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this is why I never hold bully romances to such a high regard because they always suck😭😭.. started good ig with a tortured fmc trope but it just wasn't good
These are so good. I struggle to put them down. I need the next one on the series asap! 😭
Whenever You Call was about 29-year-old Hannah Moore (Newman), the widow of the late Cole Newman,(rock star), and 30-year-old Logan Thomas, a paramedic at the local fire department.
Trigger Warning! There is a lot of talk about drug use, overdose, and suicide. This is NOT an easy story to read.
I'm going to preface this review by giving a quick heads-up. This book was dull AF. It wasn't the length that bothered me so much as it was the writing style, the inner monologues that filled most of the pages, and the fact that the two main characters were rarely ever together...and when they were, they were both still too battered by their separate demons to focus on building a relationship between them. Even the FMC's daughter needed more time to heal from losing her father before she was ready to accept a new man in her or her mother's life. It took nearly two weeks to read this book, and I had only reached chapter 19 of the 50! Again, not because of the length, but because it was that disappointing. I normally can read a book in just a few hours. However, I deliberately set this one aside for days. That's sad to say since I normally love to read anything that's put in front of me.
Hannah had been married to Cole Newman, her rock-star husband for an unspecified number of years and they shared a 6-year-old daughter named Bella. Cole had not only been unfaithful, but he had also lost himself to drugs. When his last trip to rehab failed, Hannah told him she was through and for him to enjoy the divorce. He didn't seem to care because he was strung out on whatever cocktail of drugs he had ingested. His last words to his wife were cruel, hateful, and wounding. Hannah left the house with Bella, although where they went was never mentioned. Sometime later, Cole died from an overdose while in the back of an ambulance.
A month after the loss of her husband, Hannah was taking Bella out for ice cream but ended up having a panic attack, during which she backed up into Logan. She didn't know that he had followed her from her house. As a panic attack began to hit her, she tried to get away from the public eye, only to back into Logan's car. When he tried to help her, she briefly passed out. Another three weeks passed before they encountered each other again, also due to an accident (not hers) and her passing out from a second panic attack.
Ten more days apart (and we were only in Chapter 7 at this point), before he received a call, but it wasn't from Hannah, but her daughter instead. After he received a second, deliberate call from Hannah, Logan went to the gym to work out some of the ghosts that haunted him. His trainer then invited him to have drinks with him at a local establishment. While there, he was introduced to the lead guitarist of Envy-98, the band that Hannah's late husband had been a member of. When the man was videoed having a drinking breakdown during which he lamented the loss of his bandmate, Logan and his trainer escorted the man home, only to be filmed by the paparazzi. Unfortunately, Hannah saw the footage the following day and doubts crept into her mind that Logan had perhaps latched on to her to get his fifteen minutes of fame. Her animosity towards him didn't last long before she was calling him. As with all the times before, Logan came to her rescue yet again.
They met up again a day or so later, only for him to walk away again after guilt swamped him enough to make him turn his back on her. That lasted a short time before they were talking and visiting more. Then another week passed. They seemed to spend more time apart than together. It wasn't until sh*t hit the fan for Hannah once again regarding her late hubby that the bottom fell out of things between her and Logan as well. It all happened within 24 hours of each other. First new revelations regarding Cole, then another revelation happened when she kissed Logan, only to have him tell her he had been the paramedic who showed up when Cole overdosed. The fallout led to further time apart for the two main characters. And still, the reader was 17 chapters away from the ending. Really? Sigh. So what did Hannah decide to do? She took her daughter and fled. Another week passed. A pattern has begun to form, right? They spent so much more time away from each other, which didn't give them a lot of time to develop a romantic relationship. They were never in each other's company for more than 24 hours at a time before days or weeks passed.
There was an overload of angst and drama in this story and too little connection between the two main characters. The push/pull between them was quite pronounced and filled more chapters than their relationship warranted. The emotional rollercoaster didn't make its presence known until the epilogue, which was too little, too late, but very fitting since the story was too long and needed something to pull it together.
The two main characters, while both mature, weren't as developed as they could have been, and they each had too many issues to work through that overshadowed the relationship. The author didn't really give too much backstory for either of them. The only thing she did was have each character do an inner monologue every now and then to give the reader a slight glimpse into what made them the way they were.
I think my biggest issue with this book was the fact that the death of Hannah's husband was too recent. It wasn't years ago, but mere days/weeks when the two main characters met for the first time. The loss of Cole took up too much of the story and most of the focus was on that issue rather than the new romance between the two main characters. There wasn't time for any healing to have taken place, for any of them. It was all still too fresh.
I couldn't give this book anything higher than a three-star rating. It had too many issues that worked against it for it to merit anything else.
This is a great mystery story. The intensity builds until the final chapters when all is revealed. Very different from her usual stories, but I loved it!
Best story🌸