View source for Babies In Waiting by Rosie Fiore

{{infobox1
|title=Babies In Waiting
|author=Rosie Fiore
|reviewer=Zoe Morris
|genre=Women's Fiction
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-0857389589
|pages=432
|publisher=Quercus
|date=March 2012
|summary=Babies, boys and best friends. This is a brilliant book with wide appeal, regardless of whether, in their situation, you'd want the stick to show one or two lines when you peed on it.
|cover=0857389580
|aznuk=0857389580
|aznus=B0074QGDWW
}}
Three women, three different situations, ages spanning three decades. Gemma, Toni and Louise don’t have masses in common but come into each other’s lives when they all fall pregnant around the same time. With partners, parents, siblings and other friends not quite getting all that’s going on in their heads...and in their tummies...the women quickly form a tight support network in which all their differences cease to matter.

Told with each chapter alternating a point of view, this is an easy to read, entertaining book that makes good use of the women’s individual stories to keep you interested. Posh girl Gemma is to be a teen mum, much to her parents’ horror, while a few years older, Toni seems happily settled with hubby James but is still scared she’s rushed into the baby-making game. And then there’s Louise, a single career woman who made a bad decision on a work do and now seems to be paying for it. So yes three completely different characters but, thanks to some well thought out weaving, three separate and yet related heroines. It’s a risky strategy but it definitely pays off here and you get three for the price of one when it comes to juicy stories.

This is chick-lit as its best, slickly written and well-edited. The characters may have their own traits and may sometimes clash with each other, but as a reader, I never found any of them either irritating or two dimensional. There’s no getting away from the fact that this is a book all about bumps and babies and breastfeeding (and breakups) but it’s done in a very un-cliquey way so that even if you’re not a breeder you can relate (and keep up with the jargon). Though the overriding theme of the book is pregnancy, essentially it’s a story about relationships – with friends ''and'' family.

I very much enjoyed the story, both the enticing language and the way the individual tales developed. It was easy to keep the women separate which isn’t always the case, but I didn’t end up with a favourite out of the three of them as each had their appealing traits. It’s not a graphic book for the most part – some of the birth scenes paint, well, a messy picture but they’re brief and in keeping with the story. Ditto the conceptions, featuring the sort of level of detail you might discuss with your friends, but nothing x-rated. It didn’t make me broody...but it did make me laugh. I found it refreshingly realistic, from the way Adam popped in only briefly – no matter how much you were rooting for him to stay – to the way Brian and Simon approached the same situation with differing levels of enthusiasm. 

I find it hard to fault this book as I found it well-paced, a good length, and engaging throughout. To pick one slight thing, I’d say the blurb was misleading. The ''online forum'' element seemed to be overplayed, and the line ''One of the women is keeping a secret that will test their friendship'' proved rather anti-climactic when you realise that for you, the reader, it’s never been a secret or even that important or relevant.

That aside, I’d highly recommend this one for fans of the [[:Category:Sophie Kinsella|Sophie Kinsella]] school of chick-lit. It’s not fine literature but it's not drivel either, and it’s a perfect holiday book whether you plan to read it all in one go or dip in and out in-between dips in the pool.

Thanks go to the publishers for sending in a copy to review.

Babies on the brain? [[Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell by Debbie Carbin]] or [[The Two Week Wait by Sarah Rayner]] are equally highly recommended.  You might also enjoy [[Wonder Women by Rosie Fiore]].

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