"Boss Girl" by Nic Tatano

Sydney Hack is a single thirty-something with a high-powered job as VP of news for a television network.  But the network isn’t doing well and Sydney is under pressure to get viewership up.  And with her new idea, she is about to strike gold.

Sydney realizes that like herself, many over-thirty women want a chiselled young trophy buck on their arms.  And she thinks, why not give it to them on their nightly newscast.  Imagine, instead of the older male/young beauty queen combination that is currently on television, you pair an older woman with a piece of male eye candy.  When her brilliant idea becomes an overnight success, she and three of her fellow female managers are catapulted to national fame and their very own 24 hour network.  

The four women are ready to infiltrate the Old Boys Club and they’re going to do it acting just like men do - casting couch included.  That’s right, Sydney and her friends take advantage of a decades old tradition and not only are their young male anchors starring on television, they are also starring in the women’s bedrooms.  

Boss Girl by Nic Tatano takes you behind the scenes of television news into a world where pretty much anything goes, and shows you that women are capable of doing everything men do - and I mean everything.

I’m going to start off by saying I was so conflicted about this book.  The premise sounded fantastic and I’m all for a woman getting her man, no matter who they are.  Older woman, younger man? Go for it.  But I did not realize that it was going to all get a little creepy.  

These women sleep around.  A lot.  They sleep with every man who works for them.  They share men.  They hold a draft to see who is going to get to sleep with who.  They even have a loft in the studio where the women can go to sleep with the men during working time.  That’s where it all became ridiculous for me.  I get that this is an age-old tradition for men in the entertainment industry and why shouldn’t women be able to behave the same way.  But I don’t think it’s something that should be celebrated, male or female, and that’s exactly what it felt like in this novel.  If this part of the novel had been toned down a bit, alluded to, or not as frequent, I would have really liked this book.

I often say that I don’t like sex in my chick lit novels and by that I mean I don’t like graphic descriptions of sexual acts.  I’m cool with the characters having sex no matter what their situation as long as it isn’t descriptive and I will credit Tatano for going this route.  He could have gone into detail about what was happening in the loft but he didn’t and this was smart writing on his part.  

I did enjoy this novel because the writing was very good, the premise was great, and Tatano writes four strong female characters, something we need more of in our books.  I also loved that we have four high-powered, go-getter women who have a fantastic friendship.  It goes against the stereotype we have of women and I like that this book represents those women that do exist! It’s refreshing to see these kind of women being written by a man.  And Tatano uses his years of experience in the news industry to make this a well-rounded book.  

Like I said, I was conflicted about this book because I loved it and I didn’t love it.  I would be reading and enjoying everything that was going on, then the discussion of the women’s sexual lives would come up and I’d be disappointed.  So it went back and forth like this for me through the whole book.  

If the sexual attitudes in this book are something you can deal with then I would definitely recommend this book to you.  If that wouldn’t ruin a novel for you, then you will enjoy this book because it is well written, smart, and funny.  But if you don’t think you can handle the sort of behaviour I’ve mentioned, then it might be a good idea to give it a pass.  I hear his first novel, Wing Girl, isn’t like this so that might be a good one to try instead.

I received a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley.