Book Review: Meternity

I grabbed Meternity by Meghann Foye off the readers choice shelf on a whim. Emily Giffin gave it a positive review on the front cover and I like Emily Giffin. Meternity kept me occupied in the airport and on the plane on our way home from SoCal.

I have super mixed feelings about this book. The premise is hysterical. A woman working at a mommy magazine is irritated that she constantly has to pick up the slack for working moms. That her opinions are always discounted because she doesn’t have any kids. Then at a meeting with her bosses she vomits and they think she’s pregnant so she goes with it. The idea is she will use the “maternity” time to launch her freelance career.

The vast majority of the book is about all the complications she runs into while lying for months on end to her employer (and the federal government). As well as all the opportunities that come her way, now that she is pregnant, from her employer.

I don’t want to give away the ending. But there’s all this build up and pop. In like two pages, the denouement. It was unsatisfying. Lie and commit fraud and magically you’ll get all you want? WTF?

And I think what bothers me most, is through out the whole book the main character blames everyone else, not taking responsibility for her own actions. And in the end, she is handed everything she wants. She doesn’t work for it. She doesn’t earn it. She’s still just a passive object in her own life.

This was super hard to rate, because I read it in one day and quite enjoyed it for like 250 pages and then disappointment began to set in as I didn’t see any growth or consequences.