My Reading Nook

Samantha Brady is a single thirty-something aspiring author living in New York with her best friend, real estate investor/agent Jack Turner. Samantha and Jack, who have always known one another (her family fostered him from his own alcoholic home life), watch each other through a parade of relationship bimbos and bastards, all the while functioning for all intents and purposes as a nonsexual married couple.

Samantha’s biological clock—apparently heretofore not set to ring—begins to chime after Samantha baby sits one afternoon. Despite lack of income, or stable career, or any ability to care for even herself, Samantha decides to have a child. And since she also lacks a sex life, she begins the artificial insemination process in hopes of conceiving the child she now believes she’s always wanted. As would happen, the procedures fail; Samantha is left broke and with little hope of pregnancy. Until, that is, a dark and stormy night leaves Jack and Samantha stranded in a no-star hotel with only a bottle of whiskey and a contrived game of spin the bottle to keep them warm. In the aftermath under one of the motel light fixtures, the emotional upheaval in their relationship is too much for either Samantha or Jack to handle and their friendship dies…and then Samantha discovers she’s pregnant.

She hides it from him as long as she can, but the truth outs soon enough and Jack decides that HIS baby needs him in its life as his father was never present in his own. Samantha is adamant that he doesn’t need to feel that way; she’s determined to raise the baby on her own without a man in her life.

Somehow, through the process of getting her brother back with his ex-girlfriend, Samantha and Jack work things out and finally come to an agreement on the path their relationship will take.