A Not So Immaculate Conception is a romantic comedy novel written by Crystal Estell. Lacey Winters was a woman in control of her destiny. She had every milestone charted and was, even now, anticipating landing the contract for The Sanctity of Marriage Coalition’s downtown skyscraper. Margot Wallace, the Coalition’s head, was on hand to congratulate her on having won the contract, and she expressed her admiration while mentioning as an aside that she had actually hoped for a married person to have won the contract, considering, of course, the Coalition and its purpose. She did assure Lacey that her single status wasn’t sufficient to disqualify her. After all, it wasn’t as though she were an unmarried mother or anything, Margot added.

Those words made Lacey’s blood run cold. Just earlier that day, a homeless woman had told Lacey that she was pregnant, and she did seem to have the oddest cravings. But how could that be? She hadn’t been intimate with anyone since she broke up with the detestable Finn. When she finally did have the time to use the home pregnancy test she had picked up on her way to work, however, it flashed two bright lines of pink. She was, indeed, pregnant. But how? And how was she to keep that contract?

Crystal Estell’s romantic comedy novel, A Not So Immaculate Conception, is a fast-paced and funny story about a strictly business young woman whose elaborately planned-out life is thrown into disarray by an unexplainable pregnancy. Following as she tries to figure out who the phantom father is, while keeping up the pretense that she is indeed married, makes this story work quite well. Estell’s plot is ingenious and filled with the unexpected, and her characters soon felt familiar and authentic. A Not So Immaculate Conception is highly recommended.

Lacey Winters is a strong independent woman, one who knows what she wants in her life and she plans it out thoroughly. She has a ten-year plan; however, what she was not expecting was to get pregnant unexpectedly. She was just having fun one night and the next thing she knows, she is pregnant. With the events of that night being particularly hazy, she has no idea who it was but she knows that the man was hot. However, things go downhill the moment her boss finds out and, in an act of desperation, she says that her co-worker Zak Cooper is her husband. Now poor Zak has to pretend to be her husband until her private investigator can find out who the father actually is. But what both of them were not expecting was the fact that they might fall for each other, so what will they do?

I wish I could give more than 5 stars to A Not So Immaculate Conception by Crystal Estell because this is a gem of a novel. From its humorous narrative to its pretty awesome characters, this novel was filled with amusing anecdotes that had me smiling until the very end. Lacey Winters is my spirit animal; she is funny, feisty, incredibly talented and a quick thinker. Zak Cooper, on the other hand, is the sweetest man ever. He stepped up, reluctantly or not, and helped her out. The chemistry between was phenomenal, they fought it, they avoided it, and then they simply learned to live with each other and then they grew to love each other. Was the story a little clichéd? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely. The character development is nicely done, the pace is fast, the narrative is smooth and the dialogues are some of the wittiest I have ever read.