Catching Babies

By: J D Kleinke

Narrated by: Kathleen Li

Birth, and death. Two ends of the same spectrum. And sometimes, the only person standing between is a tired, overworked resident with personal problems of her own.

Welcome to the world of Catching Babies. In the halls of a busy metropolitan teaching hospital, a group of OB/GYN doctors complete their residencies and embark on ambitious careers, all while trying to hold their lives together at the seams. Jay is running from a life he’s tried to leave behind, while Katie sacrifices everything she has to serve an endless parade of needy patients. Anna is out trying to save the world, while Tracy is trying to save twins dying in utero. Based on true stories from delivery rooms and labor decks, Catching Babies spins the doctors’ stories into a gripping mosaic of the obsessions, the anxieties, and the heroism of doctors who have chosen to preside over life’s greatest medical drama - high-risk childbirth.

©2010 J.D. Kleinke (P)2021 J.D. Kleinke

I really wanted to like it more than I did

Childbirth is probably one of my life’s passions and I was really looking forward to listening to this book. While the story was pretty good, the narration was not. It almost sounded as if Siri were reading to me. Character voices were either exaggerated or robotic as well. There was no happy medium. In addition, the writing in Spanish (where the author created dialogue for a native speaker and one of the doctors) was abysmal. Unfortunately, I can’t be absolutely certain if it was the writing or just the bad narration. The same goes for a few places where there seemed to be grammatical errors in English as well. Overall, this is a good book especially given that it’s the author’s first novel, but I really wish I had read the book instead of listened to it.