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Annie Cassidy was taught to love romantic comedies from her earliest years. She knows “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally” and “You’ve Got Mail” like the back of her hand. She knows what perfect love should look like (her parents had it, but, tragically, her father died when she was a baby, and her mother died when she was a teenager), and she knows she shouldn’t settle for less when it comes to her own love life. She figures if the man she ends up with has a penchant for bouquets of newly sharpened pencils and maybe even owns a houseboat, all the better.
At 27, though, Annie is still waiting for her own Tom Hanks. She lives in her mom’s big old Victorian house in Columbus, Ohio, with her uncle Don, a “Star Wars” and Dungeons and Dragons nerd, and makes a small living writing web content. She’s also writing her own rom-com screenplay.
Then she learns that a major Hollywood movie is filming right in the neighborhood where she lives, and she has a meet-cute with the hot star of the movie, Drew Danforth. She even gets a job on the set, putting her in regular contact with him. But all Annie has seen online indicates that Drew is cocky and a prankster, not even close to being a sensitive Tom Hanks type. Plus, when filming wraps in just two weeks, he’ll be going back to his movie-star life in L.A., so there’s no chance of a relationship.
So it makes no sense when Annie experiences all kinds of feelings about Drew churning around when she has to see him or even thinks about him. How could she possibly have any kind of relationship with a Hollywood star, one who isn’t at all like the type she is looking for?
Waiting for Tom Hanks is full of tropes, but mostly intentionally so. It’s fun on one hand to see all the great references to the beloved movies that it quotes. At the same time, the schtick gets old, and then the book still uses rather tired (and quite weak) plot methods to resolve the supposed issues that prevent the two protagonists from falling in love and being together. In addition, although the main character is 27, I just kept thinking as I read that she was about 17. I had to remind myself regularly that the book wasn’t YA. So Waiting for Tom Hanks was cute, but it could have been better.
Rated: Moderate, for two or three instances of strong language, plus some other uses of mild and moderate language. Sexual content includes kissing, a reference to great “off-screen” sex, and some off-color references throughout.
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