B-
Genre: Contemporary Romance, LGBTQIA, Romance
Theme: Age Difference, Friends to Lovers, Workplace
Archetype: Actor/Actress/Celebrity, Diverse Protagonists
CW: sexual harassment
I first heard about Something to Talk About last year and said “oooooh,” because it has tropes and character types that I like a whole lot:
- Hollywood setting
- Ice queen lead
- Boss/employee relationship
- Tabloid photo fallout
Jo Jones is showrunner for the hottest drama on TV and rumours abound that she is going to head up the next Agent Silver movie (I imagined an American James Bond). Jo has no interest in fielding questions about it at the SAG awards and decides to head that annoyance off by asking her assistant extraordinaire, Emma, to accompany her. Jo’s never brought a date to an awards ceremony and is infamously aloof, so the press have a field day when they photograph her and Emma beaming at each other on the red carpet.
Everyone speculates that Emma and Jo are a couple and their only comment is “no comment.” Is it great for Emma that everyone thinks she’s sleeping with her boss? No, but because Jo’s never commented on her love life before, making a comment would only further fuel speculation. They just need to keep their heads down and it will all go away. Besides, it’s not like they have feelings for each other. Until (dun, dun, dunnnn!!!!), they do.
First things first, I know boss/employee romances aren’t everyone’s jam. I’ve long been a fan, but I find them less easy to read since #MeToo exploded and some of the stories I used to love now make my skin crawl. I’ll still try new ones, but my enjoyment level depends entirely on how the relationship happens and how the power dynamic is addressed. If you’re like me in that regard, I have great news for you about Something to Talk About. This book has the slowest of burns, so I wasn’t bothered by the fact that they start out in a direct reporting relationship. Need more on what that means?
Jo and Emma don’t have their first kiss until their last week of working together, so there’s a very clear end date to them being in the same office. And even then, they don’t sleep together until after Emma isn’t reporting to Jo anymore, because Jo is highly protective of Emma. Despite the many months of rumours about them, she doesn’t want to give off even a whiff of impropriety, so she emphasizes that they need to start their relationship the right way.
This still might be too much for some people, but it was perfectly fine for me because Jo is always cognizant of their power dynamic and ensures they start their romantic relationship on equal footing.
In some ways, Something to Talk About feels as much like a friends-to-lovers romance as it does a workplace romance. Emma has been Jo’s assistant for more than a year, so their working relationship is well established. They have tremendous respect for each other and what they’re each capable of on the job, and they also clearly enjoy each other’s company. For example, that famous photo is taken a moment after joking together about Emma’s height:
“Don’t let me fall on my face. I don’t know how to walk in these heels.”
“Right, of course,” Jo said. “You’re an Amazon.”
Emma stiffened, and Jo tightened her grip on her wrist.
“I only meant you’re tall,” she amended. “Compared to me? Of course you’re an Amazon.”
Someone appeared and fixed the train of Emma’s dress, disappeared just as quickly.
“Anyway,” Jo said. “The Amazons were mythological women warriors, so really it’s a compliment.”
Emma smiled, a real smile, without even thinking about it. “Didn’t they kill all men who entered their lands?”
Jo slid her a glance, smirking slightly. “See? Definitely a compliment.”
That was one of many moments where I was struck by how much they truly like each other. And neither of them is actively crushing on the other at this point, even if they’re each aware that the other is objectively attractive.
It’s especially odd for Jo to like Emma, since she’s known to keep her distance from people, except with the very closest of friends and relatives. Jo’s best friend, Evelyn, even calls her on it after seeing the photo, saying “You admitting you took the girl as a buffer isn’t helping your case […] You brought her so you don’t have to deal with people you didn’t like. Ergo, she is not in the category of people you don’t like.” In other words, even if Jo isn’t into Emma, it’s a Very Big Deal that she likes her. On the flip side, Emma not only likes Jo, she’s protective of her, too. When the media speculates whether Jo can handle the leap from TV to film, Emma is infuriated on Jo’s behalf.
“You’ve dealt with paparazzi before,” Jo said. “Why are they bothering you now?”
“Normally we deal with them because they like you, not because they’re being dicks to you!” Emma huffed, clearly affronted.
Jo tried not to chuckle. “You hardly need to defend my honor.”
Emma didn’t immediately reply. She turned to look out the window and folded her hands in her lap. Quietly, she said, “Well, it deserves defending.”
Because I adore reading about people who enjoy each other’s company, I reveled in the first 40% of Something to Talk About. Hands down, that’s my favourite section of the book. Unfortunately, things take a weird turn in the middle, because Emma stops talking to Jo unless she absolutely has to for a solid 15% or so of the book.
