Rant
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance
TW: horrible stereotypes regarding women who get abortions
Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake is a classic example of how a book that is otherwise OK can be utterly ruined by a few sentences near the end. If this review seems compartmentalized, it’s because the book has a lot of compartments, some of which are filled with great stuff (hot sex, self-actualization) and some of which are terrible (unfortunate implications about abortion). I’m going to deal with the terrible first so you don’t have to read the book only to see it destroyed by the ending. Then I will attempt to review the rest of the book.
Lizzie is a baker who lives with ADHD. When baking, she is able to find her flow, hyper fixating on her projects and creating pastries that are beautiful and delicious. However, her ADHD causes her to struggle with things like remembering appointments and being on time – the latter of which causes her to be fired from a sequence of jobs. Lizzie enjoys casual sex, and she picks up a man at a bar, Rake, a name that Rake does in fact joke about (he has a pretty good knowledge base of historical romances).
Rake and Lizzie plan to have a brief fling before he leaves for Australia. Both of them are determined to avoid an emotional entanglement – and they both figure they are safe, what with Rake’s imminent departure, even if they do like each other more than they want to admit.
Surprise, after Rake leaves, Lizzie discovers that she is pregnant. She tells Rake, and he jets right back to Philadelphia to be with her. Lizzie wants to have a baby, and Rake wants to be a fully involved co-parent. Rake suggests that they try living together without having the sexual relationship that would “complicate things.” Can this opposites-attract relationship survive months of sexual frustration? What will happen when Lizzie’s air mattress pops and they have only one bed? Will Lizzie be successful at her new job that requires her to make sexually suggestive desserts? It’s a romance so…take a guess.
Let’s get the most problematic and infuriating aspect of this book out of the way right off the bat. Although Rake and Lizzie both state that they are pro-choice, near the end of the book…
Rake is emotionally detached throughout the story, and turns out to be because his ex had an abortion without his knowledge. Rake insists that it wasn’t the abortion that he objected to, it was her exclusion of him from the process: “It was always her choice to make – and I respected her decision – but I wanted to be there for her. I wanted the chance to be the partner I was supposed to be in her life.”
Then it turns out that his ex was cheating on him and didn’t know who the father of the baby was.
Of two women who experience pregnancy in this story, the one who has the abortion is portrayed as manipulative, callous, and dishonest while the one who chooses to proceed with the pregnancy is portrayed as a good person. It’s an ugly stereotype, and it comes out of nowhere, and it’s irresponsible. All of this shows up at the end of the book.
Rake can say all day long that the abortion wasn’t the problem, but clearly the abortion is supposed to be part of a sequence of secretive, irresponsible acts taken by the ex. This is villainizing abortion to a ridiculous degree, but on top of being ridiculous it’s dangerous.
As Sarah said during editing of this review:
WHAT THE FUCK. Using abortion to further villainize the character is unacceptable from my perspective when people are actively being harmed by abortion bans. Not only is this an ugly stereotype, it’s lazy and actively dangerous! Abortion is healthcare. And under current bans and limitations, pregnant people in different states are unable to access care, health providers are afraid to give care to pregnant people, medications aren’t being dispensed because pharmacists fear arrest. But sure, let’s further tired and awful stereotypes and make sure to underscore the Badness of the Bad Character with her having had an abortion.
So basically, a couple of sentences make this book intolerable.
From a technical standpoint, the whole thing is bizarre because it has nothing to do with the rest of the book, which is…not great, but OK. You could lift it out and change nothing about the characters or the plot. This massive reveal just slips in there at the last minute and destroys all my goodwill in about three sentences and then the book moves on with me going, “What just happened?” Bullshit, that’s what just happened.
Here’s my review of the book aside from the above fuckery:
Most of the book involves Lizzie’s ADHD and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. I don’t have these conditions but a great many of my friends and family do, and I could see a lot of their struggles reflected in Lizzie’s journey. Her pregnancy motivates her to work on improving her executive functioning. I appreciated her quest to improve her executive functioning skills by taking baby steps (pun not intended). I also appreciated that instead of her previous efforts to mask her ADHD, she learns to integrate her ADHD into her life in a positive way, embracing her creativity and enthusiasm and finding skills that “accommodated her habits instead of forcing her to do things ‘the right way.’” She finds techniques that “nurture her brain instead of rewire it.”
