“The exchanges usually end with a gale of laughter. One such gale is particularly explosive, so powerful in fact that they don’t hear the front door open and the pitter-patter of little feet. It takes Annie a moment to notice a little girl in her kitchen, wearing a brown onesie with a kangaroo on it and a pink tutu-like skirt with an embroidered pouch.”
The premise of this novel is very entertaining. A single girl in a “committed relationship” becomes pregnant, but it turns out that her boyfriend is elsewhere engaged, literally. So how to navigate single parenting in the big confusing city of San Francisco where Mom’s clubs are forged along economic and social strata. Likewise, babysitters need rich clients for maximum paydays, not a struggling work- from- home Mom who enters cookbook contests. Then Mele, the heroine has to face up to her boyfriend’s wedding with someone else because their daughter is to be the flower girl. Naturally, in this type of book it all ends happily for our heroine although another marriage is destroyed. In a book about being a Mom, the children don’t seem fully realized; they seem like props to the grown up story. Kai Hart Hemmings is a good enough writer, but her creative story deserves a better and more realistic ending. Also, some of her satire of Mom’s is so sharp and biting that it seems misogynistic. Of course, some is outright funny and entertaining. I had hoped to like this book more than I did.
Reviewed By: Julia McMichael
Originally posted at – https://manhattanbookreview.com/product/how-to-party-with-an-infant/
