Rowena’s review of Welcome, Caller, This is Chloe by Shelley Coriell.
Main Character: Chloe Camden
Love Interest: Duncan Moore
Series: None
Author: Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads
Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe and loved by all until the Christmas holidays of her penultimate year of school. That’s when her best friend shreads her reputation and her school counselor axes her independent study project. Forced to take on a ‘more meaningful’ project in order to pass, Chloe joins her school’s struggling radio station, where she must team up with a group of misfits who don’t find her too queenly. Ostracised by her former best-friends, lonely Chloe throws herself into the radio station where she ends up hosting a late-night call- in show that gets the station much needed publicity and in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life. Readers will fall in love with Chloe as she falls in love with the radio station and the lovable misfits who call it home.
When your best friend up and leaves you and you have no idea why, you’re left wondering what you did. When you get to school after the winter break and find out that your best friends are spreading rumors (that are also lies) about you around school, you start to wonder if they were ever your friends to begin with. That’s what happened to Chloe Camden. She won the crown for Queen of the Winter Formal and had a fabulous time.
Now she’s back in school and she finds herself shunned from her own circle of friends and she sets out to try to find out why. She’s not the kind of person that get let things like this slide. She’s a bubbly kind of person who is happy and she loves to surround herself with people and with friends.
Chloe was the kind of person that I would have loved to be friends with in high school. I couldn’t understand why her friends were mad at her. She wasn’t there for Brie for ONE night, then you get mad and then you get over it. You don’t go around, spreading lies about the person that would never have done that to you. It showed just how great a person Chloe was that she was able to look past all of the lies and the rumors and the cold shoulders because she wanted to make things work with her best friend. I wouldn’t want a friend in my life like Brie. She was like poison and going through some rough stuff at home didn’t justify what she did to the people who loved her.
I wasn’t all that wild about Merce either. She shouldn’t have let Brie and Chloe’s beef get between her and Chloe but she did and she’s not the kind of person that will have your back when its up against the wall so why would you want that person as a friend? Yeah, eventually she came around but I was mad at her throughout most of the book. I needed more than just showing up at Chloe’s JISP presentation to get over my madness at her.
When Chloe gets assigned to work at the school radio station, I wasn’t too wild about that until I met the crew over there. The way that they rallied behind each other and then the way that they were there for each other was great. I loved seeing the interactions between them, even when they were being mean to Chloe at first. Now, when they got mad at her and blamed her for the fire, I wanted to karate chop each of them in their kneecaps because it was stupid of them to blame Chloe but I wasn’t as mad at them the way that I was with Brie and Merce. I was probably not as mad at them because they weren’t friends that long and at that point, I wouldn’t have considered them friends since the only person that Chloe talked to outside of the shack was Duncan.
Duncan was a great person to have on your side. I loved the romance that blossomed between him and Chloe. I loved how he wasn’t good with girls and he flubbed things up a time or two before he finally got them right and I loved how he was a Captain Save a Hoe. He got by with so little and gave so much of himself that I couldn’t help myself but care about him. I thought Chloe was so good for him because she made him enjoy the simple things in life, things that cost no money but bring about great joy. Their relationship was cute and cuddly and I loved it. I thought Chloe was a little hard on him from time to time but overall, I really enjoyed their romance. They had faith in each other and they waited and it was just all things good.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I thought Chloe was a strong protagonist and it was a treat to get to know her. I loved her family, I loved the tuna can and I loved her new friendships with the radio kids and with Duncan. I thought she was a total natural on the air and enjoyed reading the radio show bits as well. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone in the mood for something light and fun, this totally fit the bill.
..and that’s your scoop!
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Book cover and blurb credit: http://barnesandnoble.com
