Emotional, heart-warming, and full of all the lifestyle influencer content you didn't know you needed, this book is perfect for those who need a great beach read, or a quick escape.

This is a book about an influencer who has built her platform and brand around being childless by choice. This is all great until she meets Will and is very attracted to him. Unfortunately she soon realizes he is a single father to his daughter Addie. This definitely is a dilemma for Kit personally and career wise. Kit also is a book lover which is a another interesting aspect of her life. The pacing and writing are well done and this book is fun with characters that are engaging. A great summer read!

Kit Kidding is a Toronto influencer who promotes brands and her child-free lifestyle. She’s created a community for women who choose to not have children. When she meets Will MacGregor, a local chef, there’s an instant attraction. They end up working together on a brand promotion. However, when Kit learns that Will has a daughter, she second guesses their relationship. Being seen with a child would ruin Kit’s no-children brand. Even though his daughter, Addie, is smart and lovable, Kit is reluctant to be in a relationship with a man with a child because she doesn’t want to be a mother. Kit must decide if she will choose love or keep up her brand that she’s outgrowing.

Kit Kidding created a community for women who don’t want to have children. I think that it’s crazy that people think they have the right to judge people, particularly women, for their choice not to have children. I’ve heard it so many times, but it’s not anyone’s business if a woman has a child, whether by choice or not. Kit had to create this community so that women had a safe place to go to be with people who also chose not to have children.

Kit was also an Instagram influencer, so this story showed the positives and negatives of influencer lifestyle. Kit got to go to exclusive events and meet lots of people. However, she also had to promote brands that she didn’t want to use. She didn’t cook, but she had a contract to promote a food kit brand. Will solved this problem by cooking the food for her. It can make influencers lose their credibility if they promote brands just for the money and not because they actually like the brand. Kit had to figure out how to adjust her brand so that it suited the person she grew into by the end of the story.

Instamom is a fun contemporary romance!

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked this book!! Kit was a strong female character who was able to take her time figuring out who she wanted to be, and I appreciated the way this was written. As a mom, I appreciated the discussions around being a mom/choosing not to be a mom/wanting to be a mom and not being able to be one. I think this is something we all need to respect more about other women, and I think this book had some great points in that direction. I *really* loved Will and Addie, of course. It is always fun to read about a super-savvy 8 year old girl...right?!

Overall, I'd recommend this book for fans of women's fiction but after chatting with several friends about it, I've realized it might hit differently if you are a mom/not a mom etc. so just something to be aware of if that's something you are sensitive about!

Instagram influencer Kit has made her living promoting being happy, healthy and kid free. She is the leader of a group of women who are kid free by choice and happy about it. She promotes her happiness on her page, and is doing a great job at it. So when she meets Will, a handsome chef at an event and a romance beings to bloom what could go wrong? Besides finding out he’s a single father. Kit has to learn what’s most important in her life, and grow into the woman she was meant to be. Does that mean kid free, or does that mean Will?

It was really nice watching Kit grow into herself. She has a very nice character arc. A book about being tru to yourself and growing up.

What I thought it would be about:

I thought it would be about a somewhat annoying Insta influencer who targets the mom crowd.

What I thought:

It was quite funny and very relatable as someone who wakes up to Instagram notifications galore! I felt like this had more to it than I originally expected. There were insights into women who do not feel the need to have children yet the pressures they face from society.

If you are looking for something light, fun and quick I 10/10 recommend this for you!

Full disclosure: I've known Chantel Guertin for a number of years. I've been reading her books since 2011 (um, I did NOT expect it to have been a decade...) and I've seen her at countless book events in the years since. So, it's no surprise that I was THRILLED when I heard she was writing a new adult novel that was going to fall into the rom com sphere. Instamom is out tomorrow and it's a contemporary story that is smart and fun but also really deep as it addresses a lot of heavy and important topics.

Here's the book's description:
In this #funny, #wise, #emotionally compelling look at modern love and finding your true path, a proudly kid-free influencer meets the ultimate #dealbreaker . . .
It’s the influencer’s golden rule: know your niche. Kit Kidding has found hers on Instagram, where she gets paid to promote brands and share expertly curated posts about her fun, fabulous, child-free life. Kit likes kids just fine, but she passionately believes that women who choose not to become mothers shouldn’t have to face guilt. Or judgement. Or really hot chefs who turn out to be single dads.
Will MacGregor is aggravating, sexy, persistent, averse to social media, and definitely a bad idea. As soon as Kit learns his parenting status, she vows to put their scorching one-night stand behind her and move on. But Will and Kit are thrown together on an Instagram campaign, and the more time she spends with him—and his whip-smart, eight-year-old daughter, Addie—the more difficult it is to stay away, much less sustain what Will so cleverly calls her “Resting Beach Face.” Kit’s picture-perfect career path is suddenly clashing with the possibility of a different future—messy, complicated, and real. Which life does she truly want? Will she have to re-invent herself? And will love still be waiting by the time she figures it out?

