I did not like this.
The two female characters must be some sort of long or high jumping champions, the way they masterfully jump to conclutions at the smallest hint. Person has a lighter in their bag - person is a heavy smoker. Person has not planned to have a baby - person hates the baby and will be a terrible parent. Person is a female nurse - person is good. Person is a big burly man - person is bad.
I mean, I get why Tegan is afraid and/or suspicious of dudes. But at the same time she is never suspicious of Polly even though Polly is often extremely sus. The first part of the book, before we get to Polly's POV, is generally very much and very stereotypically "man bad, woman good".
Which, of course, means that we then get a reveal of things being exactly the opposite, which was predictable and cartoonish. "Woman go nuts because woman can't have baby" is the essense of Polly, and there isn't much else. Barely any backstory, no build-up, no nuance. She evokes no sympathy, she doesn't deserve her happy ending, but she is also not evil or scary - just kind of annoying and dumb and not really plausible. And no, I'm not hating on women who are crushed by their infertility, I'm hating on how this particular character is written.
I did not like how the beginning of the book seemed to be building Simon as the main villain but then, when trying to get away from that particular drama, the main character crashes into another one and that's the main part of the book, - or at least I didn't like the way it was done. The Simon-related parts of the plot are so poorly fleshed out that they feel like a plot device ment to get Tegan to Polly, barely anything more.
The way Tegan does dumb stuff and then immediately goes "oh, I shouldn't have done that", or changes her mind at the very last moment, gave me a headache.
The book is not terribly atrocious, I guess. It is easy to read and the pacing is okay. I also kind of liked the way Polly ends up saving Tegan instead of killing her. But that's about it.
The ending is very underwhelming. The way Hank just drives Tegan to the hospital, because, I guess, the page quota has been met and it's time to round things up. There's no tension whatsoever and feels like he could have done it at any other time before.
This book has made me think hard about reading the remaining couple of McFadden's books on my TBR, despite being a TBR hoarder and terrible at removing books from my TBR once they are there.
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