When Julia Strauss was a teenager, her father sat her down and warned her, “Men are going to look at you.”

By the time Julia is a senior at Princeton, she’s used to turning heads. But the stare of a particular man from across the food court at the mall one day feels a little too intense. And when he approaches and hands her his card, embossed with the name Princeton Fertility Clinic, she finds herself listening to his pitch. Twenty thousand dollars? Just for selling my eggs?

What college senior couldn’t use $20,000?

And Jules isn’t “going to blow it on clothes or a car or a graduation bash, on Ecstasy or a trip to Vail, or Europe, or one of the hundred frivolous things my classmates might have chosen.” Oh, no, she’s already plotted noble plan for that money.

Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner probes the temptation to treat your fertility like a piece of real estate. Buy, sell, rent, time-share — as long as everybody reads the contract carefully, and signs on the dotted line, what can go wrong?

What can go wrong for Annie? In her working-class Philadelphia neighborhood, kids graduate from high school. The boys go to work in the factory, the girls start having babies. Money is tight, but sometimes there’s enough for your dreams. Annie’s own dream comes true when she and her husband buy a charming farmhouse. But did anybody check to make sure this adorable home has “working toilets, reliable appliances, closet space”? Wouldn’t a $50,000 turn at surrogacy solve a lot of problems?

What can go wrong for India, a forty-something woman who’s perfected herself with a lot of salad-eating and a little plastic surgery? She meets and marries a billionaire. A baby would really seal the deal. It’s just that her uterus won’t cooperate.

Meanwhile, the billionaire’s grown daughter, Bettina, resents India’s intrusion. She resents India’s plastic perfect-ness. Bettina resents the loss of her home, of Dad and Mom and her two brothers, “the five of us, together, the way we used to be.”

Bettina guesses that “India” isn’t even step-mommy’s real name. She starts digging for dirt.

What do you think will turn up? Could there be anything less than perfect in India’s past? If so, would it move us to scorn? Or sympathy?

And finally, what could go wrong for the child cobbled together in the coolly scientific rooms of the Princeton Fertility Clinic?

Then Came You is not a clean read. You’ll have to choose between the fascinating subject matter and an unnecessary plot twist launched by a scene that was almost a deal-breaker for me.

As for harvested eggs and rented wombs, I’m for it as long as it serves a traditional family structure. I’ve read some people — Mormon even! — who say that marriage and sex aren’t necessary anymore, since we can replenish via test-tubes.

Maybe they ought to try out their ideas on— oh, I don’t know — penguins or something. See if it’s a reliable, resilient way to churn the circle of life. See if young penguins pick up enough penguin survival skills, despite being raised by flamingos, giraffes and Princeton scientists.

I mean, how much confusion can we take?