Over the Christmas holiday I read, In the Unlikely Event, by LJ Shen. Leigh writes with a kind of beautiful rhythm that sucks you in. While in the prose of the story, you discover that every character has jerkish tendencies and makes poor choices with the little information at their disposal. No one in this novel is without some sort of sin. Even the hero and heroine are terribly flawed.
I have a girlfriend who prefers movies without an HEA (GASP). Believe me, I know. She says that she prefers when writers make the story more real and don’t pretty it up at the end. Well, I recommended this book to her. It does have an HEA, but you have to work REALLY hard to get there. I think I read somewhere that LJ Shen uses at least 6 story lines to make things interesting and she definitely does that here. Aurora (Rory) and Malachy (Mal) meet early in the story and share an unbelievable night together. As they leave each other the next day they draw up a crazy pact that if they meet in the future and the universe means them to be together, they will drop whatever life they have at that moment (marriage kids, mortgage, etc.) and run away together and live out their life happily humping. What could go wrong, right? Chances are they will never meet again since they live in separate countries, right? Wrong. Which is what starts the story when they meet again years down the road.
Just like I lost count of how many people died in the movie, FARGO, I lost count of the number of obstacles these two actually had to overcome to make this book an HEA. It was one of the most unique reads I have been engrossed with in a long time. Many people I’ve read either loved it or hated it. I found myself liking it and I recommend it if you want something other than Hallmark. If you are looking for “An Affair to Remember”, keep walking. But “In the Unlikely Event” is edgy and fun and will have you looking at chocolate bars in a whole new way.
I give it Four STARS ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐.
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