Customer Reviews

Baby Business: 9 Months Later (Harlequin Superromance No. 955)

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Brenda Novak is a writer who writes with gut-wrenching emotion. The characters she creates will quickly become a part of your everyday life. Her latest, Baby Business, is set in Salt Lake City. The hero, Thad Winter, a widower of 18 months, still mourns the death of his beloved spouse and unborn child. His late wife and unborn child were tragically taken out of his life by a drunken driver. Thad decides to have the child he was denied and give him something to live for once again. He offers a hundred thousand dollars for a woman to accept artificial insemination, carry his baby to fruition, and to stay out of their lives after delivery. He is convinced he can never love anyone as much as his late wife.

Thad has many applications trying to collect the hundred thousand dollar prize. Most are very bold and eager to assure their place as the selected candidate. Tactics they use to entice Thad only turns him off until he meets Macy McKinley. Macy is a mystery to Thad. She is neither bold nor aggressive in her pursuit of the hundred thousand dollar check. She refuses to tell him why she is in need of such a large amount of money. However, during a background check, Thad learns that the divorced Macy needs the money so that her beloved five-year-old daughter Haley can receive a life saving bone marrow transplant. Thad and Macy reach an agreement that includes him safeguarding his investment by a temporary marriage. As Macy and Thad remain in close proximity, they fall in love. However, she mistrusts love after her former spouse deserted her, and he feels guilty for betraying his first wife by falling in love again. Love may not be enough to heal the deep wounds of either one of this deserving pair.

Baby Business is an emotional read that will keep the reader turning the pages until the end. Her characters are so well developed you will long remember them long after you finish one of her novels.

Macy McKinney's young daughter, Haley, is in dire need of a bone marrow transplant. The cost is ..., to be paid before surgery. Desperate, she took a friend's advice to contact Thad Winters.

Thad had lost his wife and unborn child less than two years before. Unable to love another woman, he put out the word that he would pay the woman he chose from applicants to be artificially inseminated, have his child, and then walk away forever. He chose Macy McKinney. Then his family gets involved. To keep his parents or Macy's from discovering their "contract", he convinces Macy to temporarily marry him and act the loving wife (in name only). But things quickly fall apart as he begins to care for Macy and Haley.

***** AWESOME STORY, READERS! Here is one that you do not want to miss! Macy is in a catch twenty-two and the author wrote it all so well that I could not help but get deeply into the book and cheer for Macy! Excellent read!

Macy McKinney's young daughter, Haley, is in dire need of a bone marrow transplant. The cost is ..., to be paid before surgery. Desperate, she took a friend's advice to contact Thad Winters.

Thad had lost his wife and unborn child less than two years before. Unable to love another woman, he put out the word that he would pay the woman he chose from applicants to be artificially inseminated, have his child, and then walk away forever. He chose Macy McKinney. Then his family gets involved. To keep his parents or Macy's from discovering their "contract", he convinces Macy to temporarily marry him and act the loving wife (in name only). But things quickly fall apart as he begins to care for Macy and Haley.

***** AWESOME STORY, READERS! Here is one that you do not want to miss! Macy is in a catch twenty-two and the author wrote it all so well that I could not help but get deeply into the book and cheer for Macy! Excellent read!

Divorced medical student Macy Mckinley needs ninety-eight thousand dollars and change and she needs it now. A friend tells her about Thad Winters, a man offering one hundred thousand dollars for a position he'd like someone to fill immediately - that of a surrogate mother. Although Macy has plenty of qualms about even thinking of accepting a position like this, she knows she has no choice but to accept. Five-year old Haley, Macy's daughter, is dying of cancer and in the hospital at present. She needs a bone marrow transplant and the hospital wants the money in advance. Deserted by her husband who ran off with a younger woman, Macy has little faith in men and has learnt to fight all her battles on her own. Compared to saving her daughter's life, no sacrifice is too great for Macy - even if it means having a stranger's baby just so she can save her own.

Eighteen months have passed since his beloved wife died and Thad Winters still mourns her death. Convinced the only way he can bring back some sort of fulfillment to his personal life is by fathering a child, Thad starts interviewing candidates to find the best woman to give him a baby through the process of artificial insemination. However, not long after he starts meeting the long line of women competing for his money, he finds himself growing tired of their aggressive and persistent attitude to get the `job'. That's when he meets Macy, the first woman who genuinely seems to need his money but won't tell him why. Thad learns of Macy's reasons for wanting his money through a private investigator and even while his practical side insists he not get involved, he can't help but feel drawn to this sweet and courageous woman and her adorable but very sick daughter. He gives Macy the money and soon fins himself wanting a whole lot more from her in return than he'd originally planned. Yet, he fights a battle within his heart for while part of him still feels tied to his deceased wife, another part of Thad desperately wants to let Macy into his heart. The question remains, will he be able to convince Macy to love him in return?

