Thank you Slowburn for the arc!!!
This was a great, bittersweet end to a series that I fell in love with last year and refer to as one of my favorites. Mack created such a beautiful found family of friends and relatives that have grown endlessly and shown up for each other in every possible circumstance. This book was no different.
Cara and Emmett
The star couple since the very first book who were already married, funny, goofy, and quirky, underwent so much stress, pain, and heartbreak while trying to conceive. Their relationship went through many challenges and struggles throughout the course of the novel. I commend Mack for writing Cara's character so shamelessly raw and real, even when it can be "ugly" to feel and think certain things. Emmett, to nobody's surprise, was completely lovable. He showed up for Cara in every way he could, showing his love and proving her her worth as much as he could and was able to. But the journey of infertility is not an easy one, and it wreaked havoc on their relationship as Cara's confidence began to dwindle. Watching her slowly lose herself was heartbreaking. We were introduced to Cara in the beginning of the series as spunky and fun and feisty, and she really, truly lost herself to the fight against infertility. But watching the family come together and show up for her, watching Emmett shower her with love and appreciation, was beautiful. Even in the moments where she admitted jealousy for her friends and animosity towards them for being pregnant together, etc, I thought it was written and handled really respectfully while still realistic and painful. I really love their relationship and dynamic. However, while the spice was good, it felt extremely overdone in this book, and I skipped probably half of the intimacy scenes.
When Cara and Emmett foster Abel, a boy from a broken home, things start to look up. I appreciated this route for both of them. Abel was such a beautiful boy and character and taught Cara and Emmett just how much love they still had in them to share. With this small plotline, I especially appreciated that Abel's birth mother, Catharine, relinquished her parental rights after being forced to birth because of her parents. Mack did not shy away from the conflicting and troublesome feelings and situation that many women and mothers find themselves in and it's important to normalize and discuss those situations. Emmett's love for Abel, and his being able to relate to such a bad upbringing and also learning more about Emmett's childhood life, was so wonderful.
The found family in this entire series is unmatched. I truly love all of them, and they all fit so well together. I find them all to be as ridiculous as they are endearing, and I can't believe that I'm saying goodbye to them for the last time.
Now, I did have a few issues with this book, and I can totally blame this on not being in a romance-y mood and then reading one of most probable cringe authors with the writing, but there were a few things that I may have ignored in the past about the writing that I couldn't ignore now.
First, I really hate when a character has a mouthful of food, and Mack actually writes out those unintelligble words (which happened SO much). It's ridiculous to read. I hate it. I hate reading baby talk written out, too. Reading grown men talk like literal babies because Mack thought it was necessary to have them speak that way was exhausting. For example: "Pwus, you took us thwew da Wendy's dwive-thwu". Seriously??? "I wish I got twee of dem" like these are literally grown ass men and women... I couldn't handle it in this book mostly because it seemed everyone was pregnant and constantly stuffing their faces.
Second, the plot was a mess. I knew we were following Cara and Emmett's journey through infertility, but the pacing was very clunky, and while all of her books in the series have been long and repetitive (by the last 40%, instances and internal monologues just repeat over and over again, and it was tiresome to read in this case), the plot in this one felt lost. There was a weird thing that happened with a character who talks to a tabloid to "out" their relationship issues, but that situation is NEVER brought up again. Nothing about Emmett's family is EVER discussed or brought up again. I also feel like these characters had no personalities in this book. We had a few flashback chapters in the beginning, which moved incredibly quickly, and then before maybe the first 30%, we were done with flashback chapters? In one chapter, it went all from 8 months ago, 7 months ago, 6 months ago, etc, and was all one liners from Cara "giving up" on trying to get pregnant. By the end, there are a few more gaps in time, which led to something I really didn't like: Cara magically getting pregnant by the end of the novel. I'm happy for her, sure, but after their intense struggle, I feel like a character whose fertility reserve or whatever that was genuinely so poor, and had SUCH a hard time even creating viable eggs and embryos, that it was completely unrealistic. And yes "miracle" babies happen all of the time but I really expected Mack to not follow the trajectory of the "miracle" baby plotline that so many infertility books fall victim too, because unfortunately it is NOT the case for everyone who struggles to get pregnant. This bothered me (not because I struggle with infertility or anything like that) but just because it felt like it undermined the entire character arc that Mack set Cara on. It also bothered me because we weren't even told that they were planning to undergo more of the fertility treatments again? As I mentioned, there was a time jump that fast forwarded two months after her being with the friends, and she's talking about how there wasn't an email from the clinic about the results. But there was NO leadup to tell us that they were trying again? So it quite literally came out of nowhere... and having seen them give up previously, I hadn't expected that at all, and it was kind of disappointing to just wedge in there. More disappointing it was rushed and paved over so quickly, when there was SO MUCH PAGE TIME dedicated to Carter getting an Oreo commercial. If you read the series you know Carter LOVEs oreos. When i tell you that he got more page time talking about his fucking oreos than Cara and Emmett talking about trying to conceive again (again it was just kinda thrown in there) I really mean it. Had we had more time to see them struggle to think about going down that road again, i think it would have been more impactful than what we got.
Third, every character was focused on sex, dicks, and cum, 24/7. I genuinely do not feel like the girls especially talked about anything aside from being dicked down by their men, being horny for their men, or their men being alpha and the women being like "I dont need another kid!" There was a chapter where for Cara and Emmett they had to abstain from ejaculation and the rest of the crew was participating in solidarity... and they ALL freaked out about not having sex for 5 days. They were always super high on testosterone throughout the series (and it is obviously an intentionally spicy series i know!!!) but in this book they were sex-crazed maniacs and that was literally all they ever talked about... Because of their horniess too, I feel like with Emmett is was severely overdone. He was talking about how he was going to fuck Cara, IN DETAIL, in front of their nurse... like sir can you wait?? I know you're a big horndog but like in a doctor's office while your wife is undergoing infertility treatments, in front of a nurse? It was seriously over the top.
This is probably my least favorite book of the series, just because so much of it felt rushed and not fleshed out properly, the plot feeling messy, and their characters just kind of being overall annoying after a certain point. I know this series is not everybody's cup of tea because Mack's writing can really be over the top ridiculous and crazy and I was always okay with it, until this book lol. It was still a good conclusion to a great series.