Britin Frazey

Like many content platforms, Amazon’s Audible has been putting out content for several years now. As someone relatively new to audiobooks, I had never engaged with any. None ever crossed my feed or my mind, until a few days ago.

It wasn’t actually Call Me Maybe that recently graced my recommended page, but one of its two sequels. Unsure whether the order would matter or not, I found the first book and read its description, already feeling a natural love for it due to growing up in the 2010s. Carly Rae Jepsen may not have any other songs that I know, but I adored her biggest hit.

Regardless of what led to the decision, I began listening and was quickly charmed by the quality of the production and the fast pace of the narrative. The perfect secrets were kept from the reader to create an interesting twist– which I predicted, but that says more about the years I’ve spent studying literature and writing than it does about the quality of a plot twist, because I always get them. If you know of a book you think I won’t get–

I won’t spoil too much about this book, because it is probably one of my favorite romances that I’ve read recently, and generally, my goal with book reviews is to talk people into or out of reading them. So, I will keep things relatively surface level and put up a warning when the spoilers start.

Vera and Cal meet on a customer service phone call when Vera calls into Curio, a fictional website builder similar to WordPress, which is what I use. When she gets patched through to Cal, she’s in the car and has been on hold for four hours.

Vera is a lovely person, so full of light, even when she is frustrated. She is immediately kind to Cal, knowing that he is simply a representative, and that the issue with the website isn’t his fault. She’s the entrepreneur of “Date in a Box” which makes custom gifts for people, based on a form they can fill out online– which currently reads as gibberish.

Cal is a sweet but awkward guy who spends most of his time working from home on his phone and computer. He may be in customer service, but he’s determined to fix Curio on the back end to make it work for Vera’s site on time for her big debut later in the same upcoming week.

Cal is charmed by Vera, which we can see from their dialogue and from his own thoughts, because the narrators cut back and forth between the two. There are clear cuts between the sections, making it easy to follow. Vera is also charmed by Cal, and the two spend many hours talking– only some of it about being the website.

The narrators really made this production for me. Quickly into my listening, I recognized the female narrator, Luci Christian, as a voice actress from One Piece, an anime that my fiance and I are currently chipping our way through, and love. She voices Nami, who is easily one of my favorite characters. She’s resourceful and a redhead, which is all I need. I looked up the male narrator, and didn’t recognize him from anything, but his performance was really great, too.

However, due to miscommunication conflicts that I won’t get overly into, they spend different points throughout their collective hours of phone tag thinking that the other person is in a relationship. Or worse, that the other person is mad at them. After all, the entire book doesn’t take place over just one phone call, but multiple. There are also some side plots, such as a cyber threat to Cal’s sweet rescue cat.

All of it is so entertaining. Since it was written for the audio format, there are some really cool sound effects and voice layering techniques that I found really cool and fun to listen to, making it unique from a typical narrated audiobook. The entire thing is under six hours, which is quite quick for an audiobook, in my experience.

If you think you want to listen to this book, stop reading now, and come back afterwards! I appreciate you for reading this far. If it’s not for you or you don’t care about spoilers, keep reading… you’re so close to the end!

The only reason this book was four stars for me instead of five was that we never got to see any of Cal and Vera interacting in person, past their greeting.

Now, I’m not someone who needs smut to buy into a romance. Similar to my steak, I like my smut well done or not at all. But literally, they say hello to one another, and then the credits roll. They don’t kiss, or even so much as hug! After the hours and hours they’ve each poured into their conversations, and realized they are basically soul mates.

How did they realize that, you ask? Well, Vera’s brother has been obsessed with setting up with one of his best friends– a geek named Fred– for years. She’s always dodged him, just as she dodges naming him to the audience for the first portion of the book. Cal has a good buddy named Eliot, whom he goes to for advice, and Cal also mentions how his friends always want him to date their sisters, which he takes to mean he is “safe” and therefore boring. These are each mentioned casually in the character’s internal thoughts, but are never really a focus. Still, they caught my attention, enough so that I wondered if somehow Fred and Cal weren’t the same person.

It’s one of those things where Cal is his middle name, and that’s reserved for family, while he goes by Fred, his first name, elsewhere. However, the other half of the twist is that Cal is the CEO of the company, so he uses this name when he takes customer service calls, so he can learn about what’s wrong with his site without risking customers knowing who he is. He does all this to get honest feedback, and it works for him.

Once they get all this squared away and talked over, they both find it hilarious. Overall, I think this story was perfect, I just wished there had been a final moment– a hug, a kiss, something– to send Cal and Vera off on the high note they deserved.

I cannot wait for the second one– I already forgot its premise, so when I start it tomorrow, I will be in for a fun treat!