First-Time Caller was one of my favorite romances I read last year, so when I saw B.K. Borison was coming out with a sequel, I waited impatiently to get it from the library.
I was kind of disappointed.
It’s not a bad book. Something about it just didn’t pop for me the way First-Time Caller did.
This is a sequel, which means Aiden and Valentine make a few short appearances, so we can see how disgustingly in love they still are. Maybe it was the fact that we never get to see Lucie’s adorable and incredibly sweet child that I missed in this book.
That said, Jackson does have two children for whom he is responsible. His mother proved to be a totally inept parent and he basically had to raise himself. Once he was old enough and financially stable enough, he got custody of his younger twin sisters and has been raising them.
The girls are adorable, and of course there’s no better rescue-the-cat-type scenario than volunteering at an early age to be a parent to children who need someone to step up.
My problem with it is I think at one point it’s said that they’re teenagers or preteens, but they act way younger. There was 0 teenaged angst, which I would think would be even more prevalent being raised by a sibling rather than a parent.
Meanwhile, Delilah is just trying to get taken seriously at work, which is tricky when your boss keeps putting you on assignments that require dressing up in ridiculous costumes.
Even Jackson rolls his eyes at her, but of course that’s only until he gets to know her.
Both Jackson and Delilah are meteorologists, but Jackson works for the local radio station and Delilah for the local TV station. They’re separate companies, but they share a parking lot and Jackson’s spot is right next to Delilah’s spot and she is apparently incapable of perpendicular parking because she can never keep the car in her allotted space.
It’s not just parking. Delilah is kind of a mess, literally and figuratively, and her mess tends to spill over onto Jackson every time they meet. It’s not a good way to make friends with someone who abhors mess because he dealt with it constantly from his mom growing up. Routines and systems saved him, and now Delilah keeps messing with them and he’s not OK with it.
When it turns out there’s an historic blizzard approaching Baltimore, the radio and TV stations decide to team up for coverage of the event. Jackson and Delilah are sent into the mountains where the storm is predicted to hit hardest to jointly report on it.
Of course they end up falling in love, first when Jackson realizes that despite the fact that Delilah’s boss is a turd who has been orchestrating her downfall through petty schemes like giving her shitty assignments that require her to dress up in ridiculous costumes, she knows her stuff when it comes to meteorology and takes her work very seriously.
Delilah sees this assignment as her opportunity to be taken seriously, so she makes a deal with Jackson: if he helps her do the assignment justice, she’ll help him find his fun side.
Of course, Jackson also has to deal with family drama, and he gets to see another side of Delilah when she’s worrying about her grandfather who raised her but is now struggling with dementia and sometimes mistakes her for her mom or tries to talk to her about school.
This book was fine. As with First-Time Caller, the audiobook has two narrators, one for each main character. They both do a great job, so the fault is not with them. Something about this book just didn’t click for me, but I hope it does for you.