Talk of the Town by Lisa Wingate

I had read the 2nd book in this series by Lisa Wingate a long time ago (Word Gets Around) and I had enjoyed it. Enough that when I saw this first book I decided to give it a read. They can be read in any order as the plots are separate from one another, so that didn't make any difference to my enjoyment of this one. What did make a difference was the fact that this one was almost excruciating to get through.

Mandalay Florentino is a producer from California who has landed in Daily, TX as part of a secret plan to have American Megastar come to town for the top final five, of which a Daily resident will be a part of. Amber Anderson, local talent, is under big wraps for this announcement and it's Mandalay's job to make sure everything runs smoothly. But of course there are always hitches when you have to deal with the paparazzi. She has to deal with her love life too and a new found attraction for a country boy passing through. Mandalay wants to do her best, but she has a lot of things working against her.

There weren't very many characters that I liked in this book. I found Mandalay boring and whiny and she didn't ever seem to do very much. She just had other people do everything for her. Carter was sweet but kind of unbelievable and he just seemed to pop up like a gopher in almost every chapter. Imagene was about the only character I liked as she seemed down to earth and since she took turns being a narrator with Mandalay, we got to know her pretty well. Amber Anderson, who only make a brief appearance was overly saccharine sweet and also an unbelievable character.

Between the slow moving plot and the writing, there was definitely a reason why I didn't enjoy this installment of Lisa Wingate's. The plot leisurely took its course getting to the conclusion with a lot of useless filler. But the writing was the real kicker. Wingate decided to make sure that you knew these people had accents and spelled things out phonetically to illustrate these accents. Charming for about the first paragraph, it quickly grated on my nerves after and made the book difficult to read. She also switches back and forth between Mandalay and Imagene as narrators and while they have different voices, sometimes they run together and confuse the reader that was as well. I should also note that this is considered Christian fiction and much to my delight, there was barely any mention of religion at all making it entirely non-preachy.

Not the best for sure and it makes me a bit hesitant to read the third book in the series. I probably will though just because I don't like to leave anything unfinished.

Talk of the Town
Copyright 2008
359 pages

Word Gets Around by Lisa Wingate

The thing that first drew me to this book was the cover. Ironically its not the cover pictured here. The two are very similar though and the girl is the same. To me she seems very approachable and down to earth, not the usual cover heroine who is too beautiful for words. But enough about the cover and on to the actual story.

Word Gets Around follows two main characters of Nate and Lauren. Lauren is a girl originally from Daily, TX who because of a terrible accident in her past, finds it hard to return to her home town. This is actually quite the shame as she is a natural "horseman" or as others know it, a horse whisperer. Her father finally convinces her to come back and train a horse for a movie the town is resting their hopes on. But she meets Nate, and starts to fall for him, but can't decide if she can get over her past.

Nate is a script writer who because of a hard past is a friend to Justin Shay, all powerful conceited movie star. While he tries to help Shay out, this may be his last attempt to work with him. Shay wants him to develop a screen adaptation of "The Horseman" and also help with a home being built for foster kids. Nate views the project as hopeless since Shay has drug addictions and is known to be flaky. However, after meeting the people of Daily he becomes determined to do the best for the script and project. Especially since he's very interested in impressing Lauren.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't mindless but it wasn't a deeply complicated book either. It was a nice relaxing book. Wingate tells the story easily and from the point of views of both Nate and Lauren. My only complaint about her writing would be the way she writes accents. I absolutely detest the way she chose to do this. The way she words her accents make her characters sound idiotic or stoned. Luckily the accents don't come up too often.

To note, even though I didn't find it advertised as such, this book has Christian overtones. They're not in your face type of mentions but they are a key element in the novel. Some of the mentions are used to help the characters grow and while the novel only spans a little over a week the growing is not awkward or rushed.

Its a good novel for seeing character development, small town fun, and an easy playful romance. I wish there was a sequel but I didn't see one listed. I definitely would like to see more of the story and these characters.

Word Gets Around
Copyright 2009
363 pages
It also includes a few pages of discussion questions.