Alice Raymond is pregnant, alone, and suddenly wielding some uncontrollable gypsy magic. Somehow she has to find a way to cope with being pregnant by a dirtbag ex-boyfriend, break the news to her family, and figure out what the deal is with her new-found abilities. If that weren’t enough, she has five months to find her soul mate or her unborn baby will forever pay the consequences.

Here’s the thing: A Stroke of Magic is a Chick Lit book that somehow got mislabeled as a Paranormal Romance. First, it’s written in first person narrative, which alone doesn’t make it Chick Lit. But combining that narrative style with a storyline that is essentially all about the heroine and the changes in her life (with the romance as one of several subplots), it read very much like Chick Lit to me. Not very good Chick Lit, either.

The mystery surrounding the gypsy magic was mildly intriguing, but the romance subplot was, at best, two-dimensional. In fact, I’d estimate that only one-third of the book as a whole involved any actual interaction between Alice and the hero, Ethan. And a considerable portion of that interaction was either as co-workers or in a friend/advisor fashion, with Ethan trying to help Alice with her baby-daddy issues. Needless to say, I wasn’t buying it for a second when the declarations of everlasting love and forever came. My response was something along the lines of, “Are you kidding?”

In addition to the two-dimensional romance, there’s two-dimensional hero Ethan. One of the big reasons that Ethan felt flat was that he’s so unbelievably perfect he never felt real. Gorgeous? Check. Doesn’t think twice about pursuing a pregnant woman? Check. Thinks the heroine is dead sexy at 5 months pregnant? Check. Is kind, considerate, and attentive at all times? Check. Frankly all that blinding perfection was just too much. And given that the reader is told so little about him and his background, there wasn’t any kind of depth to make up for that pure fantasy perfection, either.

The characterizations of Alice and a few of the secondary characters — namely her sister and best friend — were somewhat better. I liked the best friend and sister, but the Adorably Wacky Grandma wasn’t doing it for me. And for the most part I liked Alice. Although by the end her inability to see what was staring her in the face had grown tiresome, there was really nothing objectionable about her.

So unless you’re a Chick Lit fan in the mood for The Single Pregnant Woman’s Ultimate Fantasy, I recommend skipping A Stroke of Magic if for no other reason than because the romance is quite lacking in depth.