TITLE: The Accidentals
AUTHOR: Sarina Bowen
GENRE: Young Adult
PUBLICATION: July 10th, 2018
THE ACCIDENTALS:
Is a full length, by Sarina Bowen her first YA fiction debut novel. About Love, Loss and New Adventures.
An accidental is a note in the piece that departs from the stated key signature. But there's nothing accidental about an accidental, in spite of it's name. The use of accidentals ads colour and depth to the music effectively allowing the composure a expanded colour palate from which to paint.
For seventeen years it’s always just been Racheal and her mum, on her mother’s death bed she declares that now it’s time that Rachel get in touch with her father, not long after, right before Racheal’s eighteenth birthday her mother passes away from cancer. It’s then that she’s placed in a group home until she can go to boarding school in New Hampshire in the fall.
Racheal knows nothing of her father, only the child support cheques her mother regularly got, but other than those her mother refused to speak of him, Racheal only knows his name and what she’s sourced off the internet from wikipedia and u-tube videos.
Music has always been my only connection to him. And in a weird way, he’s never let me down.
When she meets her father for the first time and their journey is where the story came into it's own, so beautifully told, I loved their connection, their learning curves, this was just such a straight forward beautiful tale.
Boarding school is the only thing that Racheal has set her sights on, it's the only solid thing in her future, everything else imploded the day her mother died. She’s going to the place where her mother and father supposedly met. It’s where her own story began.
And a boy named Jake that’s attending the same school that became her pen pal who she meets the first day on campus, he was a breath of fresh air, the nerdy boy, a friendship that blossomed into so much more, a slow moving perfectly paced romance.
What wasn’t to love about this, normally the ya genre doesn’t really do it for me, but slowly and with this one under my belt I’m changing my mind.
It's hard to explain this book, all I can say is that it was just so real, nothing was over dramatised, it flowed perfectly, it wasn’t dramatically full of angst, which so many authors tend to do when it comes to this genre, or overly emotional it was just the perfect story, you would not know that this was this authors first tip toe into this genre because she nailed it.
I loved the father, daughter dynamic, their connection after seventeen years of absence which was brought on by a traumatic event was heartfelt and the perfect blend of angst. There is absolutely nothing I would change about this story.
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.
Sarina Bowen is the USA Today bestselling author of many things, including: the True Northseries, 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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