Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner: Talk about how bad it is
I picked up Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner absolutely ages ago because A) I'm gay, of course, and B) I'm weak for an age gap, at least in which both participants are legal age consenting adults. It’s a lesbian stereotype, and one that I fall into enthusiastically alongside the cohabiting-weakness that is the u-haul. So, I am a simple woman; I see a gay age gap, I go for it. Consider this your call-outs, Melissa Tereze and Harper Bliss! Heroes, both!
Let’s start with the characters. I usually like to do that, because I find romance is character-centric, unsurprisingly, and I like character development. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a well-told plot, but I read romance for the people first and foremost. You could almost consider this as much a character analysis blog as anything. At first blush, I liked our leads, Jo "Jones" Cheung and Emma Kaplan. Respectively, a famous hollywood actress/scriptwriter and her rising assistant, working on a TV show at the moment but prepping for Jo writing a film script. Em is more than just Jo's assistant really, as they've been working together for years and are great friends.
The author really manages to convey their affection, but unlike a lot of these contemporary sapphic romances(In the Long Run, Who'd Have Thought), it's not immediately obvious to everyone in-universe that the pair of them are in love and falling all over eachother. Does that make any sense? As in, even though they're the leads in a gay novel, but they're not obviously falling all over eachother, they do begin as friends. It makes the small bits of affection all the sweeter. Like, Emma going on a tirade about how great Jo is, and that she can totally nail writing this sick film script? That's sweet. Jo being so warmed by it that she invites Emma to hang out in her office? Adorable, I'm dead. And yet, we do still manage to get some cheeky and flirtatious dialogue woven in. It is obvious to YOU, the reader, that these two need a room.
Okay, I think that covers the good stuff. Time for a tangent.
I’ve put this piece up elsewhere before, and the reception was pretty good, but I still sort of paused when looking it over. Originally I was pretty mad about Meryl Wilsner’s debut, which given how invested I get in the average pair of leads, was understandable. But I guess, in summary, I wasn’t really very nice. It sounds silly, because most critical people DO NOT give a single shit about being kind at all. But then, critics are so often total fuckers. Aside from “remember the human” though, it’s very easy to post something totally non productive and bash the shit out of bad things, which is why the funny angry video game nerd format became so popular. I kind of like the challenge of writing about things I like, and generally I try not to write about things I just outright hate. I’ve Did-Not-Finish’d a great many novels(When Katie Met Cassidy, Two to Tangle, She’s the One, so on) sometimes because I thought they were written with a big toe, and sometimes because I just didn’t jive with the concept – I don’t bother talking about those. There’s also the fact that as an aspiring writer, running a review site at all could be considered a faux pas and extremely poor form. Oops!
So given all of that, why? On one hand, as stated I am obnoxiously enthusiastic about sapphic fiction as a whole, and I wanna talk about it. On the other, I actually began reading the stuff as a sort of research project for writing my own. Instead, I ended up with a new special interest, and probably my best one! But I do consider being a fucker on the internet to be a method of, I guess processing story content in general. Analyzing character arcs, and such. Sometimes, I do find it useful to analyze both the good and the not-so. With that justification/explanation out of the way, I feel slightly better about posting this.
Back in our subject here, all is well until about one third into the book. It’s pretty standard stuff; Emma is fairly whitebread regular as far as protagonists go, but Jo has a lot going on, what with being of asian descent and a longrunning player in the entertainment industry. Her glitzy, cool confidence is appealing too. However, this all starts to fall apart before you can really get too interested, and in a big way.
Emma discovers that Jo has invested in her sister Avery's bakery, and has been hanging out with said sister at little league baseball games. Avery needed more dosh to hire extra workers, and they both have siblings at the baseball games, alright. This sounds pretty fine; Emma and Jo are extremely close, so it’s not surprising that the families would be getting involved and friendly. However, Emma is miffed about this, because Jo didn't bother to tell her and, frankly, "She didn't want to share Jo." She's also bothered because Avery was always the golden child and got all the help in the family, so why should Avery get Jo too, etc etc. Aside from how ridiculously possessive your favourite 20-something white girl is being, this seems like it's leading to a discussion in which Emma opens up to Jo about her insecurities, right? Gets some character development?
