My wife found this on Audible. It’s included with the membership, so she didn’t need to use one of the credits. As soon as she finished it, she immediately told me that I should give it a try.
And, damn. I loved it every bit as much as she did. This is probably the most charming book I’ve read this year, and was certainly one of the more enjoyable ones.
I’ve had some tentative forays into romance novels. For years, I brushed off anything that sniffed of romance – not because I have some kind of aversion to love, or it’s depictions in art. Generally, I love watching romantic comedies, and I enjoy a good romantic storyline in books and TV shows. When I think of a “romance novel”, I picture Fabio on the cover – and those books never appealed to me. But I’ve learned to appreciate novels focused on romance, even if they don’t necessarily fit into the Romance genre. I’ve even found some traditional Romance novels that I adored.
All thanks to Cannonball Read, I might add.
Call Me Maybe is a fairly simple story. Vera signed up on a Square Space-type website to build a website for a company she’s started, but it’s having technical issues. She calls customer service to get them resolved, and ends up talking to the customer service guy – Kal – for, like, nine hours.
I’m not going to lie – I rolled my eyes through much of this. It felt very cringey, to me, and incredibly implausible. But I can also pinpoint the exact moment when my feeling flipped. Vera and Kal are talking to one another, and something along the lines of the following exchange happened:
Vera: I’ll be quiet as a titmouse.
Kal: I think the phrase you’re looking for is, “quiet as a church-mouse.”
Vera: Right, well, my tits will be quiet.
Kal: Wow.
I may have guffawed. At work. And gotten a few odd looks.
There’s something about that exchange that just rang so true to me. The flirtatious excitement of budding romance is handled pretty well, here. After this, I began to see the cringey moments as more charming, and was soon swept up in the story. And I really liked both Vera and Kal.
This did have some the pitfalls thought frequently annoy me in romances – the central conflict between the two could pretty easily be resolved if they just talked to one another. But, I felt like the reason they weren’t talking to one another was at least believable – so it didn’t really bother me.
The only thing that didn’t quite work for me was a side plot between Kal and his father. But it’s a pretty small part of the book.
I highly recommend Call Me Maybe. I think many of you will like it. And if you already have an Audible account – it’s free!