Hi, I'm Deboki and this is okidokiboki.
and today I am going to be reviewing
Something to Talk About by Meryl
Wilsner. Something to Talk About is a
romance novel, it was published at the
end of May this year, and it centers
around two women, Jo and Emma, who both
work in Hollywood. Jo is a former child
star, she was on a hit sitcom, but she's
since moved on to becoming a producer
and a scriptwriter who has been dealing,
you know, with the cumulative result of
decades of being a Chinese-American
woman in Hollywood, which is a place that
has not been historically very kind
to Chinese American women. Emma, meanwhile,
is her assistant who is also trying to
kind of figure out what she wants to do
in life. We are told that she is very
good at her job. I'm not entirely
convinced that she is, but that is not
going to be the point on my review. At
the beginning of the book, Emma ends up
going to an award ceremony with Jo and
a pictures taken of them, and it
like makes everyone think that they're
dating, so there's all this like rumor
stuff going on. There's gossip. There's
paparazzi. There's also someone who might
be selling information about them to
like, you know, tabloids and stuff. So that
is like all like this external level of
stress that then gets combined with the
fact that they are internally dealing
with the fact that maybe they actually
do kind of like each other. But you know,
that is also very complicated because
yes, Jo is Emma's boss, and that is a
very complicated thing to navigate. I was
very excited for this book because I
love stories set in Hollywood, and I'm just
give me all of them, anything that like
deals with like how movies get made, like
all of that stuff, I want it. And
especially like knowing that this was
gonna be a book with like a very
successful woman in Hollywood, like I was
down for that, and I was even more down
for like watching these two women fall
in love with each other over the course
of this story. So I was very very excited
for this book. And just like as a
heads up, this review is to be pretty
negative. But I want to start out by
saying that Jo was probably my favorite
part of this book because I really loved
the idea of exploring what it would take
to be a child star in an industry that
is like not particularly kind to its
child workers, and like turn around and
actually come out of that very
successful, to actually be able to take
control of her career. And add in the
fact that you know, Jo is
Chinese-American, and
you know, there's all these added layers
to it. And so there are ways that this
story does explore that, you know, there's
this background story from Jo's career
where she spoke out about this show that
she was on that made her famous, and she spoke out about the ways
that she felt she was being mistreated,
and that like led to her being
blackballed. But like she managed to
reinvent her career, like that kind of
stuff I was very very into. There's a few
other moments where like Je's
background does like kind of inform
specific things, but it's mostly just
stuff like you know, her having to change
her name from Cheung to Jones, which is why
you might not actually realize that this
book has a Chinese-American heroine
until you actually start reading it.
There's also a brief scene with her dad
who basically just enters and exits the
story to be homophobic, which also felt
just like a little bit like...of course...
you know. And so I don't know ,this might
just be me getting a little bit kind of
like picky about what my own like
preferences are in books, but I'm
starting to get a little bit bored of
books that you know, that are not own
voices, that like really fixate on the
ways that being not white in America is
a liability, like in this case in Jo's
career and in her family relationships
and how she relates to her sexuality, and
not as like a bigger thing that's part
of different parts of your
experience, both good and bad. I think
that this is a very difficult needle to
thread, especially if you're coming at
this from an outsider perspective, so
it's not that this is something that I
think is like racist about this book or
necessarily problematic about it. It's
just a thing that I find very limited in
books like this that are trying to
approach diversity, but maybe don't
know or are still somewhat limited
in understanding what it is they're
trying to do with some of their
characters. Despite some of my
frustrations with the way that Jo's
character was written, the best parts of
this book for me by far were when we saw
Jo interact with like the few friends
she has because she's really
parsing through what friendship means to
her as someone who's been  very
isolated by fame for a very long time.
But unfortunately those
things were almost always
undercut by the fact that they're
followed by bouts of jealousy by Emma,
who was like parsing this understandably
strange and confusing situation with her
boss, but who is also unable to make
Jo's friendships about anything except
herself. And I'm being kind of harsh on Emma,
and I think it's in large part because
the conflicts that seem to be used to
develop her character don't really make
sense to me, and worse, they made Emma
seem really self-centered. About halfway
through this book, Jo develops a
friendship with Emma's sister. It's one
of those weird things where like they
just sort of like accidentally become
friends, and they're like not really sure
who was supposed to tell who about it,
and so Emma doesn't find out about it
until like much later when Jo has
done a very nice thing for her sister.
