Reviewer: Tracy The Switched Baby Scandal by Theresa Meyers
Series: Scandals of San Sebastian #1
Publisher: Entangled Bliss
Publication Date: June 10, 2013
Format: eARC
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His child. Her daughter. One monumental mix-up.
Single mom Taylor Lawrence just discovered that the hospital sent her home with the wrong infant five years ago. Now the headstrong and handsome biological father wants his child back. But Emily has always been her daughter, and Taylor won’t give her up without a fight.
Widower Reece Wallace believed his life was over when a drunk driver killed his wife and daughter. So when he learns of the baby switch, he sees this child as his ultimate salvation. But he never anticipated the fiery woman on the other side of this custody battle—or how she’d stir feelings in him long dormant.
As the media storm surrounding the hospital’s mistake intensifies, Taylor and Reece find there’s more to sort out than custody of Emily—they must work together to protect her while grappling with their growing attraction. Can they pick up the pieces of two broken families and meld them into something new?
Taylor Lawrence’s fiance left her the minute he found out she was pregnant. She finally is bold enough to fight him for child support but she needs DNA proof for the courts. What she finds blows her mind. Not only is her fiance not the father of her 4 year old, Emily, but she’s not the mother! WTF?
She takes up the issue with the hospital and what she finds is that her daughter was switched at birth with another child.
Reece Wallace is the father of the other child, Alyssa. The problem is is that Alyssa was killed in a car accident along with his wife over a year earlier. While he’s devastated by the loss of his family, he sees this as a way to finally keep his promise to his dying wife, that he would take care of their child. He seeks joint custody of Emily but Taylor isn’t willing to give up her child – because Emily IS hers whether she carried her in her womb or not.
Eventually Reece and Taylor work together to try and take care of Emily including having Emily and Taylor move into Reece’s gated home when the press gets wind of the whole story. Both Taylor and Reece feel an amazing attraction to each other but Taylor is afraid of once again having a man take her life over and Reece still has survivors guilt and is afraid of “cheating” on his dead wife.
I have to admit I can’t possibly imagine how it would be to find out that the child that you’ve raised for years isn’t yours. It certainly wouldn’t make me love that child less but it would be frightening to think of the other family and the ramifications of that switch. I think that Taylor and Reece handled things the best that they could and truly thought first about Emily and her feelings about the situation.
Now Reece was terribly torn about how he was feeling about both Emily and Taylor. I can see that it was difficult for him as he had such guilt about feeling attraction for Taylor when he should not be having feelings for her so soon after his wife had died. Granted he’d never had a great love for his wife, they were friends who got married because they’d gotten pregnant. I thought this was handled well but yet dragged on a bit for my liking.
Taylor was understandably cautious with Reece at times but then threw herself out there at other times and if she got shot down she really took it hard. I’m not sure why this bothered me so much. I guess I thought she should have known that Reece was in a tough spot, but yet she chose to ignore that. IDK, I guess I just never really warmed up to Taylor and her actions seemed over the top to me.
In the end I liked the premise of the story and felt for the characters who were in the situation, but I didn’t necessarily care for the way the story was laid out.
Rating: 3 out of 5