Podcast: 6 Hot and Fresh Summer Reads At Your Library
Summary: During this episode of the Booklovers Podcast, we share six debut authors and summer reads.
Summer Reads Suggestions
Stacy: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Clermont County Public Library’s Booklovers Podcast. I’m your host, Stacy. And I’m joined today by Shayna and Laura. During this episode, they are going to talk about some of their favorite debut authors. The show notes with links and the books will be available at clermontlibrary.org.
Shayna, would you like to get us started today?
Table of contents
First Summer Read: The Girl in the Mirror
Shayna: [00:00:22] Yes. So, the first summer read that I have picked it’s one of my favorite thrillers. It’s a debut by Rose Carlysle. It’s called The Girl in the Mirror. And the title, when I first stumbled upon it (actually a coworker told me about it) and the title it’s just…You don’t expect the book and then once you start reading it, you understand the title. It was thrilling. It was crazy. So full of twists and turns. So, if you enjoy books with mysteries, thrills, and shocking endings, this one’s a great choice. I’m just going to start off with the summary.
Summary
Twin sisters, Iris and Summer are identical on the outside, but on the inside, they are night and day. They are mirror twins, which means when Iris looks in the mirror, she doesn’t see herself. She sees her twin, Summer, staring back at her. Iris has always been a bit envious of Summer…from her good fortune to her personality, her perfect husband, perfect family. Even her name. Summer asks Iris to sail the family yacht for her, since she doesn’t know how to sail and Iris, a natural sailor, agrees.
And then the worst happens. One morning, Iris wakes up and finds that Summer has vanished. Iris finds herself completely alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean and her sister, nowhere to be seen. When Iris finally makes it to land and Summer’s husband thinks that she is Summer, Iris goes along with it.
Now Iris is living the perfect life she always envied her sister for having but, her glamorous life soon turns into a paranoid nightmare…Very creepy.
Full of surprises
Laura: [00:01:59] That’s super intriguing.
Shayna: [00:02:01] So the entire time I was reading this book, I just kept thinking “What the heck is going on?!”
Like, from the very first few pages, Iris, she’s in Summer’s closet. And she tries on Summer’s lingerie, and she looks in the mirror and of course they’re mirror twins.
Which is a real thing, by the way. I looked it up. It’s a real condition and it’s rare, but some twins are mirror twins. When they see their reflection, they don’t see themselves, they see their twin.
When you think you have stuff figured out, you don’t. It’s full of twists and turns. It was creepy and thrilling and odd, but in a good way.
Unlikable characters
I’ve never read a book where I have disliked every single character until this book. But don’t let that deter you. Every person in this book is just horrible, unlikable.
As soon as you start to think, “Oh, well maybe they have some redeeming qualities?”, no…They’re terrible people. On the boat, Summer vanishes. And Iris, she does grieve. She does think “Oh my gosh, maybe she got drunk and fell over, or maybe she passed out and fell. Maybe she did it on purpose. Maybe she just jumped…”. She does grieve for her sister, but then she figures out, well, I’m going to go to jail. And she’s always wanted to be Summer. Summer had this big scar on her thigh – it looks like a hook. Iris purposely gives herself that scar on her leg.
She decides before she sees Summer’s husband, I’m going to be Summer. It’s very creepy. Summer has a step son. He’s like three or four and he knows during the whole book she’s not his mommy. It’s very eerie. The family dog barks at her because it knows she’s not Summer.
The book was just really, really good. Read it if you want to not like anybody and be creeped out the whole time.
Laura: [00:04:00] Sounds really good.
Unexpected plot twists
Stacy: [00:04:01] ] Sounds good. A very atmospheric type of read, like really puts you in the setting of the book.
Shayna: [00:04:07] And once, like I said, you think you figure it out and then something happens with a character and you’re like, oh my gosh, like who would do that to somebody or who thinks that way. And it just gets more and more and more crazy as you go through the book. And then, in the last chapter, something traumatic happens. Then the very last few sentences wraps it all up and I had to stop and I was like, wait a minute…?
