Gemma has reached the point in her life where she's ready to be a mom but infertility and single life stand in her way. When she asks her brothers best friend to be her sperm donor, she's shocked when he agrees!

If only it were all the simple. Lots of ups and downs, and a lot of laughs along the way. This rom com had me laughing, swooning and I may have even cried...twice!

Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review!

This was a fun, quick read that was just what I wanted this time of year. A romance to cuddle up with, but with depth too.

Thank you to Netgalley, Swift & Lewis Publishing, and Sarah Ready for an advanced e-ARC and audio-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book filled me with so much joy. 🥰 I absolutely LOVED it! Gemma is so relatable, and Josh is perfection too. I truly loved every second of this book.
This is perfect read for the month of February too! 💞 I would not hesitate to highly recommend this book to all the romance lovers out there. Gemma and Josh are definitely a couple who deserve a place with the best of the best!

I also had the opportunity to listen to the audio of this book as well. I thought the narrative did a fantastic job. If audio is your jam, than this is a great audiobook to add this month!

Josh and Gemma Make A Baby was SO cute. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but mark this one under the wins column anyway. If you are a friends to lovers or second chance romance fan, give this one a shot. Without spoiling too much, I was such a fan of the subplot. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC audiobook in exchange for an honest review. 4 stars.

I loved this story. I loved that Gemma didn't depend on Josh or try to put expectations on him. Gemma's struggles with infertility were heartbreaking to listen to. As heart-wrenching as this story was, it was also funny! I laughed out loud a lot while listening to this audiobook. I would have liked some smut though. Thank you to NetGalley and Swift & Lewis Publishing, LLC for an ALC of this novel in exchange for my honest review!

DNFing at 13%. Audio e-ARC via NetGalley.

The main character and her family have really toxic attitudes to dating. Gemma is also thoroughly incompetent with technology for someone employed as a social media manager. However, the deal-breaker for me was the conversation between our two leads that should've started the plot.

Gemma has endometriosis, which could've been good representation. She wants to have a baby, which isn't the attitude of my friends with this condition but I can believe some people are like that. She asks her brother's best friend to be her sperm-donor and he makes out that she's the villain and is objectifying him. Even if he was going to say 'no', I would've expected someone in that situation to be compassionate and acknowledge how vulnerable she had made herself in asking. I'm sure it's true-to-life that some guys would act that way but he can't be the romantic hero, he ought to be the cad.

Gemma is a single woman taking the reins of her life and decides that she wants a baby. And she refuses to let her infertility diagnosis get in her way. So IVF it is! But she doesn’t want the baby of a stranger so she asks her brother’s best friend Josh for assistance.
This book was so cute! I’m such a sucker for a romcom throw in the bothers best friend trope and I’m in HEAVEN!
Gemma was such a quirky character with her constantly spewing inspirational quotes at everyone and her weird girl way of dressing. But i loved her!
Josh is so sweet. So so sweet. His i can laugh at anything attitude did really well at keeping the mood light.
Their relationship going from somewhat friends to actual friends to lovers was such a fun little journey to go on. And the comic convention scene was hilarious!
The IVF support group was so sweet and super important to the story. Infertility is such a hard thing to go through and to see the different versions of it made my heart ache. Those ladies were all so so strong!
Some of the writing felt a bit repetitive but overall i really enjoyed the story, rooted for the characters HEA, and was satisfied with the ending especially since it included little updates with her friends.

4 out if 5 stars and 1 out if 5 chili peppers for spice.

Huge thanks to NetGalley for this ARC. Josh and Gemma Make a Baby was the book I didn’t know I needed.

It was a slow burn, but oh so worth it. Josh L is thoughtful and nerdy. Gemma is honest and powerful.

Infertility is so difficult, raw and real. It’s a subject not talked about enough. Sarah Ready used this book to capture the devastating nuances of trying to conceive.

I really enjoyed this book. It was funny and the characters were likeable. It was a sweet story with a happy ending.

I really enjoyed the narrator of the audio book. Erin Mallon did a great job.