And I get that this is like a weird
awkward situation to be in with anyone,
especially like someone you've got a
crush on, or someone you work for, and Jo
happens to be both of those things for
Emma.
So I get that this would be weird. But
again it's very clear that this is just
like an awkward accident, it's not a
deliberate act of aggression against
Emma. But Emma, and really the book itself,
establishes this as a violation of trust
that is so egregious, that Jo has
done something so egregious to her, that
Emma has to resort to being
passive-aggressive with her boss. And
again, Jo has just done this like huge
generous thing for her sister. And Emma's
response just felt so confusing and out
of place. Like I don't know, I don't have
siblings. But I just feel like if someone
had done something really nice for my
imaginary sister, that just like came
from a genuine place of friendship, that
had no strings attached...like I would be
excited about it. And like frankly, their
friendship is none of her business.
But like the book continues to establish
that she is right, and like that this is
Emma standing up for yourself. And I just
I don't understand what it is she's
standing up for. I don't know. This
conflict made so little sense to me that
I am still convinced that I am missing
something. I am kind of paranoid that
this is like an interpersonal boundary
that I am not aware of and have been
unwittingly trespassing on for like ages
now. And moreover I feel like this
conflict just reinforced like why you
should actively try to not fall in love
with your boss. I truly cannot imagine a
functional workplace built on an
assistant passive-aggressively pouting
at their boss for doing a nice thing for
their sibling because neither the boss 
nor the assistant want to address the
underlying supposedly romantic tension
informing all of their interactions. And
I say is "supposedly romantic" because I
do not find their interactions romantic
at all. Mina over at Mina reads talked
about this in a wrap up video, and I'm
gonna link to it down below because,
I mean, I was just so relieved to find
someone else who had frustrations with
this book. A lot of reviews will note
that this is
a slow burn romance. And that was
something that honestly had me really
excited to read it. I have read a lot of
smutty books, but I prefer for things to
err on the side of slow burn versus
instant attraction. Like Marina Zapata is probably like the queen of slow
burns. Like her books, I find are like
almost like a masochistic affair. Like
you were go in knowing how much it's
gonna hurt because like 80% in, every
time I read, I'm like so panicked.
I'm like is this the one that's gonna
like break my heart, because you've spent
like chapters upon chapters watching
these two people agonizingly build this
emotional arc and connection, and you're
just like terrified that they're not
gonna even like make out. So all of that
is to say that I am very Pro a slow burn
romance. This, however, didn't have any
burn, and it didn't have any romance. Ot
was just slow. At 80% into this book, I
didn't really feel any emotional
connection between Emma and Jo. Like you
know there's some angst on Emma's side ,along
with her jealousy. And Jo seems like
confused and a little bit protective, I
guess. But I wasn't really invested in
the why or what or how of it all. I think
one of the challenges of writing a
convincing romance between a boss and
their assistant is figuring out how to
navigate the boundaries between like the
professional and personal lives in
the story. And I think it's really tricky,
and for this book I think the final
effect was something really muddied
where like the more I think about it, the
lesson to me is like...don't date your
boss. There's also an extended plotline
about sexual harassment, which involves
Emma's favorite director who turns out
to be a creep, and it's a story that gets
wrapped up in a very neat and tidy way
that is like very different from how
these stories actually go in real life.
