683. RT Rewind: August 1996 Reviews

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there and welcome to episode number 683 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and we are going in the time machine back to August 1996. That’s a bit of distance. We’re going to take a peek at the new releases and the book reviews in Romantic Times Magazine. We are back in the era of time travel. There’s a sci-fi imprint named Avonova [Eva-nova] or Avonova [a-VON-uh-va] – we can’t figure it out – and there’s also a very likely chance of worms Not Safe For Work. Worms. As usual, we learn an astonishing amount of unexpected information in this magazine? For example, we’re both obsessed with the 1996 movie Twister, and we have many thoughts on tornados.

I’m going to have some CONTENT WARNINGS right before the show starts about discussions of worms, racist language in twenty-nine-year-old reviews, and some spiders. So right before the show starts I’m going to give you those timestamps.

I have a compliment this week, which is always my favorite part of the intro.

To Stephanie VB: Every cake, muffin, pastry, bread, and soufflé all rise in the oven because the yeast inside is celebrating you with a massive blow-out – heh – party. Because you are so great and deserve the best in carbs.

If you would like a compliment of your very own and you’d like some neat extra stuff, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. You get the complete PDF scan of each issue of RT; you get bonus episodes; you get extended files, like this episode is going to be different for Patreon folks in a way that I’ll explain in a minute; and you get to make sure that every episode is transcribed by garlicknitter. Hi, garlicknitter! [Hi, Sarah! – gk]

Thank you very, very much if you’re a member of the Patreon. Thank you for considering it if you are not, and if Patreon support is not in the cards, that’s okay! I would very humbly like to request a review wherever you listen, or just tell some people. But most of all, thank you for listening. I’m really happy you’re here.

Speaking of Patreon, a special note for the Patreon folks: You have a different file. Your file for this episode contains an extended bonus outro where Amanda and I catch up and discuss some pop culture, specifically the Swift-Kelce merger and Amanda’s rather rant-y reaction. So stay tuned at the end of the episode if you are in the Patreon and listening to the file through Patreon with your RSS feed or through the app; you get a special outro.

And if you’d like to join: patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Support for this episode comes from The Spite Date by Pippa Grant, a hilarious rom-com featuring a Golden Retriever celebrity who needs to get out of his own way; a woman trying to live her best life, even if she’s not exactly sure how to do that; and a series of plans gone very, very wrong. Here is the cover copy:

>> I might be the only person not obsessed with Simon Luckwood, Hollywood’s hottest leading man and the newest part-time resident of my little hometown. I don’t trust the way he’s always smiling. No one smiles that much. And I am clearly missing something, because I do not get why the character Simon played on his weird hit TV show is so popular. But revenge is a dish best served cold, just like the dishes on the menu at the restaurant my ex stole from me. So, when Simon feels guilty enough about his twin teenage boys accidentally getting me arrested that he wants to take me out on an apology date? I see a perfect opportunity to get my cold revenge. One night, one date, one very loud public scene at my ex’s grand opening, and then I can wash my hands of men forever. That’s exactly how it has to go. Because my life cannot handle one more plot twist.

Reviews for The Spite Date are very positive. MaddMoxie says:

>> This book was a total win for me, the kind you inhale on one night and then stumble through the next day running purely on caffeine and zero regrets. I cackled so hard I woke my husband at least a dozen times, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.

And GetLitWithAshleyZ says:

>> This book was amazing. It’s the kind of book you binge and then have a book hangover the next day. Totally worth it.

Your good book hangover comes in different format options, too! The eBook will be in Kindle Unlimited; while the paperback has sprayed edges, illustrated endpapers, and custom chapter headings; plus the audiobook features duet narration by Will Watt and Callie Dalton. The Spite Date by Pippa Grant is out now, and you can find your copy where you like to buy books. Visit pippagrant.com for more information, and there will also be links in the show notes.

Thank you to Pippa Grant for sponsoring this week’s episode, and thank you for supporting our advertisers.

Before we get started, some timestamps: Number one, at thirty-five minutes in [35:00], we are going to be talking about worms that are very Not Safe For Work, and at forty-five minutes [45:00] we’re going to begin talking about spiders very briefly. You’ll want to skip ahead about a minute to two minutes for the worms and maybe a minute for the spiders.

And now, on with the podcast. There’s going to be a bit of a delay before the interview starts because I have to lock everything in place to identify where the timestamps are for this material, and then I have to fill in with this part to say where they are, but if I move everything else then what I just said is not accurate, so I’m totally vamping in this moment and watching the play head – heh – move, so now, now! Are you ready? Now, on with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: Shall we get started with this issue?

Amanda: Live, laugh, love, yes. [Giggles]

Sarah: This was so fun! You picked such a, another, another good issue. This is so fun. And so thank you –

Amanda: Welcome! [Laughs]

Sarah: – from the very top. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

As usual, we’re going to go over the cover during ads and features, but this is – did you know that this is what the cover looked like when you picked it?

Amanda: So in your big old spreadsheet, you have, like, Title or something like that, but it says, like, Love & Laughter, and so I was like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – Yeah! Why not? [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, come to find out, poor Amanda, Love & Laughter is the launch of – [dramatic pause] – a line from Harlequin. You’ll never guess, folks. Harlequin is launching a new line in August 1996, and you know what? I’m going to make a note in the ads and features: When did Love & Laughter close? Because you know it’s not around now. To quote Steve Ammidown: No one is – no one can compete with Harlequin in starting and then squandering a new line. It’s incredible.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: So Love & Laughter capture the lighter side of love with two new fun-filled books a month. So I’m thinking that they paid for this.

Amanda: Yeah! I, well, I think we always suspected that cover features are paid.

Sarah: Yes. And in September I’m going to be talking with Heather Graham, so I’m going to ask her about it, ‘cause she’s been on the cover – she’s on the back of this one, too!

Amanda: Yeah –

Sarah: Gorgeous…

Amanda: – she’s in here!

Sarah: Where are we going to begin? Where we always begin: Historical!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Historicals.

Amanda: I forgot a lot of the older issues, the, like the front half of the magazine are features, so you’ve really got to scroll to get to the first batch of reviews.

Sarah: Yeah, historical reviews don’t start until PDF page – ooh, dang! – PDF page 35; 37 is where the first reviews show up. There’s, there’s a lot of author profiles, too.

Amanda: Yeah, there are, and a lot of excerpts.

Sarah: Excerpts, glamour shots, it’s, it’s, there’s something for everybody!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So where would you like to start?