Gemma is basically a 32 year old loser who wants to have a baby but has to do it through IVF. She has her brothers best friend Josh be the donor while simultaneously starting a romantic relationship with her boss. This book was intriguing enough that I kept wanting to come back and I really liked the characters. There was a depth to the story that I didn't know was going to be there, but was so glad it was. Also, the narrator, Erin Mallon, is amazing.

A cute little rom-com that occasionally leans too heavily into the comedy for me (I don’t love when there are lots of high jinks, and this has many). Overall, though, this is a sweet story that handles its infinity story with delicacy.

I loved everything about this book! It had everything you would want in a romcom. I was laughing out loud but also pulled at your heartstrings. It even made me tear up. I instantly fell in love with the characters, Gemma was relatable and funny and you could feel the connection between her and Josh.

Was it predictable? Sure. BUT I enjoy my romcoms to be tied up in a nice, neat bow and this one did exactly that. I LOVED it. 5 stars!

This very entertaining rom-com did exactly what it was meant to do, make me laugh and fall in love (with the characters and a series of hilarious events!). For anyone who loves Christina Lauren, Emily Henry or Ali Hazelwood, you will eat this book up!
This book is filled with characters that I would love to meet. I need to start by saying, I listened to the audio book version which was perfectly narrated by Erin Mallon.

Our voluptuous Main character, Gemma, is ready to live the life she envisions for herself. Of course, just like every best-laid plan, nothing goes as planned. Enter long time family friend, Josh (sigh). Gemma plans to propose a simple "business" transaction, but really, how simple can it be when you are dealing with the handsome, witty, smart and Sexy Josh? This book is filled with comedic relief, Romance that gives you that butterflies in your stomach feeling, and that feeling of impatience while you wait for all the pieces to fall in to place.
It was nice to see several serious issues addressed in what would usually be considered a light-hearted genre. I do think this book could be a bit of a trigger for some dealing with infertility.

This is my first time reading Sarah Ready and I can honestly say, I can't wait to read her other books.

I knew what I was getting into with this one, I've never been the right person for Erin Mallon's narrations. Her male voices are swoon worthy, but female characters, especially her reading of Gemma wasn't for me. Mostly because too many sentences ended like a question. I preferred reading the ebook version of this one.

I really struggled with this book on many levels, but instead of going into detail on all of the things that didn't sit well with me (fat shaming, fertility shaming, only loving a guy once you realize he's rich and famous) I'd really like to talk about the one thing that I loved about this book: the way this book handled fertility treatments.

I appreciated the level of detail and attention that was given to this aspect of the story. And while there were some things that did not sit well with me (Gemma's fear of being turned on by the painful and not even remotely sexy ultra sound probe, for one) there were lots of aspects of Gemma's fertility journey that I did appreciate. I appreciated that things were hard, that Gemma was afraid, even though it was what she wanted, that she felt the joy of a successful implant and felt the pain of losing that child, because that is a very real part of fertility. I really wish the author hadn't taken Josh out of the picture during Gemma's loss. I think the moments that they could have shared together could have been really beautiful and given their relationship arc something to cling to that wasn't so surface-level. Josh could have supported Gemma and that could have been what made her fall for him, and maybe that was the case, but with the way the story presented it, it just kind of felt like Gemma was only falling for Josh after she found out he wasn't a loser like she (unfairly) thought he was and it really didn't have anything to do with the emotional connection they shared.

Stories like this one are important. But this one tried to do too much and the truly beautiful aspects suffered as a result.

What a delight! I knew within a couple of minutes of listening to this audio book that it was going to be so much fun!
This book is worth every single star. It had me laughing out loud quite a few times from the first visit to the reproductive office and on and the whole plot and character development was just hilarious. I loved Josh and Gemma. I loved how Gemma rose above the negativity in some instances. I highly recommend this book! Definitely worth the read!

