Love Song by Elle Kennedy: The Next Generation of Manchildren

Love Song by Elle Kennedy is a Briar Universe standalone romance where Wyatt Graham (son of Hannah Wells and Garrett Graham from The Deal, and twin to Gigi Graham from The Graham Effect) and Blake Logan (only daughter of John Logan and Grace Ivers from The Mistake) are stuck together at a lake house in Tahoe for the summer. Blake has had a crush on Wyatt since she was a teenager, and she’s going through a brutal breakup while Wyatt is a struggling musician with writer’s block who can’t seem to stop getting in his own way. The next generation of Off-Campus characters try to stay away from each other while the slow-burning tension between them in that big house cooks them alive in the perfect summer heat.

Sigh. I am an Elle Kennedy stan through and through and have been enjoying the next generation characters’ stories (see my gushing about The Dixon Rule). But somehow Love Song managed to hit every single note wrong (pun intended). Blake feels erased from the previous books, Wyatt is the biggest manchild not-wanting-to-be-nepo baby alive, there’s no romance and way too much spice, and their relationship is problematic at best. I love this universe, and being visited by the previous gen is always a treat. But I could not shake off the ick, and the unnecessary trauma this book inflicts on you for absolutely no reason made it impossible to ignore.

Read our full summary and review of Love Song by Elle Kennedy below. This post contains spoilers.

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Tropes

• Childhood friends
• Grumpy x Sunshine
• Forced Proximity

Review

Overall Impressions 😊

I can’t believe I’m saying this but this book icked me the entire time.

I was so excited to read about the grumpy “I can fix him” musician MMC and the confident, ephemeral “ordinary” FMC. But it was by far my least favorite Elle Kennedy book.

Blake’s character felt like it was gone from what we’ve read so far, Wyatt was too much of a manchild, and the entire second generation save for Gigi and Ryder were insufferable. And aren’t they basically cousins with the way they grew up? There’s no blood relation but still.

Beau’s character got ruined, Logan is like a 50 year old child, and after all that the trauma and tropes I cannot stand back to back, an accidental pregnancy AND a miscarriage, I’m just so disappointed.

This was way too long and Wyatt and Blake’s relationship never made it past surface level lust for me. Why were there almost eight spicy chapters back to back? I truly don’t understand where this went wrong except everywhere.

Perfect For Fans Of… 🧭

This one is for the Elle Kennedy completionists first and foremost. Love Song is technically a standalone but you’re going to get a lot more out of it if you’ve read the Off-Campus and Briar U books, especially The Deal, The Mistake, and The Graham Effect. The generational cameos are honestly the best part of this book and they’re so much better when you already know and love these people.

If you like forced proximity and spice forward romances, this has both. They’re stuck in a lake house all summer and there is a lot of spice. A lot.

If you don’t mind your couple basically never leaving the house for 400 pages, this is your book. Just know that the story moves slowly and the setting doesn’t change much, which worked for some people and really didn’t for me.

It’s more of a read it and forget it kind of book if you can look past everything I mentioned in overall impressions. It’s not the kind of book that keeps you up at night. Just a chill weekend read if you go in with the right expectations.

Characters 👥

Blake has been this quiet, sarcastic college student in the past couple of books and I have been dying to see her inner monologue. Except she was kind of a blank canvas. I loved her aimlessness, it’s something a lot of young adults go through and I wanted to see how she navigated that. Except her personality seemed to just be being into Wyatt. I would’ve loved to see her explore what she actually enjoyed, whether that’s podcasting or anything else, but her end game was just being Wyatt’s significant other and that didn’t sit right with me.

Wyatt is not the grumpy musician we were sold. Yes he drinks and smokes and doesn’t take care of himself and has issues with not wanting to become a nepo baby. And I’ll be honest, I was kind of intrigued by the unintentional generational trauma these uber successful parents passed down to their kids. Like, boohoo they’re rich and spoiled, but they also have massive examples to live up to and that could’ve been really interesting. Except Wyatt is just a grumpy manchild who hasn’t taken accountability for anything in his life, and I fear he might be exactly who he thinks he is. And who kisses someone else when they’re deeply in love with another person? That felt completely inauthentic.