I thought Lizzie’s story balanced the real struggles that ADHD can create for people with the assets that can come with having ADHD. The story also dealt well with the importance of valuing neurodiversity. Lizzie is much more capable of executive functioning when she’s able to do things her way without constantly battling shame. I enjoyed seeing Lizzie come to appreciate her strengths and eliminate toxic people from her life.
Rake is a less interesting character (remember, I’m reviewing him minus the Paragraph of Crap at the End which turns him into an oblivious asshole) and he doesn’t go through much of an arc. He has to learn to trust, I guess? But his behavior throughout the book is consistently forthright, kind, patient, and committed. Did I like him? Sure, what’s not to like? Was he interesting? No, not at all. He is a rock for Lizzie to bounce off of and stand upon. His total acceptance of her allows her the space to grow into the confident woman she is at the book’s conclusion.
To an extent, Lizzie is Rake’s manic pixie dream girl. He’s overwhelmed by her energy, her casual and candid attitude to sex, and her collection of chapsticks in penis-shaped tubes, and I guess she teaches him to try for another relationship after his last one (years ago) left him uninterested in dating. But for the most part, he’s the same guy at the end of the book as he was at the beginning.
Overall, and not counting the Paragraph of Crap at the End, this book needed to be a little bit longer. Coping with ADHD, overcoming emotional abuse, overcoming a bad past relationship, starting a new career, and going through an entire pregnancy is more than can conveniently fit in a 322 page paperback with a smooth flow.
Instead, it felt like things were checked off a list. Lizzie’s friends learn to be more supportive? Check. Lizzie confronts her evil mom? Check. Rake deals with an evil boss? Check. Often seeing these things checked off was quite enjoyable, but it lacked cohesion.
Also, this happens in the epilogue, the most unrealistic line I’ve every read in a long history of reading unrealistic fiction:
Some nights, after putting Evie down, she and Rake would spend hours in front of the crib, holding hands and watching her sleep, grinning like lovesick fools.
There are so many things wrong with this sentence for me. New parents are TIRED. Lizzie and Rake both have jobs they are juggling along with newborn care. Lizzie built an entire human and pushed it out of her body. These people are going to stare at their newborn for five happy seconds and then pass out. Also, I don’t know what kind of babies the rest of you have, but my baby, who I did in fact adore, did not sleep for hours at a time. I couldn’t have stared at her sleeping face for hours even if I had been able to stay awake for it. Lest you think me unloving, I stared at her a lot when she was awake, but not once did my husband and I plonk her sleeping body into a crib and stare at her for hours while holding hands, and I doubt anyone else does that with their babies either.
This is especially irritating when we revisit the Paragraph of Crap. Raising a baby is DIFFICULT. I only had one baby and I had an amazing support system and was financially stable and I still was so tired that I hallucinated. Babies aren’t idyllic. You can’t just say, as Lizzie does, that she has a modified work schedule that lets her work around the baby, and solve your work/family problems. Your friends are not going to offer to babysit for a month, not even in jest, not even the ones that like babies. You are not going to have gleeful sex the minute the baby falls asleep. It’s enraging to me that the same book that treats the woman who has an abortion as devious and irresponsible treats raising a baby as only marginally more tricky than raising a puppy (which I do realize is difficult).
I WANT to recommend Lizzie Blake’s Last Mistake for the ADHD representation, which I thought was balanced, realistic, and positive (again, I don’t have ADHD so I’m speaking as an observer of the many other people in my life who do have it). Also, the sexual tension between Rake and Lizzie is certainly something.
However, the Paragraph of Crap, which villainizes the woman who gets an abortion while holding Rake and Lizzy up as Relationship Goals for having a baby together, ruins the entire story. Of all the directions this book could have taken, I’m floored that it went with “bad people have abortions and good people have babies.” We need more books that deal with neurodivergence in a positive manner but I can’t recommend this one.