Let's get the heavy stuff out of the way first. I, like Kit at the beginning of this novel, am childfree. I do not want kids and have felt this way for probably over ten years but have been super firm in my decision for I'd say about eight. I've had so many people tell me that I'll change my mind (pro tip: never tell a woman that. Ever.) My boyfriend (of sixteen years) also doesn't want kids and people in his world often say "but doesn't your girlfriend want kids?" There are countless other frustrating and nosy questions and comments I've gotten and it all comes down to this: society finds it really weird and hard to understand when a woman does not want to have children. So it was great to hear that some of Guertin's characters were also feeling those frustrations - it was so incredibly true to life and I appreciated it so much. But. This is where it gets tricky. (And slightly spoilery. But this does have a romance at it's core and if you can't figure out that there's a Happily Ever After at the end of this one, well, I can't help you.) I really, really didn't want Kit to change her mind. And I kind of felt like an asshole about that. One of the main points of this story is that women are allowed to change their mind about having children (or not). I truly do believe that. One of my very best friends did and I'm thrilled to bits for her and her little munchkin. BUT. I don't get to see myself and my views on not having kids reflected in fiction very often and the fact that this one was so close and then wasn't? I think I felt hurt. It's been a very complicated time for me to sort out these feelings, let me tell you. At the end of the day, Guertin's novel nails the judgment women receive because of their decisions on motherhood and how they're questioned because of those decisions. I may have felt way too close to the storyline but that doesn't take away from how important it is for stories like this to be out there, that challenge the status quo and explore what it's like to be a woman - with or without children.

I love that contemporary novels are finding a great balance between fun and light and serious and heavy. Should we be calling them all rom coms? Hmm, maybe not. Romantic comedies are going to have more real life topics to deal with than straight romance novels but they should still be super heavy on the romance and the comedy. Once you add in struggles with, in the case of Instamom, deciding whether you want to completely change your values when it comes to having children? Can it really be a rom com? This one wasn't laugh out loud funny like I expect from those kinds of books but it was still smart and witty - which I love. I don't have an answer for "what should we call these kinds of books?" and I'm still not sure if we really need one. I struggle with it, too, because a book by a man with these kinds of themes would just be fiction. No need to throw a subgenre on there. Anyone else feel like that?

The other part of the storyline, apart from the childfree business, explored Kit's job as an influencer. I am so small time but I'm still in the influencer world a little wee bit so I understood some of what she was feeling. Authenticity seems to be what people want to see but it also appears they still enjoy the carefully curated photos and captions more than every day views. Influencers feel they have to have a niche so followers know what to expect. And it all gets to be a bit...exhausting. Guertin doesn't hold back in describing how conflicted Kit was and the issues she was facing as an influencer and it was great to read - really real and impactful. I don't know what's going to happen with our influencer heavy world but I think something has to change.

Kit was a really interesting character to read. She's about my age, which I always appreciate, and smart and a book lover. I was pretty sure we would be friends if we ever met in person. I was really emotionally connected to her and her story and I felt all the feelings right alongside with her. I did feel a little differently about Will than she did. Quite honestly...er...well...I didn't like him. I felt he never listened to Kit and brushed off her concerns as if they were silly or hysterical. I do think he truly cared for her but I couldn't help but think he had some shit to figure out before he'd be good enough for Kit. And Addie? She was an absolute delight. I've read three books in the last two months where there's a daughter who's about seven or eight and they've all been so smart (sometimes too smart) and fun to read about.

I also absolutely loved that this book was set in Toronto. We're seeing that more and more in contemporary reads from Canadian authors and I'm SO HAPPY. Next we need to have more cities and towns represented from across the country. Publishers may have some backwards notion that readers in other countries (cough, the USA, cough) don't want to read books set in Canada but I think that assumption is slowly changing.

Instamom had me feeling all of the feels and I think Chantel Guertin's latest novel is going to stick with me for a long while. It's a perfect book to throw in your beach bag or dive into while sitting in your backyard. It'll make you think and smile the entire way through.

*Am egalley was provided by both the Canadian (Doubleday Canada/PRHC) and American (Kensington Books) publishers and a print copy was provided by Doubleday Canada in exchange for review consideration. All opinions and honest and my own.*

4.5/5
Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for a gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

Although slightly predictable, this book is the best summer read if you're craving a sweet, romantic story with social media on the side. Kit Kidding, a popular influencer, has built her brand on choosing the kid-free life. But when she meets Will, who has a daughter, Kit is thrown for a loop and really has to step back and evaluate for herself if she can go forward with the relationship or not.

