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Lily Morton’s The Cuckoo’s Call is a charming and heartfelt age-gap, opposites-attract romance that looks at what happens to a holiday romance after the holiday is over. You generally know what you’re getting with a Morton book – steamy sexytimes, witty banter, engaging characters and a good helping of feels – which is exactly what’s on offer here, and if you’ve read at least some of Lily Morton’s other romances, you’ll recognise the character-types – the snarky, free-spirited one and the more world-weary one who falls completely under his spell but fights it all the way. But tropes are tropes are tropes; as always, it’s what the author does with them that matters, and if the formula happens to work for you (as it did for me here) then you’ll likely enjoy the book.
Wren Roberts was looking forward to taking a holiday on the island of Majorca with his long-time friend, Owen, but didn’t know that they would be joined there by a group of Owen’s rich, snobby friends. After a week of putting up with their not-so-veiled jibes at his non-designer clothes and being dragged to private beaches and expensive bars, he’s more than a little pissed off when Owen announces the group’s intention to finish their holiday in Madrid – the fare an expense Wren can’t afford.
Wren is giving Owen a piece of his mind in the hotel lobby when he notices their exchange being watched by a striking, dark-haired man at the reception desk who is trying to suppress a smile.
Although disappointing, Owen’s departure at least means Wren will be able to explore the island and do the things he wants to do. Not so good though is the treatment he’s afforded by the hotel staff; now he’s on his own and not with a rich crowd, they’re less than polite towards him, and one of the waiters is in the process of turning Wren away from the restaurant when the man Wren had seen earlier announces that Wren is his dinner guest – and the waiter’s attitude immediately turns from dismissive to obsequious. Wren isn’t sure what’s going on, but when the man – who introduces himself as Mateo – invites him to join him, Wren allows himself to be persuaded to stay.
Wren and Mateo share a meal and an enjoyable evening, but it’s not until Wren has, with typical self-deprecating humour, spoken about the rudeness of the staff that he realises exactly whom he’d had dinner with. Mateo Rossi. The owner of the hotel.
Oops.
When Wren answers the knock on his door the following morning, Mateo is the last person he expects to see standing there. Far from being annoyed, however, the man is smiling and chatty, then asks Wren to tell him about the pros and cons of his room, listening carefully to what he has to say. He then explains that he’s on Majorca in order to purchase two more hotels, and would like Wren to view them with him:
You have a very keen eye, and I find I need that this week… I find myself suffering a little ennui. Everything looks the same to me at the moment. I need a pair of fresh eyes.
Wren thinks he should probably turn down such an out-of-the-blue request… but he wants to do it, to go with this intriguing man and have something exciting happen, something he can remember when he’s back at his boring job in gloomy London. He says yes.
Over the next few days, Mateo – who was born on Majorca and obviously adores the place – shows Wren more of the island, taking him to some of his favourite places in between their visits to the hotels he’s considering purchasing. A genuine friendship springs up between this odd couple, and it’s the best week of Wren’s life, even though he knows he’s in danger of falling for the fascinating, older man. Mateo isn’t looking for anything long-term – and even if he were, he’s way out of Wren’s league – but Wren decides the eventual heartbreak will be worth it for having had the chance to live life to the full for this one week and make lots of wonderful memories to take home with him. And Wren’s captivating mix of honesty, warmth and humour make Mateo realise how weary and closed-off he’s been, and how long it is since he’s felt so unencumbered, so joyous and free. On their final day together, Mateo suddenly realises he’s not ready to let Wren go – and asks him to go back to Venice with him (which is where his family and business are based) and stay for a month.
It’s not a spoiler (it’s in the blurb) to say that in Venice, things change. Mateo’s mother and stepsister are hostile towards Wren, and even though Mateo wants to spend time with him, he is quickly sucked back in to the corporate world and consumed by his responsibilities. Wren can’t deny he’s upset at not seeing much of Mateo, but he decides to make the most of his time in the city and enjoy it while he can. But the longer he’s around the Rossi family, the more Wren is convinced there’s no place for him in Mateo’s world.
