The Only Boy for Me

Publishers Weekly

Single mother Annie Baker knows she hasn't got it all figured out, but she thinks she's doing okay: a house in a nice town outside of Kent, a production job demanding only that she come into London a couple of days a month, lovely parents and available babysitters, several other single mother friends in the village. And she adores her six-year-old, Charlie. Who wouldn't? He's charming, precocious and adorably intelligent even when having a tantrum. Despite Charlie's cute habit of ending up in her bed each night, Annie knows what she is missing, and it shows up in the form of Mack MacDonald, high-powered ad exec. He's gorgeous, rich and tired of all those foolish, beautiful model types, of whom he says, "none of them are sexy. At all." When Charlie becomes very ill, Annie's priorities turn themselves right side up, and she resists Mack's attempt, albeit motivated by love, to convince her to relocate to be with him. While it's nice to see Annie refusing to uproot still-recovering Charlie from his familiar surroundings, the novel as a whole is just a single-mother version of the average romantic comedy. First novelist McNeil (who is a single mother and lives in Kent) is mining the vein of Helen Fielding or Nick Hornby, but she seems to have absorbed the details of humorous writing without the overarching sense of irony. Most of the amusement comes from Charlie's habits and conversations (cute bums, cute food preferences, cute comments on life) but this one-note laugh track quickly wears thin. Annie's life is pretty successful from the start, so perhaps the only irony required is McNeil's willingness to eschew the expected ending. Otherwise, single motherhood has never seemed so easy or so slow. (Feb. 7) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

First-time novelist McNeil makes single motherhood, as sometimes suffered but mostly enjoyed by a freelance ad-producer in a quaint village near London, look awfully appealing. The center of Annie's life is her six-year-old son Charlie, the happy result of an unhappy affair. Charlie's father not only went back to his wife but also moved abroad, so he's conveniently out of the picture. Annie's job allows her to work at home much of the time. When she's away on a commercial shoot, she depends on an enviable network of supportive friends and family. Annie recounts her daily life with the beloved but demanding Charlie-his tantrums, his food requirements, his way of sneaking into her bed at night-in a self-revealing approach reminiscent of Anne Lamott heroines. She engages us in her routines: taking Charlie to and from school, drinking (coffee or gin) with her women friends, working on comically nightmarish commercial shoots. Soon, not unexpectedly, a man enters the picture. Mac, a divorced ad executive with two kids and lots of money, is immediately as crazy about Annie as she is about him. He is handsome and romantic. He and Charlie like each other; even better, his son and Charlie quickly become best buddies. His only flaws are his less-than-total devotion to his children and his too-frequent need to be the center of attention (in other words, he's a man). The story's crisis occurs when Charlie comes down with meningitis. Parents, friends, and Mac rally round the distraught Annie while Charlie receives excellent medical care. He makes a speedy recovery, but not before Annie has been reminded just how precious he is to her. Weeks later, Mac takes a job in New York and asks her to marry andmove there with him. Like a more mature Bridget Jones, she turns him down, leaving room for a sequel down the road. Not very deep but undeniably entertaining.