Marley Valentine is so good at the emotional stuff.

With a title like Unwanted in a series called The Unlucky Ones this wasn't a book I was rushing to pick up - too serious?! a downer?

Well, Valentine is writing about the ultra important subject of addiction and it is serious, it needs to be.

Frankie and Arlo have been separated for 4 years after Arlo accidentally overdosed. Frankie disappeared. Just when Arlo needed him most. But Frankie can't wait around for Arlo to disappear permanently - it's too much. He feels guilt at running away.

Arlo hates Frankie for what he has done. The hate gives Arlo the impetus to get his life back together. Than he has guilt. That he didn't revere what he had with Frankie.

So when fate brings them back together it's as emotionally charged as a volcano - with love, hate, abandonment, addiction, terror. But they navigate the shoals. Thanks to the life they had started to build post growing up in the foster care system. They have created their own family of other kids who went through the system with them.

I assume other novels in the series deal with their lives. As there is an intriguing amount written about others in the circle they live in.

This is a love story between two abandoned boys-to-men, who have an unwavering attraction forged from shared boyhood affection and survival. At the end when they have moved into their own apartment, which Arlo makes just so to be all he never had as a boy, it is a satisfying conclusion.

I think I found this book because I was looking for works by narrator Jacob Morgan. I think he is Arlo; and Zachary Johnson is Frankie - whose name I don't recognise. But they both have wonderfully resonant sexy voices. Maybe the reason why they are a little too similar. Zachary Johnson (Frankie) reads particularly fast, so fast it doesn't seem remotely like reading - rather someone firing off as they catch us up on their thoughts. ( )

I felt like I got thrown into the middle of a story that no one felt like explaining to me (no one being the author here). There are five characters with a huge backstory that literally gets maybe five sentences of coverage, so it threw me off quite a bit. Arlo and Frankie had a lot of epic love, anger, and pining going on; it was nice to see them come back together (not that we really saw where they’d come from). ( )