normal romance

I love Cara Bastone, the way she writes normal lives I to love stories. and this one about pregnancy too. love it.

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Fluffy and sparkly and just lovely

I adored this book so much. It was fluffy and lovely and made me laugh out loud several times. It was at a great pace so I got to know all the characters properly I just didn’t want it to end

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She does it again!

I need to stop listening to Cara Bastone's stories. They get me all up in my feelings and I'm not sure I can really cope with it. It's nice to believe there are still Sheps and Ethans out there though.
Narrator was also fantastic!

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gorgeous

beautifully crafted, funny, heart-warming and entertainingly performed. a must read for fans of romance

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Excellent

A little more raunchy than I expected but as ever a wonderful story that takes you away from the mundane and into a fun and frivolous world that you really become invested in. Loved it.

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beautiful

Just love this author. Every book I've listened to, I've loved. The narration really good too

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Another feel good book

I've listened to Cara Bastone's 'audio only' books hundreds of times recently whilst my baby's been up in the night.
I wasn't sure what a traditional novel would be like, but I could immediately tell it was just as comforting and inclusive as her other stories feel.
I'm sure I'll be listening to this on repeat at 3am too!

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3.5 stars rounded up to 4

I was so looking forward to this book, having loved "Just a heartbeat away" and this author's writing style. In many ways, it did not disappoint. I gobbled up the audio version in a day and a half. As I savoured the author's wonderful prose, which was so well crafted, I honestly believed this was going to be a 5 star read. So why isn't it?

Firstly, for a book that purported to be a romance, I felt the actual romantic element took a backseat to the pregnancy part of the narrative. This was more a work of women's fiction, telling the story of a clueless millennial who accidentally gets knocked up and how she deals with it, than a romance.

Then, there was the fact that I found all the main characters unlikeable - even Shep (the saint), the supposed hero of this romance. He was no such thing. He was so passive, so utterly emasculated and far too unselfish to be real or to be appealing as a romantic hero. I would hate to have somebody like that as a partner - highlighting my own human weaknesses at every turn with his selfless perfection.

Perhaps too, the reason why this book, in the end, did not land well with me was the very of its time wokish and slightly preachy tone to it - which reminds me a little of "Out on a limb" by Hannah Bonam-Young, yet another accidental pregnancy story. I can well imagine it being fodder for anthropologists of the future wanting to understand the peculiarities of societal norms of this decade. Picture an academic some hundred years from now, lecturing her students with, "It became a cultural norm for people in the 2020s to introduce themselves with the stating of their preferred pronouns," and then using the birthing class scene as exhibit A.

Final verdict? A well written work of fiction that provides an entertaining vignette into contemporary New York millennial society, but fails epically as a romance.

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2 people found this helpful

Heart-warming and fantastic narrator!

I found this book extremely heart-warming and yet it dealt with hard emotions. The narrator did a wonderful job and each chapter felt like another episode of a series.

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