Y’all, I was so excited to see a new novel from Rachel Lynn Solomon on the way. The Ex Talk was one of my favorite reads of 2021, so I was hopeful for a repeat of wonderful from Weather Girl.

Weather Girl introduces us to Ari Abrams, a meteorologist on air during the morning news in Seattle. She’s working in her dream station, which just so happens to be the one she grew up watching, and working with the meteorologist who inspired her to join the field. However, Torrance Hale’s ex-husband is the news director and they kind of make the place miserable for everyone.

After a wild moment at the Christmas party (I’ll let you enjoy the hilariousness for yourself), Ari and sports anchor Russell Barringer sense there’s unfinished business and start scheming ways to get Torrance and Seth back together. But in all that time spent together, they develop a deeper relationship themselves.

Before I get to the the TV-related rant you all know is coming, there are some good things about this novel. One being, I don’t know that I’ve ever read a romance novel with a plus-sized hero, much less one who was also a father. Both leads are Jewish, so I loved the diversity among characters, which is rooted in Solomon’s real life.

I went into Weather Girl expecting it to be light and funny like The Ex Talk, but it’s not like that one at all. Ari has depression and battles with how much of that to reveal about herself to others around her. Mostly, no one knows. The depression side of things gives this one a lot more weight than the previous novel, but it also makes it more realistic. As a TV journalist, I can tell you there are a lot of people who do put on a perky face for air when they are actually miserable behind the scenes. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong; it’s just a fact of the business.

And since I’m adjacent to the realities of TV newsrooms, I might as well jump on in to it. There’s one thing that books and shows about the news always seem to get wrong and that’s the morning show’s schedule. Do not even get me started on Morning Glory, miss goes-to-work-when-the-sun-is-shining. Morning teams are pretty isolated, so Ari’s overlap with sports would not be realistic. The morning meteorologist is generally off the clock and gone by 12:30-1:00 p.m. Sports is an evening-only segment, (if you see a sports anchor in the morning show, it’s pre-recorded or there is something HUGE going on) so members of that team tend to start work around 2 p.m. Ari would have had to be staying late to see Russell or he’d be coming in early. Not unheard of, but it’s not normal either.

However, Solomon did capture a smidge of how toxic newsrooms can be. It’s not just when your boss had a bad relationship with someone else in the building though. (Although there are a lot of newsroom relationships because we don’t have much social life outside of work. We’re a wee bit nuts.)

Anyways, enough of my nitpicking. Overall, Weather Girl is a solid novel. Just maybe think of it as a novel instead of romance and the heaviness in some parts won’t feel as out of place.

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