Author: Shawn Bailey
Publisher: MLR Press
Length: 86 Pages
At a Glance: If the author wanted to write this cute premise of a story with a female protagonist, Nanny Dearest would have been darling.
Reviewed By: Angel
Blurb: When it comes to picking a mate baby knows best.
Cosmetician Hunter Monroe is the busy single father of a precocious one year old son, Chase. When his nanny gets married and resigns, Hunter is left in a lurch until his best friend, Adam, suggests the short term solution of using their family’s babysitter while interviewing new candidates for the position. To Hunter’s surprise, Adam’s solution is a handsome twenty-three year old male college student – not what he expected to have watching his son.
While more of the applicants for the position fail to meet up with Hunter’s expectations, the temporary babysitter impresses with his cooking skills and childcare knowledge. Chase makes the decision that Terry is the one he wants, but has Hunter also grown attached to the attractive babysitter?
Review: Shawn Bailey is a new-to-me author, and the writing was simple, easy to read, and follow. I just didn’t care for this book. I might try this author again, as I really wanted to enjoy the story—I love men with children plots. The storyline is common for this trope; man with a child needs a nanny and poof…a sexy one shows up…but Nanny Dearest fell flat for me from almost the very beginning.
I felt so bad for the Terry. I loved his character. He’s trying to make his way through college and into grad school, and honestly appears to love children. But it felt as if there was no chemistry between Hunter and Terry.
I could have easily fallen for this MC, Hunter, and nearly did fall for his little infant son, Chase, but there was just something about the way Hunter interacted with Terry that set me uneasy. I felt that Hunter’s overt and almost constant touching of Terry was kinda creepy. The way he kept pushing Terry to model for him, to wear the make-up needed for the shoots, in spite of Terry’s objections, really irritated me.
It also felt as if Terry was being emasculated from the beginning by Chase, and Hunter never did anything to correct this behaviour. The baby is one, how can I say this? It was all in the context. Children are stubborn, I know, I’ve got one, but little kids learning who they are, can be especially difficult. However, this felt like something more. Chase’s insistence on calling Terry ‘mama’ felt like a denial of Terry himself. It had that ‘aww’ thing once, but each time it was repeated, it became more annoying. Neither Hunter nor Terry seemed to want to do anything about this, though Terry seemed to be discouraged with it happening.
There’s some conflict with Chase’s grandparents that was almost comically hand waved away, when it should have been serious business. After they congratulated Hunter and Terry on their relationship, the conflict was dropped and we had our happily ever after.
The book left me with a bit of whiplash on the reasons why things occurred as they did and I felt that if the author wanted to write this cute premise of a story with a female protagonist, this would have been darling.
You can buy Nanny Dearest here:
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