And I had to reread the last chapter because I thought I’d missed something! That’s how twisty this author wrote it. It’s a complete shell shocker. My mouth dropped open when I read the ending.
Stacy: [00:04:46] Awesome. That’s a good sell of a book.
Laura: [00:04:50] I love domestic thriller fiction that keeps you guessing. I read enough mysteries that I’m like, oh, I know who did it, and I love it when they prove me wrong.
Shayna: [00:05:03] Right. And especially with this one, because there’s no one else on the boat, but them, so it’s not who did it. It’s more like what happened. And then when Iris pretends to be Summer, it’s like, maybe she did it, but it’s a wild ride.
Second Summer Read: Fresh Brewed Murder
Laura: [00:05:19] Sounds like it.
I’m going to lighten things up just a tiny little bit, although there is still murder because it’s a cozy mystery.
My first summer read suggestion is Fresh Brewed Murder by Emmeline Duncan. And it’s the first book in a new culinary cozy series set in Portland. So, of course, it features coffee culture. 20-something Sage and her bestie, Harley, have a new coffee cart.
Summary
One morning, Sage discovers a murdered customer in front of the cart. And even worse, he was killed with a box cutter from the coffee cart, which makes her the prime suspect.
Now she has to unravel all these layers of mysteries involving local property development. There were protesters who were upset about this property to be turned into a big fancy building that doesn’t fit the neighborhood. Her estranged mother’s shady past misdeeds and her complicated family ties.
Lots of layers to this, but it still has that cozy feel where it’s kind of comforting and gentle. I mean, there isn’t anything other than the original murder that’s really in your face.
Great sense of place. Emmaline Duncan brought Portland to life for me. I’ve never been there, but she made it sound absolutely wonderful.
Authentic coffee talk
And I loved all of the coffee talk and I never felt like it was an info dump or page filler. I hate when I’m reading a book and it almost feels like the author is like, “I did all this really intense research, and now I’m going to share it with you.” If I wanted that, I’d be reading nonfiction, please don’t do that.
Sage and Harley felt authentically knowledgeable about coffee roasting. They were talking about the beans – where they were grown and creating beverages. They even had coffee cocktails, which sounded intriguing.
Tackling tough subjects
And she included other issues about homelessness, runway kids, gentrification. I thought she handled all of those in a really sensitive manner, but it never felt like a heavy, oh, this book is about issues. She kept a fairly lighthearted tone and Sage, the main character with her humor, her dating, and her desire to give back to the community and her conflicted feelings about our own past very well developed believable, main character.
I wanted to hang out with her while drinking one of her coffee creations. It sounded like a whole lot of fun, so Fresh Brewed Murder, a fast paced, quick read with a twisty mystery, great sense of place and an engaging main character. And I gave it five stars on Goodreads.
Stacy: [00:07:57] Awesome. First of all, I would love to have a coffee cart with my best friend.
Updated cozy
Stacy: And it sounds like there’s a lot to unpack for a cozy mystery, but done in like a fast-paced, lighthearted way, like you were saying. So like kind of more depth than like a normal cozy mystery, which is nice.
Laura: [00:08:14] You still have the traditional right? Set in a small town but I’ve also noticed that some of the newer, younger writers are kind of involving more social issues and social awareness into their cozy mysteries.
They still have that bit of traditional with an amateur sleuth, not a lot of blood or gore. If there’s sex, it takes place off the page. So there’s still that gentle read. I know that sounds funny when you’re talking about a book that has a killing in it, but that gentle sort of feel to it, but it feels like it’s a little bit more current.
Stacy: [00:08:52] Like with the title that it’s a cozy read, you know, I like that because I don’t know—I don’t think I’ve ever read a cozy mystery before. It just has never sounded super appealing, but that the book that you just described definitely does.
