Review: 'If Not For My Baby' by Kate Golden (do not recommend)
Pub. Date: 07/08/2025
Publisher: Quercus Books
Clementine Clark isn't looking for love. She's a talented singer, but she's set her dreams of stardom - and romance - aside to care for her ailing mother.
And then her best friend calls her with a life-changing opportunity: join Irish megastar Halloran on his first US tour as a backing vocalist. Clementine wants to reject the offer, but the pay would change her and her mom's life. Overnight, Clementine goes from serving enchiladas at the Happy Tortilla to belting high notes before a cheering crowd.
But the whiplash of trading small-town Texas for sold-out stadiums is nothing compared to the rush of performing with the enigmatic Thomas Patrick Halloran. Poet, introvert, and lyrical genius, Halloran quickly gets under Clementine's skin. The two couldn't see the world more differently. And yet, over the course of the next eight weeks on tour, the romantic rockstar might just strike an unforgettable chord in Clementine. But will it be enough for an encore?
Unfortunately I think that this book is highly inappropriate. I know, look at me grandstanding on morals, but let me explain. I first started reading romance when I was introduced to Ali Hazelwood by a friend. I knew her books were based on fanfiction she wrote about Kylo Ren and Rey, characters from the Star Wars sequels. Fanfiction is based on fictional characters and, although it can take creepy shades, it is usually absolutely fine. The characters form a starting point from which fanfic authors build alternative universes or create their own storylines; they are something of a shortcut to characterisation, which authors eventually outgrow if they focus on the craft. So although the main characters of Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis are very clearly based on Kylo Ren and Rey, by Not in Love, Hazelwood grew into writing her own characters who still might contain hints to the OGs, but are their own creation. In my eyes, that's absolutely fine. If Not For My Baby, however is not fine for a whole number of reasons. Quick disclaimer, I am a fan of Hozier's music and all of this made me feel bad. Kate Golden's book is not based on fictional characters but on a real life person who is famously quite private. When I read the blurb I stupidly assumed that the marketing was exaggerating the connection between Halloran and Hozier to sell to his fans (already rude). Unfortunately, the blurb almost undersells just how much Golden is basically writing about Hozier. I can't even explain to you, dear reader, to what extent she has stolen his likeness and repurposed it into a romance plot. There is no Halloran without Hozier, is what I'm trying to say. Golden has not created a character, she has copied and pasted things known about a real life person into a plot and then explicitly described how he would be to have sex with. I found this gross when it happened to Taylor Swift and I find it gross here. It is an invasion of privacy, simple as that, much as creating deepfakes of people is. Another thing is that Golden engages in all kinds of weird "Irish people as magical woodland creatures" discourse. I appreciate this is also a bad thing about the Hozier fandom itself, but here it is taken to a whole new level I feel. Any of Hozier's actual political activism is erased in Halloran, while Ireland is turned into a magical green isle that has never been troubled by strife. It's wrong and the more I think about it the grosser I feel about having read it.
Clementine works at a tortilla place to make money for her mother's medicine, but really her dream has always been to perform musical theatre. When her friend needs Clementine to fill her place as a background singer for famed Irish musician Halloran, she decides to go for it because they could use the money and this might be her one taste of performing. From here, the usual takes place. Halloran is more than she expected, touring is more than she expected, and what seemed comfortable about her quiet life before now no longer fits. How much is she willing to sacrifice of herself to please others? If Not For My Baby is straightforward in its formula, which is fine. Were it not for the issue above, I probably would have had a better time with this. Even with the Halloran-issue put to one side for a sec, however, the story isn't really worked out well. Clementine's childhood is not great and her relationship with her mom one which reads quite toxic. I would have loved to have seen more of how Clementine grew in her understanding of that, for example, of how she actually confronted her own security-blanket-cynicism and grew as a character. She doesn't grow as a character, unfortunately. Golden also throws in some brief discussion of power imbalance and consent, but this is more like checking a box than engaging with the topic. The side characters are the fun kind of road crew (mostly), but I didn't really feel Clementine's growing connection to them, although it is endlessly talked about, in a case of telling rather than showing.
I'm giving If Not For My Baby the lowest rating I've given in years and much of that has to do with the invasiveness discussed above. Had it not been for that, I might have quite enjoyed the novel. If Kate Golden had taken the time to ask what it was she enjoyed about Hozier's music and then took the extra step to create a male lead that shared these elements, abstracted from a real life person who is entitled to his privacy, this could have been good. It would still have needed a bit more development even then, though. As I said, the novel's non-romance elements were underdeveloped and I felt that they did somewhat detract from the plot. The protagonist herself also veers wildly between being a responsible adult and very immature in a way that grated. I also wish that the actual connection between the leads had actually been worked out more. It's not enough for me that they like each other's voices, I want actual conversations about music, for example, not just, "yes we both liked this yay". But I feel icky even thinking about how this could have worked because Halloran simply isn't a character but a pastiche of a real person. I honestly think that publishers need to think a bit more critically about where they draw the line for these kinds of books because some things should stay on AO3, or even better, in the mind.
I give this novel...
1 Universes!
If Not For My Baby could have been an absolutely fine, middle-of-the-road romance, if it had made the effort of creating a main male lead, rather than throwing a filter of a real-life person who did not ask for any of this.
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