Two competing meteorologists are forced to find common ground in this opposites attract, When Harry Met Sally inspired romance, from New York Times bestselling author B.K. Borison.
Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover the snowstorm of the century, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.
Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal. If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With an undiscovered chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.
But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains, stay in the mountains?

My Review:

Readers of First-Time Caller, the first book in the Heartstrings series, have already met the radio station’s “weather boy”, Jackson Clark. But they haven’t really met his opposite number from the TV station that shares the parking lot, TV meteorologist Delilah Stewart. And honestly, neither has Jackson, even if they have been sharing passive-aggressive sticky notes via each other’s windshields for months.

So when this book begins, we only know Delilah through Jackson’s VERY uptight opinion, and he doesn’t know Delilah AT ALL no matter how many assumptions her truly terrible parking skills have caused him to make. And have, as Jackson discovers in this book, thoroughly handled his half of the ‘assume’ cliche. Because he’s certainly making an ass of himself when it comes to  Delilah.

Delilah, on the other hand, is already dealing with a much bigger asshole so she’s not all that bothered by Jackson’s relatively minor grumpy assholery in comparison. Her part of that particular equation is more of the sly, cutting dig variety than the rather excessive hate-on Jackson seems to have for her.

But they both report on the local weather in Baltimore. Or, Jackson certainly does, and Delilah does when her hateful asshat of a boss lets her do her actual job instead of demeaning, deflating and downgrading her at every turn.

Back to the weather – or as Delilah’s signature sign off goes, “and now back to you.” The you in this instance being the entire city of Baltimore, because the weather outside is about to get frightful even though the holidays are definitely over for the year.

It’s late March and a freak blizzard is barreling down on the city. Based on multiple weather models that both Delilah and Jackson are following, the storm is going to hit the mountains in Western Maryland with ‘the big one’ late in March with plenty of heavy, damp late season snow and gale force winds. It’s going to be the weather programming opportunity of both of their careers.

Because their respective stations need ratings and advertising dollars, her TV station and his radio station decide to team Jackson and Delilah up for a trip to tiny Deep Creek on the far western edge of the state to report on the storm as it hits. They are both excited by the opportunity but neither is thrilled for either the company OR the circumstances.

Jackson has EXTREME stage fright to the point of panic attacks. Delilah is certain that her evil, abusive boss intends to use this trip as an opportunity to do even further damage to her career – even if she can’t figure out how he’ll manage that at the distance. Jackson, for his part, is very afraid that his issues ARE the intended damage.

Once they are on the road to remote Garrett County, they have the chance to get to know the real person behind all those passive-aggressive post-its. A person who shares some of the same damage but took that trauma in utterly opposite directions.

Which means that they DO have an opportunity to meet in the middle. If they’re each willing to share the load AND step outside their respective – and opposite – comfort zones in order to get there.

With just a little bit of help from a big storm, a full hotel, and some truly evil connivance from Delilah’s boss that has some unintentionally excellent consequences for everyone involved who DESERVES a shot at a happy ever after.

Delilah’s evil boss DEFINITELY not included.

Escape Rating C+: I picked this up because I did, in the end, love the first book in the Heartstrings series, First-Time Caller. I’ll admit that that one opened with a bit of a rocky start, but it was a rocky start that was definitely a ‘me’ thing. Once Aiden and Lucie got into the radio booth, they made the kind of magic that just made the whole story shine.

And it was the hope of a similar turnaround in this second book that made me stick with it long after I might have otherwise bailed. Because I wasn’t seeing that chemistry no matter how much I wanted to. Instead, I saw a few too many similarities between Jackson and Delilah in this book and Callie and Thomas in Tuesday’s book. Which was itself a replacement review for an entirely different book that didn’t work all that well either although for entirely different reasons.

Even though I started And Now Back to You in audio, I finished in text because I was just done and needed to move on, but was still hoping that the magic would happen between Delilah and Jackson. Although I’m not sure it did.

The thing is that the start of this book reminded me a bit too much of First-Time Caller. They’re not the same situation but the situations were both very uncomfortable for me. Lucie’s situation involved an inner circle of well-meaning but overbearing and intrusive people. It was a bit of a personal nightmare but felt real and right for the story.

Delilah’s situation was outright triggering. Her workplace isn’t just toxic and her boss isn’t merely abusive although both things are certainly true. The way that he was abusing her, doing his damndest to tank her career PUBLICLY and make it so that she’d be forced out of a career that she’d worked so hard for and was so good at hit a bit too close to home. The way that she just kept sucking it up and being a mouse about the abuse, even inside the confines of her own head, wasn’t a situation I wanted to read about.

In short, her boss is an EVIL, abusive asshole, and she’s become the meat shield for the entire station through no actual fault of her own. The situation is terrible to the point of outright abuse (and let’s not forget the gaslighting) and she’s just taking it and I just wasn’t there for it even though I was, well, there in it by reading/listening to it.

OTOH the personal situations that Jackson and Delilah came out of were heartbreaking but very well done. It made both of their traumas understandable AND explained why their reactions to variations of the same damage went in such different directions. Coming out of childhood abandonment and chaos, he turned rule-bound while she turned sunshine  which are both plausible even though they’re caused by the same thing.

However, the way that we get to see the man behind the panicking mask more clearly long before we see what Delilah’s hiding under snarky sunshine made it easier to empathize with him – and made her continued digs at Jackson’s expense seem more mean-spirited for a bit too long. Their initial relationship as passive-aggressive frenemies did not work nearly as well as a road to romance as Aiden and Lucie’s first meeting.

In the end, I stuck with this in the hopes that magic would happen after all. And it kind of does, but only after the halfway point and even then it wasn’t nearly as magical as I hoped it would be. And I know I’ve been having a bad week this week, but I honestly didn’t see the purported resemblance between this book and When Harry Met Sally. Which is a real pity because a variation of the iconic scene in the diner might have been just what this story needed.

Of course, and I sincerely hope so, your reading mileage may vary.