(courtesy Hachette Australia)
This will come as a news to absolutely no one but the world is not exactly full of moments which end neatly and perfectly and with everything tied in a bright red bow.
It’s also not fantastically good at giving people the happy endings they deserve, and while there’s still a lot of happiness out there, it’s not enough much of the time for any of us to feel like all the good things we want to have happen actually do.
Which is why we need romantic comedies; yes, we need them, because we have an innate longing to feel like people will get the person they want, that lives will be changed for the better and that all the obstacles that litter their path will be swept like so much chaff on a super windy day.
And if we need rom-coms, then we most certainly need, and deserve, ones are well-written as The Wake-Up Call By Beth O’Leary (The Flatshare, The Road Trip, The No-Show) which takes us into the highly antagonistic world of Izzy and Lucas, two employees at the beleaguered Forest Manor Hotel who work the front desk together and who, to all appearances, do not like each other.
Well, that’s the impression and anyone within earshot gets as the two bicker over just about every aspect of their roles from online booking systems vs. paper books through to which side of the counter all the stationery should sit.
And then I remember her screaming at me across the hotel lawn last December. The countless times she screwed me over in the last year, the petty point-scoring, the way her humour turns barbed the moment it’s turned on me.
I look away to sort the next box. Not everything difficult is worth the time.
It’s a cold war-hot war kind of deal, and it’s percolating away in such a fashion that you could be forgiven for thinking they will never ever ever remotely like each other, let alone fall heavily and inevitably in love.
But hey, this is a rom-com written by one of the best in the publishing biz, and while the trope of two antagonists falling in love is as old and well-used as the genre itself, The Wake-Up Call is far from being just another derivative addition to the long line of love stories that start out with sparring and end up with the kind of loved-up loveliness that makes you sigh with happy appreciation.
In fact, one of the things that makes The Wake-Up Call such a lot of fun and wholly satisfying to read is the ability O’Leary has to take the standard tropes and give them the sort of new life and vibrancy that every love story worth its will-they-won’t-they salt must have.
As Izzy, who’s holding a major grudge against Lucas after a big gamble by her didn’t elicit the expected response, and her very handsome Brazilian coworker battle it out, you get the popping fizz of a story that benefits from the time the author takes to flesh these two people out fully as grounded characters with wounds and flaws and people who makes ill-advised decisions in the heat of the moment, not once but repeatedly.
Granted, that plays to a certain level of narrative convenience, but in this case, it works a treat because while the story gets the required kick along it needs, you are also heavily invested in whether these two genuinely lovely people who are actually sparring over erroneous assumptions and flawed understandings, will finally realise they are each other happy-ever-afters.
Of course they can’t realise that too quickly, not when there are a shade of 400 pages to fill, but at no time does The Wake-Up Call ever feel padded out or that it’s simply marking time until Lucas and Izzy put two and two together and get a four made out of red roses, starry eyes and love songs sung loud.
It’s one of those perfectly paced and plotted novels that feels like its simultaneously about real people but also about the pitch perfect romantic fantasies we all hang onto when the real world just feel a little too much and inimical to giving us what our heart desires.
The romantic aspect of The Wake-Up Call is powered along by the fact that the Forest Manor Hotel is in real danger of closing, something that Lucas and Izzy both dread happening because for entirely different reasons, the owners of the hotel, Barty and Mrs SB, and the people they work with including Ollie, Poor Mandy and Arjun the Chef, all of whom are appealingly given personality and humanity to burn (and whom you’ll love almost as much as Izzy and Lucas), have become family and losing them is entirely too much for them to contemplate and with which to deal.
‘Just so you know,’ I say, ‘if you’re really making me wait until tomorrow night, I’m going to make your day as difficult as possible.’
The corners of his mouth turn up just a touch. ‘It’s an opportunity to torture me,’ he says. ‘I would expect nothing less.’
So, much of the plot of Forest Manor Hotel The Wake-Up Call revolves around the fact that if Izzy and Lucas can find the owners of the four remaining glam rings in lost property – the first one finds its owner quite quickly attracting a sizable reward and leading to a lovely queer romantic moment all its own – they might just attract enough money to keep the doors open.
That’s reason enough for these two people to give the ring return operation their all but as this live-or-die mission gains momentum, they begin to realise that it means a whole lot more than just reuniting rings with owners.
It could actually mean that they finally unlock their hearts, tell the truth to each other and resolve the massive misunderstanding between them which, once fixed, will mean they are ready to be each other’s one and only.
But this is a rom-com and O’Leary is not about to wave some magic wand or make this too easy for the fated twosome, and so while this is rapprochement and steps taken to one another, there’s a lot of backward stepping to, all of which is beautifully judged and adroitly doled out so we get the happy ending we know Lucas and Izzy need just when they, and we, need it.
It’s a masterful piece of rom-com writing and it marks The Wake-Up Call as something delightfully, wonderful, heart-liftingly, warmly special, full of characters you adore, situations with humanity and hilarity, a happy festive buzz, and a story that gets where you know it’s going to go in ways that surprise and enthrall and which deliver the requisite happy ending in a way that defies the cold, dead hand of emotionless reality and answer the call every single true romantic on this planet has – to be loved, to know unconditional acceptance and to find a home that will last a lifetime.