I had never heard of Carol Voss, but her book ‘Instant Daddy’ was offered free for the Kindle about two-and-a-half years ago. Aafter a quick check of the blurb I downloaded it. I like having something undemanding to read when travelling, though of course not much travelling has been possible until recently.
I think it was billed as American Christian fiction, but the ‘religious’ aspect is fairly low-key and, I thought, well-done. God is an important part of several of the characters’ lives, and churchgoing is a significant feature of the small town where several of them are located, but it’s not pushy or preachy.
Jessie is the main viewpoint character, someone who has suffered a lot in the past. She was involved in a traumatic road accident a couple of years before the story begins, and although she made an almost miraculous recovery, she’s not as strong as she was, still has a slight limp, and has another problem which isn’t revealed until much later in the book although it’s obvious what it is just a few chapters in.
Even worse is that Jessie’s beloved twin sister Clarissa died suddenly, just over a year before the story starts. So Jessie is raising her sister’s son Jake. I thought at first that Jake had been left to her, but apparently Clarissa, who was a very driven and ambitious career woman, really didn’t want the responsibility of a baby so gave him to Jess when she was still alive. She insisted that his father had no interest in having a child.
And then, in a rather dramatic coincidence, Jess meets Peter, a man whose resemblance to Jake is so strong that she knows he must be related - and (as the blurb tells us anyway) it’s clear that he was in fact the father, after a single night with Clarissa that neither of them wanted to repeat. However he had no idea that she was pregnant… and is suddenly very keen on the idea of having a son.
I thought the book started well; the coincidence isn’t as unlikely as it sounds in the circumstances of the meeting, and Peter seems like a likeable guy, if rather naive about family life. He seems to bond quite quickly with Jake, and wants a part in his life but is entirely thoughtless about how it might work out, and what the changes he proposes might do to Jake. And Jessie is very suspicious; she’s protective of Jake, perhaps overly so but it’s not unreasonable, I felt.
However, from this promising start to the story, which I thought was a clever idea, it didn’t really go anywhere. It became rather predictable with lots of misunderstandings and resolutions, repetitions of how the main characters felt, either on their own or pouring out their hearts to friends or relatives. Jake is a likeable and believable child, but Peter and Jessie both seem rather caricatured, and we’re told what they’re like rather than actually seeing it in action.
I kept reading - other than the repetition the style is quite readable, and certainly undemanding. There’s another subplot that interested and drew me in more: a close friend of Peter’s is in the late stage of an unpleasant auto-immune disease, and Peter’s team has been working all hours on experimental drugs. I’d like to have seen a bit more of this thread, but although well done it felt a bit as if it were a plot device to explain why Peter’s work is so important to him (and perhaps to educate readers about the condition) rather than really relating to the story itself.
It’s not a bad book, and since I downloaded it free I don’t mind that it wasn’t the greatest story. The ending is satisfactory, if predictable and rather too sudden, and the future encouraging (other than for Peter’s friend). I won’t be looking for other books by this author, or even others involving the same characters, but if you like something gentle, undemanding and with Christian undertones (but nothing pushy) it’s a pleasant book for a relatively quick read.
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