Which brings us to Wyatt and Blake’s relationship, which was built on lust and forced proximity. These two would never have gotten together if they weren’t stuck in the same house and that showed. There were so many missed opportunities to show them actually connecting emotionally instead of just being two hot people in the same house. This isn’t Love Island. That scene where they stayed up talking until dawn? We could’ve seen something really profound there instead of just being told they talked. It was definitely a choice.

Before wrapping up the next gen, there are just too many of them to keep track of. Who’s Stella? Who’s Ivy? We’ll never know. Beau is the only one I recognized outside of the main characters, and his storyline got ruined for no reason. Also why would AJ ever forgive him? What Beau did is one of the worst things you can do to a best friend. I do not want an AJ or Beau book. Please Elle, do not justify that by giving him a redemption arc.

Going back to the parents though, I loved that Grace and Blake are so close, that Hannah and Wyatt are finally connecting, and that Wyatt and Garrett are mending their accidentally frayed relationship. I just wish Elle Kennedy would stop treating Logan like a running joke. How is he 40-something and still acting like a 20 year old? We’ll never know.

Plot 🗺️

There are some clear pacing issues in this book. The first part drags with the two of them alone in the house, and the second part after the families arrive feels too chaotic. It could’ve been about 75% of the length and honestly the time Blake and Wyatt spend alone could’ve been a lot quicker.

The plot is basically just Blake and Wyatt falling in love, and that’s the problem. With one location the whole thing feels like a bottle episode. There’s a ghost subplot involving a Lake Tahoe legend called Darlene that gives the story something to move around, and without it there would almost certainly be no plot, but it didn’t do much for me personally.

The trauma was hard to get through. The accidental pregnancy and the miscarriage back to back felt like Elle Kennedy was following a formula of inflicting third act trauma onto her characters. Both of them together wasn’t necessary and there are definitely some trigger warnings needed here.

That said, I did appreciate the third act breakup. It felt realistic and it actually gave the book something worth talking about: the way men’s grief gets ignored when tragedies like this happen. Wyatt was mourning too and that conversation is worth having.

What I didn’t appreciate was Blake groveling to get back together with Wyatt after everything. She was grieving. She needed time. Why did she have to apologize for being in mourning, especially when Wyatt was out there kissing someone else?

My Favorite Quote 📣

“You’d hate how much I’d want from you. How much I’d take.”

Elle Kennedy, Love Song

Writing Style and Narration ✍️

It’s an Elle Kennedy book so it’s light, funny and has good banter. That part delivered.

What didn’t work for me was Wyatt’s constant sexualization of Blake. It got old really fast and the dirty talk felt cringe more often than not.

I adore the dad chat bits and their variants, it’s one of my favorite things about this universe, but it felt overdone this time around. And the epilogue being almost entirely dad chats? What the heck Elle.

It’s dual POV and I always love that, especially when we get to read the man yearn. No complaints there.

The one thing I genuinely appreciated were the songs. They were added as interludes throughout the book and that was a really different and fun creative choice.

Synopsis

Wyatt and Blake Before This Summer in Tahoe

When Blake Logan was 16 and Wyatt Graham was 19, she confessed a crush on him. He shut it down and called her a kid. She never forgot it.

Two years later, the Grahams and Logans are at their lake house in Tahoe. They have a tradition of staying there every summer.

Blake is now 18, Wyatt is 22.

One night Blake can’t sleep and goes looking for a snack. Wyatt follows her into the kitchen, drunk off his ass. He makes a move. They nearly hook up, even though Blake is confused because Wyatt had made it clear he was not interested in her. Realizing what he’s doing he backs off.

The next morning he claims he doesn’t remember anything and apologizes if he was an asshole.

Present Day: The Summer of Blake (And Wyatt, Unfortunately)

Blake is now 20. Wyatt is turning 25.

