Review: Fun but predictable
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2013
I enjoyed Bundle of Joy - it was exactly what I expected and had a mostly predictable story arc.  Caroline and Charlie judge each other on superficial characteristics.  They each have secrets about their past that they are hiding.  They think they hate each other but, as circumstances push them together, they find they really care for one another.  They are afraid to admit their feelings because they think they are not reciprocated.Like other reviewers have noted, there are references (walkman, tour in Nam) that make it clear that this is not a current story, but I didn't have a problem with that.  Early on, there were some editing issues and some repetitive phraseology.  My biggest issue, however, were the internal inconsistencies in the timeline - the baby is conceived in June (when her friend is 8.5 months pregnant); "a few weeks" later, the friend's baby is born on July 4th; she has a positive pregnancy test on July 31st at which point she tells her friend she is 5.5 weeks along.  The next day, "almost two months had gone by since the night they made love".  One day more, when she sees her doctor, she is due in late January.  These inconsistencies abound - later in the book we are in the middle of October, we pass the next two months "in a happy blur" and are "two weeks before Christmas," and then at the start of the next chapter, "Before they knew it, it was Halloween and then Thanksgiving."  These types of problems should be caught in editing and really are among my pet peeves - they distract me from the story and make it frustrating to read.