Jo goes to her nephew’s baseball game and runs into Emma’s sister, Avery, because Avery’s kids are on the team too. Jo keeps sitting with Avery at the games and doesn’t tell Emma. This goes on for WEEKS, until Jo invests in Avery’s bakery and Avery tells Emma because she feels guilty. Emma is deeply hurt because she thought she and Jo were friends and she won’t talk to or look at Jo unless absolutely necessary.
This frustrated me because the way they handle it feels out of character for Jo and Emma. Like, Jo considers telling Emma about seeing Avery and the kids after their first meeting, and basically decides not to because she thinks it would be a bit strange. Then she sort of just flounders, not understanding why Emma was withdrawing so much that she wouldn’t even look at Jo (yes, Emma hits that level of petty). That is the opposite of Jo’s no-bullshit approach to life. And I understand that Emma gets upset because she thinks Jo doesn’t really consider her a friend, when Emma had thought she did. But, I don’t know… maybe say something? I found it mind boggling that Emma would treat her boss so petulantly when she wants a career in Hollywood.
After Emma and Jo get past that problem, they ride their feelings on into angst-town, with each acknowledging their romantic feelings to themselves but questioning and/or doubting whether the other could feel the same way. That means the same fun from earlier in the book isn’t quite recaptured until the very end.
I know that in real life we don’t always have the conversations we should because they’re hard, but I was disappointed because it felt like such a deviation from the characters I’d fallen in love with.
The writing style in Something to Talk About is clever and I highlighted almost 30 passages because I loved the turns of phrase so much (and maybe to remind myself that they go to Calgary, because hooray! My city is in this book!). For example, when Avery says to Jo “You basically offered me a hundred thousand dollars a year, just because you’re nice,” Jo shoots back, “I’m no such thing and I won’t stand for this slander.” Or right at the beginning, when Jo and Emma are talking about the photo that changed their lives, and Jo says, “How novel […] This is perhaps the first time two women seen together weren’t labeled gal pals.”
Another aspect I want to call out as a positive is that Jo is Chinese American and Emma is Jewish American. While this book isn’t specifically about their experiences as it relates to their culture, it does come up. There are questions about whether the media’s doubts about Jo are because of racism, sexism, or both. We also learn about racism that Jo experienced at other points in her career, since she started out as an actor before making the leap to writing and producing. Emma goes to her temple when she needs to be with her community and there were enough Jewish food references that I kept wanting to grab snacks. I can’t confidently speak to how well these aspects of the characters are written, since I’m not Jewish or Chinese, but they didn’t feel tokenistic to me.
Also, because I called it out as a content warning above, I want to call out that there is sexual harassment on the page in this book.
Jo has Emma’s favourite film director come to the show’s set to visit, because she knows Emma wants to be a director some day. He’s a fucking creep and tells Emma that he’ll help her get a job if she gives him a handjob. When she flinches, he says that she’s already trying to sleep her way into the business and that he can give her better opportunities than Jo.
Something to Talk About has a lot of good going for it, between the writing style, the way Emma and Jo like each other so much early on, and how they finally work things out. I just wish the spirit of the first 40% was consistent throughout, because it changed from a book I loved to one that left me waffling between being delighted by turns of phrase and frustrated because Jo and Emma needed to get out of their heads and talk to each other. I was happy for them at the end, but they get together so late in the story that I was relieved to get an epilogue because it added a HEA to what felt like a HFN. If you’re into Hollywood romances, ice queens, age gap pairings (there are 14 years between Jo and Emma), or workplace romances, you might enjoy this one. It will probably depend on whether bad communication irks you as much as it does for me.
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Thanks!
I really enjoyed this one a lot. Normally, I’d be put off by the boss/employee relationship trope in the wake of #MeToo, but I felt like Jo spent so much time concerned about her interest in Emma coming off as predatory or exploitative due to the power imbalance between them, that it really wasn’t a problem here. As you say, they waited to establish a relationship until Emma wasn’t Jo’s employee any more.
I also recommend people have snacks, because there is so much food in this book (Jewish food and comfort food and pastries (Emma’s sister is a baker)).
I liked the age difference between the two – Jo is in her early 40s, while Emma is about 27. It never feels like it impedes the connection the two have.
This is a lovely review. I ended up disliking this one because of how Jo treated Emma during a set tour. I felt like that got resolved way too quickly; it felt like a slap to me as a reader and I can’t believe Emma moved on so fast. And even though Wilsner is great at working to make the employee thing as responsible as possible, I still couldn’t get past it.
@Tara,
I will have to read this just because they go to Calgary! I lived there for over 10 years.
I love Vivian Arend’s books because she’s Albertan and so many of her books are in places I’ve lived or been. Ditto for Jackie Lau’s Toronto books.
Great review!
Surprisingly we flip-flopped! I struggled a bit with the beginning because I didn’t understand what kind of working relationship they had, but then I really liked how Emma stood her ground and demanded apologies.