Review: Talk of the Town by Sherrill Bodine

A big thank you to Sherrill Bodine for sending me an advance copy of her new book, Talk of the Town.

When Rebecca Covington, 15 year veteran gossip columnist for the Daily Mail in Chicago, finds out she has lost her job to a younger woman, she goes into a tailspin. It seems the paper has been bought out by an as yet unidentified media mogul. Her boss tells her she will now be working with Kate, editor of the home and food section. This will be tricky because Rebecca hates to cook, doesn’t even really know how and on top of that her oven is broken. Rebecca’s friend, Harry ,has recently inherited a lot of cookbooks and is willing to help her after Kate tells her she must actually cook a recipe while adapting it to her tastes. What follows is a hilarious episode in Harry’s new kitchen. Absolute laugh out loud moments.

Rebecca is determined to keep up her image because she feels in no time she will get her old job back. As she tells Kate, “her job is her identity, the armor she puts on every day. She needs it back to feel safe.” It seems that Rebecca’s husband had left her for a younger woman, leaving Rebecca with a lot of abandonment issues and fear of commitment.

When Rebecca is invited to a charity function, she spots an absolutely gorgeous man and the sparks fly as the two exchange looks. No stretch of the imagination to know that this is the new owner of the paper, David Sumner. When David tells Rebecca she can put her own spin on the food column, she does it in a big and very successful way. While their personal and professional lives progress, it is not always in a smooth fashion. There are a lot of bumps along the way.

This book has a lot more going for it than just a romance. Although at times, you can turn up the air conditioning because there are some steamy love scenes here! Some “chick lit” books, I find are vapid without much real content, but not so this one. The plot line is extremely plausible. The characters are very well drawn, especially Rebecca and David. The reader gets to see all facets of their personalities as Bodine makes them come to life on every page. They both have had some triumphs and disappointments in life along with real heartbreak that left them with commitment issues. Both work at learning how to deal with the fallout, finally figuring out what they really want out of life. There are several more subplots involved with some wonderful peripheral characters that will keep the reader interested from the beginning until the very end. This new book from Sherrill Bodine will have you talking for quite a while. I really liked this story. 4****