Blake has been living with Isaac, a football player that literally nobody in her life likes. She comes back from a vacation to find he didn’t even bother picking her up from the airport. Just as they’re about to reconnect, Gigi Graham sends Blake a message apologizing for what she’s about to find out: Isaac has been cheating on her and a sex tape has surfaced.

A few weeks later Blake arrives at the lake house alone. She’s calling it the summer of Blake. A breakup recovery tour. Except when she gets there, the house isn’t empty.

Wyatt, who moved out without telling anyone, has also decided to spend the summer there to work through his writer’s block. The two butt heads immediately. Wyatt is still calling her “kid.” They begrudgingly agree to share the house and stay out of each other’s way.

The Muse

On their first day together Wyatt is trying to write when Blake wants to take the boat out. Garrett and Logan call Wyatt and ask him to keep an eye on her, so he ends up on the boat whether he likes it or not. Blake decides to sunbathe topless. Wyatt is not handling it well.

Out on the water they run into a married couple, both named Spencer, who run a paranormal podcast investigating the ghosts of Lake Tahoe. Blake is immediately obsessed. She has always felt like the ordinary one in a family full of prodigies and overachievers, and this is the first thing that has genuinely excited her in a while.

What Blake doesn’t know is that Wyatt has been sneaking off to the local hockey rink to skate and shoot pucks with friends. He doesn’t want his family finding out because Garrett always wanted a son who played hockey, and Wyatt doesn’t want to deal with the weight of that expectation.

A group of college kids visiting the area come over to the lake house. One of them gets drunk, makes a move on Blake, and doesn’t take no for an answer. Wyatt steps in and completely overreacts. Annalise, one of the college girls, pulls Blake aside afterward and tells her Wyatt is obviously into her. Blake doesn’t buy it.

That night Wyatt and Blake almost share a moment. For the first time in weeks, Wyatt feels a real spark of inspiration. Blake becomes the muse behind what will eventually become his love song.

This is all tied to his bigger internal battle. He doesn’t want to make it in music through his mom Hannah’s connections. He wants to do it on his own, and he feels like he has nothing to offer beyond being Garrett Graham and Hannah Wells’s son.

Celibacy and a Hookup That Goes Nowhere

Wyatt has bad insomnia. Sometimes goes three or four days without sleep and eventually just drinks himself to sleep. One night Blake finds him drunk and he admits he finds her attractive but can’t go there with her. Blake laughs it off.

His Nashville country star friend Cole has been telling him to stay celibate to protect his creative output. Wyatt eventually decides he just needs to get laid. He calls a girl named Mira, tells Blake he’s going on a date, and heads out.

Blake figures there’s no reason to sit home since nothing has happened between them. She accepts a text from a bartender named Landon and goes to hang out at his place. They drink absinthe. Blake gets very drunk.

Wyatt is hooking up with Mira and it’s going nowhere because he can’t stop thinking about Blake. When his phone rings and it’s her, drunk and needing a ride, he drops everything and goes to get her. He finds her passed out outside Landon’s house and loses it. When Landon comes out claiming he was in the bathroom, Wyatt tears into him for leaving her alone outside like that and tells him to never speak to her again.

Wyatt takes Blake home. She showers, sobers up, and finds him outside. The two of them end up cuddled on a lounge chair talking until dawn.

They open up about everything. Blake feels like the unspecial one in a family of extraordinary people. Wyatt feels the exact same way living in the shadow of Garrett Graham and Hannah Wells. It’s a genuinely moving moment of unintentional generational trauma, considering they both have really great parents. They nearly kiss.

The next day Wyatt feels raw and exposed. He told Blake he wants a love that fully consumes him, that he’s intense and tends to take too much from people, which is why he never sticks around. He feels himself getting too attached to Blake and pulls back.

The Kiss, The Mistake, and The Firefighter

Blake goes back to the library to research the Spencers’ podcast. When she gets back she tells Wyatt the dawn conversation was just a moment and there’s nothing to worry about.

Then Wyatt and Blake finally kiss. It’s the best kiss ever. Wyatt immediately calls it a mistake. Blake tells him to stop lying to himself and lets it go.

