Waiting for Tom Hanks and Not Like the Movies by Kerry Winfrey (Reviews by Minaal Amin)

Waiting for Tom Hanks – Rating: 4 stars

Waiting for Tom Hanks is a rom-com movie in the form of a book.

Meet Annie, our clumsy heroine, who is working a job that she doesn’t enjoy so that she can pursue her real dream of being a screenwriter. She is writing a screenplay based on her best friend, Chloe and her ‘will they, won’t they?’ boss, Nick. What Annie doesn’t seem to realise is that she is actually the leading lady in her very own rom-com.

What really made this book for me were the characters. I loved their banter, how funny they each were and how each one had their own quirks. Kerry really made her characters come alive through their dialogue which I appreciated as character development is not always a focus in plot driven books. And I now feel like I need to have a local coffee house and coffee house friends too.

The plot moved along nicely, it was a little predictable but most rom-coms are. Let’s be honest, we don’t read rom-coms for their unpredictability, we read them because we know them and we like the security of knowing what we’ll get with them.

If you are looking for a romance book that is going to pull at your heart strings, that’s going to make you question everything this isn’t it. But if you are looking for a little bit of a feel good romance and a little bit of escapism to take you out of reality for a little while then you can stop your search right here.

In all honesty, I am not usually a fan of rom-com books but I really enjoyed reading this one and I’m looking forward to reading the spin off which is based on Annie’s best friend Chloe.

Not Like The Movies – Rating: 4 stars

Not Like The Movie is a spin off of Waiting For Tom Hanks (review above). The book is centred around Chloe, the person that inspired Annie’s movie in the previous novel.

As Chloe tries to inwardly navigate her feelings towards Nick, her father’s ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s, the return of her brother, Miles and her feelings towards Annie’s movie, she begins to realise that she can’t do it all alone.

Not Like The Movie was another hit for me. The characters continued to develop well, I felt more invested in them as I had read about them in the previous book and the plot grew in a realistic manner. My frustration with Chloe and her unwillingness to receive help was infuriating at times but I’m sure that’s exactly how the people around her felt too.

Although this book works as a stand-alone, I definitely recommend reading them in order as there are references made to the first book which you may not be able to appreciate or understand fully without knowing the history of the characters.

I tend to stay away from romance novels but I’m so glad I didn’t with this pair because they are so much more than a romance. There is character development, there are twists, great dialogue and of course, the obligatory happy ending that romance books are appreciated for.