Sinead Moriarty, The Baby Trail

Sinead Moriarty, The Baby Trail - Married one year, thirty-three-year-old make-up artist Emma Hamilton and her spouse, rugby coach James, decide to have a baby. Emma conducts research, develops an action plan with a detailed timeline, and implements the process because she must be ready to celebrate next Christmas with her three month old child.

However, month two in her plan called for pregnancy, which failed to happen in spite of constant sex. Now, two months behind schedule, Emma decides to supplement the au natural plan that failed to achieve its objective. Months later and still not pregnant, fertility drugs, standing on her head, and James not allowed wasting one iota in case that one is the gold medal swimmer, Emma is stopped by a cop who has just adopted a Romanian child. Two years and no kid, even James is losing patience with Emma (can the readers be far behind?) so perhaps Bucharest is the perfect vacation spot, that is after a stop at Lourdes hoping for divine intervention.

This chick lit tale is more a series of vignettes that focus on contraception and fertility than a novel. Though the obsessed Emma is an interesting character, readers will become weary of her antics yet ironically root for her to achieve her goal and become pregnant. James is a saint (or the reincarnation of Job) for putting up with Emma's insanity. THE BABY TRAIL has amusing moments and overall is well-written, but reads more like a short story collection with a central character worth perusing over several sittings.

Harriet Klausner