Amanda: So before I get to mine, I just want to shout out the first review on this page is The Wedding by Julie Garwood, so –

Sarah: Classic.

Amanda: – you know what we’re working with here.

So I picked, page 46 of the magazine – so not the PDF – and I thought this was curious that it’s under the Historical section, because, I don’t know, this, the – [laughs] – the anthology’s about, like, natural disasters, and it just felt like a weird fit for a Historical setting? And I think they only mention a time period once in the review? I feel like the rest you could sort of sub in a contemporary setting and you might not even know.

Sarah: Oh no!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I didn’t see, I didn’t see the first line!

Amanda: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh my God, this is so –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – funny!

Amanda: So this is an anthology called Unchained Lightning. It has no grade. There is no star grade for this one at all. And it’s the last review of the section, I believe. And the anthology authors are Anita Mills, Lynn Michaels, Patricia Potter, and Vivian Vaughan from St. Martin’s. And I went with this because of the first line of the review.

Sarah: I missed this, and I am delighted. Oh my God, this, I have so much to tell you about this movie; I have such a history with this movie…

Amanda: That is:

>> With Twister taking the box office by storm, St. Martin’s –

Sarah: Ow.

Amanda: >> – Press offers four novellas destined to unleash passions with all the fury of a summer squall.

I know.

Amanda: >> Anita Mills has, has own Whirlwind set –

I, maybe, maybe Anita Mills’s own?

>> – Whirlwind set in western Kansas during the 1870s, a hired gun comes riding into town bent on revenge until he’s caught up in tornado and swept away by a woman’s love.

Sarah: Wait. Is the tornado the love?

Amanda: I think it, the tornado is literal.

Sarah: Huh. Okay! Sure.

Amanda: [Laughs]

>> Lynn Michaels’s Once Struck proves that a Nebraska lightning and hailstorm can mean disaster or salvation when she tries to harvest her wheat crop before it’s ruined and must swallow her pride to ask help from the man she’s vowed to never love.

>> During a wild Colorado storm, a man on the run finds refuge with a woman who helps him over the pain of the past and teaches him that love is a powerful force in Patricia Potter’s Pride’s Way.

>> A small Texas town on the Gulf of Mexico is the setting for Vivian Vaughan’s Storms Never Last. A hurricane is threatening, but a more powerful storm is brewing between a notorious outlaw and a feisty servant girl.

Sarah: Ooh! Do love a good feisty girl.

Amanda: [Laughs] But yeah, I have a soft spot for Twister. I almost named my old man cat Linus after Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character in the movie Twister, but…

Sarah: Rabbit?!

Amanda: No, not Rabbit –

Sarah: No, no, no, Rabbit –

Amanda: – Dusty.

Sarah: Is it Dusty? Dusty. Rabbit is Cameron from Ferris Bueller.

Amanda: Yes. So I almost named him Dusty –

Sarah: Yeah, sorry.

Amanda: – but he was not a Dusty. But I love this movie –

Sarah: I love that!

Amanda: – I’ve seen this all, like – I can’t remember the last time I saw it, but I used to watch it all the time. Love Cow? Another Cow; we’ve got Cow.

Sarah: Cow!

Amanda: And of course, like, RIP Bill Paxton, so.

Sarah: And Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Amanda: [Laughs] And Philip Seymour Hoffman; it’s true! And –

Sarah: Okay –

Amanda: – Cary Elwes from The Princess Bride is the bad guy!

Sarah: And he has the worst Southern accent you’ve ever heard! It’s awesome.

Amanda: [Laughs] It threw me –

Sarah: It’s great.

Amanda: – for a loop, as someone who also really loved The Princess Bride, and then I watched Twister and I was like, Wait a minute! This feels wrong!

Sarah: My dude. So I did not know that this was – have we talked about this before? Is my memory bad?

Amanda: I –

Sarah: I don’t think we’ve talked about this, because I am equally obsessed with Twister? Number one, I think we should have, like, an online movie night, where we watch Twister and, like, stream us talking about it? Like, we should just have a, like a, a Mystery Science Theater Twister watch on Zoom or on, on streaming or something, because that would be very fun.

I love that movie because, at the time, Helen Hunt was on Mad About You, which was one of my absolute favorite shows? And so I was like, Ooh, she’s in a movie! This was the first movie I ever saw with surround sound, and I went to – people who live in Evanston are going to know this; it was something Orchard; it was an open mall. Adam went to college at Northwestern, so I was visiting him, and we went to whatever-it-was Orchard open mall, and we went to the movie theater, and it was one of the first things that they’d ever shown with surround sound, and in the middle of the movie when, like, the wind is coming from behind you and the sounds are moving around the room while you’re in them, the fire alarm goes off, so we had to get up and evacuate before they could let us go back in, and I was, I remember so clearly standing outside of the movie theater with all of this adrenaline because the movie had scared the shit out of me up to that point. Like, I was very invested in what was happening, and I had to just get up and go stand outside.

I also owned a VHS of this. Remember you used to have those little TVs with a VCR in the bottom. It was like one little pod –

Amanda: Yep.

Sarah: – so of course I had one of those. I had this movie on VHS. I took a class my senior year on narratives in movies – total senior class – and I wrote a paper about Twister, about how there are icons throughout the movie in the background and in the foreground with different characters and different structures that keep calling back to Helen Hunt’s origin story, where her, where her family gets into this shelter and then the door blows off. So I wrote a whole paper about framing in Twister, and I probably wore the fuck out of that VC-, VCR and that tape, because I was rewinding and playing forward and rewinding and playing forward. I wore it out. I don’t think it works. Not that I have a VCR, but I love this movie so much! I am so excited that we have something in common, because that’s very rare in terms of things we like.

Amanda: [Laughs] This is true. Yeah, I remember, so in terms of natural disasters, I think tornados freak me out the most, just because, you know, there’s not a lot of warning, and a lot – like, it’s better now, but –

Sarah: It was.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Not, not anymore, under the current administration. We used to have, what, twenty whole minutes, man!

Amanda: But, like, our, our manufactured home was hit by a tornado, a small one –

Sarah: Oh my –

Amanda: – and it, like –

Sarah: – God!

Amanda: – our shed wound up like in, like, farther out in one of our fields. All of our animals were fine; we were fine. So the siding on our house got ripped off.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: That was a pretty small tornado, but that was so freaky, having a tornado, like, come by our house. I can’t remember if I was in high school or middle school. But yeah, it’s like, tornados, if I had to pick a natural disaster that freaks me out the most, tornados is the top of my list.

