Having Justin's Baby

A friend bought me Having Justin's Baby as a private joke--at least, I assume she intended it as a joke; it may have been well-meant witchcraft.

There are a number of things you know about this book before you read it, which is of course one of the comforts of genre fiction. The cover art, and the "Bundles of Joy" blurb, and the title underline the Baby As Plot Point nature of the thing; it's a Harlequin Super Romance, "Mainstream with a promise," which indicates greater length (story length, get your mind out of the gutter) than some of the other Harlequin lines.

But what it doesn't tell you--and what I'd have liked it to--is that this is one of those romances where the conflict consists of two people who are in love with each other but who have no ability whatsoever to communicate that point. She thinks he thinks they had inconsequential, one-night-stand sex, so she doesn't tell him she'd like it to be more. He thinks she wants to forget the whole thing, so he doesn't tell her he's been in love with her for years. And so on and so forth, until the very end of the book. There's a bit of backstorying in which we learn that she blames her father for having cheated on her mother, because she heard them arguing just before her mother's death; it takes roughly two pages of conversation for them to clear this up and forgive each other, but apparently the heroine had been avoiding having that brief conversation all her life, so her non-communication is a habitual relationship problem, I guess. How nice that she's found her ideal man: her lifelong best friend, who has never once mentioned his own crush on her, or their mutual friend's crush on her.

There must be people out there who love this kind of plot, where you know the only thing keeping the hero and heroine apart is that they can't manage to have an honest conversation about their feelings. I'm not one of them, so while I can appreciate that the book flowed smoothly and was pleasant reading, all the emotional angsting for no reason left me wanting to shake them. But if the "I want to tell him but I can't!" plot does it for you, this is a good one of those.

My favourite moment: the perfectly captured honest moment in which the hero reflects that nothing about the heroine's pregnancy has been "fun." I imagine a lot of people feel that way. Of course, he doesn't tell her he feels that way...

Review: Pride & a Pregnancy Secret

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll state up front that Secret Baby plots are my least favourite substrain of romance. The thought of getting pregnant by some man who doesn’t want children fails to ping any of my particular kinks. Also, the way the heroes of these things suddenly flip 180° on a fairly serious matter, and suddenly discover they want a houseful of children after all, annoys me. I’d honestly find it more romantic if at the end the hero declared he loved the heroine too much to live without her, proposed, and confessed he still wasn’t that into kids but would try his best to be a good father anyway.

So why did I buy this? Well, the hero is a green-eyed Australian. I may not like fertile wafflers, but I have a definite thing for green-eyed Australians. And I liked the title–it not only provides clear warning of the Secret Baby plot, but the reference to Austen is cute, and the author later provides a house nicknamed Pemberley, and a line for the hero in which he says, “I’m not some Jane Austen hero.” You’re telling me, dude.

The book’s main strength is its heroine, Jessica Cotter. She suffers the usual self-induced miseries of Secret Babyhood, but she has enough backstory to make her actions credible. Also, she has a slight chip on her shoulder about rich arrogant bastards, which makes more sense than if she’d fallen for this particular hero without envy, resentment, or any sense of being an outsider.

Another strength: the other female characters. Only one is a jealous backstabber. The others are supportive friends, or encouraging members of the hero’s family. There’s also the heroine’s mother, and the hero’s own deceased mother, both of whom had problems and hinted storylines of their own, and they’re presented warmly and sympathetically. Nice: it’s good to have a full, rich cast of supporting females who don’t hail from the Land of Jealous Cats.

The book’s weakness is its hero, Ryan Blackstone. It pains me to criticize anyone with green eyes and an Aussie accent, it really does, but Mr. Waffle here is an extreme case of conversion to Joyful Fatherhood. It’s extremely annoying. His ground rules, we’re told eleventy-billion times, are, “No cats. No kids. No press. No diamond rings.” By the last chapter he’s presented the diamond ring, declared himself proud and delighted to be fathering twins, is kissing Jessica at a press-laden launch of the new season’s diamond collection, and has invited her to bring her cat to live with them. In the face of firm opinions like his, one can’t help but wonder what their future holds. Will he change his name? His career? His sex? Sure, today he’s a gem dealer named Ryan Blackstone, but by the time the twins are born he could easily be a blonde welder named Sally. Let’s hope Jessica wants an adventurous life.