Single Dad's Surrogate, Annie Young

Surrogacy can be a blessing for an incredible number of individuals and couples that desire children but for one reason or another cannot carry a child themselves.  Some women are happy to have a temporary connection to the individual(s) and others request to remain in the child's life.  In Lily's case, she chose the latter.  Caroline and Wyatt were more than happy to continue their relationship with her and they grew very close.  Lily loves Maggie and is happy to be the fun aunt who visits regularly and often.  And when tragedy strikes the family she's even more committed to being a source of love for the little Maggie.  She's the light of her life and makes her mundane life brighter.

She never intended to be a 26-year old barista but her college degree isn't doing her any favors at the moment.  Grateful for her employment, however, she's happy to live so close to the family she helped to bring Maggie into the world.  One afternoon visit changed things a little for her.  While she's fantasized about Wyatt for quite a while, she's determined to be just a friend.  When his regular nanny goes on vacation he offers her the position temporarily.  Ignoring the crush she has on Wyatt she accepts the offer to be the stand-in.  Neither of them was expecting their dynamic to change and grow.

Wyatt felt a bit basic.  His grief, self-doubt, sudden attraction, business acumen, all of those things felt genuine, but none of them really combined enough to make me feel for him as a person very deeply.  When he finally decided to court Lily there was a lot of flash and not as much substance.  I understand wanting to treat her with the money he has, that's fine, but to bring up the money thing as often as he (and she) did, it cheapened the experience.  I liked him, but in a more general sense.

Lily felt younger than 26.  There were times that I felt she was emotionally immature.  She did have a huge heart and was committed to being a good influence with Maggie.  Her kind, genuine nature was an asset to her character and allowed the reader to see her as being a good choice for both Wyatt and Maggie.

Together I thought they had the potential to be a great pairing.  Each of them had qualities that would balance and complement one another.  But the story took so long to get them together that I almost wondered if it would actually happen.  And then when it did, it ended so abruptly that I was terribly disappointed.  Sure, where they ended was really just an extension of where they should have been for quite some time, but it was the very beginning of their evolution and quite unsatisfying.  Even their intimate, steamy moments were 90% fantasy and dreams.  One aborted heavy make-out session and then one limo/bedroom scene together...

I was surprised by the depth of feels and the relationship that evolved in this story.  I was actually kind of regretting requesting to review this story from Hidden Gems after clicking.  But after making myself get reading past chapter one I was actually kind of interested in the characters and the story.  It was much longer than I was expecting as well.  The unnecessarily long pre-relationship change coupled with the abrupt ending made the book less enjoyable than it could have been.  In addition to that the emphasis on money and model-worthy looks cheapened certain experiences and made it seem shallow rather than deserving of the depth the story tried to build before these points.

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