Brownlow Baby By Katie Hamstead {Review}

Title: Brownlow Baby

Author: Katie Hamstead

Publication Date: January 25th, 2017

Genres: New Adult Romance

Julia Saxon has been in love with her best friend since the moment she met him. The problem is, Lachlan Daniels was already in love with his model girlfriend. But she just dumped him, and the night of the Brownlow medal ceremony--the most prestigious award in Australian Rules Football--Julia is determined to win him over.

For one night, she believes she has succeeded, until in the morning he runs out in a panic, apparently regretting their passionate time together.

With the support of her friends, she tries to move on, and even manages to snag herself a boyfriend. Then, the vomiting starts.

When the pregnancy test shows up positive, Julia knows exactly who the father is; Lachlan. But that is all kinds of complicated as he continues to pine after his ex, who has moved on, although, she still toys with him.

When Julia makes the decision to keep the baby, her boyfriend leaves, unable to watch her carry his team mate's child.

As the following months ensue, Lachie discovers the pregnancy and vows to stand by Julia. The pair struggle through a tumultuous and complicated relationship. When it comes down to it, Lachie will have to choose between Julia and their baby, or his ex. But Julia won’t go down without a fight for her happy ending, whether it’s with Lachie or not.

*I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

I'm going to start this review by unfortunately saying that, I did not enjoy this book. At all. The beginning was alright. Not very promising but, it was interesting enough. I really wanted to see where the story would, after the first couple of chapters, because it did sound like something I would personally enjoy. 

The plot itself wasn't something extraordinary but, it was something that I was definitely looking forward to reading as soon as I read the synopsis. Brownlow Baby tells the story of Julia, who works as a physiotherapist for a football team, is in love with one of her closest friends, Lachie. But, Lachie is head over heels in love with his ex, who dumped him before one of the most important Award ceremonies in the football scene. After the ceremony though, Lachie gets Julia pregnant which starts this chain reaction of events that affect every character introduced in the book.

First of all, I didn't find the main characters easy to connect to. Julia was okay, but I couldn't, for the life of me, understand her life choices. Or her way of thinking. She spends - I'm not going to say the majority - the whole book pining after a guy who is trying to win his ex back, and doesn't even care about what she might be feeling after the night they spend together. An ex, mind you, who cheated on him and everyone hates but he worships. Not only that ladies and gentlemen but, he argues with everyone trying to make him open his eyes and finally realize that, his ex is a total bitch who is trying to manipulate him. Seriously? As if that wasn't enough, he spends every single day giving poor Julia mixed signals and mentioning his ex ALL THE FUCKING TIME! What is more, he won't even let her date anyone else because , apparently, nobody is good enough for her. Just...NO!

Second of all, I want to say that, the majority of the book had me so frustrated, I was debating on whether I wanted to continue reading or not. I was so angry by the unacceptable behavior of every single character in this book. By the time I reached the ending, I was ready to explode. And I'm not exaggerating.The characters were way underdeveloped, the plot didn't go anywhere and the writing itself wasn't that great.

 Lastly, I feel like, if everything wasn't so underdeveloped - plot, characters, writing - and if a little more thought went into the making of this book and the direction it followed it, I would have, at least, enjoyed it.

Overall, Brownlow Baby is a book with many flaws and not one I enjoyed in the slightest. I'm usually not so harsh with reviews but I felt like everything went wrong with this particular book. For me, there's always the positive and the negative side to each book that I read but, for this one, it was like the positive side didn't even exist. One of my least favorite books that I've read in a very long time.