Laura: [00:09:06] And Shana for you – It has a yellow cover. I know how you love the yellow covers.
Shayna: [00:09:11] Oh yeah. If it’s a yellow book, I’m going to read it. That’s my thing. That sounds really good.
Identifying with the characters
Shayna: And I agree with you, Stacy. I would love to have a coffee cart with my best friend. Like even with my husband, like, yes, let’s make coffee cocktails!
Laura: [00:09:30] They have the cart, but they also cater events. They do tastings for people and they have little samples of these delicious coffee creations and I’m like, yeah, I think I would like to taste one of those.
Shayna: [00:09:44] I’ve read cozy mysteries where it’s like a chocolate shop or a truffle shop or cupcakes, or I read a cozy mystery series where it was Mexican food and like the way those authors write their books, you can almost taste and smell the food and the desserts. And they’re just so much fun.
Stacy: [00:10:06] Yes, absolutely. That would be really fun for a book club too, to get together at someone’s house. And make some recipes from the book, do some, some samples, what would I do? And then our next podcast can be updates on this is what we made.
Third summer read The Lost Apothecary
Shayna: [00:10:26] That’d be fun! All right. I will go next with my next pick. Laura read this one. It’s The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner. Yes, a gorgeous, gorgeous cover. A great debut. I really enjoyed the book. I mean, it has a dark atmosphere. She definitely does a great job setting the scene for readers.
There’s mystery. There’s a little bit of romance, a little, and it also just has a bunch of historical components, which I love.
I’ll just read the summary.
Summary
One cold February evening in 1791 at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop Nella awaits her newest customer. Her mother’s apothecary shop used to be a respectable place for healing. Now Nella uses her knowledge of herbs, insects, plants, flowers, and such for a much darker purpose. She sells well disguised poisons to desperate women who want to be rid of the terrible men in their lives…Husbands brothers, uncles, friends.
Nella only follows two rules now. Rule number one, the poison must never be used to harm another woman and rule number two, the names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded.
Eliza is just 12 years old and her mistress has devised a plan with the child to poison and murder her husband. When Eliza shows up at Nella’s hidden apothecary asking for the poison Nella begins to truly question her humanity. An unexpected friendship is formed and a string of events is set in motion that jeopardizes Nella’s whole world.
Dual timeline
In present day London, Caroline spends her 10th wedding anniversary all alone. She recently discovered her husband’s infidelity and is trying to cope. She discovers an old abandoned apothecary near the river, and as she investigates, she realizes she has found the link to the unsolved apothecary murders from 1791…
Centuries apart the lives of these three women intersect in unimaginable ways.
That was a lot!
Stacy: [00:12:37] It’s hard when it’s very deep, when the book is very like detailed.
Shayna: [00:12:41] It’s back and forth between present day London and then London in 1791.
Nella is an apothecary, which, during that time they created medicines for people. But instead she makes poison for men. When Eliza shows up, who is a child, Nella really then starts to say, “I’m a terrible human being, what am I doing?!”. And things just start to happen. A series of events happens and they’re basically fighting for their lives.
Then Caroline, in present day London, her husband has been cheating on her and they had this big trip planned for London for their anniversary. And she’s like, bye, I’m going alone.
Mud larking
She is a history major. And she goes mud larking. Mud larking is a real thing where people go and they dig in the mud in the river. Especially in London, it’s a big deal, mud larking, and there’s groups and clubs. And they find artifacts that could be centuries old. She finds a little vial and that’s how she starts to get on her quest for this apothecary.
Her husband ends up showing up and he wants to fix things. He ends up getting sick and the police have to take him to the hospital. And the police think that she poisoned him because they find her notes on this apothecary and poison and how to poison people…
Well-written characters
It’s a whole whirlwind! I really, really liked the book and I really liked that it blends well between the characters, because you have Nella, who’s an adult woman and she’s not a real exciting character. She’s kind of like Debbie downer in the dumps all the time.