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There was an HP by Clare Connelly last year (or possibly the year before—time seems to whiz by these days) that featured a “villainous” ex—villainous because she aborted the hero’s baby. I could literally feel my blood pressure rising while I was reading the book. I was dismayed for any number of reasons, but especially because Connelly had previously written an HP where the heroine had terminated an earlier pregnancy and the situation was presented in a very even-handed way. Beyond everything else, it’s lazy writing to use terminating a pregnancy as shorthand to demonize a woman.
I don’t like romances with babies for precisely this reason—having a kid is HARD and not really conducive to romance! (Secret babies are even worse and are on my “will not even touch” list.)
Naomi Novik’s conclusion to her Scholomance series, The Golden Enclaves, also has some weirdness about abortion, which is unfortunate because, again, it’s just kind of dropped in there at the end.
Side note: I had occasion to think about my own abortion the other day. It happened during the darkest time in my life and I really shudder to think what would have happened if that option had not been available to me. (Pretty much positive I’d be divorced; not sure if I’d still be alive.) It’s been the better part of ten years, and I am grateful EVERY DAY to the doctor and the care team who were there for me. Abortion is absolutely health care.
I’m amazed that you made it to the end. It was a DNF for me because both main characters seemed so two-dimensional.
She is a manic pixie dream girl who has a disability but (read the next bit in a TikTok voice) it’s one of those cute, quirky disabilities (/end TikTok voice). The rep didn’t sit right for me, in other words. He needs his manic pixie dream girl to give him purpose in life because without her he is as charismatic as cardboard.
“Oh, what’s a little mess in the corner of the room? That makes her like totally relatable and him super-forgiving.” That whole schtick grew old very fast.
I didn’t reach the abortion paragraph, but that doesn’t surprise me. Happy to have left the book unfinished.
Yikes on bikes. Thanks for the heads up on this one. I had heard good things about this author and l’ll still try her, but definitely not this book.
I tend to avoid surprise baby stories because I feel like they’re often written in a way that wants to downplay the fact that abortion exists or is even an option. They are in some parallel universe where it’s not talked about. Like, have the conversation at least? Say the word out loud. IT’S NOT A BAD WORD! (caps lock smash) But going past avoidance straight into abortion shaming? Nope, nope, nope.
Oh wow, that’s a lot at once. Obviously the Evil Harpy Ex-Girlfriend had an abortion because she was also an Evil Cheating Ex-Girlfriend and these evilnesses go hand in hand; a Good Girl keeps a pregnancy from a total stranger who just moved to the other side of the world and “makes it work.” All it takes is organizing your day planner and some pixie dust! He totally RESPECTS her choice (you can tell because he SAID he does), it just bothers him that he wasn’t consulted in making her choice, and kept in the loop as she went through with her choice, and harbors resentment over the choice she made without him about her own body. But he SAID he respects her choice. Can’t you tell how much RESPECT he has for her CHOICE? It’s a shame, I love a good Rant but this one has me ranting too.
Even with that aside, I know “Sexy Rock for the Heroine to Lean On” appeals to a wide audience but it’s never been enough for me, I’m with FashionablyEvil on Babies-R-Us romance plots, and I’m incredibly wary of “the Differently Abled are people too!:)” type stories because of how patronizing and twee and just wrong they can be.
You’re a stronger reader than me, my good Carrie S.
Also! Also! The evil ex was not required to inform him of her pregnancy or abortion, especially if their relationship was ending, especially since she decided to have an abortion. That’s her own healthcare. If she’d had the baby, yeah talk to the father let’s avoid Secret Babies. But come on now
THANK YOU FOR THIS KICKASS REVIEW. I run screaming from this book. SCREAMING I TELL YOU. SCREAMING, SCREAMING ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE!
@FashionablyEvil–Same! TBH, any time I see a romance has a baby in it, I shelve as not gonna read it. I don’t want kids, I don’t want to read books where fertility is the driving motivation for the characters. Yes, even historicals with a “needs a heir” plot.
