Nine Month Contract by Amy Daws

Help Wanted: Grumpy Mountain Man seeks baby momma. Job is an incubator position only. Surrogate must be impervious to grunting in the form of communication and nosey brotherly neighbors. Rustic mountain range housing available upon request.

I wanted to pummel my irritating brothers when they posted their own version of a wanted ad to help me with my life.

But I can’t fault the results once the right woman lands on my lap.

Becoming a single father is not a decision I made lightly. In fact, it’s the biggest decision of my entire life.

Which is why when I interview Trista, I know she’s perfect.

She’s wild, she’s opinionated, she wears cowboy boots. Even my pet goat loves her…

She’s the exact type of person I was holding out for.

And to my great horror, I realize on our first night of attempting this baby making dance…when the lights are low, the cheap wine is flowing, and the home insemination supplies are laid out on the kitchen counter…

I want to do a lot more than just make her my surrogate.

I want to make her mine.

Series: Mountain Men Matchmakers #1 | Publisher: Amy Daws | Narrators: Erin Mallon, Teddy Hamilton (duet) | Length: 10 hours 45 minutes |  Genre: Contemporary Romance  | Source: Purchased | Rating: 1

Have you ever scrolled Audible trying to use up your last few credits before your memberships ends and ended up throwing something random in your cart because it looked okay and you were tired of scrolling? That’s exactly how I ended up with Nine Month Contract and…I have regrets. 

Wanting a baby without the complications of a girlfriend, Wyatt heads to the surrogate center although he’s unable to connect to the right surrogate. When his niece runs into Trista, she seems the perfect person for the job. Trista’s looking for a way to earn a little money and this seems like the perfect job, plus it comes with free housing. Although Wyatt’s niece has ulterior motives, while she knows Trista’s perfect to carry Wyatt child, she’s also perfect for Wyatt, if she can get past his grump demeanor and Trista can overcome her fear of depending on someone.

 I wanted a cute little story and this just ended up being weird and slightly icky.

 There was banter between Trista and Wyatt and some of it was comical but the majority felt forced. I liked Wyatt, to a point. He has some issues that he’s trying to deal with and, honestly, I’m not sure he had it together enough to want to be a father. Trista was just annoying and very immature. I really struggled with Trista’s desire to become a surrogate, and egg donor, given the way she feels abandoned by her own parent and how she has allowed this feeling to control the way she lives her life. And her behavior towards Wyatt was unacceptable.

 The relationship between Trista and Wyatt was just odd. While there’s a ‘sexuationship’, as Trista calls it, there’s no actual development on the page and I struggled to see that they were more than just bed buddies. I couldn’t feel the chemistry between them. This one is spicy but it’s weird to the point of being icky. I just found them constantly calling it ‘pregnancy kink’ to be off-putting.

 The surrogate situation was off and not entirely ethical. While the author does mention that she consulted the surrogate community, I don’t feel that to be true as I feel this book demeans surrogacy.

Just a few bits of weirdness in the book include:

-The fact Wyatt allows his 18 year-old niece to search for his surrogate.

-Odd use of dressing/dip cups and children’s medicine syringes.

-Trista constantly saying she a ‘cow’.

-The constant use of the term ‘pregnancy kink’.

-The icky analogies such as Trista’s icky description of her new mattress,  “I swear it was crafted out of the foreskin of newborn babies it’s so comfortable. Not that foreskin is comfortable. I wouldn’t know, I guess. But I venture to bet it’s soft. Adult penis skin is crazy soft. At least what I remember of it. It’s been a while since I’ve touched a penis.”

Overall, this book just isn’t for me.