Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries

Annie Bostrom | Booklist Online – October 14, 2016

Last we heard from Bridget Jones, in Mad about the Boy (2013), the beloved heroine was trying to get her groove back as a newly single mom. Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries, based on Fielding’s columns in the Independent, takes place several years before that book, and is being released in conjunction with the third film in the franchise. It’s been a rough few months for Bridget. First, after a dynamite reunion with her beloved ex, Mark Darcy, he tells her they can’t be together lest he use up any more of her surely waning “childbearing years.” A few days later, she puts the notion that she’s reached her sexual sell-by date to rest with none other than Daniel Cleaver, her other sexy ex, though that seems to go nowhere, too. So when a little blue line confirms that she’s pregnant, she’s thrilled. Letting rivals Mark and Daniel know that she can’t be sure which of them is the father is messy business for sure, but it’s Bridget’s own identity crisis that she doesn’t anticipate. Her Singleton friends are acting like she’s no longer one of them, and though Bridget’s pregnancy does put a damper on her partying, she’s not rushing to become a Smug Married just because she has a bun in the oven. While Bridget lumbers over these new hurdles with her signature charm, predictably entertaining dramatics ensue between Mark and Daniel, while readers guess who the baby daddy is until the end of this little breeze of a book. — Annie Bostrom