Book Review: First Time Caller by B. K. Borison

There are few romance writers that make me fall quite as hard for their characters as B. K. Borison does. With the four-book Lovelight Farms series under her belt, the author is yet to write a protagonist I didn’t absolutely adore. So it was with some small measure of trepidation that I settled down to read Borison’s first novel to move away from the beloved interconnected small-town romcoms. Would I miss the cosy Christmas tree farm backdrop? Would the characters feel as relatable as the ones that came before? I needn’t have worried, because First Time Caller is just as sweet, sexy and heartwarming as its predecessors.

Taking inspiration from Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, the story centres around Lucie Stone, a hopeless romantic mechanic and mum whose love life has ground to a halt, and Aiden Valentine, a jaded, temperamental radio host who spends his evenings giving people romantic advice, even though he’s fallen out of love with love itself. When Lucie’s whip smart daughter calls Aiden’s romance hotline asking for dating advice on her mum’s behalf, Lucie finds herself at the centre of a viral interview. Suddenly everyone in Baltimore is invested in her reluctant search for love and Aiden’s ratings skyrocket. And that’s how Lucie’s Road to Love begins.

Lucie becomes a regular fixture in Aiden’s radio booth, as the two take calls from listeners and spend their evenings discussing romance, dating and their differing expectations of love. But as the increasingly disastrous search for Lucie’s perfect match continues across the airwaves, sparks begin to fly behind the scenes. The more time they spend together, the more Lucie and Aiden find it difficult to ignore their undeniable connection – something all of Baltimore seems to have already picked up on. Lucie’s looking for a love that feels like magic and Aiden doesn’t believe it exists, but if the Heartstrings hotline teaches them anything, it’s that the best kind of love story doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be real.

I want to feel something when I connect with someone. I want sparks. The good kind, you know? I want to laugh and mean it. I want goose bumps. I want to wonder what my date is thinking about and hope it might be me. I want…I want the magic.”

First Time Caller is a book that’s all about love and longing; about wanting things that you can’t always put into words, and the inescapable vulnerability that comes from placing your heart in someone’s hands and hoping they’ll be careful with it. I’ve never felt so hopelessly giddy reading about two characters who look so wrong for each other on paper but feel so right for each other from the moment they meet. Aiden is grumpy and pessimistic but Lucie is like a shot of adrenaline in his veins. Meanwhile, Lucie has settled into the comfortable life she’s created for her family. She doesn’t realise anything is missing until Aiden’s radio show forces her out of her comfort zone. Apparently there’s nothing like your teenage daughter embarrassing you live on air to make you reassess your relationship status.

With this story, Borison perfectly captures the wants and hopes and fears that are universal to us all. It’s something that Ephron was so adept at too. The world of modern dating can be a brutal place, as Lucie very quickly discovers, but Borison never lets her characters give up. Even when they feel scared, humiliated or lost, Lucie and Aiden find courage in each other. They find the kind of joy and comfort and understanding that most of us yearn for. And whilst the story orbits around Lucie and Aiden with single-minded focus, it also imparts the importance of love coming in different shades and shapes. The love between old friends, or the love between parents and children, can be just as healing to the soul.

With its seaport city setting and its grumpy x sunshine split POV narrative, First Time Caller introduces readers to their latest slow burn contemporary romcom obsession. It’s enough to soften even the grumpiest of hearts.

★★★★½

First-Time Caller is published by Pan on 13 February 2024