Ahoy, Bitchery! We have a very special request from Reader Leanne, who really want to put together a super thoughtful care package for a friend. Here’s her request:
Background: I have this friend and colleague, let’s call her Mary, whom I really love and respect. Mary is about to turn 40. She’s a hardworking woman who has dedicated her life to her job. In this case, real life really imitates (some) romance fiction, because Mary has confided to me many times how badly she wants to have a baby. She is a godmother, aunt, and friend who loves spending time and energy with kids. But she often works 60-70 hour weeks and doesn’t have time for or interest in dating.
Long story short, Mary has finally decided to look into sperm donation. I can hear her happiness and excitement in her voice when she talks about it, but she’s nervous, too. I’d like to send her a care package with some romance novels that are happy and inspiring for a woman in her situation. I know she wants to find love, but she’s worried that being a single mom (which she wants more) will make that even harder, so I thought some inspiring love stories would help her feel better.
Can the Bitchery suggest any HAPPY romances where the heroine is a single mom, maybe even through sperm donation, IVF, or adoption? Bonus points if she doesn’t have to give up her career to do it.
Let’s help Leanne and her friend out, shall we? Give us your recommendations with kickass, single mom heroines!
If you are looking for historicals as well: the first in the Dressmaker’s Series by Loretta Chase has a single mother heroine that is successfully running her own business and cgarity keeping that even after the HEA, without it being too anachronistic.
How nice of Leanne and go Mary!! Maid for Love by Marie Force is a really sweet contemporary example. And there are two Elizabeth Hoyt historicals… To Beguile a Beast from the Four Soldiers series and Darling Beast from the Maiden Lane series both have (as you might imagine from the word “beast”) grumpy recluses learning to enjoy the company of the heroine and her preteen children.
This is less of a romance but Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld is a Pride and Prejudice retelling where Jane is almost forty and considering sperm donation. SPOILER but relevant: she has a baby not biologically related to her hero, and they work through it.
In the third book of the Key Trilogy by Nora Roberts, Key of Valor, the heroine is a single mom that had her son as a teenager. She does great with him, and the hero also beautifully accepts him and develops a relationship with him outside of the relationship with the mother. The whole series is aces though, so don’t just read that one, as it won’t make sense without the other two.
I second the Elizabeth Hoyt titles mentioned above. If your friend also likes mysteries, the Phryne Fisher series is a lot of fun, and Phryne adopts two orphaned girls who are also best friends in the 2nd or 3rd book.
There is a book by Katie Fforde called Wild Designs. It’s charming and funny and cozy, featuring a single mom who is given a chance to design a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show.
IIRC, the third book in Susan Mallery’s Fools Gold series is about a woman who is implanted with her dead friend’s embryos and finds love in the midst of that process. It’s called “Finding Perfect,” and I don’t think reading the earlier books is necessary to read this one.
Claudia Connor’s Worth The Fall. Its about a young widow with many kids (5?). Its SO good. Also found this list on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/47093.Single_Mothers_of_Romance
Good luck to your friend for taking the leap to make her dreams come true!
Katherine Center has ‘the Bright side of disaster’ and I also liked ‘Watermelon’ by Marian Keyes. Both books have stories about new mothers finding love. I thought Watermelon funny, and Bright side recognizable in how hard the first weeks can be, maybe one to save after giving birth. Also completely off topic, but Ann Lamott has written ‘Operating instructions’ about her first year as a single mom. It is also really funny.
Reading The Stolen Princess by Anne Gracie and loving it SO much. Gabriel is such a fantastic hero, sexy, charming sense of humour, just….sigh. Callie is a wonderful heroine, strong but at least thus far (I’m halfway through) not proven herself to be too stupid to let the hero help her when needed. (I HATE those kind of ‘oh I’m so independent I don’t need a man to rescue me even though I can’t possibly get myself out of this dangerous situation without help’ heroines.) She’s afraid to depend on him because of the horrible power the men in her life have wielded over her, yes, but he’s slowly proving himself not to want to control her but to be there for her and she’s letting him. And her little boy Nicky….Oh that little boy. <3
Nora Roberts’s In The Garden trilogy features heroines who were all single moms at some point in their lives.
Yea, Mary! Best of luck deciding what’s right for you. I took this route 8 years ago – my son just turned 6. [Side note: search online for Single Mothers by Choice (SMC) if you want more info/support]
Unfortunately, I have no titles to offer. I’m really hoping someone else does (not that my TBR pile needs to get any larger!). I’ve been looking/reading for years & found lots of books with single mothers, but every single one of those women had sex (willing or not) to become pregnant.
