I Only Read Elle Kennedy's "Girl Abroad" Because I Love London

Spoilers for "Girl Abroad" are included in this post.

So I was at Barnes & Noble doing my (almost) daily browsing when I saw "Girl Abroad" by Elle Kennedy on the rom-com's table. I flipped it over, skimmed the synopsis, and immediately I purchased it.

"Girl Abroad" by Elle Kennedy follows 19 year old Abbey (named after Abbey Road, which I found insufferably cheesy but I let it slide because I like The Beatles) who wants to escape her current life living with her famous rockstar father so she moves to London to study abroad for the semester. Before she arrives in London, she's arranged everything. She's going to be living in a beautiful house with three other girls named Jackie, Jamie, and Lee and studying at a prestigious "uni". However, when she arrives, she's surprised to find out that Jackie, Jamie, and Lee are not her girl roomies but instead they're Jack, Jamie, and Lee, her new male roomies.

Chaos ensues and Abbey quickly finds herself in a love triangle with her new roommate Jack who is a hot blonde Australian dude, and a hot British bassist named Nate. "Oh no! What an absolutely terrible predicament to be in!" said no girl ever.

When I'm writing this it is March 17th, so I finished the book last night and gave it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. This was entertaining... I think? I genuinely do not know how I feel about this book and that is why this review may be short. Like I said, I picked this up solely because it was about a girl around my age studying abroad in London (which is exactly what I did back in January of this year) and it intrigued me.

The romance aspect of the book was fine. Jack was a cute character aka the complete opposite of Nate, who was clearly trying too hard to be the mysterious, emotionally unavailable but hot love interest. So clearly, Abbey chooses Jack at the end for many reasons. However, the romance was so rushed at the end as well as the overall plot.

I don't think I've ever read a book with a more rushed ending than this book. Abbey decided on who she wanted to be with in practically a second, only taking one painfully short conversation with Nate where he couldn't commit to being her boyfriend. Then Jack's love confession to Abbey was actually so lame, for lack of better words. He invites her to meet his family then says something along the lines of "oops I fucked up the order of what I was going to say" and then proceeds with, "I think I'm in love with you." I decided to not care too deeply about the love confession even though this is literally a romance novel. At this point though, I was just ready to be done with this book. Did I mention it took me two whole weeks to read this?

In addition to the romance plot, there was a very strange subplot with Abbey and her studies where she was attempting to decipher a rich British family's long-lost history or something like that (to be honest, I don't remember much about that plot, I skimmed most of those pages because they made no sense and were high key boring). Abbey eventually solved the mystery with the help of like ten thousand irrelevant different side characters, including the old man librarian, Mr. Baxley, who's only personality trait was that he was grumpy. Oh, and he liked cats. There's a classic old man librarian character for you.

For fun I will include a list of things this book had, just in case you're curious.

Clichés, tropes, and other odd things about "Girl Abroad" - click on the arrow next to this to read the list

• spice level probably 2.5 out of 5

• quirky ginger "I'm different than other girls" female MC (main character)

• main love interest is shirtless every other page

• low key but high key a cheating trope??? (Abbey dates/hooks up with Jack and Nate simultaneously)

• love triangle trope

• Just something I think is so odd... Abbey compares the feeling of having sex to the feeling of solving that irrelevant historical mystery

• token gay bestie character (Lee)

• jealous ex-girlfriend (Nate was dating a girl named Yvonne while hooking up with Abbey and dumped her because he was "in love" with Abbey)

• over-protective father

• douchey guy almost takes advantage of female MC but love interests both show up to save her and then both love interests argue about saving her

• "I just want to live my own life and make my own memories!"

• the love interests say things that are supposed to be sexy but they're just not (I will not put the examples because my parents may read this ☺️)

After writing this review, I can conclude that this book was not really worth the two week reading slump. It took me too long and the only redeeming quality is that it was set in London. I'll still keep it at a 3.5 stars though because the romance was kind of entertaining at times.

Thank you for reading!

All images found on Google.

The description of the book and links on where to purchase it can be found on the author's website as well.

Elle Kennedy's Website: https://www.ellekennedy.com/girl-abroad