You might have sworn off dating, but what if your 11-year-old daughter has decided otherwise?
When Lucy finds her 11-year-old daughter on the phone with a strange man way past her bedtime she’s as upset as any of us would be.
Turns out her daughter had called in to a radio show called “Heartstrings,” which solicits calls from listeners so the host of the show can give them dating advice.
She had called in asking for advice to get her mom back on the dating scene.
Lucy hasn’t been on a date in two years or in a serious relationship since her daughter was born.
She’s become disillusioned by the dating scene and has convinced herself she’s happy with her life as it is.
But her daughter knows better, and has decided to do something about it.
So, she called into a local dating advice radio show on her mom’s behalf.
When Lucy finds her 11-year-old daughter on the phone way past her bedtime, she grabs the phone and proceeds to tell off whoever is on the other end.
She’s halfway through her tirade before Aiden has a chance to tell her she’s live on the air.
She’s stunned into silence long enough for Aiden to turn the conversation around and ask her why she hasn’t been dating … aside from the fact that she’s a single mom in the big city (Baltimore) just trying to hold it together.
Lucy ends up admitting to him how awful dating has been and that she doesn’t want to settle. She wants the magic we all want.
Aiden has become disillusioned with people calling in to his show to complain about the small, mundane problems that arise after that initial magic fades.
So Lucy is a breath of fresh air.
And his listeners feel the same way.
The show has been struggling, but the internet hasn’t been able to stop talking about Lucy’s conversation with Aiden. She wants what we all want and she was vulnerable and honest enough to admit it out loud.
People respond to that.
So, Aiden’s boss has come up with a way to save his job: bring Lucy on the air as a guest co-host so they can help her find love.
The idea is to get men calling in and having conversations with Lucy so she can choose her dates and hopefully find Mr. Right.
She’s also given a cell phone so potential dates can reach and interact with her without the need for Lucy to give out her personal cell phone number to all the randos out there.
Lucy does go on a few dates, and while they don’t all go terribly, they can’t go too well because we know from the beginning that she has to end up with Aiden.
Aiden has his own issues he has to work out, and there’s a fair amount of miscommunication and assumptions made between them before they get their HEA, but get there they do.
Actually, it’s a HFN ending, but you get my point.
If I have any complaints about this book it’s that the 11-year-old daughter is too good to be true. And what kind of 11-year-old girl is listening to the radio these days? Aren’t they all listening to podcasts and YouTube videos?
That said, I did love Lucy’s unconventional family. She got pregnant when she was 16 and her baby daddy offered to marry her, but she turned him down because she knew she wasn’t his HEA.
He is now married to a wonderful man and lives next door to Lucy and her daughter. So, while Lucy is technically a single mom, in practice her daughter has two dads in addition to her mom. It makes me wonder if seeing her dad happily married made her want the same thing for her mom.
I listened to this one on audio and it has two narrators, both of whom I loved. The chapters switch perspective between Lucy and Aiden. A woman voices Lucy’s chapters and a man voices Aiden’s chapters.
In between the chapters are short snippets from the radio show. Sometimes it’s Aiden by himself, but sometimes it’s Aiden and Lucy together and it took me almost the whole book to realize those sections had both voice actors together.
This book by B.K. Borison had everything I want out of a romance and I highly recommend it.