Bed Rest
Written by Sarah Bilston
Narrated by Elizabeth Sastre
4/5
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About this audiobook
In a charming and witty novel, Sarah Bilston tells the story of a busy career woman who finds her pregnancy a breeze -- until she's ordered off her feet for complete and total bed rest.
Quinn ""Q"" Boothroyd is a young British lawyer married to an American and living in New York City. She's checked off most of the boxes on her ""Modern Woman's List of Things to Do Before Hitting 30,"" and her busy working life has been relatively painless. But when her doctor tells her she must spend the last three months of her pregnancy lying in bed, Q is thrown into a tailspin. Initially bored and frustrated, Q's days soon fill up as she tries to reconnect with her workaholic husband, provide legal advice for her sweet Greek neighbor, find romance for a loyal co-worker, forge new emotional bonds with her mother and sisters, and figure out who will keep her stocked up in cookies and sandwiches.
Q experiences adventures on the couch she never would have encountered in the law firm, and learns a lot about herself and what she wants out of life -- above all about the little one growing inside of her.
Sarah Bilston
Sarah Bilston is the author of Bed Rest. Originally from England and married to an American, she teaches at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she lives.
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Reviews for Bed Rest
11 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Total bed rest for the last three months of pregnancy sounds like a boring premise for a novel, but for Quinn "Q" a young British lawyer married to an American lawyer and living in Manhattan it is anything but - lots of fun with some serious moments. Great on audio with the British accent.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The writing in this book is atrocious. The protagonist is unlikeable, the hashtagfirstworldproblems are not relatable, and the story drags on as if you are *literally* reading the boring droll of teenaged diary. Skip this one, you won't miss it.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quinn is a young lawyer, born in Britain but now married to an ambitious American attorney and living in New York City. They are expecting a child, but their lives are turned upside down when Quinn is told that she must stay on bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy to delay a possible pre-term delivery as long as possible. During her bed rest, Quinn occupies herself by making to-do lists, seeing family and friends, and getting ready for the birth of her child.Quote: “Crack open Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” when life seems hard to bear. It’s always good to discover that someone else has been closer to the screaming edge than you are.”This is one of those books that is written as if it is the diary of the main character- although I did not find it to be as big on flow-of-consciousness as some works with a similar premise, such as “Bridget Jones’ Diary.” The problem with this work is that, although it is entertaining, I found Quinn and those around her much less endearing than would be necessary to make this book really work. There was a nearly complete lack of sympathetic or appealing characters portrayed (which may be because it was written from Quinn’s perspective and the bed rest has made her touchy), but everyone in her life is completely annoying, which made it really difficult to care whether all the individual story lines worked out okay.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Quinn Boothroyd, expat Brit married to American lawyer Tom and currently pregnant with their first child, discovers a major glitch in the pregnancy (besides the fact that her and Tom's high-stress life is going to be impossible once the baby arrives): low amniotic fluid. If the baby is to survive, Q has to stay lying down on her left side for the next thirteen weeks. As a woman once diagnosed with placenta previa during her first pregnancy (I recall the doctor talking about blood "literally pouring off the table" if things went wrong) and also sentenced to bed rest, I empathized with Q's bed-rest trials: the very phrase, "bed rest" begins to seem Orwellian as your mental health goes south, your intense boredom creates massive stress, and your social life becomes non-existent. Bilston manages to make all this quite amusing, while guiding Q through resolution of her less-than-sisterly feelings for her sisters, her deteriorating relationship with Tom, and the legal case of the downstairs tenants which Q takes on to while away her hours. I was a bit surprised by how dark things got before the dawn, but I did enjoy it - the problem of Brianna and her married lover was actually awfully funny. How about a sequel, Sarah Bilston? This is the right kind of book for a sequel.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bed Rest by Sarah Bilston is the story of Q, an expectant mother who is put on bed rest after it is discovered the baby doesn't have enough fluid. The book is written from the point of view of Q writing in her diary about all her visitors (or lack there of), marital stress caused by her husband working too much, family and friend drama, and her worry about her baby. Despite the rather serious subject matter, Q is an endearing narrator and her story is funny, light and interesting. I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick read and I identified well with Q. I am looking forward to reading the sequel, Sleepless Nights. This was a very good book and I recommend it to anyone who has ever been pregnant. 5 stars.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is Bilston's first novel. It was an okay read. I looked forward to it and was disappointed. It wasn't very fast paced or enticing to read. Not a page turner. You won't feel bad if you skip this one.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yummy book that will entrance Sophie Kinsella lovers...a fast tracked pregnant English attorney married to a New York attorney and the problems that they encounter when she is forced into total bed rest for the survival of her unborn baby.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A young English lawyer, married to an American and living in New York, goes for a routine scan, finds her amniotic fluid dangerously low and is confined to bed for the duration of her pregnancy. But life doesn't end there: whilst lying on her sofa she finds herself the confidante for a colleague embroiled in an affair with a married man, forced to reassess her relationships with her mother and sisters and even with her late father, and acting as legal adviser for a group of elderly tenants faced with forced eviction from their rent-controlled housing – a battle in which her husband, also a lawyer, finds himself on the other side. An easy read, with some surprising hints of depth
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh, this was so marvellous to read. A novel about a career woman and her first pregnancy, it's quite hilarious once the protagonist has to step away from normal worklife and stay, mostly, on a couch due to medical complications.
There's a maternal neighbor, a mother who flies in from jolly old England, and then there's the husband, who is driven as crazy as the pregnant one. I was laughing throughout most of the book, and that's a very good sign.
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