Sarah: Wooow. That’s very, that’s very scary.

Amanda: Yeah.

Anyway, which one did you pick, Sarah? [Laughs]

Sarah: Speaking of very scary, there is a two-star review. There’s a two-star! There are also some ones in Series, but there’s a two-star here in Historical and it is for Savage Shadows by Cassie Edwards.

Amanda: You couldn’t help yourself. [Laughs]

Sarah: And I was like, You know what? I’m going for it. Previous titles include Savage Bliss and Savage Whispers, and the setting is Texas 1840s. I just want to offer a very, very large CONTENT WARNING for really terrible ways of talking about people, especially indigenous people, in the following review. This is not language that we use, and I apologize for reading it aloud verbatim, but yeah. Yikes. Here we go:

>> When Ralph Hampton is shot in a robbery, his pregnant wife agrees to go with the notorious outlaw Clifton Clodsmith in order to save her husband’s life. Twenty-five years later, Ralph, paralyzed from the injury, is married to Lois, who has adopted Night Hawk, a Comanche half-breed –

Ouch.

>> – who had been abandoned by his father during an ambush on his village. Ralph receives word that his former wife and her outlaw husband are dead and that he has a daughter. Raised as Ralph’s sons –

Excuse me.

>> Raised as Ralph’s son, Night Hawk agrees to his father’s request that he find his daughter and bring her home. When –

Oh boy.

>> When Night Hawk first glimpses the wild and beautiful Jae, he falls in love with her, and when Ralph turns his back on his wife and Night Hawk to bestow all his wealth on his daughter, Night Hawk feels abandoned for the second time in his life. Crying Wolf, Night Hawk’s elderly companion –

Oh boy. [Sighs]

>> – reveals the truth about Night Hawk’s father and the night he was, the night he was left. Night Hawk is compelled to locate his Comanche family, and when he leaves, Jae follows.

Listen, we don’t need to read this book, ‘cause we know everything that’s happening.

>> When Night Hawk reaches the Indian village, he finds himself embroiled in a madman’s plot to kill his father and destroy the tribe!

Oh no!

>> Savage Shadows is highly read-, highly readable, but somewhat unrealistic. The reader, expecting to be caught in an Indian fantasy might be disappointed in the contrived scenes and predictable plotting, but as always, Ms. Edwards’ love scenes sizzle. Very sensual!

If memory serves, plenty of this will be realistic ‘cause it was lifted from research materials, but anyway!

Amanda: This got two stars, and I want to remind everyone about the grading rubric and how it means –

Sarah: Yes!

Amanda: – nothing? So –

Sarah: I’m holding a lighter.

Amanda: [Laughs] So four and a half Gold Medal with special mention; then they have just a regular four and a half stars, which means Exceptional; four stars, Excellent; three stars, Very Good; two stars, Good; one star, Acceptable. So according to the rubric, Cassie Edwards’s book –

Sarah: Nothing is bad.

Amanda: – is good. But I will say, going through this issue, there are a good handful of twos and ones in here.

Sarah: Mm-hmm! Right –

Amanda: Which is nice.

Sarah: – two and one doesn’t mean – it, it, two and one communicate something to the reader, but the rubric is like, No, no, no, we’re being nice! See? We said it was Good!

Amanda: And, like, different reviewers treat twos and ones differently, ‘cause there are a few reviews where it’ll be a two, and they’ll have some critique in there of what sort of went wrong or what they didn’t like, but then you’ll get a two review that there’s no indication of, like, why it’s only getting a two.

Sarah: Yeah! Like, I have no idea. Like, okay.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Highly readable, unrealistic, contrived scenes, and predictable plotting. Now, I have read several Cassie Edwards books; that’s pretty much true of all of them? This was very much a spoon-feed the reader the plot kind of story? There used to be a lot of those in historical. It was almost like – you ever, you ever notice this about older historicals? There’s so much background detail and, like, pages of exposition, as if the book expects that the reader doesn’t know any of this?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So yeah. Also, I want to point out on, on page 44, with the rest of the review for Savage Shadows, that picture, An Unlikely Hero by Gail Eastwood, we’re going to come back to that, but I realize that guy looks like he’s completely silver-haired, and so does she. Like, he looks like he’s, what, like eighty-two with that hair?

Amanda: I looked at it, and I was like, What in the Flowers in the Attic is this?

[Laughter]

Amanda: You can tell they’re both very blond.

Sarah: [Still laughing] So moving onto Mainstream and New Reality, which I have never fully understood why it’s called that.

Amanda: This is a catch-all if you’re looking –

Sarah: Yeah, it’s like –

Amanda: – [laughs] – at all the different subgenres.

Sarah: It really is! Like, where are we putting it? New Reality; it’s fine. I picked, on page 85, Wrapped in Wishes by Olga Bicos, published by Zebra, a four and a half star Gold! I don’t think they did the TP at this point, but this would be –

Amanda: No.

Sarah: – the equivalent of a four and a half TPG.

Amanda: I think Gold evolved –

Sarah: To Gold Medal.

Amanda: – into the TP.

Sarah: Okay. So I kind of think I want to read this, because this sounds unhinged in all of…

Amanda: This is –

Sarah: …ways.

Amanda: – a long review!

Sarah: Is, there’s a lot to cover, Amanda. There’s a lot to cover. Although, actually, now that I read the, now that I read the review out loud, I bet at the end I’m like, Well, I don’t need to read it anymore, ‘cause I know what happens. Are you ready?

Amanda: [Laughs] Yes.

Sarah: So I’m going to remind everybody, this is 1996.

>> Chloe Plum, seeing a therapist for insomnia, is put under hypnosis. While under, she takes possession of Constance Franklin’s body at the time of her death in 1882. As Constance, Chloe is drawn to Egyptologist-turned-ghost-hunter Harrison Conners.

So I just want to point out we have Constance and Harrison Conners? There’s a lot of Con here.

Amanda: So her name would be Constance Conners if they got married. [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s like the tea I like, Constance Comment. It’s a blogger’s favorite tea, y’all.

>> Driven to communicate with his dead brother, Harrison is trying to locate his brother’s ghost when he finds Constance. When she witnesses a ghost, Harrison realized that Constance has the power to contact the other side – perhaps even his brother! Constance/Chloe learns much about Harrison and the others in Constance’s life, all of whom parallel people in her own life. Even the untrustworthy Stedman, Harrison’s enemy, is too much of a reminder of her ex-husband. When she comes out of her trance, returning to present-day New Orleans, Chloe tries to answer the questions from the past and meets Parker Stevens, a dead ringer for Harrison and the cartoonist who created Hauntings, a paranormal comic strip based on Harrison Conners’ adventures.

