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nickoliver's review
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
No book under 300 pages should take me over a month to finish, but here we are. This was the first time I downloaded a Kindle Unlimited romance solely because I kind of found the guy on the cover aesthetically pleasing, and it will certainly be the last. There was absolutely nothing about this book I enjoyed. It may not have been the worst romance I've ever read - mostly because the male main character wasn't abusive, which I guess is where I set the bar for straight romances nowadays -, but it certainly wasn't good, either.
First of all, there was absolutely no plot in this book. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Going into it, I thought that Foster would set up the foundation first, let you get a feel for the main characters especially. And then a few chapters in, she'd introduce the surprise baby. But that's not what happened. Instead, the baby showed up in the first chapter, eight pages into the story. At that point, all you knew about Ben and Aurelia was that they were horny for each other. They'd just been objectifying the shit out of each other so far. So the main story line started way too early in my opinion.
It got worse, though! The two main characters got together at approximately 30%, so very early in the book, too.For the rest of the book, nothing of significance happened. It was just them repeatedly saying how much they loved each other and the baby, and everyone else telling them how perfect they were, and some smutty scenes. There was a subplot about Ben trying to find his baby mamma, but nothing came of that until 90% of the way through, and the way that was resolved was just very cheap and convenient.
The characters themselves didn't make things any easier. None of them were fleshed-out or had any personality. While I appreciated, like I mentioned already, that this relationship wasn't as abusive as others I've seen, both Ben and Aurelia were extremely bland and boring. Ben was Mister Perfect who couldn't do anything wrong, had no flaws, and got the hang of fatherhood in the span of like a week. Never mind the fact that he was also a billionaire, which, let's be real, kind of contradicted the whole "I'm the best person ever!" vibe Foster was trying to go for. The female main character was just as one-dimensional, since all you learnt about her was basically that she loved Ben and Bea, the baby, and that she was trying to open a bookshop. That was her entire personality. Oh, she also really loved slut-shaming Ben, especially before they got together. There was this whole scene where she and Ben tried to figure out who the baby mamma was, and the way she slut-shamed him in those scenes ... yikes. And while I do understand wanting to help your friend who unexpectedly became a father, the way she pretty much ended up doing most of the work didn't sit right with me. But more on that later.
Unfortunately, the side characters were just as flat as Ben and Aurelia. Literally none of them had any type of role in the book beside 'Tell Ben and Aurelia how perfect they were for each other and how cute Bea is'. What made it worse was that there were so many jabs at Ben and Aurelia's sex lives in this book. Which would be fine, really, especially because a lot of them were friends, but many of them also happened to be Ben's own sisters. Like, for people who claimed to have no interest in knowing any details about his sex life, they sure made a lot of jokes about it. Sweet Home Alabama!
Plus, I could barely keep any of them straight. There were so many of them, and none of them were developed properly. After combing through some reviews, I realised that this book was actually part of a spin-off series and a lot of the side characters were main characters in the other series, so I guess Foster just assumed I had read all of her other books and knew exactly who they all were and didn't need more descriptors aside from "Ben's sister" or "Ben's brother-in-law". Which seems like a bad thing to do; you can't just always presuppose that everyone is familiar with your characters and throw their names out in quick succession like you expect people to tell them apart at first glance. Especially if you put this many characters in a story.
Moreover, the writing was absolutely atrocious. I'm not someone who comments a lot on the writing style, unless it's really bad or really beautiful, and unfortunately, Foster's belongs in the first category. It was so fucking cheesy all the time, and so much of the dialogue sounded anything but realistic? I could hardly get through conversations, especially between the two main characters, because they were just so bad and added nothing of substance. I was constantly cringing super hard. It was also extremely repetitive, since there was a lot about just how much Ben and Aurelia loved each other. Yeah, I got it, Aurelia wanted to kiss the ground Ben was walking on and vice versa, now how about some actual plot???.
The smutty scenes were no exception to that bad writing, btw. The dirty talk? Yikes. Personally, I also found the sex scenes extremely boring and unbelievable? Like, the idea of them having passionate sex was just really laughable to me.
Additionally, the book came across as very misogynistic. Like I mentioned above, despite the fact that Ben was the father and Aurelia was merely helping him out at first, Aurelia ended up taking care of Bea almost more than Ben. And it was seen as this normal thing? And even later, when Ben introduced the baby to his family, it was only the women who fawned over Bea and offered to help, while the men just stood by. One of them even joked that his wife got angry at him for offering to babysit his own child, and it was portrayed like the wife was just being overly dramatic? Like, this isn't the 50's anymore, my dude. Raise your damn child.
At one point in the book, there was also this horrifying scene between Ben and his father. They were on the phone in like the wee hours of the day, and Ben mentioned how exhausting babies were. And his dad was basically like, 'Oh, just wait until she's a teenager,' and then proceeded to tell him the following:
First of all, there was absolutely no plot in this book. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Going into it, I thought that Foster would set up the foundation first, let you get a feel for the main characters especially. And then a few chapters in, she'd introduce the surprise baby. But that's not what happened. Instead, the baby showed up in the first chapter, eight pages into the story. At that point, all you knew about Ben and Aurelia was that they were horny for each other. They'd just been objectifying the shit out of each other so far. So the main story line started way too early in my opinion.
