Something to Talk About Plot Summary

A photograph of Hollywood writer Jo and her assistant Emma on the red carpet starts rumours that the two are dating. Rumours that are completely ridiculous… right? Despite the fact that the gossip is entirely baseless, they prove difficult to shake. To the point where Emma has to wonder, might there be more to her relationship with her boss than even she thought?

My thoughts on Something to Talk About

Something to Talk About is the debut novel from author Meryl Wilsner. The book takes its sweet time (more on that later) building a romance between writer/producer Jo Jones and assistant Emma. I had real mixed feelings about it, honestly, but it had some great strengths so I’m going to start there.

I really appreciated the way both women’s sexuality was handled. Both are totally at ease with their identities; Jo being a lesbian and Emma bisexual. The romance being between two women is kind of incidental. There are obviously societal implications, which are touched on, but it doesn’t play into their feelings towards each other. Speaking as a (reasonably) well-adjusted bi gal myself, it was nice to read about a young bisexual woman who wasn’t just discovering it, and wasn’t stressed about it in the slightest!

Speaking of Emma, she’s a sweet character. She’s very earnest, and obviously totally dedicated to her work. Which does by extension mean she’s completely dedicated to Jo! And speaking of Jo: Jo was very interesting. She did seem kind of chilly a lot of the time from Emma’s perspective, but there were obviously layers to her. I also thought the author used some nice touches to make it clear from the offset that Jo paid attention to what Emma liked.

Jo is a Chinese-American character, and the way the author referenced the effect this had on her career was interesting. I can’t really comment on the quality of the representation, but it seemed clear the author was thoughtful about it. Emma is also Jewish, so there were some nice nods to representation in Something to Talk About beyond sexuality.

The writing was a little hit-or-miss for me

The writing was decent, and by and large I thought Something to Talk About was incredibly readable. But there were a few things that bothered me.

Jo rolled her eyes a lot, to the point where I wondered if she was going to get some kind of eye strain. There were also a few instances of being told stuff that could have been shown through the narrative. For instance, in an early scene Emma references her ‘clumsiness’ but we don’t really see any evidence of this. At all.

There’s also a lot of back and forth in Emma’s internal monologue, “This, but that, but on the other hand this, and yet also that…” which I found annoying. Although, this was mainly an issue towards the beginning. I don’t know whether it stopped happening or whether I just got used to it.

On the other hand, Wilsner did something pretty cool with the writing in Emma’s perspective chapters at points. When she was running, and in a couple of other instances, the writing style changed to reflect her physical state. So the sentences got a little choppier, broken up as if by her pace. I thought that was a nice touch.

Plot and pacing in Something to Talk About

Okay, I have to talk about the elephant in the room. Something to Talk About takes slow burn to an extreme, the likes of which I have never seen before. Partly because of that, I think, the pacing felt weird at points.

The book glossed over a few plot points that felt like they should have been a big deal. Like ups and downs with the rumours, which were set up to be pretty central to the plot, but were largely mentioned in passing after the first couple of chapters. On the other hand, the plot slowed to a crawl at points to dwell on things that felt a lot more trivial to me.

Part of the reason for the slow build was to allow for the complexity of the boss/employee relationship to be addressed. And I think that was handled as well as it can be, considering the inherent power dynamics at play. There was a nod to the ‘Me Too’ movement at one point, which was well handled, and added some interesting context to Jo and Emma’s conflicted feelings. All the same, I don’t think we needed quite as much time as we got to re-hash the moral dilemma of an assistant falling for her boss, and vice versa.

Wrap-up

A modern and thoughtful take on the boss/employee romance trope, Something to Talk About is a slow-burn female-female romance with sweet characters and a lot going on. Although there was a lot that frustrated me about the book, it was definitely a cute read. And I appreciated the representation, particularly of angst-free bisexuality!

Find Something to Talk About on Amazon (UK/US)

This is my review of the month for Lovely Audiobooks