Shay Goldstein has given a decade of her life to Seattle's public radio station, where she produces other people's shows and quietly nurses a crush on the medium itself. When management pushes for a fresh idea to save the struggling station, Shay pitches The Ex Talk: a relationship advice program co-hosted by a pair of exes. The catch is that she and her designated co-host, the arrogant new hire Dominic Yun, have never dated at all — and now have to convince listeners that they used to be a couple.
As their fake-exes act becomes a surprise hit, the on-air chemistry Shay and Dominic manufacture starts to feel uncomfortably real, and the lie they're telling threatens both their careers and the fragile trust building between them. Shay must also reckon with her grief over her late father, a radio man himself, and with what she actually wants from her work and her life.
Rachel Lynn Solomon's The Ex Talk is a smart, banter-filled contemporary romantic comedy set in the appealing world of public radio. It pairs a slow-burn enemies-to-fake-exes-to-lovers arc with real feeling about ambition, journalistic ethics, and letting yourself be seen off the air as well as on it.