Is everyone on board so far? Amanda has like a thousand-yard stare like What is happening right now? [Laughs]

Amanda: It’s just, and there’s more! Like –

Sarah: There’s more.

>> Leaping back and forth in time, in and out of her hypnotic trances, Chloe/Constance and Parker/Harrison must stop a madman from bringing his evil to the 20th century, and in doing so discover a love for all time.

>> Spellbinding, thought-provoking, remarkable, and a truly unique time travel, Wrapped in Wishes is Olga Bicos at her best. Utilizing her talents for creating unforgettable characters and combining this with a riveting plotline and a masterful use of theories and mysteries of time travel, Ms. Bicos has come up with a nonstop read destined to remain in your heart long after the end. Bravo!

That sounds completely off the chain. I am very, very interested in this.

Amanda: So I promise what I’m saying will make sense by the time I finish my ex- –

Sarah: [Laughs] I’m, okay, I’m on the edge of my seat now?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I am ready! [Laughs]

Amanda: So I’ve been watching a lot of short-form Chinese dramas? The algorithm is giving me a lot. Where they’re like little episodic dramas that happen on, like, TikTok or some other short-form platform –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – and they’re like five minutes or whatever. They, they hook me in, and then I’m able to find like a full movie of all of the clips together, and it’s like two hours long.

Sarah: Why is that so popular on Instagram? I’m getting clips of movies all the fucking time, and I’m like, I don’t want to watch a movie in a two-minute segment. What is, what is this?

Amanda: Yeah, so there are people out there who compile them all so you can watch them in one sitting.

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: So I’ve been watching –

Sarah: Bless.

Amanda: – a lot of them, and if you’re unfamiliar with Asian dramas in general, they’re bananas.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Lots of things happen, and the last couple nights I’ve been watching them, and then when we go to bed, like, I’m just like sort of high on the, the Chinese drama adrenaline, and I need to talk about it? And so –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: – I’ll, like, pace in the bedroom and send a voice memo to a friend or tell Brian or whatever, and Brian’s like, You never, you never know what sort of word is going to come next out of your mouth when you talk about these Asian dramas?

[Laughter]

Amanda: This is how they feel? It’s like, I don’t know what the next word is going to be in describing this book. [Laughs]

Sarah: When I got to the cartoonist I was like, Okay, yep, I’m in. This is the one. This is the one. I can’t wait to talk about this. And do you remember when time travel was The Thing?

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, I bet if you read, read over them now, there’s some really obvious, like, definite problems with them? But oh, wow, was time travel A Thing.

Amanda: I was never big on time travel, because I know I sure as hell don’t want to time travel – [laughs] – so.

Sarah: I don’t want to go back in time; I’d be dead. But also, I read A Knighting in Shining Armor, and to this day I don’t accept the ending. Sorry, people. Like, okay, yes, I understand that’s how it had to end for the story to make sense, but I was like, I don’t know this guy that she met on this plane. Who’s this fucko? And I’m supposed to – like, I don’t know this guy! So, like, it’s like, Okay, hope that works out for you, bye! That’s the end of the book now. That has never worked for me.

What did you pick?

Amanda: So on page 88 –

Sarah: 88.

Amanda: – PDF and, and magazine, I picked At First Sight by Cheryl Faye. It got two stars; it’s from Arabesque; it’s multicultural. You know how this is going to go if you listened to –

Sarah: Oh.

Amanda: – any – [laughs] – any of the other RT Rewinds that we’ve done. And I would love to just go through issues and find all of, like, the Black romance and the interracial romance and see how they’ve been graded?

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Amanda: And come up with an average? Out of curiosity –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Amanda: – for science, of course.

Sarah: I’m going to, I’m going to predict that average is, like, 2, maybe 2.5.

Amanda: Yeah. They’re usually graded much lower than the other books in the category that they’re in, which is suspicious.

So the review is:

>> As a CPA, Alexandra Jenkins is used to a routine schedule for work, home, and quiet leisure with her closest friends, but meeting restaurateur Warren Michaels changes her life into a fantasy of love, excitement, and the best entertainment and dining New York City has to offer. Her dream-come-true romance is abruptly shattered when Warren’s old girlfriend announces she’s pregnant with Warren’s baby. In an ironic twist of fate, Alexandra learns she is also pregnant!

Sarah: Oh God.

Amanda: >> Torn between her heart and her predicament, Alexandra is slowly being forced to make a decision that could ruin her life and deshort, and destroy Warren’s love for her.

>> At First –

Sarah: What?

Amanda: I can’t, I don’t know what that decision is.

>> At First Sight is a character-driven novel with real people, real-life issues that can’t be solved by a heartfelt I love you or a sweet kiss. Miss Faye has delved into the hearts, minds, and souls of two emotionally scarred lovers who struggle to keep life’s circumstances from destroying them and their love. With her powerful voice and honest, no-frills writing style, Miss Faye is a rising star.

They say the author is a rising star, but nothing else in this review makes me feel that way. It makes me feel like you were pretty unsatisfied with this book.

Sarah: Yeah. And I’m curious if the decision that’s going to ruin her life and destroy Warren’s love for her is for her to get an abortion because she doesn’t want to have a child at this time. And then, you know, Warren would never love her again. Like, oh boy. This seems laden with things that make my stomach hurt, if I’m interpreting correctly; this is going to be bad for my digestion and my cringe.

Moving on to Science Fiction. This is one of the weird things where it’s like one page, all of the publishers. And one of the publishers is called Avonova. A-V-O-N-O-V-A, Avonova. And I was like, Is that Avon’s imprint for science fiction? I looked it up: yes! Avon’s imprint for science fiction, created in 1991, was succeeded by Avon Eos in 1997. Avonova? Avo-, Avon-Nova, Ivanova. How do you, how do you even say this?

Amanda: I mean –

Sarah: I would say Ivanova.

Amanda: Yeah, but if it’s, like, a sister –

Sarah: Avon-nova?

Amanda: – to Avon, then I would assume it’s Avon-ova, ‘cause they –

Sarah: Right!

Amanda: – would want to keep the name in there.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: It doesn’t exist anymore, so who cares?

Sarah: It doesn’t matter. I mean, you know, I, I don’t know anyone who said it aloud, so I just get to guess. All right.

So I’m reading the one book that they rated from Avonova, and I just, there’s only one thing in here that made me grab it. We’ll see if you can figure it out.

>> If you haven’t given yourself the pleasure of reading Raymond E. Feist, now’s the time to do it, even if Rise of a Merchant Prince (four and a half stars) comes in the middle of the Serpentwar Saga.

Amanda’s like, No! No and no.

Amanda: No!

Sarah: [Laughs] See? Told ya!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: >> Follow the adventures of fast-talking Roo –

R-O-O.

Amanda: Like Christopher Robin Roo? Is this a little –

Sarah: This is exactly what I pictured: Kanga and Roo! So Roo, that tiny little kangaroo is now in my mind as I read the rest of this.

Amanda: Sure.

Sarah: >> – Roo, who leaves military service to embark on a career as a trader, little realizing that he will become the key figure in the Empire’s defense against the dreaded Sauur and their Emerald Queen. Mr. Feist is a storyteller of mesmerizing impact.

I need to know what happens to Roo.

Amanda: Is Roo okay?

Sarah: Is Roo okay?

Amanda: Who conscripted Roo?

Sarah: That’s not cool! Roo’s just chilling in the Hundred Acre Wood, living with his mom; leave him alone! So that’s the only reason that jumped out at me. I’m like, they did not name this character Roo. Okay, they sure did name this character Roo! All righty then!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Great.

Amanda: [Laughs] On the same page, so Tor obviously has a lot of releases, so has several more books to mention, and you’ve got like Terry Goodkind in there, yada-yada-yada. But –

Sarah: Right.

Amanda: – I picked a review in the Tor column that has the smallest amount of text, but I desperately need to have more information. It is the last review on the page, and it got three stars.

Sarah: This is only two sentences!

Amanda: I know!

Sarah: What?!

Amanda: >> James White’s Sector General series moves to Tor with The Galactic Gourmet, a delicious set of adventures triggered by the arrival of a five-star chef determined to bring his culinary ex-, expertise to the galaxy’s finest hospital. Mr. White –

Sarah: What?

Amanda: >> – is a sure source of high entertainment.

So it’s like a sci-fi chef who wants to revolutionize hospital food. And that’s all we get! [Laughs]

Sarah: It has – all right, well, I am really excited to tell you that The Galactic Gourmet has its own Wikipedia page. This is very opinionated for go, for a Wikipedia page.

>> Todd Richmond wrote that the Sector –

No, this is a quote, so it does make sense.

>> Todd Richmond wrote that the Sector General series declined after Star Healer, hitting a low point with The Galactic Gourmet, and that later books tend to stretch a story’s worth of content into the length of a novel. However, he thought Mind Changer represented an improvement. Other fans appreciate this novel as a high point in White’s use of alien point of view to provide insight into social interaction and the resolution of crises. The book is also notable for its ultimate focus on the merits of vegetarianism, which White achieves by humorously skewering passionate commitment to a meat-based diet among the endangered Wemar race.

Wow.

Amanda: And they have, like, the cover, which is like a fancy hospital spaceship.

Sarah: It looks kind of tattered. All of those ridges on the cover make it look very tattered.

Amanda: But it’s supposed to be the finest hospital! You’re right –

Sarah: [Indistinct]

Amanda: – it does look tattered, but –

Sarah: It looks really tattered! So, yeah. There’s, there’s also spray-on food and all – I’m going to put this link in the show notes. Y’all can check out The Galactic Gourmet Wiki-, Wikipedia page, because it is, it is a journey, and I want all of you to share in it.

Moving on to Mystery and Intrigue, I picked this book because I think it’s so fucking awful, and then it got worse.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: All right, Amanda, we’re going to go on a little journey. Okay.

Amanda: …Putting my seatbelt on; strapped in.

Sarah: All right. So there are two links off to the side in a comment in the document. I’m going to tell you to click one and then the other at the right time, okay?

Amanda: Okay. All right.

Sarah: The Fat Innkeeper by Alan Russell. I cannot –

Amanda: Start off at a real low point. [Laughs]

Sarah: I, I cannot figure out but am pretty sure that this is grossly fatphobic, so, you know, you know, take care of yourself here. This is from Mysterious Publishing, which I don’t remember.

>> Alan Russell’s likeable hotel sleuth Am Caulfield makes a return appearance in the paperback debut of The Fat Innkeeper (four stars). The Hotel California –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: >> – ever the swanky resort to party in –

Now you have that song stuck in your head.

>> – now becomes the scene of a crime when guests, when a guest, one Doctor Kingsbury, a magician, sleuth, and debunker of frauds, is found dead in a hotel room. To complicate matters, the hotel is hosting a convention of near-death experiencers, just the sort of group the late doctor liked to expose. The ever-intrepid Am is put on the case and finds that any one of the near-death group would gladly have given the good doctor the total death experience.

By the way, the total death experience is my favorite phrase in the whole magazine, this issue.

Amanda: Do they mean, like, an actual death for the –

Sarah: Yes!

Amanda: – [laughs] – total death experience?

Sarah: Yes! And not, like, taking over her body at the moment of death, like that other book. Like, legitimately the mo-, like, the total experience.

>> Making things even more complicated is the fact that the hotel has just been bought by a Japanese group, and Eastern and Western values are bound to clash during the murder investigation.

>> The Fat Innkeeper is a charming puzzler full of pleasant vignettes and quirky characters. The puzzle is well put forward, and the students of the classical form of mysteries are bound to enjoy the exploits of Am Caulfield.

So of course I’m like, All right, I need to see the cover of this book. So on the right, please click the Goodreads link.

Amanda: Okay, Goodreads link. It’s loading. Okay.

Sarah: So this won the Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery and the Critics Choice Award. And it’s, it’s not going to shed a lot more on the plot here?

Amanda: But wait! The description for this does not match what you just read.

Sarah: Sure doesn’t! Nope, there’s a group of swingers involved? A grunion run? I don’t even know what that is. And then which one of the hotel guests murdered the famed paranormal debunker? What changes did the hotel new, hotel’s new owner, a.k.a. the Fat Innkeeper, have in store? So the Fat Innkeeper does re-, refer to a person, okay. So let’s take a look at the cover real quick. It is an inverted magnifying glass, so the glass part is in the lower right corner, and in, and the rest of it is sort of like this blue kind of desk blotter color? But inside the magnifying glass part is a beach truck and a big surfboard. So far we’ve got nothing. So let’s go back to the document.

