Lucie Yi flips the script on the “conventional route” to parenthood and the trope that makes kids the cherry-on-top of romantic relationships
ARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley
We’ve seen every permutation of the dating app, but what if there was an app for finding a co-parent?
Lucie Yi’s clock is ticking. She’s a 37-year old successful management consultant on the partner track at her firm. Her last long-term, live-in boyfriend cheated on her after she had a miscarriage. With no partner on the horizon, she decides to take a less conventional approach to parenthood and enlists the help of a co-parenting app. After 2 yrs on assignment in the US, she’s headed back to Singapore. And the good news is, Collin, her co-parent is up for the move. Neither is looking for romance as part of the package.
With Lucie Yi, Lauren Ho confronts cultural mores and laws surrounding children born to unmarried mothers in Singapore, and deftly balances it with humor about the ups and downs of pregnancy and prospective parenthood — physical, emotional, and financial. I appreciated that it also touched on being child-free and how that plays out in friend groups where everyone else is a parent or pregnant.
I loved Ho’s rom-com debut Last Tang Standing, and I really liked this one. The voice and humor that made LTS so distinctive is very much in Lucie Yi Is Not a Romantic. So, do we call this a mom-com? (I kid, I really see it as contemporary fiction with romance in it). Still it’s dealing with heavier/more fraught topics than LTS, so check the CWs before diving in. If you’ve had trouble conceiving or made the choice to be child-free, this book may not be for you.
The book does cut corners on the legal end of things. As an American reader, I had a lot of questions about what happens if things go sideways, especially with Singaporean law, despite the loose “agreement” Collin and Lucie put together. (Too much legal realism would probably make for boring reading, so I get why it’s not there, but still I have questions 😀 ).
On the romantic end of things, ever practical Lucie ping-pongs back and forth as she tries to sort out what’s right for her and her baby. But it turns out, she is indeed a romantic.
4 stars
CW: Miscarriage, cheating, death of a child from meningitis (little sister at a year old), grief group that discusses how other loved ones were lost.