That night Blake gets a text from Isaac. He tells her he cheated because she never made him feel special and had no passion. Blake is furious. Isaac spent their entire relationship taking her for granted and now he’s rewriting history to make it her fault.

The next day Wyatt finds her and tells her Isaac is an idiot, that he cheated because he wanted to cheat, and it has nothing to do with her. He also admits he remembers the night they nearly hooked up two years ago. That Blake is unforgettable to him. But he still can’t go there because she’s too special and he doesn’t want to ruin what they have.

Blake goes out with Annalise. Later that night at a bar she meets a firefighter and brings him home. Wyatt, who called the kiss a mistake and has zero claim over her, wakes up anxious that she’s been out all night. When Blake comes home with the firefighter Wyatt loses it, interrupts them, and kicks the guy out. Blake rightfully calls out his caveman behavior. At the end of the day Wyatt apologizes and the two of them finally hook up and spend the night together.

The next morning they agree to a friends with benefits arrangement until the end of summer. No feelings, no commitments, either of them can call it off whenever.

They’re at it constantly but they don’t have sex yet because Blake knows Wyatt will break her heart if they do. On a hike up to the lighthouse the Spencers have been investigating, they get caught in a storm and take shelter inside. They end up having sex for the first time. After that they genuinely can’t get enough of each other.

Before their families arrive they agree to keep things hidden, especially since Blake’s dad John is very overprotective. The Spencers invite Blake to guest on their podcast episode about the Lake Tahoe ghost, Darlene. She says yes.

The Families Arrive

The families arrive for their annual July 4th week and full month of August. This year’s lawn tournament is badminton. Wyatt and Blake have been secretly practicing together and are both deeply, embarrassingly competitive about it. Garrett and John Logan end up winning. Wyatt and Blake keep sneaking around the whole time.

After the families settle in, Wyatt apologizes to Hannah for how difficult he’s been about his music career. He also starts helping Garrett secretly build a recording studio for Hannah as a surprise gift.

Meanwhile Beau, Dean and Allie’s son, keeps making moves on Blake. She tells him she’s kind of seeing someone without saying who.

One day out on the lake Beau accidentally runs into Blake and she goes under and doesn’t come back up. Wyatt completely loses his mind, jumps in, pulls her out, kisses her, and calls her “baby” in front of the entire family. Everyone finds out immediately.

The Dad Standoff and the Boat Conversation

Logan and Garrett go into a tense standoff for a few days and the house gets uncomfortable. Beau is upset when he finds out the guy Blake is seeing is Wyatt. Wyatt and Blake take a few days apart to let things settle. Then the families have a meeting that is apparently very cute and very funny, and the dads come to an agreement.

Late that night Garrett takes Wyatt down to the boat where Logan is waiting. The three of them go out on the water. Logan asks Wyatt what his intentions are with Blake and what he actually likes about her. Wyatt lists about thirty things. Garrett is extremely smug about the whole thing. Logan realizes Wyatt is genuinely in love with his daughter. Wyatt realizes it too.

After the boat conversation Wyatt and Blake start spending more time together in front of the family. One night while sneaking around they hear noises from the boathouse and find Beau hooking up with Tara, the girlfriend of AJ, Jake Connolly’s son. The next day it explodes. Beau and AJ come to blows. Tara, who nobody liked anyway, finally leaves. Beau tells Jake to never speak to him again. The fallout between Beau and AJ is still unresolved by the end of the book.

The Pregnancy

Blake realizes she is late. She tells her mom Grace, takes a pregnancy test, and it comes back positive. The Plan B was too late.

Blake is in a weird headspace about it for a few days and Wyatt is nervous because he has no idea what’s going on with her. Grace is really supportive throughout.

Blake eventually tells Wyatt she’s pregnant. Instead of panicking or running, Wyatt is completely all in. He tells her he loves her. Blake is happy but doesn’t say it back. Wyatt isn’t bothered because he knows she’s just overwhelmed.

