This book was breathtaking! Mistakes that lead to something wonderful! Thank you netgalley for the free arc in exchange for an honest review!

This book was a lot of fun to read! I loved Sara's voice! This book was a honest telling of teen aged pregnancy, of some of the kinda gross things that happen, and the realities of her situation. I loved how she had the support of her mom and her best friend!

Sara was a fantastic narrator! If you enjoy the voice like in the synopsis above (there's another synopsis, but I like this one better) then you'll like this book. Then there's the fact that her mom's side of the family is Scandinavian, and her dad's side of the family is Latino. So she's torn between those two worlds while not fully belonging to either. Which isn't fun!

I really enjoyed Leaf and his friends who become Sara's friends. Yeah for diversity, because he's Roma, and his cultural treatment of food was an interesting part of this book. It wasn't all about her pregnancy! His reaction to her pregnancy and her reaction to his reaction made for great reading!

The relationships in this book were really great and realistic! Sara's with her mom, with her grandmother, with her best friend, with Leaf, with the baby's dad, yeah. They were a great base of this book, and I loved reading about them!

Loved reading this book and it was a really great book!

Oh man I struggled with this one. It took me way longer to read than it should have, but I just never felt compelled to pick it up again once I put it down. I started off really liking it, but that took a quick turn. I love me a good food description in a book, but even I found it to be too much. I also found it to be very preachy. I don’t like feeling told off when reading, and I found myself feeling that way a LOT. I like the idea of the story, but I did not like this book, and that kills me a little. Maybe I was too old for this book.

My first 5-star read of the year!

I stayed up way past my “bed time” to read Belly Up. The story was so honest, real, and raw. Let’s not forget hilarious. This book was filled with laugh out loud moments, the one liners and jokes had me going.

There is a little bit of all types of representation in Belly Up. At first, it felt like the author was just throwing in everything she could think of, like a smorgasbord of representation, with no real reason. I looked outside that, though, because it wasn’t about me . . . it’s about others seeing themselves in a character. With that said, you can find a bit of ace, trans (MTF), questioning bisexuality, demisexual, and queer in one or more of the main characters.

I hated Mormor at first, but the crazy bat grew on me. I loved the support of Sara’s family. I’m reading some reviews saying this is unrealistic. In some cases, it might be. However, I think it was realistic enough. Not all families bail on their teenaged daughter/granddaughter, etc. when she becomes pregnant. It’s refreshing to see the positive, instead of all the negative.

I’m indifferent with the Jack ending, but this is a personal thing of my own reasoning. I can’t say much about it without spoiling, so I’ll keep it at that.

Read it! You’ll laugh, you’ll throw a shoe, you’ll cry.

I loved this book! Everything about it was amazing! It had sweet contemporary romance without characters having to be conflicted and angry at everyone for most of the story. It had rep galore in many fashions! It read like I was having conversations with my own best friends and didn't take itself anymore serious than it needed to be.

Belly Up is the story of how a reckless night at a party goes from fun to life changing. When Serendipity, Sara, has a drunken one night stand as way of rebounding from her ex she finds herself pregnant his with baby. The story goes through her figuring out the ups and downs of what her options are and the results of those decisions.

The writing is spot on and I loved the humor so much. Multiple times I was giggling out loud at something Sara or another character would say. The one liners in particular were incredible! I loved the sass both Sara's mom and Mormor (grandma) had throughout the story and how they were involved and included. Too often the adults in the teens life are glossed over in fiction and I'm glad they weren't in this. Even Sara's friends parents were mentioned and occasionally seen.

As for the representation, amazing! Darrows really packs diversity into this story and it all translates and works flawlessly for me. Not only do we have multiple sexual orientations represented but we have multiple religion and ethnicities as well. I greatly appreciate Darrows including variations of asexuality in her characters (gray ace and demisexual) and showing different diverse characters than we are use to seeing in other literature. The characters do a phenomenal explaining what and when things need to be explained without being rude or condescending about it. For example, I was completely engrossed when Sara was learning about Romani traditions and culture and the stories she was being told came naturally and the character was understanding of her ignorance instead of condescending about it. Another character starts her dialogue by telling Sara she is a trans queer girl and that if she has a problem with it then she can go find other people to talk to. The right to the point here is what's up attitude set the tone for her character and let you know what you needed without dwellig on the legistics of it. Other diverse characters are present and they all have their own way lf showing you who they are in a very natural and very them way. All of these aspects to these characters lets the reader connect to them in a much more intimate way than one may be use to.

