Read if you like:
❀ UK setting
❀ YA Insta love
❀ Classic literature

Summary: When English lit instructor Ms. Carmichael offers High School Senior Britt Hanson and several of her classmates an offer of a lifetime - a scavenger hunt in the UK with a $100K prize - none can refuse. Upon arriving, Britt becomes immediately smitten with Londoner Luke Jackson, and soon the two are working together to help her win the jackpot.

Thoughts: In order to enjoy this book, you must first suspend any sense of disbelief as the premise of the book seems a bit absurd. Ms. Carmichael refers to the scavenger hunt as a “unconventional endeavor,” and that it certainly is.

Once we move past that, I think this was a cute rom-com for juveniles/young adults that touches on some pretty important and heavy topics such as self esteem, friendship, parental abandonment, etc. The ways in which the author wove these issues into the storyline, and then addressed them head on, was excellent.

What I felt was missing, however, was more in-depth character development across the board. This was a story about adventure, and therefore was more plot heavy, and less about the characters. While this will not necessarily be a negative thing for some, for me, it created an inability to connect with any of the characters.

I did a partial audiobook read as well reading on my kindle, and I would say the narrator did a decent job portraying each of the characters and was clear and concise in her narration.

A super cute cover and an overall average YA romance. I would recommend it primarily to much younger audiences (as opposed to YA that’s a bit more mature) or to those who really love the tropes presented.

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

After reading the blurb for this book, I had Great Expectations...and it did not disappoint!

This story is a literary nerd's dream come true. References to Austen, Dickens, and so many others are interwoven through this YA sweet romance. From page one, I was sucked into the story. Though only told from the female's perspective, the male's voice is not lacking and the reader never has to guess what he is feeling. It is a sweet, gentle overseas romance that will leave you grinning ear to ear. Oh yeah, there is a swoon and a laugh every now and then!

Thank you so much to the author and Netgalley for an eARC. I immensely enjoyed this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Becky Dean, and Random House Children’s for providing this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a great adventure for anyone who loves England or is embarking on the journey to self discovery. The sadness of Britt’s future plans going down the drain is quickly changed by a once-in-a lifetime opportunity that comes to light by one of her teachers. She immerses herself into the competition, exploring new places, and really getting the most out of it. Meeting friends and a cute boy along the way.

I felt like I was reading a young girl's love letter to England, with many classic English history details entwined.

I would 10/10 recommend this book to anyone who loves travel, especially teenage females.

This review will be posted to my Goodreads, Amazon, and Instagram (@ginganinja333) accounts immediately.

Love & Other Great Expectations, by Becky Dean, follows Britt Hanson, a girl who is given the opportunity to compete for $100,000 in a literary-themed scavenger hunt around Great Britain. Britt had always planned on playing soccer in college and going on to play professionally, but must begin to reevaluate what she wants after being diagnosed with a blood-clotting disorder that bars her from competitive sports. Having lost her sports scholarship to UCLA, she needs the prize money to pay for college. Along the way, she meets Luke, a British boy with a love of literature who joins her on her quest.

I love book-themed books, and I particularly love British literature, so I already knew I was going to thoroughly enjoy this book going in.

I have mixed feelings about Britt, the protagonist. She's struggling with the way in which her diagnosis decimated her life plan, but she still manages to be easygoing and funny and sociable. The one thing that thoroughly annoyed me was her severe case of "not like the other girls" syndrome, where she constantly makes comments about things like how she is probably the only girl in the US who didn't know anything about Jane Austen. It was obnoxious, particularly since everything that she acts like is so unique about her is actually fairly common. However, aside from that aspect of her character, she's still an enjoyable protagonist to read about.

Luke is wonderful and a very compelling love interest. He wants to study literature in university, and he's caring and considerate and al that anybody could ask for in the love interest in a YA contemporary book. Like Britt, he's struggling with being forced to do his own reevaluation of what he wants to do with his life, and I really appreciated the way that he is in many ways a foil to her, but is also remarkably similar to Britt in many other ways.

The other characters vary a lot in quality. There are some, like Alexis (Britt's chaperone and Luke's cousin), who are multidimensional and interesting, while there are others, such as Britt's competitors, who, despite Dean clearly trying to give them some depth, come off very flat and boring.