It is rare for me to say that a book I listened to would have worked better for me if I had read it. It is rare because the narrators nowadays do a phenomenal job bringing the characters to life.
Gemma was tough to get along with, from what I heard. The narrator was really good at the emotions, but the pacing was off. If I played it at normal speed, it was too slow for the emotions involved, and the next speed was a bit too fast.
I picked this book to see how the process of Gemma dealing with her body's limitations was presented here. The time window is a little too short for reality, but I guess that is to be expected given the genre. That said, the process itself and the variety of experiences different women went through felt very real to me, unlike one or two other books that just label the entire situation under one large infertility umbrella.
Gemma is unable to have a child naturally; this fact was discovered quite early in some ways and late in others, given that she had a hidden issue all along. This news then spreads through her entire town, and it becomes her identity! Fast forward a few years, and she loves her job, crushing on her boss and staving off her mother's well-meaning (but frankly ridiculous) blind dates. She decides that she needs to do something drastic to shake up her life and decides on having a baby by herself. She ropes her brother's best friend into helping her, and a love story (obviously) follows. Josh is an excellent sensible foil to Gemma's obliviousness. Her mother's behaviour felt too off to me!
For anyone curious about the different stages of the investigation that might go into figuring out the fertility of a woman, this might actually help (As the entire book revolves around it). It is packaged in a rom-com for easier consumption, between some bad behaviour on Gemma's part where she is literally blind to reality. However, this provides a satisfying learning curve for it all. I liked the book, the narrator and the overall love story (there are one or two graphic scenes, but not enough to bother me- but one should know what to expect), but as I mentioned earlier, the pacing threw me off.
I did not enjoy the mother's behaviour or the obsession with quotes. If they were different ones each time, I might have been fine, but a select few are repeated once too often. Something we could have done without. I enjoyed the ending and would still recommend this to those people looking for a cozy story with some hard-hitting background.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

📕 Book Review📕 Josh & Gemma Make A Baby- Sarah Ready (5 ⭐️)

Ever read a book and you can’t wait to tell all your friends to read it?? That is this book! I absolutely loved it. Every part. The quotes, the illustrations, and my goodness did I love Josh Lewenthal 😍 If the plot doesn’t reel you in I promise you don’t have a beating heart and seriously need to go seek medical attention. This book was hilarious and I have no regrets staying up until the next morning with the flu to finish it! Thank you so so much @sarahready for writing this and making room for different discussions and connections that so many women, men, and couples have, but are so rarely shared. The diagnosis, the IVF, the miscarriages, and the will to keep trying, even though.

Synopsis:
Gemma was 22 when she was diagnosed Stage 4 Endometriosis. Doctors said her abdomen looked like a grenade went off inside. She tried the marriage thing for 10 years, to be exact!! I quote, “I already rode the marriage boat, it tipped over, capsized and I nearly drowned.” She got divorced (the scumbag cheated spread eagle on their dining table!!) and she decided single ladies don’t need a man to have a baby (thank you science 🧬 🧪 🧫). Now at 32, she asked her childhood friend, whom she’s always fantasized about (who wouldn’t he’s a total stud), to give her his sperm for IVF.

Accidentally left the review on the book version but I actually listened to the audiobook. I finished in one day. I couldn’t stop. It started a little rough in the first 2 chapters with the way some of the characters were so judgmental about Gemma’s life, but it quickly got so much better! I really liked both Josh and Gemma and really hope this isn’t the last we hear of them because a part 2 would be amazing! Definitely would recommend this!

Nope…I got 3 chapters in and had to stop for now. The Gemma’s mother & her constant negativity towards Gemma and her infertility & pointing out how she’s “broken” and that she “needs” a husband and the guys she sets her up with are ideal because don’t worry they don’t want kids. Hello?! Does she not know her daughter?! How does someone’s mother act that way?! Also….the doctor mansplaining infertility. I’m sorry if I was Gemma (who I relate to having struggled the way she has) I would have walked right out of that doctors office! Who knows maybe I’ll pick up again later to see if there’s any actual connection between Gemma & Josh since I love the whole big brothers best friend trope….but after the first few chapters I was just too irked to continue right now.

Cute and predictable feel-good contemporary romance. Gemma is tired of waiting on first comes love, then comes marriage, and finally a baby in the baby carriage. She has decided to take matters into her own hands and try IVF for herself. She just isn't sure she wants a random sperm donor.

Josh and Gemma reconnect to work on Gemma's goal for a baby. And everything gets more complicated from there.

It was a cute fast listen, nothing ground breaking, but worth a read!