Baby Baby Baby (From Here to Maternity - Sinead Moriarty)

Member Name: kellylouj

Product:	From Here to Maternity - Sinead Moriarty
Date:	29/10/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nice, enjoyable story.

Disadvantages: All characters should be written in the first person.

If you haven't read my previous review, then maybe stop reading now and divert to the review on "The Baby Trail". From Here to Maternity is actually the 3rd book in the series written by Sinead Moriarty it tells the story of Emma and James couple in their mid thirties and their quest for parenthood.

In the final book of the trilogy we discover that Emma is finally pregnant and also about to adopt a young 8 month old boy from Russia called Yuri. Emma simply can't believe her luck she has wanted for so long to become a mother and it all comes at once and her husband James is equally excited about the future.

As a married woman myself, children inevitably are the next step towards our future and in reading both The Baby Trail and From Here to Maternity I was able to relate to Emma's character and desperation to become a mother.

I love how the author writes about how "do-gooders" comments left her feeling wrought with anxiety and even more stressed at the thought that other people thought she was getting on and running out of time to become a mother and all of this is clear as Emma is written in the 1st person, you feel as if you have become Emma's friend and can relate to her as a real person and understand her thoughts and feelings, which has to be credited to the author.

We also have Emma's best friend, Lucy featuring heavily in the book and her tales of woe of becoming a newlywed to James' best friend and Rugby Team Captain Donal. Lucy is written in the third person and this makes it harder to relate to Lucy as well as you can with Emma.
The tales from Lucy and Donal however had me chuckling having experienced it myself as a newlywed and a husband who likes to take life not too seriously and found the only time I could relate to Lucy was when she was moaning about her lazy husband

The other main character in the story is the younger sister of Emma, Babs who after getting everything she wants finds herself in London, a short interview later we discover that Babs has a job selling goods for pensioners or fashion victims on tv and earning a salary that would only just cover the cost of her tube pass. Babs befriends her boss and manages to get a rent free apartment in the ideal location in London, life couldn't be better or could it?

I definately found that by reading the first installment of the trilogy helped me to gain an understanding of the characters and I couldn't wait to continue with the story.

From Here to Maternity is a refreshing story and focuses on the worries and stresses and strains that come with being a parent and we share Emma and James' experience of becoming parents firstly to Yuri and desperately trying to become good parents but Emma soon finds that parenthood is not all it is cracked up to be and with everybody having an opinion on what baby likes best, Emma is soon tearing her hair out and is desperate to get some freedom and decides to get back to work for a few hours to gain some normality.

It also covers the path that newlyweds follow that is not all that rosy and a suprising twist to the tale makes the book all that bit more interesting and proves to offer a suprising ending to the final book of the trilogy.

I have to admit that the stories are not all that entertaining but they are very nice simple stories that are easy to read and inevitably are the happy ending stories that we all seek when we read a book.

Summary: A lovely trilogy of books that would be ideal for a relaxing break away.