Review of Welcome to Your Life

Let me first say that I am not in the demographic that this book is written for and that this is the author's first book. This is a story about teenage pregnancy. Tonya finds out she is pregnant the summer after graduation and she has previously broken up with the father of the baby. After finding out she is pregnant she still has no plan to reconcile with the father which is for the best as he is defintely not ready to be a husband or a father. Tonya goes to the local community college in the fall for her freshman year and there she meets a new boy. He is a great guy who likes her, for her, even though she is pregnant. They grow closer and spend more time together during the semester. One thing I had a problem with is that we hear constantly how hungry Tonya is. She is always eating but the problem is the food she eats isn't healthy. Another issue I had was that she didn't attend any prenatal classses or have a birth plan whatsoever. She just proceeded through her pregnancy with no apparent thought to any of this. She doesn't feel the baby kick until the seventh month and then seems surprised. Once she goes into labor we hear she went to one Lamaze class but felt it was a waste of time. Once labor starts she is again surprised about the strength of the contractions. Even though she lives with her parents they haven't really prepared her for what's ahead. I felt that this was not the way pregnancy and teenage motherhood should really be portrayed in a YA book. I reviewed this book for Netgalley. It is released on Aug 3, 2017.