Reviewed by Andrea Marks-Joseph
An empowering hero’s journey that weaves a workplace drama, abuse investigation, and brazen motherhood confessional into a high-stakes, heartwarming tale of retribution
“Carlton’s going to pay. I’m going to get his job. I’m going to save the world. Or at least the call center. And maybe the paper? And Carmen. I’m going to save Carmen.”
Not That Kind of Call Girl follows Julia Navarro, a brilliant, admirable call-center manager on her journey to save the newspaper she works at from closing down and to rescue her employee from an abusive home—while struggling with the unexpected devastation she feels at being new to motherhood. Julia should be enjoying a relaxing few months acclimating to being a mom; instead, she finds herself leading a high-stakes investigation and rescue operation. Author Nova García writes Julia’s experience as a woman of color in the workplace with refreshing clarity, convincingly incorporating the nuances that come with balancing our humanity and survival instincts.
We first meet Julia Navarro while she’s preparing for her maternity leave. Julia, who supervises a team of call-center workers at the customer care line for a local newspaper (the story is set in 2016-2017), is interviewing a new employee and relying on her list-making skills to accomplish all the necessary tasks on time. But these lists are quickly deemed irrelevant when her water breaks right in the office, weeks earlier than she’s planned for. And that’s just the beginning of the way motherhood shakes up her life.
“Baby Love Magazine said Trey was too young for a bottle as it might disrupt the mother-child bond. Screw Baby Love Magazine, she told herself. A bond? What bond?”
Nova García writes with piercing authenticity the experience of being a new mom and not feeling like you’re cut out for the job. Julia doesn’t feel connected to the baby, or her body, frequently mentioning that she’d like to give the baby back. She’s relieved when her annoying and unprofessional boss, Carlton, asks her to cut her maternity leave short, not least because she could use the distraction (“Home, a former place of refuge and rejuvenation, had become a house of sadness and setbacks”).
Julia’s return to work means that she can resume her reinvestigation to Carmen, the intriguing young woman who she interviewed for a position on Julia’s team at The Cascade City Chronicle the day her water broke. In following up on Carmen’s application, Julia realizes that Carmen’s job reference is a paranoid, grumpy Old Hollywood actor who is prone to theft and gun violence, and lives at the same address as her new employee.
When Carmen doesn’t show up to work on her first day, despite begging for the job, Julia and her team investigate further. Learning that Carmen’s abusive home life is much more complex, dramatic, and intimidating than anyone at the Chronicle could imagine heightens Julia and her team’s commitment to rescuing Carmen.
Julia is a hero in so many ways: She teams up with her work bestie to break a news story about very powerful men who have been trafficking women from Mexico and keeping them locked in their homes, forcing them to work for no pay under abusive situations. She’s also a hero in the small moments when she chooses to offer human kindness to her employees and friends without a second thought. She’s passionate about protecting and caring for her staff in practical ways that support them as best as she can.
In the hands of another author, Julia may be seen as incompetent or indecisive, but written by García, Julia is as those of us who have lived variations of her everyday life know her to be: Brave, organized, determined, and innovative. She’s a problem solver operating at levels that far exceed the tools she’s been given.
Reading Not That Kind of Call Girl is spending quality time with Julia—who is struggling profoundly but still managing to find humor and community in her everyday life. García incorporates a sense of playfulness by introducing each new chapter with amusing newspaper headlines like, “Otter Devastation, Harmful Chemicals Discovered 10 in Pacific Northwest Otter Population”, “Café Owners Martin and Bridget Beach Welcome Twins Rocky and Sandy”, and “Lost Boa Constrictor May Be Linked to Poodle Disappearance.”
The book’s title is a play on Julia’s words in a pivotal scene where she is sexually harassed at a supposed work event, throwing the term “call girl” back at the man. She’s a call center supervisor, not a sex worker, but she’s leered at in the same way; her boss, Carlton, regularly commenting on the desirability of her body and sexualizing her ethnicity. For much of the story, Julia defends herself in the moment but does not formalize her complaints, for reasons many readers will know firsthand: She must maintain social stability so she can keep her job and keep her place in the running for a promotion. I don’t know any women or people of color who wouldn’t find Julia’s experience extremely relatable: “She’d thought about turning him in—many times— but wanted his job, and filing a complaint might backfire on her. Plus, the whole thing embarrassed her. Did she want to repeat lines like, “Do you have a sunburn, or are you always this hot?” to someone in a position of authority?”
