3.5 stars
Not my favourite Serenity Woods' for a few reasons, but I still enjoyed this. I really like single parent stories in general and secret baby books can also be good when done right, so the plot of this intrigued me a lot. I wasn't always the biggest fan of Esther; she seemed a little mean at times and I hated how she lied to Toby about her pregnancy, but I also kind of liked that both of the characters had flaws, and Toby certainly made mistakes too.
I've grown used to SW books being around 200-250 pages, and this dragged a little for me at 300 pages. It easily could have (and should have) been 50 pages shorter, imo. As with the last book in this series, this was a lot steamier than the majority of the other SW books I've read and - though this is usually the last thing I'd complain about - I feel like this could have benefitted from a few less sex scenes. It got really repetitive after a while and whereas in the last book we were following the 7 sins pattern and it didn't bother me so much, I felt like the plot here should have been more about Toby, Esther and Charlie as a family, rather than Toby and Esther's sexual relationship.
I did like what we did see of Toby and Charlie's relationship though, that was very sweet. Another thing I appreciated was the plot around the groups' treatment of Toby (they often joke about him being unintelligent and clumsy, not realising they were hurting his feelings). It was written in such a believable way, where they weren't made into villains but still realised their mistakes, and the chemistry of the group from the previous book felt pretty consistent despite the small time jump from book one.
As I write this review I'm aware its very negative, and its making me wonder why I'm rounding up to a 4 star rather than a 3, but Serenity Woods is one of my favourite authors and I enjoy her books so much that even though this has been one of her weaker ones, I can still appreciate her writing style and character building. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, especially not as your first SW book, but it wasn't a terrible read either.