First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison is a contemporary romance inspired by Sleepless in Seattle (4.5/5 stars)

First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison is a contemporary romance inspired by Sleepless in Seattle and the first in her new Heartstrings series.

Lucie is a single mother to a tween daughter who works as a mechanic. She and her childhood best friend, Grayson, had Maya while they were still pretty young. Today, they have a wonderful co-parenting relationship and Grayson and his husband Mateo live next-door. One night, Maya calls into Heartstrings, Baltimore’s romance hotline and radio program, to ask for advice for her mom. Maya’s conversation with the host, Aidan, ends up going viral, and Lucie is invited to join the program to help her find love.

There were several things in this book that I loved: the casual queerness is phenomenal, the romance had me kicking my little feeties, and it’s set in a real place that I am familiar with. Baltimore is less than an hour from my house on a good travel day, and I tend to visit several times per year. In fact, I used to work as a pirate out of Fells Point, an area name-dropped in the book!

Another thing that I love to see in contemporary romance is the importance of enthusiastic consent and regular check-ins to make sure everyone is comfortable with any scenario. For the most part, I really loved how communicative both of our leads were. In many ways I saw a lot of myself in both Lucie and Aidan, especially how the latter compartmentalizes.

This would have probably gotten a full five stars from me if it was a little less long (it’s almost 450 pages) and there wasn’t a contrived third-act breakup. I say contrived because up until this point, our main characters were communicating pretty well. Unfortunately, miscommunication (my least favorite romance trope) rears its ugly head there.

That being said, there was a ton of banter throughout the book that I truly enjoyed, and not just between romantic partners. This exchange literally made me snarf:

“Do you find anyone sexy yet, or is that a thirteen-year-old thing?”

“Patty,” I say again, a warning in my voice.

Maya shrugs, scooping the avocado off her sweater. “I think books are sexy,” she says, very seriously. “No one at school has quite lived up to Aragorn yet.”

God, I love this kid. I lean over and press a smacking kiss to her temple. “I hate to break it to you, kid, but no one ever will.”

I’m so excited to read further books in this series. Jackson, Aidan’s best friend and weather reporter, was so bumbling and fun and I am so hype to see where he finds love. There’s also Maggie, their boss, who seems very put together so I’m very interested in seeing her let her hair down (hopefully with the actually nice guy that Lucie has a date with but didn’t have sparks).

Tropes in this book include: forced proximity, grumpy/sunshine, slow burn, multi-pov

I received a complimentary review copy from Berkley Romance and NetGalley. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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