Overall I think this is one of my new favorites and I wouldn't be surprised if it stays in my top 5 on the year. I can easily see myself rereading since Darrows does an incredible job of making the dialogue, both inner and outer, relatable. It's also just an overall wholesome read without unnecessary drama. It was kind of refreshing in way. If YA contemporaries are your forte, do yourself a favor and pick this one up.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book at first made me nervous to read. I liked the movie Juno and I thought this book would be like it. First thing I want to talk about is the characters names in this book. They are weird. I mean Leaf and Serendipity? What the heck. I noticed that the main character loved to mention that her family was Swedish. She mentioned it only five times a chapter. I swear. Sara aka Serendipity is one of the most annoying characters I've read about. She said the weirdest and most outrageous things. This book has got to be for older teens and not younger teens. I was surprised with some of the stuff she said. But the thing that annoyed me about her was how she didn't want to assume the gender of her baby. I understand that in this day and age that people want to be respectful of others and their own decisions but that baby hasn't picked what gender it wants to identify as and won't for some time. So it's okay for her to call it a girl. It seemed like a lot of characters in this book were from the lgbt community and I'm not for sure if the author had a reason or was just trying to make it full of people from this community. I don't like when authors put them in the books just to try to make the book diverse. It annoys me a lot. Maybe this isn't the case with this book I don't know.

The plot of this book was kinda boring. Sara doesn't do anything eventful. She starts off with having a one night stand and ends up pregnant. Then she's instantly hoping into a new relationship at her new school. I just thought that was odd. She kept saying oh he won't want to be with me because I'm pregnant.

The family is very accepting with her becoming pregnant and not knowing the father. All she has is the first name. It also seems like she doesn't even bother to look for the father of her baby. She just is like oh no one knows him and moves on. She didn't try that hard to find him at all. And we don't see her look for him at all.

Overall I didn't like most things in this book but I did like how the main character kept the baby and decided to finish up school. I admire her for that. The writing wasn't horrible and I was able to finish the whole book which is a plus.

I also want to say that just because I didn't care for the book doesn't mean you won't.

This book exceeded my expectations, I was expecting to read a book about teen pregnancy and really found myself reading a book about a girl that happened to get pregnant. The pregnancy was a main part of the story but I still felt like Sara was the main character and focus of the story, it was done very well. The author uses a lot of teen "lingo" so it helps to be aware of the culture when you read this book. If you are not, you probably won't understand much of the diversity included in the book.

Belly Up shows the realities of teen pregnancy without dumbing things down. I wouldn’t use it as curriculum in my classroom as I feel the content is a little mature for them, but I would recommend it to older, more mature students.

When Sara thinks about her future her thoughts tend toward Ivy Leagues and adventures with her best friend- not to paying the price for a one-time rebound hookup with a random guy at a party. Oops. Fortunately Sara has a pretty amazing support system to see her through all the bumps in the road to come.

This was very much a book about the best possible circumstances in which to deal with a teenage pregnancy. Sara has a lot of privilege compared to other girls in her situation and I don’t think this story goes far enough into discussing that. While the story doesn’t glamorize pregnancy it definitely wraps the experience up in a nice bow by the end. I enjoyed reading the story. I found the supporting characters to be more interesting than the protagonist and was left wanting to know how things turned out for them. All that said, it was an enjoyable story but not one I’d necessarily recommend as a book on teen pregnancy. Everything was just too easy for Sara. That’s definitely not the usual story for pregnant teens.

Sara’s junior year is coming to an end. She and her on again/off again boyfriend have broken up for good this time. Her best friend, Devi, makes her attend the big end of the year party. Sara gets drunk and decides to hook up with someone she meets at the party to get over her ex. After the party Sara finds out that she and her mom will be moving to the next town to live with her Grandmother and help save money.

About a month later Sara realizes that she was left with a reminder from the night of the party. She also has no idea how to get a hold of her hook up. Sara is surrounded by strong women, will she be able to live up to the woman they believe she can be?

This book was really humorous. Sara is going to be a teen mother after one night at a party. This book goes through her journey into motherhood as a teen. She finds love, deals with typical teen drama as well as growing a human. Her family is crazy but supportive, and her friends are there for her when she really needs them.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

If Juno had first been a novel, only with lots more LGBT acceptance and even more sass - if possible! - it would be Belly Up. What a fun book and so inclusive, too.