Nope, gotcha. Instead, it gets sidelined. After Emma and Jo spend a week not talking about this at all, this famous director guy Barry comes 'round to watch the production of an episode of Jo's show, Innocents, and Emma is meant to shadow him to learn directing and make connections. She’s a big fan of his films, which should help. Instead, Barry propositions her for sex to further her career. Dark, yes? Weirdly, right around this time Jo is very cold to Emma at work, treating her like any other assistant. It’s bad, and Emma is rightly upset. As near as I can tell, the whole incident is because one of the staff was speculating that Jo and Emma were getting too close, so Jo’s reaction was to turn frigid and offend Emma. Top class!
After that slight non-sequitur, a quibbling session results in Emma revealing that the director guy in in fact a sex criminal. Jo gets a character switch flipped, and she goes all concerned, kind and pissed on her assistant’s behalf, asking Emma if she's okay. On its own this is a normal reaction, and might mark a return to plot normalcy. But then this goes off the deep end, in that Emma is suddenly absolutely swooning over Jo. First off it’s weird, because Jo doing anything less than asking if she’s okay would be justification to block her number. On top of that, this awkwardly writes out previous conflicts. All of her concerns about the thing with Avery and her, all of her insecurities? Literally never mentioned again because wow, boss is angry I got sexually harassed! Marry me, Jo Cheung! I don’t care how shit or on-and-off you’ve been to me!
Whatever, Emma. I'm glad that the aftermath of sexual harassment is the height of romance for you? The romance-lit enthusiasts call stuff like this “hurt-comfort” as a trope, and again it bugs me, at least here. She literally says "Their whole relationship felt like it had been turned on its head in the last five minutes." Yeah, because Jo showed basic concern that you’d been sexually harassed? That, and "Today, Jo fixed the reason [Emma] was mad at her." Which, she didn't. Jo SAID sorry about the entire thing briefly, but it wasn't any better than the week before, which featured an apology Emma said wasn't good enough. The only difference is the sleaze director.
It's even lampshaded directly:
Avery looked dubious. "So the two of you are suddenly okay now?" "I mean, I guess it is a little sudden, yeah, but - things have gone back to normal so easily."
I considered DNF'ing this thing, but this was like 90 of 237 pages in, so I said screw it, I'll finish. Looking back, I sort of wish I hadn't. This is the novel that taught me something useful early on; if there’s going to be a stupid, contrived conflict partway through, the plot likely won’t recover and neither will my investment. What I can tell about Meryl Wilsner is that nothing happens in their plot without trauma or some other outside force making it happen. I don't even have to say much about it because the text keeps on lampshading it, doing my job for me;
"Overwhelmed with emotions you didn't know you had?" Evelyn said. "What - your dad insults Emma and suddenly you realize you're in love with her?"
The context is that Jo’s dad is a shitty stereotypical homophobe. This means I have to file this one alongside Up On The Roof by A.L. Brooks under “books with POC families with homphobe parents”. I can’t really call it a trend per se, since there are only two, but it raises my eyebrow. Not like there’s a lot else to talk about; Jo's father is not a character, either. He has one scene and his entire purpose is to insult Emma so that Jo gets furious at him, as per the quoted text. Again, trauma is apparently the height of romance, so then Jo and Emma ALMOST kiss. At like 60% through. That's it. Oh, and Jo somehow assumes that Emma figured getting kissed is part of the job description?
She acted like it was fine. Like she was okay with it as a requirement of her as my assistant. It was awful.
That’s worrying in itself, really. Does Jo just assume that Emma can’t think for herself? Of course, they don't talk about having nearly kissed, though. Why would two adult women, aged 27 and 41, speak about their emotions and feelings? Why bother, when Jo can just stew on it and feel like a, quote, "predatory lesbian" (yikes) while Emma somehow thinks Jo isn't crushing on her??? Miscommunication—or none at all—is a common trope for romance. Not a fan!
From this point on though, the entire plot would not need to happen if they would just be honest and communicate about their feelings. I know Emma is in Jo's employ, but come on. There has to be a better alternative than this. There MUST. I hate this.
Example: when Jo's friend Evelyn comes to visit her at work and Emma sees them hugging, Emma somehow assumes that they are GIRLFRIENDS and does not bother to clear up that assumption for literal weeks. Instead, she assumes her boss is not available and she did something wrong by "almost" kissing her.
