hijacked by a hallmark movie

Campbell Andrews is perfectly happy with her life. She works in her grandmother’s law firm, as a partner, and she has everything set up just the way she wants it. She’s happy being single and working too much, but it’s important to her not to follow in her mother’s footsteps, who turned her back on the family firm and hardly speaks to anyone in the family. But every so often, Cam’s grandmother insists on setting her up on a blind date, and Cam half-heartedly agrees.

Tonight’s date is with pediatric surgeon Dr. Ben Loving, and he chooses an adorable café, the kind Cam would usually not go near. But she decided to go with it, as none of these men she goes out with are anyone she wants to get involved with. Best just to get the date over with. Cam shows up at the café and barely gives Ben a chance to introduce himself before she’s ordering and taking out her phone to return work emails. Ben tries to make conversation, but she shuts him out and they end up calling the date over about halfway through dinner. Their waitress, Mimi, covers their check but leaves a cryptic message for them to slow down and give love a chance. Cam can’t get home fast enough.

The next morning, Cam wakes up and immediately knows something is wrong. There is sunlight streaming in the room, waking her up. She is in a charming house and wearing coordinated pajamas. Her cell phone is gone, and there doesn’t seem to be a landline around either. The clothes in the closet are nothing like the clothes she regularly wears. She gets dressed anyway and goes out into the town to try to figure out what’s happening. Cam ends up in a coffee shop, where she is chided for the amount of profanity she’s using and is informed that she is in Heart Springs. She assumes it’s all just a bad dream and goes back to bed.

The next day, Cam wakes up again in Heart Springs. And the next. And the next. She spends the day eating junk food and binging movies on the one channel she can get on her television. And in each of those movies, there is a big-city girl stuck in a small town. And finally she realizes that’s who she is too. Cam is a big-city girl stuck in a fictional small town, and there is no way to just leave. Her next door neighbor, Dr. Ben Loving, of the disastrous blind date, tells her to go talk to Mimi. When Cam finally runs out of options, she heads back to the coffee shop to find out what she needs to do next.

Mimi tells her that she has to do three things: find a career she’s passionate about it, she must become a valued member of the community, and she needs to experience true love. At first, Cam is skeptical, but if it will get her home, she’s willing to give it a shot. Through some challenging career moves and hilarious mistakes, Cam tries her best to find a career she can be passionate about. She also agrees to dates with three men that Mimi has chosen. And she makes friends with Ben, feeling a little guilty about somehow getting him stuck in Heart Springs also.

But as she slowly opens up to new experiences, Cam finds that maybe she wasn’t as happy in New York City as she thought. And maybe this small-town experience can really teach her something about life and love.

Change of Heart is the hilarious new romance from Falon Ballard. It’s all about the Hallmark movies that we love to watch over and over, and while it certainly makes fun of some of the most obvious tropes, it also celebrates the values they represent, the ones that keep viewers coming back. Cam and Ben are both fantastic characters, and the story is filled with surprises and sweetness, as well as a little spice.

I absolutely loved this book. I have been a fan of Ballard’s for a while, so I knew I would be in for a good story. But the humor here is has so many layers that I was laughing out loud as I read it. These characters are smart, funny, and a little subversive in this small town, and it made me so happy to see how their being trapped in that movie set small town changed them. If you are someone who watches the Hallmark movies or someone who rolls their eyes at them, you will find something to love in Change of Heart.

Egalleys for Change of Heart were provided by G.P. Putnam’s Sons through NetGalley, with many thanks.