365 books in 365 days Challenge ... book #112

The Baby Project - Susan Meier
Harlequin Romance
Harlequin, 2011
ISBN: 9780373177219

N.B. The above details relate to the North American release of this book.



My rating



From the back cover:

"The last thing Whitney Ross needs is to be made temporary guardian of baby Gino. It will only remind her of the precious daughter she lost so tragically... Then there's another problem—the little orphan's new daddy. Darius Andreas is a hotshot tycoon who is cool, collected, shockingly gorgeous and far from ready to be a father!
Whitney must teach Darius the ways of parenting, but it will take all her courage. And as she takes on the baby project, another daunting task comes to light: dealing with her inconvenient feelings for Darius!"


I have been reading a lot of RIVA's and Modern's recently so I thought I would go for a nice one from the Romance line. This is my first book by Susan Meier and it was quite enjoyable.

The heroine Whitney is given joint custody of her late best friend's six month old son, along with the baby's half brother Darius, the hero. Whitney is terrified of this new part of her life, she is still grieving for the loss of her baby daughter and husband, and finds it difficult to connect with the baby at first. Darius also struggles, he didn't know about his baby brother and never had an easy relationship with his father. As he and Whitney learn to be parents they grow close and soon they realise that there is more than friendship between them. But neither of them wants anything permanent.

I enjoyed this book, the writing is nice and the story flows really well. The characters are nicely portrayed; Whitney in particular is really well developed, her loss is heartbreaking and written with great sensitivity. The development of the relationship is also nice, it takes place over a long(ish) period of time, which to me made it more believable.
However there were parts of this book that I found completely unrelatable; eg. the characters just seemed to swan in and out of the baby's life when they weren't working and then leave the rest to the nanny. I found it a little off putting.

But, this is a nice, quick and sweet romance.

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