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Book details
Love on the air
Aiden Valentine hosts Baltimore's beloved romance hotline Heartstrings, but he's harboring a secret that could derail his career. He's stopped believing in love. Night after night, he dishes out advice he no longer trusts, going through the motions while the magic fades. Then a twelve-year-old named Maya calls in with a mission: find her single mom a boyfriend.
The call goes viral. Suddenly, all of Baltimore is invested in Lucie Stone, the auto mechanic and devoted single mother who hasn't dated in years. When the station brings Lucie on as a co-host to chronicle her search for love on air, Aiden finds himself in the cramped radio booth with the one woman who might remind him what romance actually feels like. But he's supposed to help her find someone else.
Narrated by E.J. Bingham and Hathaway Lee, the audiobook captures the slow-burn tension of two people falling for each other while an entire city watches. As Lucie navigates awkward setups and Aiden wrestles with feelings he swore he'd buried, they must decide if the real love story is happening behind the microphone, not in front of it.
I almost passed on this one. The premise of a man who hosts a love advice show while privately not believing in love sounded like the kind of setup that would lean hard on the irony and forget to build actual characters underneath. Borison does the opposite. By the time Lucie Stone walks into the radio booth for the first time, you already care about both of them enough to dread what's coming.
What makes Aiden work as a character is that his cynicism isn't performed or self-aware. He has not decided to stop believing in love as some kind of philosophical stance. He has just run out of it quietly, the way you run out of things you stopped restocking. He keeps showing up, keeps saying the right things on air, keeps helping callers navigate situations he no longer believes have good endings. The exhaustion of that is written with real precision, and it makes the eventual shift feel earned rather than convenient.
Lucie is the harder character to write, because she is warm and open and actively hopeful, and those qualities could easily tip into naivety. Borison keeps her grounded by giving her a history. She built her life around Maya and her garage, and she is not on this radio experiment because she is desperate. She is doing it because her daughter asked her to, and because somewhere underneath the practical routine she has constructed, there is still someone who wants to be found. The distinction matters.
The format works well throughout. The radio show gives them a public version of their relationship that runs separately from what is developing off mic, and Borison mines that gap for most of the tension in the second half. There is a scene where Aiden gives advice on air that is clearly about himself without being able to say so, and it lands exactly as it should. The third-act conflict is not manufactured. It grows directly from who Aiden is and what he believes, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.
On the narration: E.J. Bingham and Hathaway Lee share the dual narration across 11 hours and 54 minutes, and the two voices are well matched without being identical. Bingham brings a controlled, slightly wry quality to Aiden that suits his interior restraint, and Lee gives Lucie the warmth the role needs without making her sound uncomplicated. The audiobook format benefits from the split perspective, and the transitions never slow the story down.
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Experience First-Time Caller by USA Today bestselling author B.K. Borison, a Sleepless in Seattle-inspired romance that swaps phone calls for radio waves. This is the launch of the Heartstrings series, where forced proximity meets workplace romance in the most charming way possible.
Start with a free trial you can cancel anytime. This audiobook runs 11 hrs 54 mins with dual narration by E.J. Bingham and Hathaway Lee, who bring warmth and chemistry to Aiden's quiet longing and Lucie's hopeful vulnerability.
You keep the audiobook forever even after canceling the trial. The offer opens access to thousands of romantic comedies and gives a simple, risk-free way to fall for the cozy charm B.K. Borison is known for, set against the backdrop of a bustling Baltimore radio station.
US-based editor & staff writer focused on audiobooks. Honest reviews, curated “best of” lists, and practical guides with an accessibility lens.
