I have a mixed bag of feelings about this one, y’all.

I loved Rachel Lynn Solomon‘s novel The Ex-Talk [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] and was mostly favorable for Weather Girl [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM], so I was pretty excited to get a digital ARC of Business or Pleasure through NetGalley. For me, that excitement wore off pretty quickly, but I doubt it will for most people.

Business or Pleasure [Buy Bookshop Amazon LibroFM] follows Chandler as she’s kinda going through a rough patch. She previously lost her job writing for a website and landed as a ghostwriter. We meet her at the signing for her second ghostwritten book, where she learns the influencer she wrote for doesn’t know her name. She’s all bummed about that, the job, and also that she hooked up with her best friend and he didn’t want more from her, so she finds herself at a bar flirting with a cute guy. Drew says he’s only in town for one more day, and they’re vibing, so she opts for a one night stand. But it’s terrible and she dips long before morning.

The next day, her agent sends her to a last minute meeting with an actor who is interested in having her ghost write his memoir…. only to find, Drew is not the dude’s real name. It’s Finnegan and he’s a pretty famous actor from a werewolf TV show. Not only does she take the job, but she also agrees to give him lessons to improve his game in the bedroom, no strings attached. I’m sure we all know how that’s gonna go.

The premise, while a bit weird, is fine. The writing itself is fine. There are plenty of good spicy scenes and a little nod to The Ex Talk that I quite enjoyed. I loved the Jewish representation, as well as conversations about OCD and anxiety. No issues there.

My issue is, once again, a lack of research on how some of these things work. Details make a story work or make it flop. This one leans toward the latter because once I started noticing the flaws, it took me so far out of the story and made me so mad. There may have been some all-caps messages to a friend who also reads her books.

I’ve got more than a decade of experience as a journalist and nearly as many years covering comic cons, so I know those worlds well, and this novel involves a bit of both. If you don’t care to know the details that got jacked up, please skip these bullet points and enjoy your happy oblivion.

• Emerald City Comic Con is a spring convention. Of its 20 years, only two did not happen in the spring, and that was 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic. It’s never happened in September as it does in this story.
• I’ve been to Emerald City. The chance of only seeing three cosplayers at Broadway/Pine during a con weekend is low. The convention events go late, so there are cosplayers running around the area well after midnight.
• A person observing a celebrity to write his memoir would most likely not be granted a press pass. There’s a lot of verification that comes with that, and she simply didn’t go through that (sometimes annoying and tedious) process. The convention would have given her a badge as support staff for the guest. Those badges have different names at different events, but would not really be press.
• Press do not get to just walk backstage by saying they are press and showing a badge. That requires a back of house pass or one that goes with support staff for a guest. I’ve only acquired a back of house pass one time in nine years of covering conventions, and that was for a story that went through multiple layers of approval both from the convention and the actress at the heart of it well before the event happened.
• Big Apple Comic Con has never once been held in the Javits. Not once in its nearly 30 year history. She’s probably thinking of New York Comic Con, which is held in the Javits in the fall. Changing the name doesn’t make sense since she used the real name of Emerald City, which is owned by the same company as NYCC.
• There a lot of other details that don’t make sense but I don’t have personal experience with, so I’ll leave them out (unless you DM me and ask. I’ll spill that tea one-on-one. lol) and I’m not even gonna get into the journalism questions in here.

This could have been a really fun ride if there had been more research involved. Literally a Google search or two would make an immense impact for me. But I know I’m in the minority on that kind of thing. I’m trying to not let my reaction dictate my review, but things can’t be helped.