Wren is a complete and utter sweetheart. An orphan brought up in foster care, he’s learned not to expect much and that the only person he can really depend on is himself, but despite his difficult upbringing, he’s also learned to make the most of what is available to him and has somehow managed to maintain an upbeat and optimistic outlook and to develop “a deep compassion that someone who grew up like him should surely not possess.” His gentle humour has a softer edge than the rapier wit displayed by many of Lily Morton’s characters, but it fits Wren perfectly; he’s kind and generous, but he doesn’t suffer fools and doesn’t let anyone push him around. I loved his honesty and self-awareness; he doesn’t lie to himself about what he feels for Mateo, going into their relationship with his eyes open and knowing it’s got an end date, determined not to put any pressure on Mateo for anything he’s not able or prepared to give. Mateo is a bit more of a romance stereotype; the workaholic businessman weighed down by responsibility who’s lost sight of the important things in life. I liked the way the story is structured; it’s easy to understand why Wren would fall for the more carefree Mateo we see in the first part of the book, and seeing that man first makes his reversion to the duty-bound man of the second part even more painful to witness.
The story is told from both PoVs, although at least three-quarters of it is told from Wren’s perspective with the odd chapter told from Mateo’s, and of the small secondary cast, Mateo’s grandfather is the standout. I also noticed a couple of characters who seem to be crying out for a book of their own! And bonus points for the references to the gothic romances of yore – I got a definite Rebecca-ish vibe early on (although there’s no Mrs. Danvers, fortunately!) – and Wren’s love of Mills & Boon.
Wren and Mateo’s romance is passionate and tender and full of affectionate, gentle humour – and though the angst level is fairly low, the author still manages to pack quite the emotional punch. With its wonderfully described Mediterranean/Venetian settings and charming central characters, The Cuckoo’s Call is a lovely, feel-good read that will bring a smile to your face, a lump to your throat and warmth and sunshine to the grey days of winter.
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Grade: B+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 24/11/21
Publication Date: 11/2021
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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Wow. I’m surprised by this review and the comments! I felt so differently about this latest Morton.
This was a C-/D+ book. (For me.) It felt formulaic and phoned in; I met versions of these characters in other books; the locations and fortunate financial situations of one or more of the principal characters begins to grow tedious; Wren’s “perfectness” that no one else noticed before Mateo. I mean. COME ON! Mateo spots Wren’s special amazingness when he’s telling off a group of rich jerks in a restaurant. Oh wow. He’s BRILLIANT.; the savior principal character who somehow spots a diamond in the rough and HIRES HIM WITH BASICALLY NO KNOWLEDGE OF HIM WHATSOEVER – to do a job that he’s supposedly an expert at; the ridiculous over-the-top epilogue; and the stereotypical super villains who are beautiful but super BAD and other people can’t see it…unless they’re women and since they’re awful let’s just make them super awful (cringe?!)…I just didn’t find this book different or special or…interesting?
But I will read the Alfie/Enzo book.
Maybe one of my least favorite Morton’s. She’s an author I can’t resist, so obv, I’ll be back for more. There’s usually a gem just around the corner.
This is so interesting! I see these characters a little differently than you and the other commenters here. I gave this a B, for starters. I love Lily Morton and even though most of her books fall in the B and B+ range, she is an author I reread a lot. B/B+ books are often ones I come back to because they are often comfort reads/ lower in stress.
I felt like Wren, sweet and caring as he was, was a little too perfect. So wise, insightful, self-sacrificing, etc.,etc. While his background was interesting, he wasn’t very complex. He is too much a Milo clone, in my opinion. Maybe it’s because I recently listened to Milo that I saw such striking similarities in the characters.
Mateo, on the other hand, felt more nuanced and conflicted. I felt the family pressure was well represented when you consider the age he was deposited in Venice and taken away from his true home. Plus,he was good at what he did, and that was a big part of his purpose in life,so even if self-inflicted, it felt real. I thought his reasons for avoiding commitment and sticking to something he loved was well articulated by his parent’s marriage and his father’s personality.
The rest of the cast was pretty much one-note, good or bad,with little or no complexity. I would have loved to have learned more about the grandfather,both then and now. I had the feeling he knew how to put pressure on people, and even though he wasn’t like the rest of the family,the business was obviously still right up there in #1.
