One Baby Daddy

One Baby Daddy is the third book in Meghan Quinn’s Dating by Numbers series, the contemporary romance trilogy following three best friends through their varying paths to love. The series began with Three Blind Dates and continued with Two Wedding Crashers, with each book taking one of the three central friends through her own central romance while keeping the wider friend group as recurring presences.

This novel turns to Lottie, the one of the three friends whose journey to motherhood becomes one of the central plots of the book. The premise plays with the surprise pregnancy trope that contemporary romance has been using since the genre existed, with the additional complication that the situation Lottie finds herself in involves a man who turns out to be considerably more complicated than the one night encounter had suggested. Meghan Quinn handles the surprise pregnancy material with the kind of care that the trope requires when handled well, with both Lottie and the eventual hero having to deal with the situation as adults rather than as cliched obstacles to a romantic resolution.

Meghan Quinn writes contemporary romance with the kind of warmth and humor that her readers return to her for. The Dating by Numbers series has the kind of connected friendship cast that her readers love, with Lottie’s two best friends Roarke and Dakota providing the supporting energy alongside their own ongoing relationships from the previous books. Quinn’s dialogue snaps, her chemistry is built through pages of actual conversation rather than just attraction at first sight, and her endings tend to feel earned because she has done the work of building the case for the relationship.

What distinguishes Quinn from a lot of her peers is the warmth of her supporting casts and the willingness to take the romance trope seriously rather than just leaning on the conventions. Her female leads have specific lives and specific ambitions, and the romance has to accommodate those rather than overwriting them. The supporting cast often steals scenes, and the friendship dynamics in her novels add weight to the central romance beyond just the chemistry between two people.

For longtime Meghan Quinn fans, One Baby Daddy is a satisfying close to the Dating by Numbers trilogy. For new readers, the series rewards being read in order starting with Three Blind Dates, but One Baby Daddy can be picked up as a standalone.