It got worse, though! The two main characters got together at approximately 30%, so very early in the book, too.For the rest of the book, nothing of significance happened. It was just them repeatedly saying how much they loved each other and the baby, and everyone else telling them how perfect they were, and some smutty scenes. There was a subplot about Ben trying to find his baby mamma, but nothing came of that until 90% of the way through, and the way that was resolved was just very cheap and convenient.
The characters themselves didn't make things any easier. None of them were fleshed-out or had any personality. While I appreciated, like I mentioned already, that this relationship wasn't as abusive as others I've seen, both Ben and Aurelia were extremely bland and boring. Ben was Mister Perfect who couldn't do anything wrong, had no flaws, and got the hang of fatherhood in the span of like a week. Never mind the fact that he was also a billionaire, which, let's be real, kind of contradicted the whole "I'm the best person ever!" vibe Foster was trying to go for. The female main character was just as one-dimensional, since all you learnt about her was basically that she loved Ben and Bea, the baby, and that she was trying to open a bookshop. That was her entire personality. Oh, she also really loved slut-shaming Ben, especially before they got together. There was this whole scene where she and Ben tried to figure out who the baby mamma was, and the way she slut-shamed him in those scenes ... yikes. And while I do understand wanting to help your friend who unexpectedly became a father, the way she pretty much ended up doing most of the work didn't sit right with me. But more on that later.
Unfortunately, the side characters were just as flat as Ben and Aurelia. Literally none of them had any type of role in the book beside 'Tell Ben and Aurelia how perfect they were for each other and how cute Bea is'. What made it worse was that there were so many jabs at Ben and Aurelia's sex lives in this book. Which would be fine, really, especially because a lot of them were friends, but many of them also happened to be Ben's own sisters. Like, for people who claimed to have no interest in knowing any details about his sex life, they sure made a lot of jokes about it. Sweet Home Alabama!
Plus, I could barely keep any of them straight. There were so many of them, and none of them were developed properly. After combing through some reviews, I realised that this book was actually part of a spin-off series and a lot of the side characters were main characters in the other series, so I guess Foster just assumed I had read all of her other books and knew exactly who they all were and didn't need more descriptors aside from "Ben's sister" or "Ben's brother-in-law". Which seems like a bad thing to do; you can't just always presuppose that everyone is familiar with your characters and throw their names out in quick succession like you expect people to tell them apart at first glance. Especially if you put this many characters in a story.
Moreover, the writing was absolutely atrocious. I'm not someone who comments a lot on the writing style, unless it's really bad or really beautiful, and unfortunately, Foster's belongs in the first category. It was so fucking cheesy all the time, and so much of the dialogue sounded anything but realistic? I could hardly get through conversations, especially between the two main characters, because they were just so bad and added nothing of substance. I was constantly cringing super hard. It was also extremely repetitive, since there was a lot about just how much Ben and Aurelia loved each other. Yeah, I got it, Aurelia wanted to kiss the ground Ben was walking on and vice versa, now how about some actual plot???.
The smutty scenes were no exception to that bad writing, btw. The dirty talk? Yikes. Personally, I also found the sex scenes extremely boring and unbelievable? Like, the idea of them having passionate sex was just really laughable to me.
Additionally, the book came across as very misogynistic. Like I mentioned above, despite the fact that Ben was the father and Aurelia was merely helping him out at first, Aurelia ended up taking care of Bea almost more than Ben. And it was seen as this normal thing? And even later, when Ben introduced the baby to his family, it was only the women who fawned over Bea and offered to help, while the men just stood by. One of them even joked that his wife got angry at him for offering to babysit his own child, and it was portrayed like the wife was just being overly dramatic? Like, this isn't the 50's anymore, my dude. Raise your damn child.
At one point in the book, there was also this horrifying scene between Ben and his father. They were on the phone in like the wee hours of the day, and Ben mentioned how exhausting babies were. And his dad was basically like, 'Oh, just wait until she's a teenager,' and then proceeded to tell him the following:
"I’d say you have years to prepare, but there is no preparing for teenage daughters. You al-ways told it like it was. You were pissed off, happy, or somewhere in between, but you left no room for guessing. The girls were all, ‘I’m not mad!’ Then they’d slam their bedroom door, and if I didn’t go make sure they were okay, I’d have a cryfest on my hands. Your sisters would go all, ‘You don’t love me! If you loved me, you’d want to know what was wrong.’ And when I did try to find out what was wrong, I got the old, ‘Nothing! I’m fine! Leave me alone!’”
When Ben said that that won't happen to him because he was gonna have an open and honest relationship with his daughter, his dad just laughed and basically said, 'Yeah, good luck with that. Your mother and I will be there with tequila to watch the shit show.' What fucking misogynistic crap is that??? Teenage girls aren't automatically irrational and overdramatic for no reason, and some of them do have genuinely good relationships with their parents?
Lastly, apart from the sexist bullshit that was being spewed all over the book, it was also terribly heteronormative. Aurelia got straight-up emotional over imagining Bea's wedding and thinking about future grandchildren, and like ... Bea was a literal baby, at most a few months old. Why are straight people like this? Just because she's a girl doesn't mean she's gonna get married and have children, for crying out loud. I was just horrified.
Overall, the only good thing about this book was the fact that it a) didn't feature an abusive relationship, and b) it had less than 300 pages. I would not have been able to take more of this crap.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Misogyny
Minor: Terminal illness, Vomit, and Stalking