And then you have Eliza, the child who’s very mature for her age and is doing stuff she probably shouldn’t be. And you have Caroline who’s going through something. All three women, just the way the author intersects their lives, it just came together perfectly. I really hope she writes more books because I really enjoyed this one.
And at the end of the book, it talks about mud larking a little bit more, so it’s very historical and the story was just so interesting.
Laura: [00:14:46] That’s another book where you can tell she did a lot of research, but I never felt like she was just going, admire my research. Look at all the hard work I did. She integrated it really well in terms of story.
Talk about the luck of the draw for a book cover. That is one of the most gorgeous book covers.
Book cover
Stacy: [00:15:03] Yes, it’s beautiful.
Shayna: [00:15:05] I love it. I think actually, Laura, I think you brought it to my attention, the book, because of the cover, like, I don’t even think we saw the summary.
You just said, “Look at this book. It’s gorgeous!” and then I think me, you, and Jordan, we all added it to our list. A couple of people here at New Richmond have read it because of the cover. So it’s a good one.
Author’s experience
Stacy: [00:15:26] And you were talking about mud larking and one of my coworkers, the adult selector for all of our materials here at the library, Jeanne, she attended a panel with the author, like virtually out of a book show or, you know something for publicity for the book.
And the author actually went to London and mud larked, I don’t know if that’s the right term, but did the act of mud larking so she could talk about it, like genuinely in her book. So, she really did do her research.
Shayna: [00:15:58] Yes. I read that at the end of the book. You know how some authors will add an author’s note? She mentioned that that’s what inspired this book. Someone else found a vial in the group when they were mud larking and I think that inspired this story for her. And so, she does talk about it. It’s really interesting.
Stacy: [00:16:18] That’s awesome. I haven’t read this one yet, but it is on my to-read list and I think it’s going to be my next audio book, because it sounds like it has very like lush descriptions and I feel like it would be a really good one to listen to.
Fourth Summer Read: Arsenic and Adobo
Laura: [00:16:31] It would be really good as an audio.
So my next book is another cozy mystery about food. It’s called Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala. It is a fast-paced mystery that’s going to make you laugh, cringe and salivate simultaneously.
Summary
Lila’s returned home to help with her family’s failing Filipino restaurant. And unfortunately, Shady Palms is a small town and she can’t escape her restaurant reviewing ex who seems to have it out for the family’s restaurant. If that’s not stressful enough, the restaurant’s landlord who wants the restaurant off his property is her ex’s new stepdad. So double yikes.
He and her ex come to eat lunch at the restaurant.
Her ire is up and she makes no bones about being angry with him, constantly criticizing the restaurant in his reviews. And she really feels like it’s having an impact on the family’s business. When he ends up face down in his desert, dead from poisoning, Lila’s obviously the prime suspect.
Relatable main character
This was a super fun book to read. Leila is likable and relatable. She’s trying to figure out what she wants – balancing out her needs with the pressure to meet her family’s expectations. I love her interactions with her extended Filipino family.
She talks about having grudges with some of her cousins that go back to when they were in grade school. And yet when chips are down, she knows that she can count on them to help her out with her investigation.
And her grandmother is simultaneously terrifying and hysterical. She makes these very short, kind of grim pronouncements and everybody could sort of scurries around to keep grandma happy. And when she’s not bossing them around the restaurant or at home, she’s off gambling with her friends. Super funny.
There is a large cast, all of these family members plus her friends. And I love that the author had diversity on display ethnicity, religion, sexuality, even people’s eating habits. You have everybody from super carnivores to absolute total vegans.
It was nice that there was this broad display and yet everybody was getting along and liking each other. Except for those childhood grudges, everybody had their own voice, which was also nice. I felt like she really fleshed them out.
Food descriptions
And the food descriptions were absolutely amazing. And there’s even coffee. Her best friend works at a coffee shop and she’s constantly making up these concoctions for Leila to try.
