Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Jane Darlington is a genius at physics, but there's one problem she can't solve. She yearns for a child, but wants to spare it the pain of growing up as...well, a nerd. And surely any child of Jane's would be a little too brainy for the playground set.

 

So she sets out to find a special man to father her child, someone without too much gray-matter between his ears: in short, a big, strong dope. Cal Bonner, legendary pro quarterback, seems to fit the bill. But there's something Dr. Jane hasn't counted on: he's no dumb jock. And he's not about to get used and abused by a baby-mad schemer.

 

Series: Chicago Stars #3 | Publisher: Books on Tape | Narrator: Anna Fields | Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins | Genre: Contemporary Romance | Source: Publisher | Ratings: Performance- 1 Cup Plot-1 Cup

Okay, so…this has been in my Audible library for years. It was one of the first audiobooks I received for review and, sadly, I just couldn’t get into back then so I stopped listening to it and completely forgot about. I rediscovered it when I was cleaning out my Kindle and thought I would give it a go during a road trip.

 

Here’s what’s going on. Genius Jane Darlington wants a baby, but she doesn’t want to chance a sperm bank in case the owner of said sperm turns out to be a genius too and having her kid turn out to be a genius is a risk she’s not willing to take. So when she sees quarterback Cal Bonner on television, she’s found the perfect dumb jock to be her baby’s daddy. Although Jane didn’t count on Cal being nearly as smart as she is.

 

Normally I’m a massive fan of Susan Elizabeth Phillips but this one just didn’t take the cake and If I wasn’t in the middle of a long road trip, I would have found something else to listen to.

 

I could not stand Jane. The fact that she tricked Cal into getting her pregnant was such a skeevy move and I completely lose respect for any character that does that. Not only is she morally bankrupt, she whines constantly.

 

So, Cal’s not much better. I get that he’s angry at Jane for tricking him into impregnating her—he totally has the right to be ticked off— and I have to applaud him for doing the right thing and marrying her—even though she didn’t want him, just his sperm. What I don’t get is a)the way he constantly picks fights with her and enjoys their bickering and b)the fact that he demanded that she treat his family disrespectfully.

 

So she’s a genius and he’s nearly one but their actions and behaviors were immature and exceedingly stupid. It was annoying listening to all their bickering and their plotting to one-up the other. They both needed a serious timeout.

 

I didn’t really buy their relationship. Who could ever trust someone that lied to them and manipulated them? Yes, they slept together a few times, but it wasn’t really due to attraction—she slept with him out of necessity to get pregnant and he slept with her for the simple fact she was there. He continually went on about how old she was and he only dates women in their early twenties. Their relationship went like this: sex-sex-argue-fuss-fight-sex-fight-bicker-bicker-fuss-argue-hang out with a guy he considers his enemy to make Cal pay attention to her-fight-bicker-fuss. When the story finally drew to a close, I couldn’t believe that they actually had a HEA or even a happy for now. 

 

I struggled with the way Anna Fields narrated this book. The Southern accent she used for Cal and his family sounded too forced and too fake to the point it became annoying. And when she voiced Jane it just seemed too whiney. The longer I listened the more annoying it became although I’m not sure if it was so much the narration or the fact the story just declined the longer it went.

 

Overall, this one wasn’t for me. I don’t like characters that trick the other characters into things. It ruins the character for me and makes them unredeemable.

   

What makes you lose respect/trust for a character?

How do you feel about the heroine tricking

the hero into getting her pregnant?