I wouldn’t see Juno because I’m so sick of the “we’re pro-choice for other people but abortion makes us feel icky.” Just for a change, let’s actually portray abortion as a realistic, even the best option, for some women, under certain circumstances?
I like romances with babies, but lord do they have to be carefully written and do the children have to react and feel like real people instead of moppets pushing the hero and heroine together. I feel like this book would flunk my smell test straight off because all of this feels horribly handled.
I have ADHD and I repeatedly reared back in disgust at the descriptions of the ~omg whacky frisky quirky heroine who is Totes Inapropes but is Totally Tamed by Having a Baby Into Being a Responsible Adult and the man who she Charms Into Proving She’s the One by Using Her Functional Uterus. Hero sounds like a piece of cardboard. The smiling down at the sleeping baby for hours/enthusiastic sex/cortierie of caring friends who will watch your baby whenever plot points 100 percent reads like the kind of propaganda you read in certain contemporary inspys. So, obviously, does the paragraph of crap and the book’s judgement of the hero’s evil abortion-having-ex and how Lizzie is rewarded by going through with her pregnancy by having the Perfect Everything delivered unto her.
Excellent review, Carrie S. Steering clear of this one.
I’m trying to think of a book where the heroine has an abortion. There are miscarriages, especially in historicals, but I can’t recall any with a positive abortion experience.
Loooooool watching a baby sleep for hours holding hands. That’s hilarious.
My kid was bad at sleeping on a diabolical level. Like, required multiple medical interventions include 9 months with an NG tube to be able to sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time. I was diagnosed with chronic sleep deprivation that caused constant vertigo and migraines. The first two years of her life were almost unrelenting hell. All I can say is that I’m glad that I knew my husband well going into it. I didn’t regret having an abortion years earlier when we were too young to have a dang thing figured out and I will always advocate for access to abortion and even encourage people in difficult situations to have one. I’m aware that not every unplanned pregnancy is a tragedy but I also know that not all babies are easy and that having a real partner can make the worst situation feel at least manageable.
Once Upon a Bad Boy by Melonie Johnson had the lead female with a teenage abortion, and the characters have a second chance romance years later. He finds out late in the book, and I think that’s part of what leads to the Black Moment–it’s been years since I read it–but they get their HEA.
It was very emotional as I recall, and possibly triggering for some.
The British TV series CATASTROPHE had a more realistic feel as to what happens when a short-term fling leads to pregnancy and the hero travels half way (well, since it’s the US to UK, maybe one quarter way) round the world to be with the heroine. Life is not all beer and skittles and self-actualization.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4374208/
@Jeannette: not sure if we had a Rec League for it, but I do remember the topic of romances that feature heroines who’ve had abortions has come up before. The first one that jumps into my head is JB Salsbury’s FACE THE MUSIC. Frankly, it’s not that well-written—and the hero is a widowed pastor, and the heroine is convinced he’ll consider her a “sinner” for the two abortion she’s had—but it does present abortion as a viable choice for the heroine. (The hero is not the father in either of the heroine’s terminated pregnancies.) A more recent (and better) representation of how abortion is frequently the best choice for young, unmarried women is Zoe York’s FEARLESS AT HEART where the hero & heroine (now in their late-thirties) reunite 20 years after a teenage relationship resulted in an unplanned pregnancy and the decision to terminate it. York also bravely discusses her own abortion in the book’s afterword.
In real life, the couple would have about thirty seconds of admiration before the baby had a massive bowel evacuation. Then they would have been cleaning it up battling extreme tiredness and longing for a shower.
If they get through that there’s the toddler stage. Good luck at maintaining sanity while your little one throws a wobbly at the wrong colour plates (this is why epilogues don’t feature two year olds)
We have indeed done a Rec League for it: Abortion in romance.
@Jeannette: It’s not exactly a romance, but in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity the main character’s girlfriend has an abortion (in the backstory) and isn’t demonised for it. The movie adaptation had the guts not to alter this plotline, which I appreciated. To be honest I don’t think I’d recommend the movie all that highly for romance fans, but Jack Black plays a supporting character and is a joy!