My Rating: 3 Stars
Tropes: Contemporary Romance | New Adult | Criminal
The Unlucky Ones is a new adult, contemporary romance novel from Stacey Marie Brown. This is an emotional read, but not in the way that readers are going to cry ugly tears throughout the story. What makes this one emotional is 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧 (𝗜.𝗘. 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗜𝗦 𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘𝗦). The heroine’s mother is slowly dying of early onset Alzheimer’s and the hero (if you could call him a hero) had some terrible stuff happen in his past, along with just getting out of prison. All of this could certainly bring out the emotions of any reader, but I feel like it took away from the actual love story. This didn’t truly feel like a romance novel. I think there was too much bad going on and the story was so focused on it that the romance fell to the wayside. Don’t get me wrong, there are sex scenes and they are HOT, but the buildup of their relationship was lackluster. This was disappointing to me because the story could have really gone somewhere had it been more focused on Lincoln and Devon.
𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗦𝗣𝗢𝗜𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗦 𝗔𝗛𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗜𝗙 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗛𝗔𝗩𝗘𝗡'𝗧 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞
One of the things I loved about this story is that in the beginning these two characters had sex with each other without even knowing one another, in a diner bathroom. 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗔 𝗪𝗔𝗬 𝗧𝗢 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗔 𝗕𝗢𝗢𝗞! I’ve never read a book quite like that, so I was immediately interested in what was going to happen.
The hero, Lincoln, went there because he was running from the law (they were LITERALLY after him) and she because she just got the news of her mothers diagnosis and her boyfriend at the time sent her a sext that was meant for someone else. Very unfortunate events… So, both were feeling vulnerable and decided to screw randomly in the bathroom. The scene ends with him getting arrested and then the book skips to five years later.
At this time, Devon is desperate for a job because she’s caring for her ailing mom, sister (who was so damn selfish) and her niece. So, she makes her way into a bar where she finds work (after a lot of convincing). The only drawback to the job is that her new book is jerk of the worst kind and treats her like dirt. That sucks, but sometimes we must tolerate shit in order to get by, right? So, she does… Lo and behold, HE IS THE MAN SHE HAD SEX WITH IN THE BATHROOM 5 YEARS AGO. 𝗚𝗔𝗦𝗣! 𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗝𝗨𝗜𝗖𝗬 𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦!?! Well it would have been HAD THE TWO KNOWN WHO THE OTHER ONE WAS. I do NOT believe that neither of them knew they screwed in the bathroom 5 years prior. She was still young and looked the same… SOMEONE WOULD HAVE KNOWN! So that got me down bit time. It was so unbelievable to me I almost didn’t finish the story. But I went on because I wanted to see what would happen. Things progressed of course, but it was rather slow and nothing much materialized besides a few sex scenes. Then the big finale… You can read it if you want to know what happens of course as I don’t want to give the entire book away, but it felt a little forced to me. Perhaps this is because the story wasn’t entirely believable from the get-go that I felt this way so I wasn’t expecting much.
Anyway, this is a good book, but I didn’t jive with some pieces of the plot which is why it’s getting 3 stars from me.