I deeply appreciated the varied explorations of motherhood throughout this book: Julia is a new mom who feels no connection to her first child: “Turns out, motherhood’s not exactly my thing. I’m always irritated and want nothing more than to get sucked into a black hole and disappear like—Amelia Earhart—or—or—obliterated by an asteroid like the dinosaurs. Am I allowed to say that? I’d rather disappear like Amelia Earhart than be a mother.” We also experience Julia’s relationship with her mother, who calls Julia to describe her strange dreams in detail, and shows up unannounced to meet her grandchild and then never leaves. Carmen, the new employee who shows signs of domestic abuse, is living under those desperate and terrifying conditions with her mother, who refuses to leave the man who tricked and trafficked them, no matter how cruel and threatening he is. Kelvin, one of the employees who helps Carmen and Julia, is surprised by a visit from his mom, too, and she makes herself known immediately.
Readers should be awarethat there are discussions and descriptions of involuntary domestic servitude (discussed on page as “domestic slavery”), domestic abuse, and mentions of rape throughout this book. Carmen and her mother experience physical, verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of the man who trafficked them from Mexico. He keeps them captive in his house, manipulating and blackmailing them, using starvation as a tool of control. There’s xenophobia and racism directed at these women and Julia for their shared Mexican heritage. Julia is also haunted by decades of her mother’s fatphobic comments about her appearance. Rather than weighing down the tone of the book, these heartaches and horrors add a level of authenticity that motivates Julia to complete her mission to both save Carmen and defeat her toxic boss. I also appreciated how supportive and generously kind Julia’s doctor is, providing Julia with support and encouragement in addition to postpartum antidepressants and medical advice.
I found it strange that, even when news articles quoted experts in the field, this book does not address the well-known fact that victims of abuse (however the situation began) struggle to leave for various valid reasons. Instead, the novel attributes this reluctance to Stockholm Syndrome. It felt like a common and obvious response left unaddressed or misattributed. The other resolution I found uncomfortable is that Carmen falls quickly into a relationship with Julia’s colleague, Kelvin, after he invites Carmen to live with him when she ran away from the abusive man. It’s written cautiously at first, but ultimately forms part of Carmen’s “happy ending,” which feels off considering so much of the story shows the mental and emotional damage that being saved from danger in Mexico. That said, most moments throughout the story, and particularly in the newspaper report at the end, Not That Kind of Call Girl is compassionate toward its victims of abuse, honoring them for the strength it takes to endure, escape, and seek help: “They deserve our support for their bravery and quiet perseverance in harrowing, brutal circumstances. They survived. By God, they survived.”
This novel will feel relatable to anyone who has worked in a call center and knows the sense of family you build with the most random collection of people simply by working strange hours and handling outlandish customer complaints. Not That Kind of Call Girl would be a fantastic, healing read for moms who felt shame and guilt for not feeling an immediate connection with their child. If and when the reader is ready for a storyline that represents these difficult topics, I believe this book could be a great source of comfort and support, simply in knowing they’re not alone. There’s a sadness to witnessing Julia grit her teeth to distract and please her husband, keeping it to herself that “her desire for sex equaled her desire for gangrene.” At the same time, there’s tremendous hope in seeing everything that Julia accomplishes in her personal and professional life, despite having to navigate through the haze of heartache, nipple duct infections, and a husband who wishes out loud for the return of the fiery version of herself that wanted to have sex with him anywhere and everywhere.
I’d highly recommend Not That Kind of Call Girl to readers who enjoy a cozy mystery (Julia’s colleagues and social circle working together to help Carmen has the same energy as a small town solving a murder in their midst), and to new moms who want to see the difficult, not-at-all-picturesque side of their lifestyle without any judgment. I’m so interested in reading whatever the author writes next.
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