Ready or Not by Cara Bastone
Eve Hatch lives for surprises! Just kidding. She expects every tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today. She loves her cozy apartment in Brooklyn that’s close to her childhood best friend Willa, and far from her midwestern, traditional family who has never really understood her. While her job is only dream-adjacent, it’s comfortable and steady. She always knows what to expect from her life . . . until she finds herself expecting after an uncharacteristic one-night stand.
The unplanned pregnancy cracks open all the relationships in her life. Eve’s loyal friendship with Willa is feeling tense, right when she needs her the most. And it’s actually Willa’s steadfast older brother, Shep, who steps up to help Eve. He has always been friendly, but now he’s checking in, ordering her surprise lunches, listening to all her complaints, and is . . . suddenly kinda hot? Then, as if she needs one more complication, there’s the baby’s father, who is (technically) supportive but (majorly) conflicted.
Up until this point, Eve’s been content to coast through life. Now, though—maybe it’s the hormones, maybe it’s the way Shep’s shoulders look in a T-shirt—Eve starts to wonder if she has been secretly desiring more from every aspect of her life.
Over the course of nine months, as Eve struggles to figure out the next right step in her expanding reality, she begins to realize that family and love, in all forms, can sneak up on you when you least expect it.
Review: Eve's life is shaken up when she realizes she is pregnant after a one-night stand. Her best friend Willa feels tense after her news. The baby's father is conflicted and sending mixed signals. And Eve is surprised to find herself relying and more on her best friend's brother Shep for support.
This was truly a delight and lived up to all the glowing reviews all my book reading friends gave it. It is an accidental pregnancy but that's the bombshell news around which the whole story revolves and you know about it from page one. If not for this surprise baby, Eve may not have shaken up her life the way she does over the course of this story. I am also not typically a big friends to lovers fan, but this one was done SO well. It felt realistic and earnest and genuine.
The people and relationships in this book felt so real and relatable. I liked seeing the way Eve's pregnancy complicated her friendship. I liked the way the baby's father is a good guy but genuinely so torn up over this news to the point where he makes mistakes in the ways he shows up. I also liked that this wasn't some perfect fairy tale where the baby brings its parents magically together. This just felt more true life - imperfect and messy but still a happy ending.
The MMC in this was so great. I loved him. He is so supportive of Eve. He shows up for her in a way that no one else does with no expectations of anything back. This was not a dual perspective, and I kept wondering how he was internally handling the news of her pregnancy. That had to have been hard but yet he never lets it impact his behavior towards Eve or her baby, which honestly put him in the top tier of great men.
This was an extremely slow burn. I felt like I waited forever for this pair to get together. But I do think this is also very much a book about processing pregnancy and adjusting to a very unexpected big life change and the book and love story had to make space for that first.
This was wonderful on audio, and I thought the narrator did a great job bringing Eve as a character to life. This is open door and had some pretty lengthy scenes near the end.
There was one element to this that I questioned and sort of gave me the ick, but I can't really discuss it without spoiling anything ha. Rounding down to 4.5 stars for that (but posting as 5 stars as Goodreads still hasn't given us half stars).
Stars: 4.5
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