If you’re on Instagram, take a look at Mia P. Manansala’s account. She posts pictures of some of the recipes that she was working on for the book. And I’d never heard of it before this, but there’s a Filipino type of purple yam called an ube. She made these crinkle cookies, like you see at the holidays, right? The chocolate crinkles, except she made them with ube and they’re this beautiful violet color.
She included recipes and I’m going to have to try some of them. The adobo chicken sounded just amazing.
Stacy: [00:19:47] It’s almost lunchtime.
Laura: [00:19:54] Great mystery, lots of layers, several suspects with believable motives and plus there’s a hint of a love triangle. I hope in upcoming books, she’s going to flesh that out a little bit.
Shayna: [00:20:06] Oh, I love when authors do that. Love it.
Stacy: [00:20:08] To me it sounds like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but with the Filipino family and murder instead, but with all the characters and like everybody has like a big personality and stuff like that. That sounds, it sounds like a fun read.
Laura: [00:20:22] I liked it. It was a lot of fun.
Shayna: [00:20:23] Yeah, that one sounds good. My aunt is actually Filipino. She and my uncle, met when he was in the Navy. And so sometimes at cookouts or family get-togethers, she will bring Filipino dishes. So, I’ll have to ask her about that.
Fifth summer read: Starfish
So, my last pick is called Starfish by Lisa Fipps.
This one is absolutely adorable. I loved every chapter. I loved this book. It’s uplifting. It’s empowering. It was kind of gut wrenching, just all wrapped into one. It is a juvenile, so it’s written for kids, but as an adult myself, it was very, very good. It’s not very long. I think it was less than 300 pages and it’s written in the style of free verse poetry.
Each chapter is a poem and they’re very short chapters but it’s easy to follow. I’ve read books before where it’s written in free verse poetry and it’s a little hard to follow because it jumps throughout the person’s life. This one was not like that. It was very straightforward, easy to read, very quick. I think it took me like an hour and a half, if that, to finish it one morning. I’ll read the summary…
Summary
Ellie remembers the day clearly. It was her fifth birthday party and she had worn a whale swimming suit. She jumped into the pool, made a big splash, and that is when the fat shaming started. Splash actually became a cruel nickname for her.
Now, Ellie is a preteen and she is sick of being fat shamed. So, she decides to do something about it. To cope with the bullying, Ellie has created what she calls “Fat Girl Rules” and she tries to live by them.
-No making waves while swimming
-Avoid eating in public
-Don’t move so fast that your body jiggles
Her safe space is the swimming pool where she can flow and feel weightless in a fat obsessed world. Where she can stretch herself out and take up all the rooms she wants, just like a starfish. She can escape her cruel siblings and her pushy mom who thinks that criticizing her weight will somehow motivate her to diet.
Ellie has allies in her dad, her therapist, and her new best friend, Catalina. They all love Ellie for who she is. With their support, Ellie might finally be able to get rid of her “Fat Girl Rules” and starfish in real life…
Sad!
Laura: [00:22:51] It sounds amazing.
Impact of appearance
Shayna: [00:22:53] It was really good. I mean, it definitely shows the worst in people, but it also shows the very best in people. And I loved how the author just really highlighted a child navigating their thoughts and their emotions in dealing with their self-worth.
Because I think the world is harsh when it comes to our looks. If you wear glasses, your hair color, how you’re dressed, your skin color, and especially if you’re overweight. We do live in a fat obsessed world and for a child to experience that and process it, it was just heartbreaking, but it was beautiful at the same time because as you read the book, Ellie, she goes to therapy the whole time and she does the work that her therapist tells her to do. For example, the therapist tells her to stand up for herself, but don’t become a bully at school. Because there’s a way to tell someone, “Hey, that’s not okay” without bullying them in return. As a child, she figures that out.
