The Great Baby Caper

Rating:
Summary: Boring!
Review: I really struggled reading this book. More than once, I threw it across the room. There is 0% chemistry between the Mark and Courtney. I found it difficult to understand what drew him to her in the first place. And it seemed a bit spooky that this supposed hunk was obsessed with her for a whole year. To the point of watching her boardroom antics on video over and over again. Eww!

As for M. Billingham Bootle... Eccentric is not the word I would have for him. Mean to the max is more like it. He should be locked away at the funny farm for good.

Courtney is exasperating. She is supposed to be a bright, on-the-ball exectuive. Could have fooled me. I wanted to slap her more than once and tell her to get a grip. And to think of somebody besides her poor pitiful self. This woman is almost 30 and she's comparing hunk Mark to some pimple-face jock way back in high school. To Mark's detriment. Sheesh! Did she stop her mental development back then?

OK You can tell I didn't like this book and wish I'd saved my hard earned money for something more enjoyable. The only good thing about the book is the cover. That I liked!

Rating:
Summary: It Was Okay, But...
Review: I've liked other books by Eugenia Riley, but this one had too much book for too little plot. The book was well written but about seventy-five pages could have been cut from this book without damaging it.

Courtney and Mark get together right at the beginning of the book, she gets pregnant, and then the rest of it is spent dithering how they are going to get their lifestyles and careers to coincide. It became boring after a while. Mark was almost the perfect man - gorgeous, smart, wealthy, loving, humorous, protective - yet Courtney kept having all of this angst over her career vs. his, men who betrayed her trust in the past, proving herself in her chosen field, etc. I started to sympathize less and less with her as the book went on. It was one one of those familiar plots where the heroine can't see what's actually important in life until it smacks her in the face.

Having said all that, the characters themselves were amusing in some ways, but I wouldn't say that I laughed out loud at any of the scenes. Some of the situations that Courtney found herself in stretched credulity to the extreme (and I'm not even talking about the intial plot set-up). She is the CEO of a large company, yet whenever something goes wrong in one of the company stores, she has to go personally there to straighten it out. Hasn't she ever heard of delegation? And, it made no sense why she continued to work for Mark's grandfather, given all the grief she had to take from him - she has a MBA from Harvard, for goodness sake! Also, all of her siblings decide to go on consecutive cruises, and just happen to leave each of their respective broods with Courtney and Mark, the two people in the family with the most high-powered, time-intensive jobs? There were other annoyances, but you should be able to get the picture by now.

I expected more from this book, and didn't get it.

Rating:
Summary: A sexy, zany tale
Review: The Great Baby Caper is filled with comedy based in exaggeration, sometimes to the point of the bizarre, as in the case of the initial premise: Courtney Kelly is among the top candidates in line to become president and CEO of the company, Bootle Baby Bower. And she is appalled to hear that her boss, M. Billingham Bootle, is making the final decision about his successor based on all of the distinguished candidates going on an insane scavenger hunt at the company's annual meeting in New Orleans. Her assignment? To scout out the most eligible bachelor in the French Quarter and marry him within 12 hours! Courtney decides this is carrying eccentricity way too far. But it turns out to be even worse than that. What she doesn't know is this is all a convoluted plot of her boss to engineer Courtney's marriage to his grandson.

Mark Billingham is willing to participate in an elaborate entertainment for his grandfather's annual company meeting. It all sounds outlandish, but outlandish is his grandfather's middle name, and the game seems harmless enough. Not only that, it will give him a chance, at long last, to meet and spend time with beautiful, dynamic Courtney Kelly, a woman whom he's been infatuated with from afar for over a year after seeing her in a company video.

From this point on, the droll plot takes flight, progressing from Courtney's initial encounter with Mark, to her fight with Bootle and Mark when she discovers her boss's deception, her make-up with Mark and successive night of passion leading to an unplanned pregnancy, her ultimate marriage of convenience to Mark, and their gradually coming to terms with meshing together their high-powered careers--and high-powered personalities. Endless humorous imbroglios occur in the midst of these events, including a series of visits by the kids of Courtney's many siblings during sequential cruises by their parents.

If you enjoy frenetic comedy with lots of zany subcharacters and crazy complications thrown in one after the other like a juggler tossing a collection of plates, balls and bats in the air as he twirls a beach ball on his nose and a ring around his extended ankle, you will love this story. There is something going on every second, in the classic tradition of screwball comedy. The heroine is very strong, the hero sexy and tender, and their efforts to come together as a couple are moving as well as funny. A very entertaining read.