, but that does not compensate for absence of his time and love. From their first meeting and interaction, I was sad for both of them. For the missed years and opportunities that passed them by as she was growing up. Frederick seemed genuinely emotionally wrecked and hopeful for some type of real relationship with her.

My first impression was that there had to be some grand explanation for his absence because of how determined he was to prove himself to her. He wasn't trying to make excuses or marginalize his parenting fail. He owned it. So for that, I had total respect. From Rachel's point of view, you could feel her internal conflict through every page. Having imagined being a part of her famous rock star father's life for so long, it now felt surreal to be living that dream so abruptly. She can't help but feel as if he was forced into the situation, and yet when given the choice to have her live with him or leave her in the hands of the state, he chose HER. For once in his life, he chose his daughter, and because of that, she knows that he deserves a chance to make things right.

    Our relationship is like an experiment gone awry. Maybe my father and I will never be able to hear each other properly, because so much of our beginning was spliced off and thrown away.

Frederick and Rachel have a long road to healing in front of them. It doesn't help that they are their own worst enemies and have a total lack of communication. She holds her resentment and hurt inside, only letting it out in passive aggressive swipes. He likes to shove uncomfortable explanations and conversations under the rug for later. Or never. There were so many times you want to grab them and lock them in a room until they yell and scream, and come to understand each other. But it's a process, one that they need to filter through, experiment, and learn from. Don't expect perfect behavior from perfect characters, because you won't find that here. That had me conflicted for a while, because Frederick truly did some immature and selfish things as they were taking that journey together. But the character growth by the end was realistic and well earned.

Jake was an amazing love interest for Rachel. There wasn't anything about him that I didn't love, and I rooted for them to admit the feelings that were brewing while she was navigating her new life. One of the things I really liked about them was that they became good friends over emails before they met face to face.

    His messages are like an escape hatch from my real life. They make Claiborne Prep seem like a real place. And when I read his messages, I can almost believe that the earth is still turning around the sun, and that I’m really going to a fancy new school in the fall.

Then to find out that her self proclaimed nerd of a friend was just as sweet and funny and person, AND made her heart skip a beat? There was never any doubt that their crush was going to develop into more. They had an easy camaraderie and flirtatious energy between them that was unmistakable. It almost became a joke at how they seemed to be the only one who weren't aware that their crush was reciprocated. Everyone around them was just waiting for them to get with the program and make it official.

I loved that Rachel was a talented singer herself. It fed into the whole music theme, while at the same time giving her and her father a common interest to help them bond with each other. Combined with their frequent walks and his persistence in consistently showing up and being present, they slowly start to build a relationship together. But the whole way, you're waiting for the past to rear its ugly head. The Talk is a long time coming, and secrets need to be aired. When her father finally put the ugly truth out there, it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It was then that you realize that he had a lot of growing up to do, and there was so simple excuse or tidy bow to place on top of everything. They were messy, they were broken, but in the end they found a way to put the shattered pieces back together again.

I could have done without Haze being in the picture altogether. I wasn't his biggest fan, and the fact that they "hooked up" in the past in the circumstances that they did was a little disturbing. Rachel was the type of person who didn't speak up when something was bothering her. Unfortunately that's what happened when she didn't feel comfortable with his pressure to move past friendship and get physical with her. In no way did that excuse his behavior either in the past, or when he visited her at her school. I didn't like that she never held him accountable and confronted him, but rather the entire thing was forgotten after she made him leave. The resolution of that felt like an after thought, and I wanted to see it more defined and addressed.

Overall, I thought this was such a beautiful coming of age story about a father and daughter building trust, learning how to get real with each other, and healing the wounds of their past. It was such a highly addictive, fast-paced book that I binge read almost the entire thing in one setting. Even if you're not typically a YA fan, I think you would find this story well written and easy to fall in love with. Sarina has another winner on her hands with The Accidentals, and I can only hope that there are many young adult titles in her future. I'll be the first one to sign up for every one of them.

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