My wife first read Cara Bastone three years ago, and convinced me to give Call Me Maybe a shot. I loved it. We then downloaded this book from Audible and started listening to the audiobook on a trip we took. I got into it, but she didn’t. So we turned the book off, and I never really went back to it.
Well, I just wrapped up a pretty heavy book last week, and took a vacation in Georgia this week, so I needed something to listen to on the drive. After trying a few different things, I decided on giving this book another shot.
And it had a lot of things that I loved about Call Me Maybe, but it also had a lot of the things I didn’t like about it, too.
Sebastian Dorner is newly widowed, and father to a son he isn’t fully equipped to take care of. His son is in pre-K, and his teacher, Via DeRosa has a meeting with Sebastian to tell him, basically, that he needs to do better for his son’s sake. Two years later, Sebastian and Via reconnect and he falls for her pretty hard. Sebastian is trying to get back on the dating scene, but Via has a boyfriend so they resolve to be friends. Things go from there.
This book didn’t land for me quite as well as Call Me Maybe. I liked both Sebastian and Via, and the build-up to their romance was believable and interesting. But while Call Me Maybe was charming, Just A Heartbeat Away dipped into cheesiness. And everyone is too perfect. Sebastian is 6’4″ and gorgeous. Via is also gorgeous. Her friend Fin is sultry and unbelievably beautiful. His friend Tyler is just “attractive” – but super understanding and supportive.
I think it’s the same problem I always have with romance novels. I want the book to surprise me. I don’t want characters to always follow the normal, predictable path. They meet, fall in love, have a misunderstanding, then get back together and live happily ever after. Even a writer who handles all these beats well (and I think Bastone does) is going to lead me disappointed.
But, in reading this, I think romance writers are particularly adept at characterization. I’m not well versed enough in the genre to really be able to speak with authority on this, but since these books so often followed a well-trodden path, they need to be able to create interesting, believable characters – perhaps more-so than in any other genre. Fantasy, my preferred genre, is often built around stereotypical characters, but the writers make up for that by creating complex and interesting worlds. I think I have a habit of not giving romance novels their due because I’m hung up on the tropes that define the genre. But that’s the wrong way of looking at it, because all genres have their tropes. They also have their strengths.
And as far as that goes, I think Cara Bastone is pretty good at what she’s doing. I believed Sebastian and Via. I believed they loved each other. I believed that the thing keeping them apart actually would keep them apart. And I believed that they were the kind of people who could overcome their obstacles and find a way to get what they deserved out of life.
It’s just not really the kind of story I wanted to read, I guess.