I love Chantel's writing style. It really draws you into the story and you get invested really fast into the lives of these characters. I enjoyed the banter between Kit and Will, and the plot moved at a great pace. You'll definitely be finishing this book with a new perspective on social media for sure - and also a better look at how curated an influencer's feed can really be.

Emotional, heart-warming, and full of all the lifestyle influencer content you didn't know you needed, this book is perfect for those who need a great beach read, or a quick escape.

Told through the lens of an Instagram influencer, Guertin's Instamom is a compelling look at modern relationships, perceptions, and the pressures women face with societal expectations. Kit Kidding is proudly kid-free and has made it her brand. She has created an envious career out of her unapologetic choice to not have children. But what happens when she's met the ultimate #dealbreaker?

At first Will is charming, wickedly sexy, and worth taking a chance on. But as the story progresses, he puts Kit into situations that are either unfair—in that she's set up to fail—or that are just plain awful. My only criticism is that the chemistry isn't quite to the level where it's believable that they would want to work on their relationship.

That being said, Guertin is a wonderful writer. There are some truly beautiful passages where Kit is reminiscing about her mom and that she was a secret bookstagrammer. Also effective was the reminder of the pitfalls of social media and how life is curated to be envied.

Funny, flirty, and emotional, Instamom is a perfect summer escape.

Kit is Ieading the picture perfect life (literally - her instagram pictures are perfect) but its all fake. She posts fitness selfies but doesn’t run, she posts food box ads but doesn’t cook, even her condo isn’t realistically showcased. But when she meets Will - who doesn’t fit into her grid and brand - she finds herself questioning what’s more important in life and who she really wants to be.

Having experience as a micro-influencer and a bookstagrammer myself, I could really relate to the social media topics of this book and I enjoyed this book a lot. It felt like nothing else I’ve read and though it’s a romance - it also delves into more serious issues like spousal loss, parental loss (and the impacts that can have on your life and who you become), the pressures of social media and female empowerment.

I’ll definitely be recommending this book to friends.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the digital ARC of this book. All opinions remain my own as always.

I have lukewarm feelings about the book. I didn’t love the character of Will. He felt too aggressive and forward for my liking. The plot lines in the book seemed unrealistic to me but if you can look past it, the story flowed. The ending was predictable and...eh fine. With such a sensitive topic, I wish the book went in a different direction with the ending (no spoilers so I’m being vague!) but no suck luck. The writing was well done, however, so I will definitely pick up the author’s next book.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Instamom is a charming rom-com by Chantel Geurtin that was refreshing, fun, relatable, sweet and a little steamy.

We meet Kit Kidding, an Instagram sensation, who has built her brand around being childless. When she meets Will, the attraction is instant. When she finds out he is the father of an eight year old, Kit is terrified. Their attraction is irresistible, but how can she fit this content into her life?

Although this was definitely a light and fluffy novel, it handles thought provoking issues like social media, widow-hood, single parenting, female empowerment and family beautifully. I loved Instamom being set in Toronto and Niagara and loved the Canadian content.

This is the perfect novel for cottaging and being lakeside this summer. I definitely recommend this very well written rom-com!

A sincere thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

4 stars.

This was an enjoyable light read. Thought provoking in regards to Instagram. If you are looking for a quick easy read then this is your book

I typically read thrillers and mysteries but every few books I want a feel-good, rom-com as a bit of an escape and a lighter read. I figured Instamom would be a cute, fun read- so I was super excited to receive this ARC. What I wasn’t expecting was it to have more heart and substance to the story. Instead of the traditional “rom com” and perhaps superficial “woman and man meet and fall in love, the end” Instamom has a lot more going for it, and brings a really different story to the genre. Kit’s story is one that I haven’t seen done before, and I think this novel will touch a lot of people- while still being a fun, quick and good read.
I absolutely loved all the Toronto references (the Centreville jingle was stuck in my head for 3+ days) and the inside look into the Influencer/ Social Media world which I always enjoy.
I’m so glad this book was what I wanted it to be, I would definitely recommend.
Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada and Chantel Guertin for the opportunity to read and enjoy this ARC!

InstaMom is an entertaining feel-good story about a young social media influencer, Kit, who is seemingly leading the perfect life according to her Instagram posts. Kit has chosen a childfree life and champions the rights of women to choose not to become mothers but then one day, she meets Will and his young daughter, Addie. Against her better judgement, Kit becomes romantically involved with Will. There are lots of lovely moments between Kit and Will but the author goes further, interweaving issues of women’s choices, societal expectations on women to be mothers, and the impact of creating the seemingly perfect life on social media on relationships.

This is a charming story with likeable characters and I found myself rooting for Kit who was struggling with the life she had planned for herself. The plot moves along at a good pace and I read the book in 2 sittings. If you are looking for a feel-good romantic story, check this one out! InstaMom is out on June 29.

Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada, Doubleday Canada and Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.