What’s Sexier than an Orphan?
by Admiral Fartmore
Editor’s Note (Beau Dashington): a romance between a baby and billionaire? sounds saucy….
My view on Harlequin romances has always been skewed by the fact that my grandmother loves them. She retired early, and for the past 40-odd years, she has pounded back these books daily alongside her brandy. Not to say there’s anything wrong with that – I don’t see why anyone doesn’t deserve to spend their sunset years freewheelin’ on benzos, sherry, and light erotica. But it’s kind of ruined these books for me, because when I pick up one and read about [female lead] putting her hand on the engorged member of [male lead], all I can think about is my randy old granny.
Visual aid of my drunk grandmother thinking about big dicks.
There are a lot of Harlequin Romance novels out there. The Baby Favor is part of a relatively obscure subsection – the Billionaires and Babies series. The interesting thing about this erotica is that because they are so many published every year, you pretty much have every circumstance covered. A few years ago, I covered A Cowboy Christmas Wedding, as an example of how niche these scenarios get. Writers are forced to focus on extremely specific scenarios in order to produce something unqiue. They are like graduate theses, but for cheap smut.
How do we describe this particular aesthetic? May I suggest man-in-suit-with-a-baby?
Andrea Laurence is the author of The Baby Favor, and I kind of like her style. She’s written a few of these books: The CEO’s Unexpected Child, Expecting the Billionaire’s Baby and Rags to Riches Baby are some of her more notable forays into post-partum literature. In fact, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for these working authors who accept the restraints of a super-simple genre. Laurence takes cheap romance and pushes the envelope by writing about business and babies, two things that really aren’t romantic at all. It’s at least different.
But she isn’t alone. I was surprised to find another piece of erotica called The Baby Favor by some wannabe named Chance Carter.
No official Harlequin overlay, Carter? No baby? No man in a suit? Take a hike you fucking hack.
But back to the book itself:
I found nothing sexy about the world of The Baby Favor. Mason and Scarlet, our two leads, are in the midst of a divorce, which was brought on by a combination of Mason’s infertility and the loss of their newly-adopted baby, who had been returned to his biological mother. The story starts with a phone call from Mason’s brother Jay, who is dying of skin cancer: his wife fell over and died while doing laundry, and he isn’t long for this earth himself, so he asks Mason and Scarlet to take care of his 2 month old daughter (this is the baby favor.) Pretty dark, right? I don’t know about you, but this isn’t the kind of thing I’d expect to get grandma going!
Naturally, Mason and Scarlet still love each other, since the only reason they split was his crummy seed. He left her because he couldn’t give her a child. At one point, one character describes that as “romantic breakup ever.” I am certain that it isn’t. Regardless, while Mason and Scarlet are looking after the baby, they begin to reconnect. Scarlet seduces Mason, Mason releases his insipid load inside her, they are confused about it, they have sex again, and so on and so on. Also, Mason is a CEO and he’s always very busy doing business.
Thee romance continues in fits and starts, but things are brought to a head when Brother Jay dies of his skin cancer. Mason and Scarlet realize that they are meant to be together, they officially take custody of the baby, and things wrap up pretty nicely – aside from all the death and the orphaned children.
Overall, The Baby Favor is pretty boring. As odd as it is, the content is bland and the medium limiting. Laurence does a fine job, much like there are some genuinely good sandwich artists at Subway. But you can’t polish a meatball. I mean, you can’t put lipstick on a cold cut. I mean, the footlong is the message. Ah, you know what I mean.
A photo of a diet coke from Andrea Laurence’s instagram.
In the end, the The Baby Favor finishes like it began, with a phone call: the adopted child Mason and Scarlet lost previously will be returned to them, on top of the free baby they already got when Jay died. Phewww. Two babies to look after? Talk about doubling your sexlife.
Come to think of it, my grandmother raised five kids. Maybe that’s what made her such a lecherous old slut.
Admiral Fartmore
April 4, 2018