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     Keeper and Kid: A Novel

                by Edward Hardy

 

I received my copy of Keeper and Kid from a Goodreads.com giveaway back in September of 2009 and it has taken me until April 2010 to pick it up to read…

 

I picked this book up from my giant pile of unread books thinking that if I read anything it should be this just to get it off the pile and out of my way. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

 

I started reading this on a Saturday evening around 5 pm and the next thing I knew I was on page 200 and it was 1 am. I got so caught up in this story of Keeper and his discovering parenthood. I seriously couldn’t put it down.

 

I loved Keeper. His reactions to being thrown in with a 3 year-old are very real. I was a Nanny for a long time, and that first few months with new kids is just plain hard so I really felt for him. Getting used to their routines and their needs and their lives and forgetting your own. It is really hard.

 

I also identified with him on a more personal level since my sister-in-law and best friend just passed away last year leaving behind her 3 year-old. Constantly remembering those moment when you should have done something different, or wondering if you had done something else would it have ended the way it did. I cried a little while reading this book. Losing someone you love is like that.

 

I didn’t like Leah from the beginning. I had already decided that she was not my favorite. I found myself wanting to know more about Cynthia and her life and her personality. Leo was adorable, though at first I thought he was a little too articulate for a 3 year-old, but as the story moved on he leveled out to what I know of 3 year-olds.

 

Tim is a really good friend. Everyone needs a friend like that in their lives to keep around when times are tough. What a good man. 

 

I think this book reminds us all that life is not stationary and that we never know what to expect. Take the time to cherish the ones you love, and don’t overburden yourself with stuff you can’t do anything about. Just live in the moments.

 

There is just one item that I did not appreciate in this book. The over use of the f**k word. I’m not a fan of it in real life so I prefer not to read it in my literature as well.  I understand that my morals are different than most of the world and that is a perfectly acceptable word for most. I understand that it was one way to show the stress of the situation through words, and maybe Keeper just didn’t have a better way of expressing himself,  I just don’t like hearing/reading it as the punctuation to everything. To have made this more realistic Leo should have started parroting it back to Keeper. Because they do. That’s usually a good way to get a parent to clean up their language.

 

But above all, I love this book. I will recommend it to others.