I absolutely loved the set-up of the book. The scavenger hunt that Britt embarks on takes her on a tour of famous literary locations all around the UK, covering books ranging from Macbeth to Arthurian Legend to Jane Austen to Sherlock Holmes. It's a trip that I would absolutely love the chance to go on myself (perhaps minus the one night spent camping), but the opportunity to read about it was the next best thing.

Overall, I throughly enjoyed this book. The premise is absolutely amazing, and simply due to that I can heartily recommend it to any book-lover. Britt is somewhat irritating, but not enough to significantly diminish the fun of the book, and the romance is absolutely adorable despite it. I'm giving Love & Other Great Expectations 4.5/5 stars.

Who doesn’t love the UK? It’s full of self discovery and adventure— all set with a British Guy in the UK. It’s a cute read.

Love & Other Great Expectations is perfect for anyone who is looking for an adventure, loves England, and/or is on a journey of self-discovery.

Britt's life and college options implode when she injures her knee and loses her scholarship to play college soccer. When one of her teachers approaches her and three of her other classmates about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that could change their futures...she's in! The best part? This strange scavenger hunt is taking place in London, England! Britt is immediately amazed by her surroundings and quickly, the competition becomes something more to her. Will, she not only discover the wonders London has to offer, but also discover something about herself? Will the bookish boy she meets just be another person along the way or will he play a bigger role in her journey?

This is a book I will wholeheartedly recommend to any teenager, especially someone interested in travel. It reads like an American's love letter to London and fits in many classically "English" things. From Charles Dickens to the Underground, Britt is immediately caught up in everything around her and her positive outlook and true zeal for experiencing London are contagious. Since I live in England, I think I will send this book to my niece for her to read before she comes to visit to help get her in the spirit!

This book was such a fun read! (Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!) if you’re looking for a cute summer romance YA read then you’ll enjoy this one.

What I loved:
📚 the nods to various English literature like Dickens, Austen, Doyle, and Chaucer
📚 the tour of UK! I felt like I was on the Amazing Race
📚 the clues! I love riddles and I loved the cleverness of how it connected to various authors and places
📚 the super adorable high school romance that had me constantly smiling
📚 the loud fun American girl vs. British bookish boy

What wasn’t my favorite:
📚 the pacing didn’t really work for me
📚 the heroine was cute and funny, but I didn’t connect with her like I usually do with the main character

Overall I would say this is a cute read, perfect for YA romance fans, but didn’t really meet my expectations for it. Still, would recommend for someone looking for a sweet fun read!

Becky Dean took me on the UK ride of a lifetime! I was so excited to read about scavenger hunts and exploring new places while making new friends and learning new lessons along the way. The sweet romance was a bonus and Britt was the comic relief I needed this summer. Luke was the perfect intellectual, complimentary partner through her personal journey.

I want to go visit Bath, Scotland and the Canterbury Cathedral now. There was so much history shared here as well, it's one of those books you need to read again in order to find new details missed the first go around! The whole book was a wild ride and Britt's adventures definitely gives the reader so much joy, even through her awkward escapades.

Thank you to the brilliant Becky Dean, Random House Children's and NetGalley for the ARC. I hope other readers will enjoy this gem as much as I did!

This was really fun and cute. Britt is a high school senior soccer star with plans to play in college and go pro. An injury derails those dreams. Her English teacher offers her the chance to compete in a literature-themed scavenger hunt in the UK with a $100k prize. Needing that money for college, she enters the contest despite not exactly being a Brit Lit nut. She meets a British boy who joins her on her journey. I loved the literature clues, the descriptions of the settings, and the development of the main character. The romance was cute but thankfully not the overwhelming focus of the book.

Love & Other Great Expectations was a fun read and I loved the unique storyline. The book has a scavenger hunt between a few American high school students. The book is set in the UK and it was fun to read the history of some of the places the characters visited on the scavenger hunt. The author also did a really fantastic job with writing about the setting and places the students visited - it was so vivid! You could really see the places the author described. This book leans a little more to the YA side, but I still enjoyed it!

This book was charming and exactly what it claims to be. The perfect light read for a YA reader who is looking for a little bit of romance and adventure.