And which to be clear I think is not a
bad thing. I think like a huge part of
romance is like the element of wish
fulfillment, like not just in the
romantic plot, but like in the big shitty
things that happen in the world that
like surround the characters. I think
that's like a huge part of the success
of Red, White, and Royal Blue. But for me
personally, and again this is just
strictly my own response, it's not
necessarily something that I think that
the book is doing is like super
problematically or whatever...it's just
like having consumed a lot of books and
podcasts and articles about the Harvey
Weinstein investigation--and really a lot
of sexual harassment investigations in
media and STEM fields--the ease with
which this story wrapped
up in the book was just so jarring that
it really took me out of the book, and it
just didn't land the way that I think it
was meant to. And I think it's partly
because that plotline is part of a story
about a boss and assistant whose
underlying attraction to each other
creates a dysfunctional workplace, one
where Jo in her worst moment fully
demeans Emma in front of everyone to
avoid suspicion. Like it is truly truly
truly awful what she says, and like I
think Emma in that moment would
have been fully right to just like walk
off. And it's this thing where their
underlying emotional relationship is
interfering with their professional
relationship and also affecting the
workplace around them. Is that as bad as
the sexual harassment storyline? Of
course not. But it is weird to have that
like those two things presented in like
two different light, where we all know
like the sexual harassment is clearly
very bad, but like the other thing as
part of this romantic plot that I am
like supposed to be invested in. I've
kind of having some angst lately about
whether I really want to be doing
negative reviews anymore on this channel,
in part because like I usually only
pick up books that I'm excited for and
then I want to do well, like this one. And so it's just like been an extended
thing just like trying to figure out what I think negative reviews mean
for me as someone who makes them,
as someone who consumes them, and like
for other people like watching this
video. So as part of my angst, as part of
this like internal dialog that I was
having I was watching Mari's video about
why she hate reads books that she put
out a few months ago because is she
someone whose criticism, both like
positive and negative of media has
really been helpful to me. And one
thing that she brought up for her was
the point that it's
interesting to think about what makes
the media we like and don't like work or not work, which was a helpful thing
for me to think about when I was
approaching this review because I just
again, like do I want to
review this book if I'm just gonna be
criticizing it? And so I think the bigger
question for me with this book in terms
of like the bits and pieces that work,
and like what it means, and I don't know
my overall media consumption is like...
would this book have worked if it weren't
about a boss and assistant. Like
especially right now, with a lot of the
conversations going on about toxic work
places especially in media, I think I
might just like have very little
patience for the antics that a boss/
assistant
romance requires. But with that said a
few weeks ago I finished a Korean drama
called What's Wrong with Secretary Kim?
which is also a boss assistant romance.
And I enjoyed it more than Something to
Talk About though it also had some truly
truly unnecessary plot lines about like
a childhood kidnapping and like a memory
transfer or something, and it was also
kind of slow at time so like I actually
like fast fowarded through most of the
show. I don't think it's fair to directly
compare this show to Something to Talk About,
you know, they are different
mediums, they're set in different worlds
and Something to Talk About is
contending with like these layered
issues of sexuality and race in America
that What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? is
not remotely having to deal with. But I'm
bringing it up because while I enjoyed
What's Wrong with Secretary Kim? more
than Something to Talk About (those two
titles are way too long).
Also the show does also have to
contend with these issues of personal
and professional boundaries, and while I
don't always like it, I think it's a
little bit more successful than this
book because I think the show leans into
what it is: a workplace romance. And that
means that the workplace itself has to
be really fleshed out. The surrounding
characters have their own lives and
romances, and more importantly the show
gets into the ways that the central
romance that's driving the whole plot
might affect the professional lives of
these other characters as well. It
doesn't ignore that. Fleshing out the
workplace has the added benefit of
giving more depth to the main characters,
you know it gives them a life outside of
their interactions with just each other,
and that in turn actually cycles back
into the relationship that they're
building, it gives that more depth as
well. And I think ultimately that might
be a big part of what I was missing from
Something to Talk About, a book that I
was excited for because it was set in
Hollywood, but where Hollywood felt more
like a series of plot points than an
actual setting. The world of Joe and Emma
felt so small, which does not have to be
a bad thing. But I think if you're gonna
create a small world, you have to really
commit and magnify the emotions
that are driving their characters so
that the that becomes the setting in a
way. But because the book didn't feel
like as big or as committed in either
the setting or emotion for me, the
characters became like very nebulous.
They became very hard for me to grab on
to, and so ultimately I just wasn't very
interested in their story. There's really
like a joke in here about how at least
Something to Talk About gave me
something to talk about, but it's not
very joke.
Unless you laughed. If you laughed
it was hysterical.
