Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the copy of this book. Ready or Not is the first book that I have read by Cara Bastone and it won’t be the last. It is about Eve, who unexpectedly finds out she’s pregnant from a one night stand. She must navigate the next nine months with the baby daddy and an old acquaintance. The storyline flowed well and I could not wait to see what happened.

Sometimes I don’t read a book right away because there’s something in the description I don’t love. Unexpected pregnancy and potential love triangles are two tropes I detest and boy did this book teach me a lesson about letting preconceived notions get in my way because I LOVED this book. Like, I couldn’t have consumed it faster. I laughed, I cried. I felt seen in a way I haven’t in a very long time, maybe ever, on page. The discussion on motherhood was one of the most honest I’ve ever read (Nurse Blank is my favorite). After a string of reading just “good” books, it was refreshing to read one that is great.

Ehhhh. Not my favorite. I’m over the floundering 20 something that can’t make decisions in her life, and the character honestly got annoying. I skimmed the last 40% to avoid a DNF. The conversations she had with her friends/nurse/coworkers about motherhood were easily the best parts of the book.

Eve finds herself with an unexpected pregnancy. She doesn’t know what will happen but she knows that she will keep the baby and everything will be ok. It has to be. After telling the baby’s father the news, she finds out he has a girlfriend (on and off again relationship). Ethan doesn’t know what to do but he wants to be apart of the baby’s life. Eve’s best friend Willa, is going through and infertility struggles and this is hard new for her to hear but she is happy for her friend. She helps in the ways she can. Shep, Willa’s brother and Eve’s friend, is the one who really steps up to help. He’s so supportive of Eve and she starts to see him in a new light.

Here’s what I liked:
Shep’s character is amazing! I loved that he was always there for Eve.
Eve’s character was a little chaotic at times and just kind of floats through and then it really hits her what’s gonna happen but I do like the fact that she didn’t wanna have an abortion and she just knew she was gonna keep the baby the whole time.
I liked the slow burn romance and how sweet it was.

Dislikes:
Ethan and how he plays into at the end and throughout is a little odd but not really I guess🤷🏼‍♀️ idk i’m still deciding on that one.
The part where Eve says ” we won’t know the gender until the baby decides what the gender is but no I don’t want to know the sex.” I get it, it’s the new politically correct thing however, I feel like this book was more pro-life but then you’re gonna throw this in there and that just doesn’t work for me. It’s my personal opinion and you can have your own but for me it was a turn off. Overall, I did like this book but I didn’t love it so therefore I gave it 3 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for my advance readers copy. This is my honest, involuntary opinion.

It took me a few chapters to get into the story, but once I did the tension between Eve and Shep was just delightful. And hey, I will always enjoy the falling for your best friend’s brother trope. It just doesn’t miss! And in this case, Cara Bastone does it well, weaving in themes of friendship, loss, and commitment, in addition to the romance.

Unless I missed it, there were little to no FMC physical descriptors. I sometimes wasn’t sure how to visualize Eve and wonder now if that was intentional, forcing the reader to form their own view of Eve and leaving room for Eve to represent anyone (maybe even themselves).

On the this-could-have-been-better side, I was confused with some of the details in the story. I chalked it up to writing inconsistencies and tried not to let them bother me too much. For example, Eve lives in this great Brownstone apartment (with no roommates), but she never really mentions how she can afford it working an entry-level job at a non-profit (which traditionally doesn’t pay that well). And then the fact that Eve’s first concern at finding out that she’s pregnant isn’t immediately how she could manage it financially. This comes up a bit later but is never really fully addressed. Since many single women decide to have abortions due to the fact that having a baby is often financially impossible, especially in an expensive city like New York, the fact that this is never fully explored just felt like a missed opportunity. It also made Eve seem really naive, despite being a total control freak who develops a special system for organizing her spices. I was also a little confused as to why Eve being good at creating a company newsletter would qualify her to join the finance team? But okay. The job storyline overall felt a little flat to me.

I give this read just under four stars. It was enjoyable, had depth and honestly was a beautiful representation of pregnancy. I would recommend it to friends looking for a lighter, romantic read.

TITLE: Ready or Not
AUTHOR: Cara Bastone
RELEASE DATE: February 6, 2024
PUBLISHED BY: Penguin Randomhouse
FORMAT READ: Kindle ARC
# OF PAGES: 400
RATING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
RECOMMENDATION: sure, why not?

Why did I choose this book?
1. The Cover is so beautiful!
2. Friends who love each other.
3. It was a Book of the Month Club pick.

What I liked:
⭐️Likeable characters (mostly).
⭐️ Loved the sarcastic tone of the MFC and pretty much all of the other characters.
⭐️Quick read and a good palette cleanser!



