This HaBO request comes from Sarah (not our Sarah), who is hoping to find what sounds like a contemporary romance:
I’m looking for a romance novel about a surrogate mother. In the book, the guy doesn’t know who she is, but she decides that she doesn’t want to give the baby up anymore and he is fighting through legal channels to find out the woman’s identity (something about a subpoena). The guy ends up meeting a pregnant woman, not knowing that she is the one carrying his baby, and begins to fall in love with her. In the end I think he does discover that it’s her and it all works out.
I’m pretty sure that the guy in the story had dark hair, and maybe was rich.
Whoa, buddy. This sounds like a doozy.
Wait, I’m confused.
Was she already pregnant and he was going to adopt the baby or was she impregnated using his sperm? Because if it’s the former it makes sense that she could back out. But if it’s the latter, I wouldn’t have thought she could as the contract she (should’ve) signed would be legally binding. Wouldn’t he technically be on the hook for child support if she couldn’t do it by herself? So many questions.
Someone please find out what this book is because I want to read it!
@kitkat9000: surrogacy is a super grey area in the law in many states – the contract would not necessarily be enforceable.
kitkat9000, it depends on how your contract is written. There are usually multiple get-out clauses for both parties for a multitude of reasons. As the gestational carrier (and possibly bio mother for the full HEA when hero and heroine meet), she would be deemed the legal parent at birth. She would, all going well, give the child up for adoption to the parents. Changing her mind is absolutely a possible outcome of a surrogate pregnancy.
I have no idea what the book is, sorry!
It is Lynne Graham Contract Baby. Young heroine wants money to save her sick mum. Mum dies daughter now pregnant wants a family… keeps baby. It was her egg. So half her baby.
I second Lynne Graham’s Contract Baby. It’s part of a trilogy, and all three are some of my favorite crazy sauce guilty pleasure reads.
@kitkat9000: If you’re interested, the legal precedent typically used for both traditional and gestational surrogate custody is the Baby M case (1988). A fun tidbit: custody issues are a big reason that it’s quite common for intended parents to choose a gestational surrogate who is of a different race than they or their donors, as when the baby is born the difference in skin colour between child and surrogate will be a forcible reminder that they are not traditionally biologically related. The idea is that this reduces risk for intended parents (who, let’s face it, are usually white and privileged. Surrogacy is damn expensive. We’re talking in the hundred thousand dollar range for gestational).
It could also be Bittersweet Sacrifice by Bay Matthews. I remember reading it years ago–the hero was dark-haired. The heroine needed money to pay for her son’s surgery after being involved in the car accident that killed her husband. I think the doctor was somehow related to the hero/father and the heroine worked for her. The hero find out the truth right around the time the baby is born, but the heroine doesn’t find out until after they’re married. She leaves him (she does leave him with the baby) and he tracks her down by convincing the doctor to reveal where she had her medical records sent. And then they live happily ever after and all that.
Wow, talk about catnip! I dont care which one of these books is the correct HaBO, I want them both LOL.
@cbackson, @brycanthe, & Katrina: thank you for the info. It seems I’ll be Googling something else tonight as well.
sorry, this genre sounds awful.
A rich guy up against a surrogate mother in legal battlle? IMO, that sort of power imbalance is anticatnip.
There are all too many news stories reporting on the sad outcomes for surrogacy disputes. Surrogate mothers are all too often from disadvantaged backgrounds, signing off on contracts where they do not get legal advice or do not understand, or if they did, they do not have the funds to contest the dispute.
Azure,, about your synopsis of Bittersweet Sacrifice where, the doctor gets convinced to share info on medical records – how is that legal wrt patient confidentiality?
@kbrum: Pretty sure it wasn’t legal, even back in the 80’s when the story took place. (Definitely not legal now!) I imagine the doctor figured, “Well, he really loves her and wants her to come back to him, and he’s a relative, so what the hey.”
Lynne Graham – Contract Baby – I’ve read this one! However the specifics of the romance blur. What I DO remember is being mildly pleasantly surprised that at the beginning of the book because the hero gets legal advice, and it’s actually in line with real English law at the time. I also remember being less impressed with the dumbassery of a supposed highfalutin businessman who hadn’t listened to his legal team – -because any even halfway competent team would have flagged up immediately that if the surrogate changed her mind, any custody contact would become unenforceable, and new arrangements would have to have been made through the courts, which had not at the time been known for being amused at the kind of power imbalance as described by his lawyer!
And then deeply unimpressed at his tactics thereafter, despite having had his legal (and ethical!) situation clearly laid out for him. Can’t remember whether the grovel was satisfactory or not – although Lynne Graham does write some acceptable grovelling.
More often than I should admit I get sucked in by Harlequin book blurbs knowing odds are I probably will regret it more than love it. But sometimes I just cannot help myself. I haven’t read Contract baby and the synopsis sounds like I would have to suspend disbelief beyond book enjoyment for me. And yet…strangely I am a bit tempted. Lynne Graham’s books I have read are a solid 3 stars.