Review: Waiting for Tom Hanks

Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Based on the description, I was really looking forward to reading "Waiting for Tom Hanks" by Kerry Winfrey, but unfortunately, I just don't think I can recommend it. My biggest frustration with this book was that the main character, Annie, was not very likeable. I felt bad for her because of the trauma of losing her parents at such a young age, but that didn't entirely make up for her selfishness or total fixation on romantic comedies. Bottom line: Annie just wasn't very interesting. All she seemed to have in her life was her interest in rom-coms. It didn't seem like she had ever developed interests besides those, which made her character seem pretty one-dimensional to me.

I didn't buy the "enemies to lovers" angle of this story either. I never got the impression that Drew had any negative feelings towards Annie, and Annie's "negative" feelings towards Drew seemed exaggerated and unnecessary. There was really no reason for her to dislike him. I could see why Annie might have felt embarrassed after spilling coffee on Drew at their first meeting, but the strong feelings of dislike she expressed were way out of proportion to the situation. Annie didn't know Drew at all, apart from some questionable gossip from Hollywood tabloids, so how could she truly dislike him?

As for Drew "making fun" of Annie, I didn't get the impression that was what he was doing at all. Teasing her, sure, but there didn't seem to be any malicious intent behind what he was saying. He was definitely a joker and seemed to have a tendency not to take things seriously, but again, he really didn't seem to do anything that was mean-spirited, to Annie or anyone else. Overall, Drew seemed like a nice enough, decent guy, especially for a fairly popular actor. He easily could have come across as much more of an egotistical jerk in his dealings with Annie and many other characters.

So what exactly did I like about this book? The secondary characters were mostly likeable, especially Annie's Uncle Don and best friend Chloe. Unfortunately, they were n0t enough to save this book for me. While I enjoyed the banter and relationship potential between Chloe and her boss, coffee shop owner Nick, I'm not sure it was enough to make me want to read the next book in this series.

It's really a shame. There was a lot of potential in this story, but in the end it left me very disappointed.

*ARC provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

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