Why I only gave it ⭐️⭐️⭐️

1. It was predictable.
2. Sometimes it was a tiny bit cheesy.
3. It made me realize I don't like pregnancy tropes.
4. A tad bit spicy in a place or two. Some people would say it's mild but I don't like when a whole chapter or + is dedicated to a sex scene.

Thank you to:
Cara Bastone
Penguin Random House
Netgalley

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Eve Hatch lives for surprises! Just kidding. She expects every tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today. She loves her cozy apartment in Brooklyn that’s close to her childhood best friend Willa, and far from her midwestern, traditional family who has never really understood her. While her job is only dream-adjacent, it’s comfortable and steady. She always knows what to expect from her life . . . until she finds herself expecting after an uncharacteristic one-night stand.

The unplanned pregnancy cracks open all the relationships in her life. Eve’s loyal friendship with Willa is feeling tense, right when she needs her the most. And it’s actually Willa’s steadfast older brother, Shep, who steps up to help Eve. He has always been friendly, but now he’s checking in, ordering her surprise lunches, listening to all her complaints, and is . . . suddenly kinda hot? Then, as if she needs one more complication, there’s the baby’s father, who is (technically) supportive but (majorly) conflicted.

Up until this point, Eve’s been content to coast through life. Now, though—maybe it’s the hormones, maybe it’s the way Shep’s shoulders look in a T-shirt—Eve starts to wonder if she has been secretly desiring more from every aspect of her life.

Over the course of nine months, as Eve struggles to figure out the next right step in her expanding reality, she begins to realize that family and love, in all forms, can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

5/5 - Loved loved loveeeeeed!!!

This book was just so so sweet 😭 I didn’t know what to expect when I picked this for my BOTM pick but I loved every second of it. I read & listened to Ready or Not and the audio was fantastic!!

I loved Eve & her inner monologues but more than that I loved reading about her pregnancy journey 🥹 the pregnancy trope can be a weird one if not done properly but this was 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼.

I also really enjoyed all of the side characters, Shep was just absolute perfection!

I'm completely blown away by how quickly this book sucks you in and makes you fall head over heels in love with every single character (even the annoying ones!) I didn't expect to read a book about a surprise pregnancy, because I am an idiot that doesn't read blurbs if it's a romance book that I'm going to throw into my Book of the Month cart anyway, and when I got this on Netgalley I instantly dove right in.

Eve is charming. She is the perfect lead for this novel, and she had me in stitches, and having been pregnant twice I just understood so many parts of this novel down to my aching lower back. The not quite love triangle was really spcecial, and this is just a book that I felt I hadn't read before (which is uncommon when you tear through probably 20-30 romances a year?) Cara did something really special with this book and I so thoroughly enjoyed myself. I laughed out loud, I felt her loneliness, I grieved with her, and I celebrated her triumphs.

Derek and Shep were both really interesting male leads, and I really enjoyed watching their arcs through Eve's eyes. What a road they take you and Eve down throughout the book. It was really interesting to see her prevail through every slight, every emotion, and every good and bad thing that happens to her through the novel.

I loved this book, and I highly recommend it for any romance lover, especially for someone looking for something a little more out of the box!

4.5 ☆

i can't remember the last time i enjoyed a romance book so much, but ready or not hit all the right spots for me. just so sweet and full of heart! i loved how it explored love in all the shapes and forms it can take, not just the romantic kind. some parts were maybe a tad bit underdeveloped, which is why i can't give it a full five stars, but it wasn't a big issue at all and it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment. like seriously, this book was kinda everything idk!

thank you to prh international for the free book!

I loved this book - so much so that I bought a physical copy as well. Loved the cover, stayed for the story. So good - highly recommend, and can't wait to read more from this author.

Ready or Not is such a heartwarming friends to lovers romance. Eve, Shep, Willa and Ethan are magnificent characters. This was one of the best romance books I’ve read in a long while and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m highly impressed by this authors writing. There was something beautiful in the motherhood/pregnancy story. It was very well defined. I highly recommend this book.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Ready or Not by Cara Bastone surprised me in all the right ways. I am not usually a fan of unplanned, or surprise, pregnancy tropes, especially in romance books, but this story was different, a bit expected in the most pleasurable-of-ways. It's a slow-burn romance, which is my favorite kind, and it's believable. So believable, in fact, that I worried, toward the end, that something devastatingly bad would happen to one of the characters to ruin the good and wholesome relationship built between them! Aye! Spoiler alert: The main (and unexpectedly pregnant) character, Eve Hatch, does NOT end up with the baby daddy, but, as a reader, I was okay with that because both the baby daddy and the man she ends up with are fully-developed male characters with depth. Also, I would be remiss in not mentioning Eve's real-life-feeling relationship with her best friend, Willa, which had its share of bumps along the way. All-in-all, this was a very enjoyable book.