Belly Up is an adorable story of a teen named Sara who becomes pregnant and goes through all the hard choices to do what she feels is right. Her mom and grandmother support her, each in their own way. Her new circle of friends have the potential to make everything worse if they don't accept her after sharing her secret. I loved this young adult novel and highly recommend it!

Here are honest thoughts:
The start jumped in too quickly for my taste. I understood the bluntness of it, but it’s not for everyone.

A lot of sentences begin with- I....

Around 8% into the read I guessed the rest of the story.

Some of Sara’s thoughts are super cringy, like I wanted to stop ready, but alas I pressed on.

I think the description of this book gives away too much. You know everything. You start read and a couple of chapters in it all kind of lines up and.. you’re pushing through the end.

I like Leaf, I like Sara I just did not completely like the style of this book. If it shoulds good to you, then read it!!



Thanks NetGalley

There is a sub-genre of romance books about the MC (Main Character) being pregnant.

I'm not sure why this is. I don't read a lot of romance books. But the cover of this one got me, and it sounds like an interesting read, so I chose to go in, knowing that this was about a girl, Sara, who is 17, and gets pregnant, and keeps the baby.

And if that was all there was to it, I probably would not have like the book at all. But Sara is a smart, witty girl. The people she is attracted to are also smart and witty. I love how she says she doens't want to impose gender standards to her baby to be. That gender is fluid, and that she might be bisexual.

For example, this is a bit of dialogue involving Jack, the bio-father, and Sara:

<blockquote>...it's a girl, right?
"That's the assigned gender. I wanna keep doors open in case they choose another gnder, later, though. But that's a talk for another day."
Jack paused.
"Yeah, okay, that's fine. I'm just going to tell my parents it's a girl. I don't think they'll get it otherwise.</blockquote>

Her boyfriend is Gray ACE. The lesbian couple that she hangs out with, one of them is transgender.

So, no this is not a typical teen romance, at least not as far as I can see.

So if you are into teen pregnancy romances, this book might be right up your alley.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Reviews of Belly Up regularly refer to the book as “fluffy,” which seems like a fair description. It’s an atypical take on the teenage pregnancy issue in that it refuses to engage in the idea the teenage mothers have irrevocably destroyed their lives and I think there’s value in those stories. I also appreciated that the novel played to some extent with the idea of multigenerational teen pregnancy, something that is often left out of teen pregnancy novels. Additionally, admirable was the effort to be inclusive of a number of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities…although there were times where the emphasis on these topics began to verge into lecture territory (although, frankly, I’ll sit through a lecture on the importance of inclusivity any day).

The novel is, to a certain degree, something of a liberal wish fulfillment fantasy. No characters ever question the wisdom of a teenager becoming a mother, even the most rigid and conservative characters adapt to issues like transgenderism and gender fluidity with a single educational discussion about the terms, poverty doesn’t appear to exist in the community (the closest we come to is a single parent who worries about paying for Harvard), Sara manages to meet a new boyfriend who has absolutely no concerns about her being pregnant on her first day of a new school), and Sara’s high achieving best friend changes her own college plans so as to be able to better co-parent her best buddy’s child (a decision her own parents appear to have 0 concerns about). It’s not exactly a likely teen pregnancy story…but it does make you wonder why it couldn’t be.

Overall, it’s an enjoyable read and one that, perhaps someday, will be more common and less remarkable.

Light, cute funny book about teen pregnancy. Usually those words should not be in a sentence together, but for this book they are. I liked the story and the characters and the writing, but the book really did not delve into any issues that are actually dealt with in a real teen pregnancy. Sara's mom seemed totally fine with her 15 yo daughter being pregnant after a drunk hook-up at a party....and losing contact info for the father to be. The story was just too unfettered and easy and pure entertainment, definitely not a look at the trials of a pregnant teen, not too much character or emotional development. With that said, I liked it for what it is--cute upbeat funny but pretty long as well, I skimmed towards the end. Thanks for the ARC!!

Getting pregnant as a teen isn't the best situation but it happens and I love how this book didn't make it to be this an earth shattering event, his was an adorable read. While most teen pregnancy novels are full of angst and pity-me, this was full of sarcasm and owning the oops if life.

This was a great character driven novel. kind of reminiscent of Juno but with more raw emotion and deeper characters! This was one of those making the best of a situation and learning how to navigate life novels. Not the stereotypical book you expect, it was so much better!

This was an adorable read. While most teen pregnancy novels are full of angst and pity-me, this was full of sarcasm and owning the oops if life.

*Received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.