First-Time Caller (B.K. Borison)

sarfirc
May 3
3 min read

Updated: May 16

BOOK DESCRIPTON

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. Which, as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline Heartstrings, is a bit of a problem. When a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mother, Lucie, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.

Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. But, with all of Baltimore scrutinizing her love life (or lack thereof), she begins to question whether she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending . . . even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But, as sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between a radio-sponsored happily-ever-after or the man in the headphones next to her.

REVIEW

This book has all the same feels that you get when you watch your favourite 90’s romcom movie. It is a warm and comforting story that feels like you have already read it before but also is has a few nontraditional elements that you don’t get in the classic romcoms. I loved the premise of this book and was intrigued by how it was inspired by the 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle and that the Heartstrings series will be inspired by different Nora Ephron classics. Although I haven’t seen the movie before I was worried that I would feel like it was missing out on important details throughout, but I was surprised that I was still able to keep up with everything going on in the book. I enjoyed how the author had effortlessly added a few nontraditional elements throughout the story and that it didn’t feel like it was forced upon you. An example of this is Lucie being a single mother too Maya but having an amazing relationship with Grayson (the baby daddy) and his husband Matteo, who both lives next door.

I was very close to rating this book 5 stars, but I felt like it was just a bit too long. If the author cut down on a few details, then this would be a perfect book for me. An example of this is Lucie gets assigned a new customer at her job, who starts testing her to see if she would add different parts to his old truck. When she answers correctly, he gets her to work on his car and comes in multiple times to check how she is going with it. Throughout their interactions with each other, you can see that the costumer has a crush on Lucie, but she doesn’t notice until one night he calls into the radio station and tries to ask her on a date. I think this part could have been cut in half and you still would have the desired reaction that the author wanted. With that being said, I love all the cute little details that the author added to help strengthen Lucie and Aiden’s relationship throughout the story. One of my favourite examples of this is when Lucie first joins the radio show she talks about what she wants in a relationship. Aiden notes this down with the expectation that it would be helpful for finding Lucie a date, but instead, he keeps the list in the glovebox of his car and starts to implement those points into their relationship. I will definitely read this book again and am very excited for this series to continue.