Laura Crossett’s Night Sweats immediately drew me in with clever writing and dry-witted humor. It has to be incredibly difficult to open your life to anyone who has the ability to order a book, but she’s done just that, inviting us along on her spiritual—and often confessional—journey of what it takes to accept the burden/joy of a child. Night Sweats is a joyous, candid account of life, love, and cats, and I look forward to reading more from Laura. ( )

A memoir about - well, yes, an unexpected pregnancy. Laura Crossett wasn't trying to have a child; she was trying not to, but birth control sometimes fails. Her story is told chronologically, as she wrestles with the decision whether or not to have the child. Along the way we learn about her mother and grandmother (both of whom raised children largely alone), her father (who committed suicide when she was five years old), and not much about the father, who is sort of involved but at a distance. We also follow along as she buys a house, negotiates the changes her body is experiencing (so tired!) and as she reflects on her religious beliefs. ("The Bible is full of women who become accidentally pregnant. Lacking sticks to pee on, they instead have angels to deliver the frightening news. Well. The angels are frightening. In most cases the news is welcome...").It ends with Peter's arrival in the world and the start of their new life together.

"It's not that I haven't cried, or gotten frustrated, or scared, since Peter was born. There are plenty of times when I look at him and think, where did you come from? And why are you here? And do I really have to get up right now? Can't you just wait another hour or so? But somehow that doesn't matter. I get up and deal with his diapers and his insatiable appetite and his crying, and I look at him, and I know at long last that we both belong here."