Thank you all SO SO much!!!!! You are all amazing! <3
I can't wait to share with Mary… and read a bunch of these myself. 🙂
Accidental Mother by Rowan Coleman fits your premise. Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Jill Mansell is about a career driven guy who inherits his sister’s baby. I liked it. Katie FForde is a good suggestion to be sure, if not kids, it’s dogs with her.
There’s also some regency’s where someone inherits children. The Rake by Mary Jo Putney. In Frederica by Georgette Heyer she is raising her younger brothers. Kate Daniels inherits Julie in Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews. 🙂
Sarah MacLean wrote Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover which is a historical with a single unwed mother (it turns out well in the end). Courtney Milan has Unravelled in which the MC is raising a boy whose mother abandoned him. And if Mary’s at all interested in sci-fi, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen revolves around the MC, who is in her 70s and widowed, having children with her dead husband’s sperm (it kind of makes sense in context) and falling in love with her dead husband’s lover at the same time (it really does make sense in context, I promise).
Has she read Public Display of Affection? Not IVF/Adoption, mom is a widow with young ones at home and starts concierge gig. Gorgeous man moves in across the street for WitSec who just happens to be a no name fling she had prior to settling down.
Also, the first book in the flower trilogy by Dame Nora features a single mom (widow as well) who up roots her family, moves back home and gets dream job but has to deal with irritating man.
I’m sorry, I don’t know any that are perfect fits. I feel like all too often even considering sperm donation is a signifier that the heroine is desperate, and the hero shows up just in time to save her from such a fate.
There are tons with single moms, at least. Nora always does that well. I think maybe Lorraine Heath has A Texas historical one that was good? Susan Andersen, Suzanne Brockmann, and I think Jennifer Crusie but blanking on titles. And I’m reading a Sarah Mayberry called Suddenly You that I haven’t finished so can’t swear to, but she’s reliable, and it’s certainly great so far.
If Mary likes romantic suspense, Nora Roberts’ The Liar has a single mom and Melinda Leigh’s She Can Run and She Can Scream both feature single moms as well as Dana Marton’s, Deathscape.
As a side story, when I was a teenager we had a family friend who made the same decision. She was so happy with the results, she had a second child by the same donor and raised both boys as a single mom. May you find all and more that you are looking for.
I’d recommend Sustained by Emma Chase. She’s known for writing romances from the guy’s POV and in this one, the hero is a hot-shot lawyer who doesn’t do relationships who finds himself falling for a young woman who recently became the guardian of her 6 nieces and nephews after her brother and sister-in-law die in a car accident. In addition to the romance between the hero and heroine it is absolutely adorable to watch him fall for all of the kids as well (they range in age from 2 to 15).
Another good romance with a single mom is Starter Wife by Moriah Densley. She has three kids and is in the middle of a difficult divorce when she meets the hero, a gruff explosives specialist who lives across the street. He saves one of her kids from being hit by a car and then falls hard for her and all of the kids.
I’d recommend against Sandra Brown’s “The Switch,” lol.
This is honestly a bit of a stretch, but it’s the only thing I’ve read that remotely matches the criteria: Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.
The premise is that this brilliant scientist wants a baby so badly that she tricks a football star into having unprotected sex with her. She fully intends to be a single mom and to never see the football star again, but then we wouldn’t have a romance, would we? Anyway, the story is all about their relationship, but a big part of it is also about the main character overcoming her insecurities–ingrained in her during her childhood–to create her own family. And she stays a brilliant scientist through the end.
So again, it barely fits one of the criteria, but I think it might get at a broader feel/message that you’re looking for?
The question stuck with me, I did some more digging, and I came up with one other.
Not a book (that I know of), but the movie “Life as We Know It” starring Katherine Heigl. Premise is she and Josh Duhamel are godparents of their best friends’ child, though they can hardly stand each other. Tragic car accident, suddenly they have custody of the child, and they need to figure things out. Heigl keeps her job (owns her own bakery) and I think even starts expanding at the end of the movie?
Two of the books in Nora Roberts’s McKade brothers series (The Pride of Jared McKade and The Heart of Devin McKade) and the last book in the key trilogy (Key of Valor) all have single moms. Two were teenage mothers and one is divorced from an abusive husband. (Looks like Mary may be getting a lot of Dame Nora in her package? O:-))
Lisa Kleypas has Smooth Talking stranger. MC ends with her newborn nephew to take care of and it changes her entire life but she does keep her career. Oh the first in the series is about a woman raising her little sister as a daughter basically and she doesn’t keep her career exactly but she created it while caring for her infant sister. That one is called Sugar Daddy.
