New Book Review: Off Limits Dad

Title: Off Limits Dad 

Author: Celia Zayne 

Date: 2023 

Publisher: Celia Zayne 

Quote: "Will you stop being a baby, Ember?" 

Ember will not stop being a baby although, in the opening scene of this novel, it's possible that that's because she's going to have one. 

The tasteful narrative doesn't specify just how or when Ember, the top-scoring intern at "Stanford Hospital," shoehorned time into her best friend's father's busy schedule to start a baby, but the expectation of a baby definitely shapes the plot of this peculiar romance. In non-academic matters Ember really seems more like a child than like even a high school student. 

I found this one hard to believe, although it could happen. Ember talks as if she's concealing a relatively normal classroom crush on Dr. Taylor, but they're about to become parents. Only when they realize--before either of them is willing to admit it--that they're going to be parents does Dr. Taylor agree with his daughter that the woman he's been seeing is all the unpleasant things daughter has been thinking about her. 

 Then, in the hospital, we never see Ember doing anything we've ever seen a real doctor do. She doesn't mention actually working. She describes interviews at which she's told "No running in the hallways!", throws a tantrum ("I won't work with Dr. Stanley!"), and is ordered to apologize, but she still gets the job assignment she wants--although and, we learn, because she's pregnant. Nobody's been told that she's even dating anybody. Apparently that part's true. No dates have been involved. Intern Ember and Dr. Taylor have been doing the kind of thing for which Taylor's wife left him, apparently, in supply closets.

If you enjoy stories about people whose actual behavior doesn't match anything they admit, in words or visible actions, even to their immediate families, this story--not explicit, not romantic, and to my taste not "sweet" at all--is for you.