Josh and Lou interact with Dallas almost as much as Diana interacts with him. Her life took a very sudden and abrupt turn when she became the boys' guardian, but she has poured her life into making sure Josh and Lou know they are loved. I imagine most parents feel some sort of doubt when raising their kids, but Diana's is compounded based on the fact that, 1) these are not her biological children, 2) these kids came to her due to traumatic circumstances, 3) she receives criticism on how she raises them from multiple sources, and 4) raising kids is hard. But there is a huge undercurrent of doubt and vulnerability when it comes to her ability (and credibility) to raise Josh and Lou. Fighting for them, loving them, and reprimanding them when they need it. She is a mama-bear when it comes to them. Diana's love and devotion to these two boys is made unequivocally clear time and again. What I love about this book is that, while it employs the single mom trope, the boys are a very real part of the story. How can she gauge that trust if the man never meets the kids? In some cases, the hero and the children very rarely interact, which, to me, seems like a huge oversight in the story especially since the main obstacle the lovers need to hurdle is her trust in him with her kids. They are forgotten, easily left behind in the story, rather than adding to it. Children are used as props rather than treated as actual characters. Or if they are, they act as an ill-timed (or convenient?) cock-blocking device. I understand that entrusting children with someone else is a delicate issue however, more often than not, the child isn't even a character in the story. The main obstacle these two have to hurdle is the mother's trust issues when it comes to her children. Many books that follow this trope use the children as a convenient plot device to keep the heroine and the hero apart.

When it comes to “single mom romances”, I always have reservations. And with that new neighborhood, comes a new neighbor, Dallas, who is tall, dark, and handsome…and just happens to be Josh's new baseball coach.

The book begins a few years into her guardianship and starts with their move into a new home and neighborhood. Wait For It is the story of Diana who, after the tragic death of her brother and his wife, finds herself the new guardian of her two young nephews, Josh and Louie. Mariana Zapata's Wait For It is by far the best example of the single mom trope I have read.

Wait for it by mariana zapata