Belly Up

Written by Eva Darrows

Narrated by Almarie Guerra

There's a first time for everything. First time playing quarters. First time spinning the bottle. First totally hot consensual truck hookup with a superhot boy whose digits I forgot to get. First time getting pregnant. Surprised you with that one, didn't I? Surprised me, too. I'd planned to spend senior year with my bestie-slash-wifey, Devi Abrams, graduating at the top of my class and getting into an Ivy League college. Instead, Mom and I are moving in with my battle-ax of a grandmother and I'm about to start a new school and a whole new life. Know what's more fun than being the new girl for your senior year? Being the pregnant new girl. It isn't awesome. There is one upside, though-a boy named Leaf Leon. He's cute, an amazing cook and he's flirting me up, hard-core. Too bad I'm knocked up with a stranger's baby. I should probably mention that to him at some point. But how? It seems I've got a lot more firsts to go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781980034858

Eva Darrows

Eva Darrows is the pseudonym for New York Times bestselling author Hillary Monahan, author of Mary: The Summoning and Mary: Unleashed, and, as Eva Darrows, the critically acclaimed The Awesome. Eva lives in Massachusetts with her family of some parts human, more parts fur kids. She can be found on Twitter: @HillaryMonahan.

Reviews for Belly Up

[lvstrongpuff · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I need a sequel to this book like tomorrow. I loved everything about this book. It brought me back to when I was in school and became pregnant. I didn't face racist things like Sarah did, but I did face the looks of being a pregnant teenager. The love story is very sweet and reminds me of how so men really so care about a person and are not always after one thing. The friendship between Sarah and Devi is sweet and wonderful to read. This book opened my eyes to the struggles that teenagers have about coming out to their parents about being trans as well as young people today understanding the need to not put labels on gender as a child grows up. This is a great book for YA readers as well as some adults. This book helps for adults to understand about slut-shaming as well as watching how they speak to people. Great book.

[ecataldi-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm a huge fan of Eva Darrows; she's a young adult author that actually writes for teens. She writes how they think, how they talk, and how they perceive the world around them. It's refreshing. Belly Up is a teen story about a girl who makes a stupid mistake and, you guessed it,gets knocked up. Not only is her father not in the picture, but neither is baby daddy. Sara has her mother, her battle ax grandma, and her best friend, Devi. She is trying to come to terms with the fact that she has a womb goblin and is going to have to put her college plans on hold (or make new ones) but it's hard to wrap her brain around it. Everything is so gross and new and scary. She starts to realize though that she is surrounded by loving caring people and she has it much easier than many other teen moms in her pregnancy group. In addition to navigating her pregnancy; Sara is also trying to navigate her way around a new high school and the feelings she has on one of the few other people of color in her school. Will he still be her friend when he inevitably finds out she's pregnant? How will the rest of her classmates act? A teen novel about unplanned pregnancy; that's funny, real, and supportive.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A humorous, feel good, idyllic (unrealistic?) view of teen pregnancy. While it might exist, I'm betting it's extremely rare.Sara (Serendipity) gets drunk at a party and has a one-truck seat stand, partly because her ex-boyfriend, who broke her heart, is at the party fawning over his new girlfriend. Of course, she gets pregnant. She has a supportive best friend, supportive mother and supportive grandmother, the latter two thenselves having had babies out of wedlock.Much of the book discusses Sara's changing body, raging hormones and tremendous appetite. Along the way, the author manages to throw in bisexual and transgender, demisexual and non-binary. So, she's got the bases covered, mostly.However, Belly Up seems to gloss over the ruined college plans for an "A" student..although I'm writing this with 50 pages to go, so maybe I'm wrong. It also introduces a group session for teen mothers-to-be but Sara seems to only attend once, even though she thought it helpful (especially showing that there are people worse off than she is). While I'm all for feel good books, as I thought about this, my rating dropped from 4 stars to 3 stars because I felt that Darrows, the author, almost was doing a disservice to pregnant teens. Yes, there are very supportive family and friends and yes the world goes on, but Sara barely had anything negative occur. I don't know. maybe I'm overthinking this, but there might be a fine line between reality and fantasy and I think this might have crossed over to the fantasy line. Just my humble opinion.

[chaoticbooklover · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

*I want to preface this review by saying I have nothing against the communities mentioned in my review. I would have just preferred the story to be closer to the blurb that pulled me in.

When I read the blurb for this book I was excited. As a former teen mom myself I was hoping to read a book that encompassed all the things I went through. But, that was not to be. Serendipity (Sara's) mom was pretty much completely ok with her daughter being pregnant and not knowing how to get in contact with the guy she slept with while drunk. The whole book was really just a light fluffy read. No major drama, no real heartbreak or angst.
It just wasn't at all believable in today's world. To me, the main focus of the book was to get the gray-ace, demisexual and trans community out there in the hands of teens. Sara kept going on about how her baby's assigned gender was female, but she would let the child decide what they wanted to be.

She got a new boyfriend pretty quick after moving and of course, here comes in the demisexual Romni, Leaf who is perfectly ok with dating a pregnant girl in his last year of high school. I know that times have changed since I was young, but no boy just jumps right in without having a ton of questions and thoughts. Plus any pregnant teen is going to have a lot more to worry about, but Sara was honestly pretty nonchalant about it all. One little hiccup with some kids at her school, and then two when she finds Baby Daddy. The most real character in the whole book was Jack's dad, and that was only one short section in it.

Overall, I don't feel that I read a book about teen pregnancy, but if you want a light fluffy read without and actual substance this is a good one for you.