Janice Kay Johnson has a number of single-mother heroines, most or all of whom keep their jobs, because she writes about ordinary, believable people. She did a series of three books, “Under One Roof,” about three women, two of them single mothers, sharing a large old house. “The Perfect Mom” and “The New Man” are the books with single-mother heroines. I also seem to remember at least one book about a woman who planned to use a sperm donor to have a baby on her own, but I’m blanking on the title.
Marie Force’s Fatal series is romantic suspense with the same h/h throughout the series (in the vein of Robb’s In Death series). She’s a D.C. cop and he’s in politics (*cringe* I know, I know! But the series began a few years ago, before the current disaster), and in book three the series adds a secondary character who goes through IVF (beginning in book four?) and meets her love interest at the IVF clinic waiting room. (He’s an FBI agent and boy howdy do they have issues, but those issues have very little to do with the fact that she’s trying to get pregnant while they’re dating. Just FYI.)
Many Nora Roberts books have single mom heroines (well, there are well over 200 in existence, so there’s a large pool to fish in), and she’s always a good choice. I second all above mentions.
Chiming in with some chick lit here, Dating Big Bird by Laura Zigman. The mc is a career girl and doting auntie who really wants a baby of her own. Her emotionally withholding on and off bf isn’t an option so she goes the sperm donor route and is very happy with her decision and does find love.
Also, I have to toss in Good In Bed, in which Cannie’s accidental pregnancy changes her life for worse and for ultimately better.
All of these have single mums finding love, but I don’t think any of them are from sperm donation/adoption. A couple are widows with children.
The Nerd Who Loved Me by Vicki Lewis Thompson.
Pink Moon by Stef Ann Holm
Unspeakable by Sandra Brown
Blue Skies by Robyn Carr
Rising Tides by Nora Roberts (book 2 of the Chesapeake Bay quartet; all are worth reading)
High Noon by Nora Roberts
Also have to say I agree with @Lindsey that The Switch by Sandra Brown would be best avoided under the circumstances. While there is a sperm donation/insemination plot, it leads to the murder of the inseminated woman.
I did a little more detective work & found a list on Goodreads called “IVF mistake”. A misnomer, in my opinion, but I suppose it has meaning to whoever created it. Anyway…
These are a few of the titles that caught my eye (blurbs are taken from Goodreads):
The Motherhood Mix-Up by Jennifer Taylor
He has her child – and she has his! Mia Adams’s life is turned on its head by the news that five years ago there was a mix-up at her IVF clinic – her adorable son is not hers! Meanwhile, her biological son has been raised single-handedly by handsome cardiac surgeon Leo Forester!
Having My Baby by Theresa Ragan
Growing up, Jill Garrison never daydreamed about having the perfect wedding. Instead, she dreamt about having a baby. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. Unfortunately, her fiancé can’t have children. Determined to realize her lifelong dream of having a baby, Jill spends years searching for a company that provides high quality donor sperm. Everything is right in Jill’s world until her wedding day when her fiancé leaves her at the altar to be humiliated before friends and family. She doesn’t waste any time moving from New York City to California to start over. And she keeps her appointment with Cryocorp. The baby she’s carrying is hers and hers alone. Nobody can take that away from her. Or can they?
Unexpected (Silver Creek #1) by Maisey Yates
After spending another family wedding fielding questions about her non-existent love life, Kelsey Noble decides she’s tired of waiting around for things she could go out and get herself. What Kelsey wants is a baby, and she doesn’t see any point waiting for a husband she’s not even sure she wants. But a mix-up at the fertility clinic lands her with a hassle she didn’t count on. A big, muscular hassle in a Stetson and cowboy boots.
Child of Her Heart (Logan’s Legacy #11) by Cheryl St.John
Meredith Malone’s dreams of motherhood had finally come true…despite the fact that little Anna happened to be a different race than her mommy. To escape the media barrage due to the clinic’s obvious mix-up of donor sperm, Meredith headed to the shore…and into the arms of Justin Weber.
A Very Accidental Love Story by Claudia Carroll
Eloise Elliot is a successful, intelligent and independent woman. She has worked hard in her career and is now the youngest senior editor at the Daily Post newspaper. However on her thirtieth birthday Eloise realises just how alone she really is, no friends, no significant other. Eloise had become a workaholic, married to her job with no social life. Feeling things have to change; she decides to take action and to fix her life.
