THE BABY PLANNER

Ask not for whom the biological clock tolls—a San Francisco baby planner indulges in some planned parenthood of her own.

When California budget cuts eliminate her consumer-advocate job, Katie Johnson hits on the bright idea of starting a service to research the best and safest childcare products for new parents. Katie moves in the opulent circles of Bay Area tech-bubble wealth: Her husband Alex owns a private-equity firm (not entirely inaptly called S&M) which milks Silicon Valley’s richest cash cows. As a concierge ushering privileged progeny into the world, Katie’s days are soon monopolized by her clients, including Joanna, a high-powered attorney whose pregnancy by her second husband is upsetting her teenage daughter by her previous marriage, Twila, a gaming executive who is pregnant by a married work associate, and Seth, whose wife’s death in childbirth has left him hard-pressed to cope with his adorable infant daughter Sadie. But Katie’s own situation partly informs her career choice. She longs to have a child, but Alex keeps stalling: He is either too busy for children, he says, or still too traumatized by his ex-wife’s removal of his son from the country. Desperate, Katie surreptitiously pierces Alex’s condoms and goes off the pill. Months later, she still hasn’t conceived, despite many gratuitous sex scenes seemingly intended to earn the cover blurb from Jackie Collins. Seth is a founder of SkorTek, a company with which Alex has just structured a deal that involves an ultimate lucrative cashing-out of the original partners. Katie finds herself increasingly attracted to Seth, who’s being edged out of SkorTek by Alex on the pretext that his single fatherhood is dragging down his work performance. Startling revelations follow, but readers may be less than convinced that Katie, who is such an able fixer for others, could be so oblivious to the red flags in her own life.