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: When I google-searched The Fat Innkeeper, please just click the google search link and forgive me for doing this to you.

Amanda: I’m sorry!

Sarah: >> Urechis unicinctus, known as the fat innkeeper worm or the penis fish –

It’s a species of marine spoon-, spoon worm, and then there’s pictures of the fat innkeeper.

Amanda: Is that their actual size, or is this a magnifying glass? Like…

Sarah: No, that’s –

Amanda: – magnification?

Sarah: So if you, if you look at the Wikipedia page, there, you can see them for sale, and they’re usually about four to twelve inches or ten to thirty centimeters long, cylindrical in shape and yellowish, yellowish-brown in color.

Amanda: Why are they selling these?

Sarah: For eating, I’m presuming.

Amanda: Oh!

Sarah: So I’m googling The Fat Innkeeper, and I’m like, What does the cover look like? And I get a big basket of penis worms, that’s what I get, and I think (a) that that is an accurate representation, but (b) if you go back and look at the cover, all of a sudden that doesn’t look like a surfboard anymore. [Laughs] That looks like an upright penis worm.

Amanda: Well, a grunion is a fish.

Sarah: So how do you run the grun-, what, what’s a grunion run? What is happening? Where is this? It’s California. I was going to say, if this is Florida, I understand. California grunion facts and expected runs. Oh, I guess it’s like salmon spawning: they run –

Amanda: Maybe.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: Who knows?

Sarah: Who knows? Well, if you know about grunion runs or innkeeper worms, you should tell us things, because we don’t know anything, but I was deeply horrified when I googled the title and I just got a big basket of penis worms.

Amanda: Yeah. I can’t stop looking at the photos.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Wait, so this isn’t the worm that burrows into a penis. This is just –

Sarah: No, nonononono.

Amanda: – a penis-shaped worm.

Sarah: This is just a penis-shaped worm. So the Monterey Bay Aquarium, on April 3rd, 2020, wrote an article, said:

>> The fat innkeeper worm: your shelter-in-place inspiration. We took a very close look at the fat innkeeper worm in our aviary exhibit. Tune in to learn all about this animal and the important role it plays.

It looks like a penis.

Amanda: Yeah, one hundred percent.

Sarah: >> The fat innkeeper worm is the poster child for sheltering in place. This worm never leaves its burrow and even has a marvelous system for getting food delivered to its door. The innkeeper worm draws water through a mucus net at the entrance of its U-shaped burrow. As the water flows through, the plankton sticks to the net, and the worm consumes the entire net to digest the plankton.

I’m deeply inspired right now? I am deeply inspired by the penis worm that has its food delivered and doesn’t ever leave the house.

Amanda: Otters apparently love to eat this.

Sarah: I mean, why wouldn’t you? I was not expecting a lesson on aquatic life and penis worms, but thank you to this book, which seems very questionable in its use of language, I’m, I’m now much more educated. I will be links to all of this in the show notes, but I just need you to be aware be-, I will put warnings before you click the fat innkeeper worm search link – unless you’ve already searched fat innkeeper, in which case I’m sorry, don’t look at this at work; it looks like a basket of penises.

Amanda: They’re eaten usually raw with, with salt, sesame oil, or gochujang. They’re popular as a food in Asian countries. In Chinese cuisine it’s stir-fried or dried and turned into a powder, and then in Korea –

Sarah: Wow.

Amanda: – they eat it raw. I mean, I don’t eat seafood in general, and I’m just going to tuck this under the seafood umbrella for me.

Sarah: Pretty incredible, though, right?

Amanda: The more you, The More You Know! With the little –

Sarah: This magazine has taught us so much. I don’t think it’s taught us anything that it expected to teach us –

Amanda: No.

Sarah: – but it has taught us so much.

Amanda: Yeah. So then I’m curious what The Fat Innkeeper title means in relation to the story, because they also mention, like, a Japanese group taking over, like, buying the hotel.

Sarah: Yes, and –

Amanda: So is there a connection to the actual –

Sarah: Well, in the Goodreads summary it says something about the new owner, the fat innkeeper, so I guess that’s what they call the new owner? Which, not great, folks; not great. But, I mean, there’s no fatphobia like ‘90s and early 2000s fatphobia. That was a very unique flavor of awful.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So what did you pick? And does it involve penis worms?

Amanda: It does not, but it also made me learn something!

Sarah: I’m telling you, this magazine! We should re-, we should restart this magazine. It’s like Highlights for Children, but for romance readers.

Amanda: [Laughs] Yeah, imagine reading this in 1996, and then you have to get on your little dial-up computer to figure out what a fat innkeeper –

Sarah: [Modem sound effects] F-A-T –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And then the search results take, take, they go – and then you have a slow connection, so it’s just slowly loading the image layer by layer…

Amanda: And you’re like…

Sarah: – are those penises? Are those penises? Those…

Amanda: And your mom walks in –

Sarah: – penises!

Amanda: – at the wrong moment!

[Laughter]

Amanda: So I picked, right next to The Fat Innkeeper, it’s from Ballantine, and it’s called The Mummers’ Curse.

Sarah: Huh!

Amanda: Yeah.

>> Gillian Roberts brings back amateur sleuth Amanda Pepper in this punnily titled hardcover, The Mummers’ Curse. Amanda Pepper, English teacher at Philadelphia prep, decides to do one last vacation-y thing before winter break ends by attending the New Year’s Mummers’ Parade. It is a Philly tradition, and one of her coworkers is marching in it. At the parade a mummer is shot. The dead mummer is a friend of Amanda’s coworker, who was nowhere to be found. Detective C. K. MacKenzie, Amanda’s lover, is assigned to the case, and when Amanda is named as her friend’s alibi, she decides to do some sleuthing of her own. Her search takes her to the mumming subculture, and she learns about the jealousy between rival groups that has led to murder.

>> The Mummers’ Curse is just plain fun. Roberts goes the whole hog in describing mumming, giving the reader a fascinating view. The storyline is excellent, Amanda is as intrepid as ever, but alas, we still don’t know what the C in C. K. MacKenzie stands for.

And if you’re like me and you’re like, What the fuck is a mummer? It’s a masked mime.

Sarah: Yeah! Sure is!

Amanda: I did not know that, and I was like, What the fuck is mumming? What is a mummer?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: A mummer parade? Like –

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: – mumming subculture? [Laughs] It’s like, What is this?

Sarah: It’s massive in Philadelphia. It is a massive, massive tradition every year.

