Book Review: And Now, Back to You by B. K. Borison

Disclaimer: I was given an e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks to the publisher, the author, and NetGalley.

And Now, Back to You is one of those books I was genuinely rooting for. I requested it off NetGalley, fully certain that I’d love it just as much if not more than I loved its predecessor, First Time Caller. I rooted for it so much that I waited for more than a month for that perfect moment to read it. A moment in which I’d be in the correct mood for a rom-com, in which I’d be the least nitpicky and critical of silliness. 

And that moment arrived — but this book was still disappointing. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an enjoyable enough read. There’s nothing outrageously bad about it, but it wasn’t good, it didn’t make me feel that giddy joy that rom coms are supposed to. And I still love the world, and the warm feeling of it, but the romance didn’t work, and I really, genuinely thought it would. 

The inklings we get of Jackson and Delilah in First Time Caller were delicious. Jackson the hot nerd (my favorite type of MMC), and Delilah the hot mess (not my favorite, but alas), in an opposites attract, forced proximity storyline — wonderful, right?

It starts off relatively strong. We get to know more about Jackson, who is the legal guardian to his two teenage sisters, and we see him struggle with his own nature. He wants to be more relaxed, but he loves his routines and schedules. And we finally get a real intro to Delilah, who is perhaps less endearing simply because the author sort of makes her a caricature of every clutzy, curvier heroine. She’s constantly running into people! She wears silly costumes! She’s curvy so we always compare her to cupcakes, make her wear fuzzy, impractical, pink things! She likes sprinkles! 

Delilah is a child, and that is a problem. 

I get what we were trying to do here — have Jackson meet someone who has trauma in their life just like him, but is positive, smiley, happy all the time, so he can see he can be different too. Delilah is meant to pull him out of his shell, help him be better. 

But the thing is, Delilah is a child, as mentioned before. Unintentionally, she becomes another person Jackson has to take care of. She cannot possibly bring a practical coat to this trip to the mountains (!) where she’s meant to cover a snow storm (!). No, instead she brings something sparkly, and then Jackson spends half the book worrying about her being cold and giving away his own clothes to her. Which, again, I get is supposed to be cute. But it just isn’t. She’s thirty, nothing about it is cute. 

She then randomly decides to go sledding in the middle of said snow storm, in the middle of night (literally 2am), in her insufficient clothes, on a sled that looks like a doughnut (!). When her grandfather falls and she needs to get to him, it’s on Jackson to figure out how. 

And I mean, again, I get that all of this is supposed to be adorable, but Delilah and Jackson are not a good match. If you have an anxious character who is a constant care-giver, you don’t give them another person to take care of — you give them a partner, someone who’ll take care of them just as much, and offer support, and have problem-solving skills that can help. Sure, they can be sunshiney, but they also need to be more. 

Aside from that, the romance progressed too quickly. Jackson and Delilah go from thinking of each other: “he has a personality of wet cardboard”, “she’s a disaster, a bizarre woman”, to “I’ll burn the world for you (or at least get really angry at the cold for you)” in about a day. They kiss before the 40% mark. Their first day together on the job, Jackson is all “I need her near me or I’ll worry”, and “oooh boobs!”. If it were a fantasy novel, he’d growl. On day three, he gets jealous and actually growly about an old man making Delilah coffee during a power outage. 

But picture your least favorite coworker for me, please. The one you can’t really stand, that one person who’s maybe not unattractive but definitely irks you. And maybe you two have to do a project together. Now, would you worry about what they’re wearing and whether they’re cold? Would you fall in love with them in a day or two (from complete dislike)? Would you want to cuddle them?

I can tell you right now that I would not. 

You could say this is fiction so it doesn’t matter, but I’d argue it does. These characters would absolutely need more time to feel this way about each other — not a day or two, but weeks. And why not find a way to give them that time? It would be so much better, so much more impactful if Jackson and Delilah had more time (and space) to go from dislike to friendliness to attraction and being in love. What’s the rush? Some of the best, most memorable love stories don’t even feature a kiss — ever. It’s the tension that’s fun, not the spice, and so many readers would agree. Is the yearning even there if it lasts like half a page?

It’s so unnecessarily rushed, tropes used for the sake of using tropes, lines meant to be impactful but how can they be when the characters barely know each other? 

As a side note, something that probably doesn’t bother people but it does me, so I have to mention it — what’s with people in these books introducing their children/little people they’re responsible for to brand-new partners? It’s such a delicate situation that has to be handled with so much care, and in these books, it’s like “let’s add this new person to the family chat” after two days?? It gives me anxiety. 

Now, all of this is not to say that I wouldn’t still recommend this book. It’s not a bad read, and if you’re looking for something cozy and relaxing, with a bit of spice, this is it. Especially so if you already loved First Time Caller or this author’s other series. I’d definitely give it a try because maybe my mood wasn’t rom-commy enough, maybe I was not in the right space to read it and maybe it becomes your favorite book ever. But for me, personally, this wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. 

And Now, Back to You comes out on February 24, 2026, and you can preorder it here.