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A review by mzdeb
The Unplanned Life of Josie Hale by Stephanie Eding
3.0
I received a digital ARC from NetGalley.
More like 2.5 stars, but I'm rounding up. This is kind of a very chaste, mild version of "Knocked Up," in terms of, if not exactly involving a bunch of slackers, then a group of people with potential who are down on their luck but who were never exactly ambitious in changing their circumstances.
Josie gets pregnant during a failed attempt at reviving a failing marriage (due to her husband's infidelity) before she moves out. When her parents give her a heads up that they're downsizing from the family home (requiring her to leave again), she's at her wit's end. It's serendipitous when she runs into two childhood buds at a county fair: Ben, her childhood crush and a divorced and confused dad of a sulky tween; and Kevin, a somewhat cocky man-child who doesn't want to run the family business when his dad finally retires. They invite her to move in to Ben's house, and Kevin creates "The Corndog Pact" (named for said treat at the county fair): their group plan to improve their personal, career and financial lives by the time they're 30.
What follows is a lot of humorous banter but a very slow moving story. To say there's a slow burn between Ben and Josie makes it steamier than it really is. Even the audiobook (when it finally came out) couldn't motivate me to completely finish the last third and I had to skim the e-book ARC instead. It may or may not work as a made-for-streaming movie, though, believe it or not.
More like 2.5 stars, but I'm rounding up. This is kind of a very chaste, mild version of "Knocked Up," in terms of, if not exactly involving a bunch of slackers, then a group of people with potential who are down on their luck but who were never exactly ambitious in changing their circumstances.
Josie gets pregnant during a failed attempt at reviving a failing marriage (due to her husband's infidelity) before she moves out. When her parents give her a heads up that they're downsizing from the family home (requiring her to leave again), she's at her wit's end. It's serendipitous when she runs into two childhood buds at a county fair: Ben, her childhood crush and a divorced and confused dad of a sulky tween; and Kevin, a somewhat cocky man-child who doesn't want to run the family business when his dad finally retires. They invite her to move in to Ben's house, and Kevin creates "The Corndog Pact" (named for said treat at the county fair): their group plan to improve their personal, career and financial lives by the time they're 30.
What follows is a lot of humorous banter but a very slow moving story. To say there's a slow burn between Ben and Josie makes it steamier than it really is. Even the audiobook (when it finally came out) couldn't motivate me to completely finish the last third and I had to skim the e-book ARC instead. It may or may not work as a made-for-streaming movie, though, believe it or not.