I do agree with you that Matteo is the more conflicted character and has a lot of interpersonal/relationship issues. My problem with Matteo is that we don’t see him do introspective work to grow and change. Compare to Gabe in Rule Breaker or Max in After Felix – their relationships blew up spectacularly and then they had to spend time figuring out that they couldn’t continue the same patterns. They both spent time apart from their partners then made efforts to try again (although 2.5 years for After Felix was too long for my taste). Matteo got Wren back in less than a day! We don’t see Matteo having any discussions with his father or confrontations with his stepmother and half sister. He doesn’t explore what made his long time friend Leandro behave the way he did – he just cuts him out. We don’t see him think about his poor work life balance and decide he needs to make a change for his happiness – rather, his grandfather just makes the decisions for him. Granted, working on all of these issues maybe would have made the book way too long but I would have been satisfied if Matteo came to the realization on his own about his work life making him unhappy and actively figuring out how to make changes (talking with his grandfather and father, etc).
I think in Lily Morton’s books, it often is the case that one character has less angst/issues than the other and sometimes that character is actually pretty well adjusted. For example, Dylan in Rule Breaker or Arlo in Merry Measure. I would put Wren in this category – his main issues were youth/inexperience and loneliness and in this book, these weren’t hard to solve.
Perfectly said – 100% agree with all of it.
I liked this book much more than the other two full length books that Lily Morton has written this year (Beautifully Unexpected and The Quiet House) and would probably stretch to an A-.
Why? Well, obviously because of Wren as he presents as such a wonderful character, but also because I think her writing of him is so good too.
I thought the first half of the book was sublime, perfectly tempered by the prologue. I didn’t enjoy the second half quite as much, with its sense of impending doom, but that’s probably because I’m not really a lover of gothic novels!
I can’t believe that I didn’t pick up first time on Wren’s hot librarian – Good job he was named later! I got the reference to Max and Felix straight away though! Loved all Wren’s romance novel references.
When you think of the storyline, it could have actually read as quite sleazy but the way it’s written avoids that.
I’m not yet sure if this book has replaced the free novella Playground Games as my favourite Lily Morton of the year – I’ll have to read it again to check! I think Playground Games is the book that I’ve reread most this year……
I did get the librarian reference (even though I still haven’t read Charlie Sunshine! But I’ll wait for the audio now, as it’s next up in the list.) The B+ is basically because I didn’t feel Mateo was that well-fleshed out, and – as I’ve said to Manjari – his situation didn’t make much sense. The set up seems to be that he’s taken over the family business because he’s been forced to – then when we meet his grandfather, he’s not the tyrant we’ve been led to expect.
Wren, on the other hand, is amazing, and incredibly well written (which makes the contrast even more obvious).
And… as I said, much as I do enjoy LM’s work, it’s impossible not to see the similarities in her characters from book to book; it doesn’t bother me per se, but it’s something I feel I have to point out when reviewing.
Yes, Lily Morton’s books all have characters that inhabit the particular ‘world’ that she has created, so have quite a lot of similarities. I think that you probably love them, or you don’t! I find them warm and comforting, with enough realistic cultural references to deflect from the utter crap that is really happening around us in England!
I’m okay with how Mateo is written. I felt that everything about him was self-inflicted. I didn’t see the grandfather as a tyrant, just absent due to bereavement, which drove Mateo to overcompensate to make up for his inept father.
I’d definitely like a book for Alfie and Enzo (hope I’ve remembered their names correctly)!
Yes, there were definitely a couple of characters I’d like to read more about!
In her newsletter, Lily Morton asked if her readers were interested in a book about Alfie and Enzo. I think she gave us enough tantalizing hints that she definitely should write one!
SPOILERS! (I couldn’t make the tags work)
I don’t think everything was self-inflicted, not if you go back to the beginning, where his life was literally laid out for him in the divorce settlement. Remember, the grandfather was angry about that at the time (that Mateo was left to live with his mother) and also that Mateo insisted on going home to Majorca each year once he moved to Venice. I thought the problem was that Morton didn’t explain the grandfather’s change of heart, or else his motivations when Mateo was young, so we didn’t see it clearly. I also wonder why, if grandfather was so insightful, etc., that he basically left a 16 year old to fend for himself in Venice as Mateo described to Wren. The grandfather’s character didn’t quite add up to me.
Yes, I agree with that. I was referring to Mateo’s choices as an adult, mainly regarding work and relationships. I should have been clearer!
I was thinking his adult choices were pretty much set up when he was young, and he hasn’t seen a reason to change them as an adult, given his father’s actions and the fact that everything fell to him when his grandfather checked out. He’s quite literally been raised to be what he is. I don’t think he could see a way out. He says somewhere that it isn’t just responsibility, it’s something he’s good at, and I don’t think he could watch the family business go to seed, and he had NO models of life balance except his mother, who also allowed him to be swept into a dysfunctional family at a very impressionable age. She offered him no way out, either, honestly.
