Rachel Lynn Solomon’s sparkling romantic comedy debut is a love letter to public radio, and an interesting twist on the enemies-to-lovers faking romance trope as we follow the growing friendship between two co-workers who don't like each other but have to pretend to be exes for the sake of their career’s future.
Nearing thirty, Shay Goldstein has been working at PPR for ten years, beginning as the ‘wunderkind’ intern, and rising to the role of producer of the station’s flagship show, Puget Sounds. She loves public radio for its ability to tell stories that connect personally with listeners, and for the connection, it gives her with her father, a fellow public radio fan, who passed away when she was a senior in high school.
Unfortunately, everything seems to go sideways as soon as 24 years-old Dominic Yun appears. Hired fresh from a master’s in journalism, he’s determined to do ‘real’ news stories (translation: hard news instead of the so-called soft ones), even if that means kicking Shay out of her recording booth. But suddenly, when it becomes clear the station is about to undergo a downsizing, Shay and Dominic have to work together as (fake) exes co-hosting in a new radio show about modern relationships.
Written in the first person from Shay’s perspective, this story is a lot of fun, without failing to address important issues, like sexism, especially in a professional environment, and finding love after a major loss. I also felt like it is very grounded in the real world while being diverse and gently subversive. For example, Shay is five years older than Dominic and considerably more sexually experienced; and all the characters are from diverse backgrounds and have diverse sexualities.
I didn’t doubt Shay and Dominic's romance for one second. They have great chemistry and I wouldn’t mind reading more of their smartass banters, both friendly and less so. I also love how they are both portrayed as being very competent and hardworking people. Once they run the show, we get to see excerpts of the fictional transcripts and I found it wonderful. I only wish the author could have given us some of Dominic’s POV chapters—maybe he would be less of a jerk if we could have known what he was thinking and feeling in some moments.
Summing up, I think the story is well-executed; the dialogues are impressively catchy, sometimes to laugh out loud worthy, and the characters are not only relatable but pretty fleshed out. Plus, the steamy scenes are very exciting. If I could change something, maybe I would have preferred the development in Shay and Dominic’s relationship to happen on air, instead of on a weekend trip; and the end could have been less rushed. Other than that, is a 4.5, so I round up.