Another major problem is that aside the trauma men(because literally all the men are bad guys in this, as in real life of course), Jo and Emma only get any closer to talking and being together when they have someone else talk to them. Again, external influence is required to force their hands. Avery for Emma, and Evelyn for Jo. It's like these side characters exist simply to talk sense into the plot, push the leads along, and nothing happens without them. Em and Jo just cannot tell if the other is interested in them. It reads like highschoolers passing notes back and forth, or some shit. It’s ridiculous. This whole shebang also really harms Jo’s independent boss-lady characterization, because it is beyond belief to think that a career woman in her forties would be THIS out of tune with her own feelings. Not that she’s struggling with internalized homophobia or anything, she’s just an idiot I suppose.
It takes until the end of a business trip, a real kiss(finally) on page 200 for the idea of addressing their feelings to even occur to either of them. But first we need some manufactured drama, because we’re at 75% or so! As it turns out, a sneaky paparazzi got a photo of them kissing, oh no! People really ARE going to think Emma slept her way into the job! The paparazzi, rumours-about-Em-and-Jo-dating thing is brought up a lot throughout the book prior to this, but of course the first time it has any meaningful impact is for contrived bs conflict right near the end.
Jo also handles it like shit; she was going to reveal her feelings about their kiss that night, but once the paparazzi sends the photos along with an ask for hush money, Jo LITERALLY does not look at or speak to Emma all goddamn day. She gets an NDA made and buys the photos herself, without even talking to Emma about it, even though Evelyn says she should. She should. Instead, again, she’s cold and hurtful toward Emma.
Of course Emma isn't mad about it, though. Why would she want to be involved with a photographer having photos of her kissing someone, right? Fuck it. Jo might be WAY too concerned with her reputation, but oh well. At this point I was thinking to myself, Emma deserves a better, more communicative and decisive class of woman than you, Jo Cheung.
But, whatever. All of the development that should lead up to a relationship proper - Jo worrying she doesn't bring anything to a relationship, being afraid of heartbreak and hurting Emma, all gets condensed into like two pages, right at the end. And then Jo is at Emma's house, and they finally admit their feelings like they should have 150 pages ago. Golly, I like a slow burn but this is contrived and stupid. The leads come off as totally lacking in autonomy and independence for the entire duration.
One last thing of note is that weirdly, the lone spicy scene(it's like a 2/5 for spice) is kind of a highlight for the entire book. That probably says more about the poor writing than the quality of said scene, but here I go anyway. Simply put, when they FINALLY get down to it and Emma strips Jo on the bed, Emma is obviously stricken by her nude beauty and all of that. Instead of being bashful and shy though, Jo is described as having her head held high, shoulders back and preening. Confident in herself. I just find that to be both a change of pace and a really nice thing in general. That’s the kind of self-assuredness that Jo’s character naturally had me expecting, not a fool woman with the emotional intelligence of a five year old, unsure if she’s crushing or not.
More generally I haven't seen a ton of protagonists with serious body image issues addressed in sapphic romance, not even the trans ones! So it's a bit different for a leading lady to outright enjoy being visually worked over by her girlfriend(or indeed, agender demon fuckbuddy). The standard is either idle shyness or just ignoring the concept of body image issues in general. This? This is nice. It also constitutes the best characterization in the entire book, and it’s wedged in between pussy being eaten like a banana sundae.
So, that'll cover the book itself. Something to Talk About is Wilsner's first novel, and it wasn't beyond saving, I don't think. The premise and characters are fundamentally solid, but it needed some heavy editing passes to be good. Something to Talk About has to go down as the first genuinely bad romance I read, when I started about a year or so ago. I wasn’t pleased, it put me in a mood for an entire week.
There are other things I could bring up, like how the perspective is third-person but still uses POV markers before each chapter, because seeing both characters’ thoughts at once would highlight how dumb various plot points are. Frankly though, I’ve lashed this one more than enough. I’m not here to be rude, but Something To Talk About is kind of a big mess of unrelated and unfinished plot threads, which explains as well why this piece comes off scattershot. This novel has about a 3.6 star out of 5 rating on Goodreads, and I don’t know if that says more about people’s takes or the site itself, but by my estimation this thing is borderline unreadable.
Still.
Wilsner has a novel coming out later this year called Mistakes Were Made. My mind says that one’s begging for another idiotic title pun, but I plan to give it a fair shake when it drops. I’m deadly curious to see if the author takes any of the criticism onboard or just improves as a writer in general. Best of luck, and see you then, Meryl.
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