Mom issues
And so that was really awesome to see. I just really loved Ellie’s spirit. She does get lost sometimes in a negative swirl of thinking where she’s just like “I’m fat and no one cares about me, especially my mom. Why doesn’t my mom love me?”. I will say because this was a juvenile, I think if it was written for adults, I think the author might have maybe had some chapters for the mom.
That mom needs therapy herself because she’s just very, very cruel to Ellie. It’s almost like she’s embarrassed that her daughter is overweight. She’ll print out diets or magazine articles and she’ll tape them to the kitchen cabinets. Ellie just rips them down and crumples them up. But who does that to their kid, you know? So thankfully, Ellie has her dad who supports her and loves her and he’s actually the one that has her start going to therapy because he tells his wife, he’s like, “Look, she’s being bullied in school. Her spirit’s breaking.” …So that was really good.
Praise
A really, really cute book. I loved it. I loved every page and actually I have it here. Very cute. There’s Ellie. So, I love the cover.
Stacy: [00:25:05] Five stars all the way! I’m going to call it. It’s going to be a Newbery contender. It’s going to be the winner or an honor book.
The author, I think she’s either a teacher or a librarian. She just knows how to write from the voice of a preteen. It felt so realistic. Like Shayna was saying, the mom is definitely a villain. Like, you know, there’s nothing objectionable language or anything in it, but you could just tell, like, this is probably what a lot of children experience in their home lives.
And it was so heartbreaking, but it was wonderful to see Ellie’s support system, her dad, her friend, the new neighbors next door. I loved that family. They were so sweet.
Family dynamics
Shayna: [00:25:59] When Ellie goes out with them to a restaurant, normally with her siblings they’ll say comments like “We have to get two tables because of you,” or “We’re not allowed to get dessert because mom doesn’t want you to get dessert so the rest of us can’t get dessert.” …They say really mean things to her.
And when Ellie goes out with her friend’s family, her friend Catalina who has some brothers, they don’t even notice how she looks or her weight. It uplifts her because I think when you’re a kid when all you know is your home and your family, you think that everyone’s family is like that, and that’s just not the case.
Stacy: [00:26:36] Right. And I think it’s important to note that her siblings are both older than she is. They’re in high school. But I think it really shows that kids can make, no matter how young you are, you can make a positive change. You can be a positive role model. You don’t have to wait to grow up to do that. So, it was so beautiful. I love that.
Shayna: [00:27:01] I loved it. I don’t read a whole lot of juvenile, but this one…I snatched it up as soon as I read the summary and I got it on hold when it came in and it was…I loved it. It was lovely.
Final summer read pick: Dial A for Aunties
Laura: [00:00:00] For my last one, this is a romcom, but also there’s a dead body because I guess that was my theme this time.
It’s Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto. And I have to say she has pulled up one mad cap, romcom caper. It’s a darkly, humorous debut.
Summary
I read someone, describe it as Crazy Rich Asians crossed with Weekend at Bernie’s and that seems like a pretty apt description.
Meddy’s meddling, Indochinese mom reaches new heights of meddling when she creates a profile on a dating site using Meddy’s name and photo, and then she continues to pose as Meddy chatting up a guy who seems nice. And she agrees to meet him, but as Meddy.
Because Meddy is a dutiful daughter, she goes along with this craziness. The date doesn’t go exactly as planned because Meddy accidentally kills him. Oops. Now what do you do? She puts his body in her trunk and then she calls her mom and her aunts to figure out what to do.
Where do you hide the body
And it’s this whole crazy caper where her family has a wedding planning business. One of the aunties does the catering and they decided they will put the body in a big freezer and then they will deal with it after the weekend because they have this big lavish, Indo-Chinese wedding that they need to do. Except the people who load their stuff up in the morning, load up the freezer too.
It’s an entire weekend of them at this island resort trying to hide the freezer, make sure that nobody touches the freezer. There’s a bloody in the freezer. We can’t let anyone discover this. And because it’s a romcom, there has to be the romance.
