Her Two Dads in A Chat with Ariel

Jan 30, 2011 Elisa Rolle added it

The book goes against a lot of the taboo supposedly M/M romances have to respect to not fall under the label of being unrealistic, but I think the author passed with flying colours: her characters are men who find themselves in a unmanly situation, but they didn’t lose their masculinity or turned into women.

Srikkanth, a web-designer of Indian heritage acted as sperm donor for his girl best friend; the agreement was that Jill would have been a single mother, Sri would have not been called as “re The book goes against a lot of the taboo supposedly M/M romances have to respect to not fall under the label of being unrealistic, but I think the author passed with flying colours: her characters are men who find themselves in a unmanly situation, but they didn’t lose their masculinity or turned into women.

Srikkanth, a web-designer of Indian heritage acted as sperm donor for his girl best friend; the agreement was that Jill would have been a single mother, Sri would have not been called as “responsible” and if he wanted he would have had the chance to meet the baby. The perfect agreement. Only that Jill died in childbirth and now Sri is the unwilling happy father of a little girl. Of course the first idea was to give her up into adoption, but many factors prevented him to do so, not last the fact that Sophie is Sri only chance to be a father, with him being gay and all.

To Sri’s help comes Jaime, Sri’s tenant and friend: he is not interested in Sri as lover, or at least he didn’t give it any serious thinking, but as Sri himself, Jaime sees in Sophie the only chance he has to be a father, even if a supporting one. Yes, indeed Sophie is the glue between Sri and Jaime, and I can understand Jaime’s reluctance to move their relationship to a physical level until they don’t understand if they have something more serious between them than a desire of parenthood. So no, this romance is not really sexy, and with a baby and all, it very much borders on “baby cuties” moments, and if you are not the maternal/paternal type, sometime you will wonder why everyone seems to be so fascinated by someone who basically sleep, eat and cry ;-) (yes, this is my Erode side speaking!).

But as I said the author managed to not turning her characters into women: true, they have to learn how to raise a kid, and of course the best advices will come from other women, but there will be one father or two along the path as well. Plus, even if of course the author chose a “girl” as a baby instead of a boy to heighten the contrast, the wanna-be fathers tried very much to not opting for “girly” things, so much that I wondered if the poor Sophie indeed will come out as a girly girl, what will she have to do to be free to express herself?

Basically the story was all about good feelings and pink glasses perspective, both Sri than Jaime came from very conservative families, both heritage not famous for being gay friendly, but more or less they didn’t have any trouble, or at least nothing they couldn’t manage. Maybe how Sri dealt with his parents is a bit unrealistic, above all since he told them he was gay not exactly in a smooth way, I can only think his parents already suspected, even if his son was not aware.

In the end my only complain is something really minor: if it’s true that Jill was Sri’s friend, so much that he decided to be a sperm donor, and Jill was savvy enough to name him as Sophie’s father, than it seemed strange to me that he wasn’t in Jill’s will; and even if he wasn’t, when Jill died she was at the end of her pregnancy… is it really possible that she hadn’t prepared anything for Sophie? Not even some pjs, or a crib? She was a single mother, she hadn’t no one to help her once she was back home from the hospital. And last, even if it is a bit macabre, what happened to Jill’s, well, body? She had no parents or near relative, is it possible that Sri didn’t think to her resting place or at least attend to her funeral? She was after all, his friend and the mother of his daughter.

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Jan 22, 2011 Brenda Maldonado rated it really liked it

3.5 stars
Sweet story about friends that become lovers and parents in a two-for-one deal. I had trouble relating to the main characters, but many readers will love this book!

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