They decide to tell the dads even though they haven’t figured out what they want to do yet. Logan and Garrett are surprisingly supportive, genuinely thrilled that their kids are together. With that much support around her, Blake starts to think that maybe keeping the baby could actually work.

The whole family is sworn to secrecy. The first trimester is rough and Blake is constantly sick. Eventually she has a really bad day and collapses. She wakes up in the hospital to find out she has an ectopic pregnancy. She loses the baby.

Blake is devastated. It’s only after losing the baby that she realizes how much she had wanted it.

When she sees Wyatt after her surgery she is deep in grief and her hormones are all over the place. She tells him she knows he never really wanted the baby and only said he loved her because of the pregnancy. She tells him he’s off the hook.

Back at the lake house Wyatt is grieving too, but Blake has put up a wall. He tries to tell her that he did want the baby, that he wants to be there for her, that he wants them together regardless. Blake can’t hear it. She’s processing something enormous and can’t shake the feeling that Wyatt wouldn’t want her without the baby.

A few days later Wyatt makes her a grilled cheese and goes up to talk to her, only to find her packing. Blake tells him they always said it would end at the end of summer and breaks up with him. Wyatt is devastated. He tries to fix it. He can’t. Blake leaves.

After she’s gone, Wyatt finally opens up to Garrett about sneaking off to the hockey rink all summer. He was terrified of disappointing him. Garrett tells him he is proud of him no matter what.

Back to Real Life (Sort Of)

Back at school Blake is just sad. Grieving the baby, grieving Wyatt, hates her major, hates her classes.

Beau eventually drags her out for coffee. He assumes Wyatt dumped her when actually Blake ended it and broke his heart. She doesn’t correct him and doesn’t mention the pregnancy. She notices Beau and AJ are still not on speaking terms, just managing as teammates and nothing more.

Wyatt starts working more closely with Hannah and prepares to record an album with a producer he’d been talking to all summer. Letting Hannah into his creative process is a big deal for him. In the studio one day he meets Mollie May, a hugely famous pop star, who asks him out to dinner.

Meanwhile the podcast episode Blake recorded with the Spencers has blown up, hitting two million listeners. She starts seriously thinking about podcasting as an actual career.

Wyatt shows up at Blake’s place with the toaster Isaac had been holding hostage since their breakup. They hook up but Blake kicks him out because she’s not ready. She can’t carry his grief on top of her own.

Wyatt goes to dinner with Mollie May in Nashville. She asks him to open for her on a six month tour, with the option to bring a significant other. After dinner Mollie kisses him and he kisses her back, but he doesn’t let it go further because he is in love with Blake. Mollie keeps the offer open.

Love Song Ending Explained

Wyatt’s debut single “Lightkeeper” drops and it is very obviously about Blake. It blows up everywhere. Blake sees photos of Wyatt and Mollie May together and assumes they’re a couple, even though they’re not.

Blake tracks down Darlene’s family. The legend the Spencers had been investigating goes like this: Darlene was in love with Raymond, but her sister Dolly and Raymond had an affair behind her back. Heartbroken, Darlene drowned herself in Lake Tahoe. The story goes that her ghost now haunts the lake, but instead of being bitter about it she spreads love to others.

Blake takes a train to New Jersey to find Dolly and Raymond. When she gets there she finds out that Darlene recently died of brain cancer. Nothing supernatural about it. Blake decides to keep Darlene’s story alive through the podcast anyway because the legend matters even if the reality was quieter.

While she’s there she runs into Wyatt, who happens to be visiting a friend’s mom two doors down. They talk about fate and coincidences because honestly, what are the odds. Wyatt tells her about the tour and asks her to come with him. Blake isn’t ready. They go their separate ways.

Wyatt goes on a radio show to talk about his album. After the show Blake has a conversation with her dad John, who convinces her to stop letting fear make her decisions.

Blake calls into the radio show and tells Wyatt she loves him on air.

The two of them reunite in the lobby. Blake goes on tour with Wyatt. Happily ever after.

Spicy Chapters

How spicy is Love Song by Elle Kennedy? 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

• Prologue
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 52

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