When Britt sustains a career-ending knee injury, her dreams of playing college soccer are over. As she faces the rest of her senior year with dread, her teacher comes to her with a proposition: take a summer trip to England, participate in a literary scavenger hunt, and compete to win 100,000. Not sure what else to do with her future, Britt agrees to join the challenge. Along the way she makes some new friends (and enemies), and learns some important lessons about herself.

This book was a joy to read. I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could! Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Children's, Delacorte Press for this e-arc in exchange for my honest review.

This has such a cute cover and was a nice read. Britt was a fun character to read and I enjoyed reading about her. The romance was just okay but I was all for the adventure of going overseas and competing against other students. It would have been nice if she had more of an interaction with them. Overall, a solid read. 3.5 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for the ARC.

Britt is a competitive soccer player for her high school team but when an injury devastatingly ends those dreams, she’s struggling to come to terms with who she is now without her soccer skills. However, when an opportunity arises for her to go to the U.K. to participate in a literary scavenger hunt based on the classics with a huge cash prize, she jumps at the chance to go. Faced with three other competitors, each with their own assigned chaperones and a cute bookish guy with a charming accent, Britt must navigate an unfamiliar country trying to solve clues in order to win an amount of money that would change her life.

Well this book sure helped/didn’t help my immense case of FOMO at everyone traveling right now. On the surface, especially with a cute cover like that, this may seem like an easy, light read but the story does have more weight and depth to it. The insecurities and challenges that Britt and the other characters deal with are nothing to quickly dismiss. There are some themes of communication, deep-rooted grievances and familial pressures. I found these moments particularly compelling to see develop – like what goes through a person’s head when what they thought themselves to always be is suddenly no longer. All the assumptions made about others and what they think they know about them. I found that a really interesting theme throughout.

While the scavenger hunt kept the story moving along, I did find the pacing a bit inconsistent at times. Perhaps I wish it flowed a bit more into each other between the actual scavenger hunt and the deep conversations as it felt like completely separate things and consequently pulled the momentum back a bit for me, which then made it read a bit long at times.

All that being said though, there is still a lightheartedness to the overall story. Britt’s voice is entertaining and a bit of a jokester so she was really fun to read. I definitely had some grinning, laugh-out-loud moments. Overall this was a fun, armchair traveling summertime read. In a way, it’s very much a coming-of-age story in that this journey allows for self reflection and growth at a pivotal age. Perfect for fans of shows like The Amazing Race and cute summer adventures abroad with a chance of romance.

3.5 stars

Britt is given the chance of a lifetime to go on an international scavenger hunt with a hefty cash prize that could change her future. After a soccer injury, her sports scholarship is out of the picture so she could really use some extra cash. She gets to explore England, meets a cute boy, and finds herself along the way. I feel like I would have loved this book in high school, but it felt a little predictable. It's cute, fun, easy to read, and has a great setting. Maybe it's just me and some YA novels feel too young for me now. Overall, it was enjoyable and would be great to pick up for a teen or young adult in your life!

Thank you to NetGalley, Becky Dean, and Random House Children's for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was a great YA novel, with a fun premise! Overall, I would definitely recommend reading it!

I received an e-ARC from the publisher.

Love and Other Great Expectations, by Becky Dean
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Pub Date: 6/14

Britt Hansen had it all figured out: she was supposed to go to UCLA on a soccer scholarship..until a knee injury got in the way. She's selected by a teacher to compete in a scavenger hunt across England, solving clues that take her to the settings of literary classics. During her travels, she meets the adorably bookish Luke, who tags along as her sidekick while she figures out her clues..and a new plan for her future.

This was such a fun read! Britt's travels sound like such an incredible adventure, especially with a cute British boy along for the ride! The book covered more than YA romance- it was a story of self-discovery and acceptance. I thought the way the book described Britt's struggle of feeling overwhelmed by the uncertainty of her future was very relatable, and really felt for her when she coped with having to give up doing the one thing she loved and believed she was good at. One thing that stood out about this book-Britt was so different than most other female MCs I've read- I haven't read many books with female athletes as main characters or narrators, and her outspoken/impulsive personality was a huge contrast to the passive/pushover/self-sacrificing leads I usually gravitate towards. At first it took me by surprise, but getting to know Britt through her journey of self-discovery was actually pretty refreshing.

Read this if you love:
💗 The Love & Gelato books
💗 Scavenger hunts
💗 YA novels
💗 British literature- lots of references to Jane Austen, Shakespeare, King Arthur, Sherlock and more

I found this one to be kind of boring, but I'm going to chalk this up as being the wrong book for me. If I'd read it when I was 16, I probably would have loved it. The scavenger hunt premise was cute but strained credulity a little too much for me as an adult.

This novel was fun and fast-paced, not taking too long in any of Britt’s adventures in the U.K., but also not skimping out just to get to the next destination. I enjoyed Britt and Luke as a traveling duo – with the snarky chaperone, Alexis, in the background – and found myself smiling at some of their antics to get the clues (the King Arthur one is by far my favorite). Even with the fun, cute factors, the fear of the future for both Britt and Luke were confronted, and each of them had to learn to face it.

Britt was an interesting character to have as a main character in a book that’s centered around literature because she – and she states this a lot – is not a reader. Up until this point in her life, she was a soccer player, and a darn good one. But then she got injured, and now she can’t play ever again due to a genetic diagnosis she gets after sugery. So, of course, she’s more than upset about that, and the fact that she has no other plans for her future. Despite being picked as one of the students to win this money, she doesn’t have high hopes of winning, even though she really wants to. Her development in learning to face her fears about her diagnosis and future was one of the elements I loved in this story. She learned something on this trip about herself and how she needed to change.

Luke was a great companion for Britt. He was the total opposite in that he had the bookworm/nerd thing going on, but wasn’t physically incapable. Not to mention that he often sought peace and quiet in times, while Britt had to keep going and/or talking. His banter and patience with Britt was impeccable, and I loved his relation to Alexis, which definitely seems coincidental for the book, but then again, this is a small world when it comes to family. Alexis, of course, was enjoyable. I loved how she cared but pretended not to and acted like an annoyed babysitter.

I would like to say that I enjoyed the other characters, but we didn’t get to know them that well. I would have liked more context to Spence, Peter, and Amberlyn, and even Ms. Carmichael as well. They all had potential for interesting backgrounds, but we didn’t get to see much of that. Only a few glimpses here and there.

Lastly, I loved that fact that this was a clean YA novel. No swearing (or if there was any, it was barely noticeable… but I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any at all), and no romance that went from a first meet to having the characters lose their virginity to one another. It was a sweet book, with a little romance, cute moments in the right places, and focused on the characters learning about themselves and growing as people.

Love and Other Great Expectations is available today, June 14th! I highly recommend this book for an anytime read for anyone who loves sweet YA novels, stories that take place in the U.K., or wants a cute summer read!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Children’s for an e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed the traveling aspects of this book. As someone who doesn’t travel nearly enough, this was a great trip for me. I often dream of visiting England. I also loved the scavenger hunt aspects as well. Although I wish we could have gotten to know the other competitors more.

The romance was okay, I just think that YA romances may not be for me anymore. I think I would have enjoyed the book even more if they just remained friends. But overall, this was an easy to read and enjoyable book!

This one was super cute! It took me a while to get through it because I wasn't consistent about reading it, but it never failed to catch me again. It was a fun story, and although there are some things I wish it had done, I really enjoyed it as a whole.

My favorite thing about it was definitely the hunt through Europe. The inclusion of all the classics (even though I'd only read two of them) was so fun! And the descriptions of all the locations were amazing. Even though I've never been to Europe, I felt like I was experiencing it right with our characters. Plus, they had so many fun and iconic experiences along their journey!

I wasn't a huge fan of the romance though... They were cute together, but they weren't anything special. I almost wish they'd stayed as pure friends, and explored that relationship. I'll admit, I found the ending to be cute, but other than that, the ship wasn't anything special.

As for my biggest complaint, i wanted moreI. I wanted to explore the other characters too. I wanted to know more about Al, as she was an awesome character. I wanted more time with Peter, as there was definitely more going on there. All of the other competitors had more potential, but none of it was tapped.

Despite that, I still really enjoyed this. It was the perfect romp through a summer adventure, and one I'd definitely recommend!

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!