Bravo Ms. Novak for penning a poignantly beautiful category romance full of heart wrenching emotions and plenty of tender moments. My heart went out to Macy for putting up with all that went wrong in her life. Her courage in the face of helpless fear and despair is so exquisitely portrayed by Ms. Novak.

Brenda Novak displays her unique talent for blending serious situations with compelling and lovable characters to create a romance one cannot soon forget.

In Salt Lake City, Thad Winters, still mourns the death of his beloved spouse and unborn child due to a drunken driver. To give him the child he was denied and to provide him with something to live for, Thad wants to raise a child containing his genes. He offers a hundred thousand dollars for a woman to accept artificial insemination, carry his baby to fruition, and then stay out of their lives.

Unable to take any more aggressive interviewees, Thad selects Macy McKinley who informed him that she needs $98,523, but refuses to tell him why. However, during a background check, Thad learns that the divorced Macy needs the money so that her beloved five-year-old daughter Haley can receive a life saving bone marrow transplant. Thad and Macy reach an agreement that includes his safeguarding his investment by a temporary marriage. As Macy and Thad remain in close proximity, they fall in love. However, she mistrusts love after her former spouse deserted her and he feels guilty for betraying his first wife by falling in love again. Love may not be enough to heal the deep wounds of either one of this deserving pair.

BABY BUSINESS is an emotional gut-wrenching relationship drama that continually pulls at the heart of the reader. Macy is an incredibly brave person willing to do anything to try to save her daughter's life. Thad struggles with his love for Macy and Haley against his feelings of be unfaithfulness towards his first wife. Brenda Novak beautifully writes about the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of loving someone.

Harriet Klausner

The intrepid Macy will do anything to save her daughter's life. Her daughter Haley has cancer, and the only chance of saving the five-year-old's life means raising enough money to pay for a bone marrow transplant. Despite her misgivings, Macy agrees to be the surrogate mother to Thad's child. Sadly, if the bone marrow transplant doesn't work, she won't loose one child but two, because she'll be expected to relinquish the baby right on the heels of loosing Haley.

BABY BUSINESS is an entertaining contemporary romance confronting some of life's most tangled issues. Macy is willing to pay the highest form of payment; that is, giving Thad one baby to save another. Having lost my own loved one to leukemia, I'm impressed with Novak's handling of Haley's disease, confronting it realistically and lending the child joy even in the midst of great pain. Novak scores high marks with this extraordinary and poignant reading experience.

Brenda Novak is one of the better romance writers I've read. If you're looking to escape from the harsh realities of life in 2009, this book will help you do it.

The plot requires a willingness to go along with a fairly unbelievable situation. Thad is a young advertising executive who lost his wife and unborn child 18 months ago. He's still in love with his wife and grieving the loss of her and the child. He doesn't think he'll ever love a woman again -- his heart is already taken -- but he longs for a child. He gets the idea to take the life insurance from his wife's death and use it to pay someone to have his baby -- a surrogate mother. Macy is desperate for that kind of money, to pay for a bone marrow transplant for her young daughter, who has cancer. They end up agreeing to this. I won't tell you about the twists and turns after that. Because it's a romance, you know they're going to be alright in the end, the question is how they'll get there.

The characters are likeable, the dialogue well-written, and the plotting holds your interest. It's not going to win the Pulitzer Prize, but it's good escape reading.

Thad Winters is a widower whose looking for a woman to be his "oven mother" for his future baby and held alot of interviews with women to achieve his dream, but he settled for Macy McKinney, a med student divorcee with a 5 year old daughter, Haley, who's in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. Macy had reached to a point where she would do anything so she could pay for her daughter's transplant, so she's even willing to go through an artificial insemination, carry to full term where she could just hand the baby to him and they be off with their own life.

Both are survivors of their own dark past. Losing his pregnant wife to an accident was devastating for Thad and for Macy's husband left her for a jailbait, leaving a huge wound to heal and unknowingly they fill each other's void. As the contract progressed, they ended up getting married and things got too messy as both sides of the family gets involved with each other, weaving emotional intrude as time passes by.

I never thought after a long while I be picking up a Harlequin book after all of these years, but I did and I'm glad I did pick this one for my first read. This is page turning and fast pace with emotional turmoil, though ina couple of pages she lost me at where a character was at the moment but it was interesting read still.