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.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.