Second chance romance
When Maddie gets to the resort, the person running it all is her ex-boyfriend from college. She had to break up with him because her family wanted her to come home. She’s a photographer and they wanted her to be part of the family business. And he had said, oh, let’s start living together and I’ll get a job and you can work on your photography.
And it didn’t happen. She chose her family and she went home, but now he’s there. You have this whole weekend of all of these capers, about who has the body, where’s the body. What have we done with the body?
It was fast paced, darkly humorous with sweet, romantic moments.
There were some moments where the crazy aunties did things. And I was like, I, what did I just read? I must read this again. Surely that’s not what they did. Yes. That is there’s even a delightful conversation with Meddy explaining to them why you do not use the eggplant emoji when you’re talking to strange men.
Stacy: [00:03:01] That sounds fun!
Caper vibe
Laura: [00:03:03] right, because you think, oh, it’s a romance with a corpse that will not be funny. That will go terribly wrong. And yet it was super, super funny and there are some descriptions – her mom and the aunties and Maddie get together for dim sum every week. So again, with the delicious food descriptions.
A sweet little romance with a dead body – giving a caper feel to it. I saw that Netflix has actually picked it up. I’m hoping that they do it justice. Because I think it would be a super, super fun adaptation.
Shayna: [00:03:38] I was just about to say the whole time you were explaining that I was getting, if you’ve ever watched Good Girls on Netflix, I was getting Good Girls vibes because a body ends up in a freezer, basically in a deep freezer in someone’s home.
Oh my gosh. I don’t know how I feel right now. I’m like, do I want to read that?
Laura: [00:04:03] Well, there isn’t anything- I mean, there’s no gross gory stuff.
Shayna: [00:04:09] Just the fact that…They sound crazy. Let’s just stick them in the freezer!
Laura: [00:04:15] Shayna, it also has a yellow cover. So…
Lighthearted but with a corpse
For all that there’s a corpse involved, it really does stay pretty lighthearted. I mean, you get Meddy and there’s also the storyline of she’s trying to balance her loyalty to her family and keeping the business.
Stacy: [00:04:50] So, so many questions. But my biggest question is like, how do you accidentally kill somebody on a date? Well, now I do want to read this. If it’s going to kind of ruin it, don’t tell.
Laura: [00:05:07] It happens very early on and I will just say she didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. He was kind of hands-y.
Stacy: [00:05:18] That’s giving me Practical Magic vibes.
Shayna: [00:05:22] It’s not the same but, it kind of reminds me of Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert that just released. She runs over the guy who is the love interest in the book. They’re not on a date, but she just backs into him and runs over him. And he’s like, “What the heck? What’s wrong with you, woman?!”
Laura: [00:05:46] With Meddy, it was an accident. The guy was really a jerk. Not that that’s grounds for killing people but I’m saying it’s not like he’s nice. It’s more like “Cellblock Tango” from Chicago. He had it coming.
High jinks
Shayna: [00:06:06] Oh, that sounds like a wild ride.
Laura: [00:06:11] Very funny. Some super sweet, tender moments when she and her ex are kind of reconnecting, but every time she sort of reconnects with him, there’s the body and the body does not stay in the freezer because they need the freezer.
At one point, it very much as Weekend at Bernie’s where they’re posing the corpse. Which leads to a misunderstanding with the ex-boyfriend. The corpse is in Maddie’s room at the hotel, in her bed and the ex the goes to see her. And he can see what he thinks is a man. Well, it is a man – it just happens to be a dead man, but he thinks it’s a guy asleep in Meddy’s bed.
I can’t wait to see what they do with it on Netflix. I’m looking forward to it.
In conclusion
Stacy: [00:07:11] That sounds fun! Well, I think we have a lot of books that we all have added to our to-be-read lifts and hopefully our listeners and viewers have as well. So, thank you both so much for joining us today and sharing your titles.
Viewers, please subscribe to the Clermont Library YouTube channel, and listeners, you can subscribe to the Booklovers Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss an episode. Thanks for joining us.
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