Read as part of CBR15Bingo: relation”ship.” This is a romance novel about two people in a relationship who the reader is supposed to “ship,” I s’pose. Never been a fan of the term, myself.
I’m going to give a brief review and say that this book is fine and entertaining if you like romance; moving in spots, cloying in others. And I’m going to spend the rest of the time spoiling the book talking about its take on infertility. So don’t read on if you want to read this some day but if you’ve struggled with infertility before, you may appreciate it or have words to say…
(Spoilers abound)
I picked this book as part of a book bingo. I needed to read a romance written by a BIPOC author and I chose this because of the infertility angle. My wife and I struggled with fertility issues for a while before we adopted. She miscarried and it was one of the hardest times of my life. Obviously, I had to comfort her and deal with my own grief, but I was also angry at societal expectations for women’s fertility. I’m still not over it. That just added shame on top of how my poor wife was already feeling physically and emotionally. Frankly, I like it when fictional characters flatly state that they don’t want kids. It’s a perfectly fine decision.
My wife didn’t have a condition like Kristen, the lead female character in this one, who suffers from tumors on her uterus and needs a hysterectomy at age 26. So in reading this, I really appreciated the journey Abby Jimenez took her through. I even appreciated that she mentioned at the end how much of this was based on the experience of a friend of hers.
What I didn’t care for was how Kristen got miracle pregnant at the end.
Look, Abby Jimenez does not and cannot speak for every person who has suffered because of infertility. It’s foolish to proclaim otherwise or to project my own experiences and desires onto this book as wish fulfillment deferred. However, it felt like it cheapened a real piece of Kristen’s person and, once again, reduced her to her fertility or lack thereof. Again, the person Jimenez based this off of did in fact have two children before their hysterectomy so maybe I’m just projecting too much of my own grief here. But I don’t know.
I feel like popular media, be it books or TV or movies, has to grapple with the fact that it’s okay to not want kids. That it’s okay to not have kids. That it’s okay to be infertile. That it’s okay to say f off to any pushy guy who thinks they have a right to dictate a woman’s body. And I was hoping this would be it. And it’s not. And it’s my fault for having that expectation but still. I still yearn for it.
Anyway, I was gonna give it two stars out of anger but I enjoyed the journey enough and appreciated Jimenez’s note at the end so I bumped it to three.