Read this one if you like a gorgeous book cover, a cute heartwarming story, relatable characters, best friend's brother, he falls first and slow burn friends to lovers. This was a fun one to read, loved it!! I really enjoyed Eve's story, handling the stages of pregnancy and finding love. And Oh SHEP - you have my heart!. I definitely recommend this one.

3.5 ⭐️

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the arc.

This was a super fast and light read. I absolutely adored the main character and the love interest. All the characters are relatable and they deal with a lot of real-life stuff.

This has a very interesting take on what it means to be self-centered vs other-centered and made me see how others might look at life.

Also, can we talk about the quote: “That your children are like your heart walking around outside your body.” I am sobbing!!

This was a charming read!

READY OR NOT by Cara Bastone was such an unexpected delight! I'm usually weary of the "accidental pregnancy," trope, but it was handled beautifully in this book! I also loved our heroine's journey and character growth as she comes to terms with becoming a mother. Such a great read!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC! 

I really enjoyed this book. It was like a cute & cozy friends to lovers romance.  I loved Eve's character & I feel like her anxiety & will to persevere was well balanced to make her quirky character. (That sounds weird but if you read this I think you'll understand). I loved Shep & Willa & the love they all have for each other & the family dynamic between them & Eve. The loss in this book was so heart breaking & I really felt for all of the characters who had to deal with it. Despite how great this book was, it definitely fell flat in some areas. The timeline always felt kind of off & I was never quite sure when everything was happening besides around the holidays. When Eve's brothers are introduced, their political backgrounds are introduced with them which you would think in a book like this that would be a huge topic that maybe Eve would have to maneuver but it's so glazed over that it wasn't even worth mentioning. I also felt like Willa should have played a little more of a role in this story because of what she was dealing with when Eve got pregnant but her appearance is very choppy throughout. Overall, I thought this book was really good & I think I fell for Eve & Shep as much as they fell for each other.

I'm in love with this book. I really loved Eve's character and seeing her growth. She learned to accept and love the fact that she was pregnant and just be excited about being a mom. Shep is a perfect man and I love him so much. He didn't care for one second that the baby wasn't his, he was going to be there regardless. It was so easy to see how much he loved Eve and it was fun watching her slowly figure it out. I really want an epilogue because I need more of them with the baby.

I received an arc through netgalley.

Eve Hatch's story begins with an unplanned pregnancy from a one night stand. But honestly, there is more to this story. The unplanned pregnancy is the center but it also brings changes to Eve's relationships with her family and friends.

First there is Willa, her best friend since growing up together in Michigan. Willa and her husband have been trying to have a baby for quite some time. So, after the news of Eve's pregnancy, Willa starting acting weird towards Eve.

Then there is Shep, Willa's brother. Shep was supportive of Eve's pregnancy from the very beginning and many times in the story, Shep stepped up to the plate to assure her that everything was going to be OK, and that Eve was going to be a great mother.

I felt that this pregnancy was a blessing in disguise for Eve and Shep's friendship. Throughout her pregnancy, Eve's and Shep friendship started to blossom into something more. Shep took every opportunity to grow closer to Eve and also be there for the baby. The best part, was Shep not expecting anything in return. It was unconditional support which eventually turned to love for one another. Shep was also very understanding of Ethan, the baby's father.

Overall, I enjoyed this story because it is emotional and relatable. I also loved all of the characters personal growth as well. Highly recommended! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This was a cute heartfelt book with lovable characters. I enjoyed hearing Eve's inner monologue and of course, Shep! It had a few spicy scenes and realistic banter. Overall, good read!

Thanks to NetGalley & Random House Publishing Group for the ARC!

I requested this book from Netgalley because I really enjoyed her Love Lines series. This book is different from those, it’s deeper and so lovely. Funny, but touching. Wonderful characters dealing with so many emotions! Makes you laugh one minute and tear up the next. I liked it so much, I am thinking of buying a copy for myself and will highly recommend it to friends.

I loved Eve’s journey, but I especially loved Shep. He is exactly my favorite type of leading man: dorky, sweet, helpful, wears his heart on his sleeve even if the woman he loves isn’t ready to see it. His Love Language is most definitely Acts of Service. I wish there were an epilogue where we could see how the three of them really work to raise this baby together. There aren’t enough books out there that show that kind of family.

This book is a delight. Thanks to the author and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review it.