If you like VERY light reading, this is for you. While I enjoyed the books well enough, there’s nothing deep about the storylines or characters. In fact, the characters in the books are pretty one-dimensional, practically caricatures. This is fairytale stuff where the characters have beautiful epiphanies and transform into better people in a few weeks time and all ends well for everyone.
The author was so artless in her writing that the first pages of each book were literally nearly identical, word for word as she sets the stage of the town and cafe. I’ve never seen anything like it. Skilled authors know how to write each book in a series so they can stand alone while threading the storylines together. They don’t just copy-paste. I was embarrassed for the author when I read the exact same introduction three times.
The first book in particular is baby OBSESSED. Pretty much everyone is pregnant under less than ideal circumstances. There is glancing mention of the range of options (abortion, adoption) these women have about their pregnancies, but not really any meaningful exploration of that. I get it. The author has a point of view on this, which is totally fine. It’s just part of what made the stories pretty shallow.
It’s obvious from the first description of Nina’s father why he acts the way he does. This book was written in 2010 and it is ridiculous to believe any adult who doesn’t live in a cave wouldn’t understand that for what it is. That just didn’t ring true at all.
Finally, the proofreading and editing of this book is absolutely HORRENDOUS. The books are riddled with grammar, punctuation, and editing errors that are simply not explained by the disclaimer at the beginning of the book that spellings may differ from American English. It was just really sloppy work. I’ve never read a book with so many errors. I think I spent $1.99 for this book series. I’m glad I didn’t pay more.