Amanda: I was curious when they mentioned Philly. I was like, Does Sarah know what this is? ‘Cause I sure…

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: – don’t!

Sarah: All right, I am going – so I don’t actually – I am writing this down – I don’t actually do like an annual review because, like, that’s silly. We just usually meet at the end of the year and talk about what are the things you’re doing in the year that you want to keep doing? What are the things that aren’t working? What do you want to stop doing? What do we want to do next year? It’s very informal, but I am now going to give you a formal review this year, and I’m going to make sure that I include, Amanda is as intrepid as ever.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I might even get it on a shirt! I’m just going to put it on a shirt: Amanda is intrepid as ever.

Amanda: Stick it in my work HR file.

Sarah: Yes! The HR file that I don’t actually – but yeah, I’ll make one up; it’s fine.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yep! That’s definitely a thing. There was a controversy because a couple of mummers got kicked out for wearing blackface, but it is one of those traditions that Philadelphians who are into it? They’re like the Swifties of Philadelphia.

Amanda: But, like, what’s the connection to mumming and Philadelphia? Like, what’s the historical context?

Sarah: According to the internet, it has its roots in Swedish and Finnish immigrant culture, so it was probably those immigrant communities that started it?

Amanda: Okay.

Sarah: But it is, according to Wikipedia, it has been running every year since 1901.

Amanda: Wow!

Sarah: Yeaahh! Yeah, I’ll link to the, I’ll link to the para-, to the Mummers’ Parade Wikipedia page if you are unfamiliar with mummers, but yeah, that’s a Philly thing.

I should call my dad? This is so awful, and I’m breaking the law, but every now and again I call my dad, but I call him on FaceTime and I record the conversation. I’ll be like, Tell me about this one ancestor you said – like, I got him to tell me all about his great-aunt, who domesticated the blueberry. So the fact that we have blueberries in the grocery store is because of his great-aunt. Apparently she was a chain-smoking, cursing, weathered woman who owned a cranberry bog and was very wealthy, so of course she could just, you know, freelance-domesticate fruits, but I will record him, just get these stories on tape. I’m going to have to call him and ask him about mummers. Like, what do you think of mummers?

Amanda: [Laughs] I’ve also always wanted to go to a cranberry bog, ‘cause it looks really interesting to wade through it?

Sarah: They’re so cool.

Amanda: But I also know that there’s a lot of spiders.

Sarah: Yes, and you want them. You want them there.

Amanda: Yes, but I don’t want them on me, so.

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah. One of the job requirements for working in the cranberry bog is –

Amanda: …problem.

Sarah: – How are you with spiders? Because they, they, they hang onto anything that’s floating –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – and so if you come walking through the bog to harvest, they’re just going to crawl all over you.

Amanda: Yeah, and I don’t want that, so – [laughs] –

Sarah: No.

Amanda: – that might have to just remain a dream.

Sarah: I’m going to have to Trigger Warning this episode for penis worms, racist language, and spider arachnophobia. Wow, that’s a lot of triggers for me.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Shall we move on to Series? What did you pick in Series?

Amanda: I picked, on page 110, both the PDF and the magazine, it’s from the Silhouette Special Edition column, and it’s A Bride for John by Trisha Alexander.

Sarah: Okay!

Amanda: This only received two stars. This is one of the ones where you’re reading, and you’re like, Fuck this guy; throw him in the trash.

>> Wrapping up the month is A Bride for John by Trisha Alexander. A pair, a pair of spirited scamps play matchmaker for their single parents, but the lovely realtor and the handsome security expert prove reluctant until they exchange a fiery kiss. Readers will enjoy the lighthearted nature of this romance, but the hero’s lack of sensitivity toward working mothers and quickness to misjudge the heroine weaken the story’s effectiveness.

I think that’s a good two-star review, but also –

Sarah: Ew, I would have dropped that to one. Ew! Fuck that guy!

Amanda: Fuck that guy! That’s it: fuck that guy!

Sarah: Whole Man Disposal Service, yes! Yes, the entire man.

Amanda: Get him out!

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: That’s it. There’s not that much to say; it’s like, This motherfucker right here. [Laughs]

Sarah: Fuck this guy!

Amanda: Fuck you, John.

Sarah: Yeah. John, piss off.

Amanda: Sorry if there are any Johns listening to this. [Laughs]

Sarah: You’re fine! It’s this John that we’ve got a problem with.

I picked One Husband Too Many by Jacqueline Diamond, and this got one star.

Amanda: What a good title, though!

Sarah: I know, right?

>> Watching her flashy marriage crumble leaves a museum curator wishing she’d answered a personal ad looking for a woman to share the simple life six years earlier. When her wish magically comes true, she finds herself with One Husband Too Many (one star). Jacqueline Diamond’s innovative storyline will catch readers, despite some choppy sections.

That’s the review that we get. Choppy in what way? I don’t know, but that’s all you get.

So moving on to the next page, what did you pick?

Amanda: So I picked, page 111, it’s called The Seduction of Lady Carroll by Joy –

Sarah: All right, Lady Carroll! Get it!

Amanda: [Laughs] I don’t remember why I picked this, so maybe once I read it I’ll remember.

Sarah: All right.

Amanda: This is part of Zebra, it looks like.

>> Joy Reed entertains us with The Seduction of Lady Carroll (two stars). A beautiful young widow determined never to subject herself to the married state again decides to have an affair with a handsome farmer, only to discover that he wants a permanent relationship or nothing. Although credulity is sometimes strange, strained, Miss Reed’s piquant premise will intrigue Regency aficionados.

I think –

Sarah: Huh?

Amanda: – I know I picked it – you get it, Lady Carroll. You have an affair with that farmer, and who cares if he wants a relationship? So. I think I was really tickled pink by it’s 1996 and this woman’s like, I’m not fucking getting married. I just –

Sarah: I just want to bang a farmer!

Amanda: I just want to relieve some stress, and –

Sarah: This guy’s hot, and I would, I wish –

Amanda: – I get it!

Sarah: – to go to Bone Town. Yeah! I mean, get it, Lady Carroll! You don’t got to marry anybody; be a widow and have sex!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: I mean, seriously –

Amanda: We’re Team Lady Carroll here.

Sarah: Right? Yeah, we are definitely Team Lady Carroll.

I selected An Unlikely Hero by Gail Eastwood. Now, over to the right is an eBay link, and if you click that, will show you the color cover. This man’s hair is not blond; it is white.

