Mazey Eddings, we must part ways here. I have so many thoughts on this book and none of them are good. Spoilers will abound.

First - it's a tough time to be writing an accidental pregnancy romance, and I feel bad that this is the environment this book is being released into for a variety of reasons. A very tough break for Mazey, and I'm trying to separate out what doesn't work in this book from what just doesn't work for me.

On the pregnancy front: Lizzie is an unemployed baker who decides to have her surprise baby. To each their own! But I would have loved a lot more introspection about being responsible for a whole ass human being when you don't have a job and are struggling with ADHD. The speed with which she decides to keep the baby just seemed irrational to me.

The baby's father is an Australian man Lizzie had a two-night stand with. He happens to have dual citizenship from his Californian father and a possible transfer to the Philadelphia office. This is all just so easy in a way that felt absolutely unreal. And also? If my baby's father lived in a place with universal health insurance, I would be on literally the next plane there. Universal health care, Lizzie! You could have had health care!!!!!!!!

Rake is eager to be involved in the baby's life because a former partner had an abortion - she was cheating on him and didn't know who the father was. He found out she was pregnant because he saw some of the paperwork after the abortion. Even though Rake acknowledges it was her choice and is fairly cool about it, I was absolutely not a fan of this plot point. I'm uninterested in a villain being a villain in part because they had an abortion, and I think we could have accomplished the same emotional investment from Rake if she had just been cheating. This was really disappointing.

On the characters front: I really struggled with the portrayal of mental illness in A BRUSH WITH LOVE, and unfortunately I struggled with the ADHD representation here. To me, these characters feel less like people with ADHD (or anxiety, or whatever), and more like caricatures of people with ADHD, and I really didn't like it. Lizzie is working on finding coping mechanisms but honestly uses her ADHD as a bit of a crutch and if I'd been seeing the same therapist for as long as it seems like she's been seeing her and we still hadn't landed on adequate tools to help me, I don't know, keep a job? Baby it'd be time for a new therapist!!

I didn't feel any real connection between Lizzie and Rake beyond their shared horniness for each other and the resulting child. I would have really liked to see more of what bonded them beyond Rake just being like "Lizzie's ADHD brain is beautiful to me." The black moment of the book occurs waaaaay too late - what I thought WAS the real emotional make or break moment would have been totally sufficient and was properly located in the plot.

The style of the book, too, is intensely Millennial. There's a lot of references to real-life romance authors that just feel like the author being like "see!!! I know them!!!" and Lizzie repeatedly calls her baby "le bébé" in a way I found so cringe-inducing. I wish people would stop relying on stereotypical Millennial jargon to make their books feel accessible and/or cool.

Anyways, it's clear that Mazey and I just are not made for each other. I hope other people enjoy this and her future work more than I do!

Thank you St. Martin's and NetGalley for the ARC.