I guess I felt like the family pressures he was under were huge and not easy to walk away from or even balance. When you see yourself as the only one that can keep things going (and he arguably was because his father was inept and his grandfather checked out) then I can’t imagine the pressure to stay on course, especially if, on some level, you care about the business, too.
Anyway, that’s just my perception of the story and character. Yours (and the other posters here) are just as valid. I love that we see different things in the characters and the story.
Forgive the horrible run-on sentence/comma splice! I didn’t proof read before posting!
I think Charlie Sunshine is one of Lily Morton’s best books and I hope you get to hear it soon!
I agree, and IMO After Felix is her very best book!
I think Rule Breaker is her best but After Felix is very close :)
Obviously we’re book twins when it comes to LM because I think Rule Breaker is her best, too. It’s my favourite, anyway :)
Rule Breaker is my favourite too, it has the perfect amount of angst and pining! I really enjoyed this book too, mainly because I found Wren so appealing.
I would also give the book a B+. I love Lily Morton’s writing so her books are an auto-buy for me. I thought the best part of this book was Wren. He was a wonderful character – kind and empathetic of others. He stood up for himself when necessary. It was nice to see a character who grew up in foster care but wasn’t traumatized or abused. Wren actually had some good experiences while in care. The next best part of the book was the settings – I really want to go to Majorca now! I also loved the subtle mentions of characters from Charlie Sunshine and After Felix – it made me want to read both of those books again.
I felt Matteo’s character wasn’t as well developed. It didn’t feel like he did the work – in one page, his grandfather basically told him what to do and solved his problem for him. I also agree that there were tropes/situations and even wording that is getting repetitive in Ms. Morton’s books. For example, she very often uses the word “throatily”. She has also had scenes in several books where one character realizes his feelings when he doesn’t want to share his partner in a threesome.
Nevertheless, any Lily Morton is still a cut above so many other books out there and I did find the book to be very enjoyable.
On a side note, although the title is well explained by the storyline, it is too close to The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling’s pen name) and I couldn’t stop thinking of that other book every time I read the title! I did really like the cover though – exactly how I would picture Wren.
Hah – I actually mistyped the title of this one several times as “Calling” and had to keep going back to check!
Wren really was the star of the show in this one – I agree it’s a change to have a character with his background be so well-adjusted and optimistic, and he’s incredibly well written.
I also found Matteo’s situation a little bit contradictory – we get the impression he’s basically been strong-armed into running the family business to the detriment of his personal life, but then his grandfather turns out to be fairly benign.
It’s still a lovely read – because Wren is so lovely!
My take was that Matteo’s grandfather stepped back from the family business due to grief and that he was brought out of his grief due to his interactions with Wren. I am OK with that but I still feel that the grandfather’s decision to go back to the business was abrupt and solved Matteo’s problems too easily. I would have liked to see Matteo come to some realizations about his life and interactions with his family members himself (and maybe a scene where Matteo confronts his stepmother and half sister about their treatment of Wren).
But Wren was indeed so very lovely!
I felt like there was a bit of “magical unicorn”about Wren. Everywhere he went people became sweeter and changed for the better. Maybe the grandfather became more aware of the situation through Wren’s eyes,but it definitely shows some benign neglect at the very least on his part. it bothered me that the grandfather character was inconsistently portrayed through the book. It was obvious Mateo had a connection with him (the watch),but at the same time, the grandfather was also shown as a dedicated businessman who was angry when the divorce settlement left Mateo to be brought up by his mother instead of Venice “where he belonged.” and he was also angry Mateo wanted to return each year to Majorca. So he wasn’t the easy-going character Wren meets in the book for a large part of his life. I guess we’re suppose to surmise his grief changed him.
Yes, that was mainly why this was a B+ for me and not a DIK. I, too, understood the family pressure Mateo was under – I think we’ve all been in situations where you think “if I don’t do it, it won’t get done” – but I think LM was trying to show that Mateo’s was all external pressure more than anything else, and it didn’t quite work because the foundation for it – the grandfather’s attitude – was inconsistent.
I’d definitely have liked a scene where Mateo gave his mum and sister what for!