New Year’s Resolution:
Have a baby
Preferably with Josh Lewenthal
Meet Gemma Jacobs. She’s driven, energetic, and a positive thinker. She has a great career working for famed self-help guru Ian Fortune, she lives in a cute studio apartment in Manhattan, and her family is supportive and loving (albeit a little kooky). Her life is perfect. Absolutely wonderful.
Except for one tiny little thing.
After a decade of disastrous relationships and an infertility diagnosis, Gemma doesn’t want a Mr. Right (or even a Mr. Right Now), she just wants a baby.
And all she needs is an egg, some sperm, and IVF.
So Gemma makes a New Year’s resolution: have a baby.
Josh Lewenthal is a laid back, relaxed, find-the-humor-in-life kind of guy. The polar opposite of Gemma. He’s also her brother’s best friend. For the past twenty years Josh has attended every Jacobs’ family birthday, holiday, and event – he’s always around.
Gemma knows him. He’s nice (enough), he’s funny (-ish), he’s healthy (she thinks) and he didn’t burn any ants with a magnifying glass as a kid. Which, in Gemma’s mind, makes him the perfect option for a sperm donor.
So Gemma wants to make a deal. An unemotional, business-like arrangement. No commitments, just a baby.
To Gemma’s surprise, Josh agrees.
They have nothing in common, except their agreement to make a baby and their desire to keep things businesslike.
But the thing about baby-making…it’s hard to keep it businesslike, it’s nearly impossible to keep it unemotional, and it’s definitely impossible to keep your heart out of the mix. Because when you’re making a baby together, things have a way of starting to feel like you’re making other things too – like a life, and a family, and love. And when the baby-making ends, you wish that everything else didn’t have to end too.
| Title: | Josh and Gemma Make a Baby |
| Author: | Sarah Ready |
| Series: | n/a |
| Pages: | 366 |
| Category / Genre(s): | Contemporary |
| Trope(s): | Brother’s Best Friend Opposites Attract |
| Point of View: | First Person, Past Tense, Heroine’s Viewpoint Only |
| Location: | USA |
| HEA: | ✔️ |
| Release Date: | 25th January, 2022 |
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Emotional but ultimately satisfying
I’m a huge fan of Sarah Ready and although this book is something of a departure from her usual, lighter fare, I was still keen to get stuck in. I knew going in that this book would deal with some topics that could be triggering to some but I was quite unprepared by just how upset I would get from our heroine, Gemma’s, introduction and setting the scene of the story.
While this is Gemma’s story of her infertility – the book is very rounded out and has a really decent set of secondary characters, a rich world and a really satisfying romance. Plus, there are some pure laugh-out-loud moments scattered throughout.
For the most part I liked Gemma as our leading lady. She had some tough times and was really at a place in her life where she had to make some tough decisions as to where she wanted her next step to take her. She was surprisingly upbeat and when she was with Josh, she was fun and funny. But… at times she was needlessly mean. I didn’t like that about her and it was made worse because she really wasn’t treated too kindly herself, at times. People were nasty to her and she was often called – sometimes by herself – a fat, frumpy, chubby, klutzy divorcee. I wanted her to have a bit more kindness, if I’m honest.
Josh, on the other hand, was just adorable. He came across as a cocky, jokey guy but, good God, did the boy have layers and layers of emotion. The looks he would give Gemma and the things he would say – if I was a Regency heroine I would have clutched my pearls and swooned. It was so wonderful. Hero perfection.
“…my eyes are puffy and raw from my tears and I can feel the book hangover coming from a mile away.”
The whole story is told entirely from Gemma’s perspective and that works for this tale as while this is very much a romance, it’s also more Gemma’s story. Plus, by not having Josh’s input, we are treated to finding out things about Josh as Gemma herself finds out about them. There were definitely some butterflies in the tummy while reading this book because of that fact.
As I mentioned, Josh and Gemma are wonderful together. They just fit. They laughed together, cried together and just understood each other, warts and all. Another check on the plus side. I do so love a couple that really completes each other and loves the other in spite of all their quirks.
Obviously the relationship of Josh and Gemma obviously revolves around them making a baby and despite it not being in the traditional sense, we still get some sex in the book although it’s fairly late on. But there’s so much sexual tension between Gemma and Josh that the whole book reeks of sex!
Having just finished this book, my eyes are puffy and raw from my tears and I can feel the book hangover coming from a mile away. It’s a pretty emotional read and I would suggest that people read the trigger warnings before deciding if this book is for them. Having said that, I really enjoyed my time with this book and am very glad that I gave it a go. 4 stars.
Author Sarah Ready writes contemporary romance and romantic comedy.
Her books have been described as “euphoric”, “heartwarming” and “laugh out loud”. Her debut novel The Fall in Love Checklist was hailed as “the unicorn read of 2020”. She loves to write fast-paced, emotionally compelling romances about quirky, smart women and the men who love them.
Before writing romance full-time Sarah had lots of fun teaching at an Ivy League. Then she realized she could have even more fun writing romance. Her favorite things after writing are adventuring and travel. You’ll frequently find her using her degree at a dino dig site, crawling into a cave, snorkeling, or on horseback riding through the jungle – all fodder for her next book. She’s lived in Scotland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland and NYC. She currently lives in the Caribbean with her water-obsessed pup and her awesome family.
You can visit her online at www.sarahready.com
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