Move forward to three years later and Eloise is now the mother of a beautiful and bright daughter called Lily. Eloise is now still a workaholic who is juggling the demands of work with being a single mother and if her life is not hectic enough, it is about to become a lot more complicated when Lily starts to ask who her Daddy is. Eloise decides to look for Lily’s father, but what will happen when she finds that he is not what or whom she thought he was, and that he has a dark past?
I think Kristen Ashley has a couple, and she also does older heroines really well (IMO).
I must confess how fascinated I am by the number of plots predicated on “mix ups” or “mistakes” at IVF and fertility clinics. Like, it’s a great option for a forced proximity or meet-cute, no question. My experience (though limited) was the opposite – the attention paid to samples, tracking, matching, and security was much like the security on myself and my sons when they were born, with tags and alarms and all sorts of safety measures.
I imagine there’s someone who works in security at a fertility treatment center who loves romance and reads these thinking, ‘OH COME ON I MAKE SURE THAT NEVER HAPPENS.’ We know, ma’am! It’s ok! We have some extra dukes to spare here, would you like one? 😀
As LaVista Turns by Kris Ripper comes out next month – it’s f/f. The protag / narrator has been trying to get pregnant via IVF for several months without success and is “fake dating” her friend who’s a single mother -she’s bi and had a baby the old-fashioned way with her ex-boyfriend (and then they fall in love). I have NO IDEA whether or not the heroine trying to get pregnant actually gets pregnant so it may not be that good for someone trying IVF. And it is book 5 in a series. I expect that it’s pretty stand alone, except for wrapping up a mystery arc.
The film ‘How to be single’ has one plot line that is very similar to this, although it doesn’t specify whether she keeps her job.
Of course it has a bunch of other plot lines too, but the IVF followed by meet-cute was my favorite one. Not a great movie but some nice things in it and that was one of them.
Sarah Morgan does kids well. Her single-mom plot lines include First Time in Forever, The Doctor’s Christmas Bride, The Midwife’s Christmas Miracle, Dr. Zinetti’s Snow-Kissed Bride, Dare She Date the Dreamy Doc?, The English Doctor’s Baby, Gift of a Family, The Italian Doctor’s Wife (he’s the sperm donor; finds out later that he’s infertile (?!) and insists on marriage. They do mention that this is a confidentiality violation, IIRC. But I still think it fits into Sarah’s comment re: IVF!)
Grace Burrowes’ Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish has the heroine saddled with a runaway maid’s baby. Hero knows all about babies and is very helpful. She adores the baby but does briefly give him up for adoption (it’s ok, a baby ex machina allows for the take-back).
Also see Erin Nicholas, Getting It All–she’s overwhelmed by her late sister’s four boys (sister and brother-in-law died in a car crash), helped out by her brother-in-law’s best friend.
I was going through a Goodreads list for top 100 romance novels, and came across The Proposition by Katie Ashley. From the synopsis of the book, it does deal with a sperm donor and looks to have an HEA, I’m even thinking of reading it sometime, I put it on my Want To Read list.
Ooh! I’ve got one. One Christmas Knight by Kathleen Creighton. It has so much going on to include a trucker hero and an older virgin heroine who has in vitro done. I’m pasting my review. Not that my review is fabulous, but man, I enjoyed this damn book.
It’s important to realize that this was originally published in 1997. Little internet. Cell phones optional. Etc.
My biggest issue with the book was its insta-love/lust. Mirabelle even tries to explain it away as hormones and oxytocin. I also couldn’t believe she’d be ready to have sex 3 weeks after giving birth but every woman is different and at least it took into account the milk leakage/drop down/whatever you want to call it that happens when she and Jimmy Joe finally go to bed. Kudos for a breastfeeding heroine.
I had no problems with the age difference. Jimmy Joe is an old soul. And it’s not every day a heroine is a 38-year old virgin who’s had in vitro done. Bonus points for a trucker hero and CB talk at the beginning of each chapter.
Maybe not a traditional Christmas romance, but an easy read that shouldn’t be judged too harshly.
If not-romance would be considered, there’s a recent Spiderwoman collection that fits your friend’s situation: Spiderwoman vol:1 – Baby Talk.
Home again by Mariah Stewart has a divorced heroine with a daughter. Good luck to her 🙂
Evanthia’s gift by effie Kamenou. It’s more of women’s fiction, but there are a lot of romantic elements