Amanda: I stand by what I said earlier.

Sarah: Yep, this looks very Flowers in the Attic.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: We’re not, we’re not wrong here. So.

Amanda: The genes aren’t gene-ing.

Sarah: They are not, no. An Unlikely Hero, Gail Eastwood from Signet, four and a half stars, Exceptional.

>> The brilliantly versatile Gail Eastwood changes pace once again to bring us a frothy –

Ugh.

>> – Regency delight spiced with piquant characters and touching emotion.

That’s two uses of piquant; we, we are loving this word.

>> Cambridge scholar Lord Gilbey Kentwell has no delusions of social grandeur –

Okay, so just remember, he has no delusions of social grandeur.

>> – but when his best friend begs his assistance to help keep an eye on his madcap twin sisters at a country house party he cannot refuse.

And I love a country house party!

>> So the lowly viscount finds himself in high company as a plethora of earls, plus a marquess and a duke play court to the beautiful heiresses.

So he’s a viscount and he’s sad about it.

Amanda: Yeah. I mean, aren’t we all.

Sarah: He’s, I mean, he’s not even a baron! Like, he’s still, like, it’s, it’s still perfectly fine. Anyway.

>> Faced with such a momentous decision, the Ladies St. Aldwyn, Venetia and Vivian, set out to test the mettle of their suitors. Why is it, though, that their eyes constantly turn toward Gilbey instead of the more eligible bachelors, and why does Gilbey find himself looking back? Miss Eastwood brings fresh clarity to a familiar premise, charming us with beguiling characters and zesty interplay.

Amanda: Zesty interplay. [Laughs]

Sarah: Listen, you had me at house party and zesty interplay and two twins testing all their suitors, so I bought this, and I started reading it. I’m about like, you know, fifteen percent in. But in the beginning, this guy Gilbey cannot get over the fact that he’s a viscount, and he is so bummed about it? Like, I should just be invisible; I should not be noticed among this crowd. It’s very annoying. It’s like nerdy, shy guy –

Amanda: No, thank you.

Sarah: – has, has self-confidence problems. But the twins, Venetia and Vivian, are so great?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I think I have to keep reading because of them? When, like, when Gilbey is talking with his friend Nicholas, who’s the brother of the twins, it’s like, Yeah, okay, I get it; you’re insecure and you’re a viscount and you’re nerdy and you want to read books and you’re intimidated by all these people. The twins are amazing. They have, one of them is helping the other protect a secret that they think would make her unmarriageable, and then they’re going to get blackmailed because of the secret, and they’re both super into this guy. My only wish, and I know this won’t come true, but my one wish is that this becomes a Why Choose? And he takes his lowly viscountcy and runs off with Venetia and Vivian, and they live happily ever after in a library full away from, far from these assholes at this house party; that’s what I want.

So what did you think of these books? I am already reading An Unlikely Hero. I’ll probably…it.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Seriously, poor Gilbey is so hung up on being a viscount, and I’m like, buddy, you’re still a step up from a baron.

Amanda: Well, his fucking name is Gilbey, m’kay?

Sarah: Gilbey!

Amanda: It’s like – I don’t know.

Sarah: But you’re not naming your cat Gilbey? It’s also a brand of gin.

Amanda: Oh! Interesting! No, I’m not naming any of my cats Gilbey.

Sarah: What is a Gilbey?

Amanda: [Laughs] I just…

Sarah: Gilbey is one of the oldest names in gin, I will have you know! Yeah. Gilbey’s Gin; that’s, maybe, maybe that’s where the name came from!

Amanda: I think the books in here were okay. Definitely –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – one of the weirder assortments we’ve had. Like, using Twister as a way to open a review about a historical romance anthology that centers on natural disasters? Interesting.

Sarah: I think that was pitched on purpose. I think that was pitched from the publisher on purpose. It’s like the minute Taylor Swift en-, got engaged, within an hour I had a pitch that referenced her, about a book?

Amanda: Yeah, how long –

Sarah: I think that –

Amanda: – were they sitting on that one, I wonder?

Sarah: – the publisher, I bet, was pitching this as perfect for historical romance readers who are obsessed with the film Twister. Like, I bet this was influenced by how the book was being marketed. I could be wrong, but that’s my guess, because it seems like a weird thing, but – when did Twister come out? When did Twister, the movie –

Amanda: I think it was ’96 or ’95.

Sarah: May 1996, so if this is August and they’re, let’s say they’re working with a three-month lead time? That fits!

Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, and then –

Sarah: That fits.

Amanda: – we learned about the penis worm. Like, this was a weird, a weird assortment of reviews that led us down quite the rabbit hole.

Sarah: We have learned so much, and the real, the real treasure is the penis worms we met along the way.

Amanda: But none of them that we covered have piqued my curiosity. There might be one in the ads and features.

Sarah: Oh! The ads and features is a plethora of good.

Amanda: But the reviews that we covered, no. None of them have sparked joy.

[Laughter]

Sarah: I’m going to keep reading An Unlikely Hero. I will report back how it goes.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: This morning, when I woke up, I was like, Okay, what if instead of looking at your phone first thing? Like, I check my phone to see if my kids have messaged me in the night. But I was like, What if, after you do that, you just read for a little while? And then I looked up and it had been like an hour, and I was like, I need to get up, I need to work out, I need to take my meds; what the hell is wrong with me? So that also was not a good way to increase my getting-out-of-bed speed. It was even slower that time.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: So come back in two weeks, and we’re going to be talking about the ads and features, which is a rich, rich text. Y’all, there’s going to be so many good covers. It’s 1996…

Amanda: Live, laugh, love!

Sarah: Live, laugh, love! With your penis worms.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you, as always, to Amanda for picking an amazing episode. I just want you to know that, while I did go with the obvious subtitle, other subtitle choices for this episode included Is the Tornado the Love? And A Big Basket of Penis Worms.

A reminder, Patreon folks: you have a special extended outro on this episode, and I hope you enjoy it.

And as always, I end with a terrible joke! Terrible jokes for everyone, because I love telling terrible jokes. That’s basically it.

Where are average things manufactured?

Give up? Where are average things manufactured?

A satisfactory.

[Laughs] I just imagine these groans, like all of you in different places all listening to this episode, and I, just all of you going, ahhh. A satisfactory.

On behalf of everyone here, including Wilbur, who loves to eat food loudly when the mic is on, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend; we’ll see you here next week! And in the words of my favorite retired podcast Friendshipping, thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking!

[end of music]