It’s a month to Christmas, so from now on I will dedicate my reviews to light reading only, and seasonal if possible!
Before getting a romantic book, I do a fair bit of research, because even in this field, you lean towards certain genres more than others and, of course, a crap novel is always a possibility.
What is it about?
Classic of classics, enemies turned lovers. The twist here is that the enemies are pretending to be ex-lovers in order to make a radio programme. Of course in the making of the radio show they also do some love making and such.
What makes it good?
Interestingly, all the bits that not stricly the romantic part of the book. Meaning, the main character, Shay, who is a radio-producer-turned-presenter is an interesting character in herself, whose background is rich and colourful. Subjects like grief are briefly approached and I would have loved to read more about this and Shay’s inner life. I was also very ignorant on American public radios and I found anything related to this interesting.
So what does this say about “The Ex Talk?”. It says that it could be better! That the steamy scenes felt a bit jammed down our throats and not really relevant, and that the strenght of the novel lied somewhere else.
The style
Gonna be honest here, I can’t recall it being very bad or very good either. It does clip along nicely, and I was not angry at the author at any point because of wonky grammar or any of the sort, so yeah… Average enough.
Final Mark
The characters are lovely and relatable, the twist on the standard storyline is intersting but there is not much to add to this. It is what we call in Italy “un’occasione sprecata” (a wasted opportunity, you actually say the same in English, hehe). But still, there are worse things out there…
You can pair this book up with “Midnight at the Magnolia” (on Netflix), which, suspiciously, tells a very similar story, bar the steaminess plus an air of disneychannellism that does not make it any favours.
6/10
On Bookreads
Capitan Colazione 