383. Our Favorite Books of the Year, Part Three: Amanda, Kiki, Ellen & AJ

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hi there, and welcome to episode number 383 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today are Amanda, Kiki, Ellen, and AJ! We are still recapping our favorite books that we read in 2019. Amanda and I are going to talk about the loss of my coffeemaker and about her favorites of 2019, including how glad she is that there’s more science fiction for her to enjoy, and we talk about her favorite historical romance sex puppy hero. Kiki is talking about a book that transformed her way of holding her body. Ellen brilliantly sneaks in six books into their top five, and AJ shares what authors and books rocked their world. Hint: there may be lesbian necromancers possibly.

I hope you are enjoying these reading recaps and that you’ll share with us what books have rocked your world this year too. You can get in touch with us at [email protected], or you can call 1-201-371-3272 and leave us a message. Or just tell me a bad joke. I have so many in my inbox, it’s amazing! I love them so much!

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie and brought to life by the brilliant dual narration of Linda Henning and Tara Ochs. Perfect for fans of Susan Mallery and Jill Shalvis, two mothers – one pregnant, one sending her child to college – form an unlikely friendship, finding love, hope, and a new start at life in this charming, laugh-out-loud audiobook. A little romance for one and a confidence boost for the other, and for both of them, self-discovery, sisterhood, and a whole lot of pie. If you love girlfriends supporting girlfriends, and of course pie, this is the audiobook for you. Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie is available wherever audiobooks are sold. Find out more and get your aural romance fixes from hachetteaudio.com.

And stay tuned after the podcast. I have an audiobook sample of Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie courtesy of Hachette Audio and Nita Basu. Thank you!

Our transcript this week is brought to you by our Patreon community, which is entirely filled with wonderful human beings. If you have supported the show, thank you so much. You help keep the show going, and you make sure every episode is accessible.

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Hello again, and thank you to our Patreon community. I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season.

I will have links to all of the books; do not worry. I will tell you what music this is, though I bet you already know. And I have an absolutely dreadful joke to end the episode.

We’re going to begin with Amanda, and we’re going to talk about our favorite books of 2019. On with the podcast.

[music]

Sarah: I just want you to know that I have suffered a most grievous tragedy this weekend?

Amanda: Oh no.

Sarah: Our coffee maker broke.

Amanda: Oh, you have my condolences!

Sarah: Oh, it sucked out loud! It was so bad that, like, we’re standing there, I come downstairs and Adam’s standing at the counter, and the parts of the coffee maker are all over the counter, and I’m like, I’m going to go to Starbucks. I have credit left over from my last trip. I’m going to go to Starbucks. We will not handle this without caffeine. ‘Cause you can’t fix the coffee maker unless you’re caffeinated! Like, you just can’t.

Amanda: [Laughs] I just picture Adam standing there with, like, smoke coming out of the coffee maker and –

Sarah: [Laughs] It was giving error codes that don’t make any sense, and we did a lot of research. And we think it’s dead, which is very sad. We have an older one that we, like, got out of the garage, and, like, we were busy coming up with a backup plan and another backup plan and a third backup plan, because not only do I drink coffee and Adam drinks coffee, but my older son is a high school freshman, and do you know how early he has to go to school?

Amanda: Oh yeah. I don’t miss that at all.

Sarah: No, he’s like, this is dumb, and can I have coffee? And we’re like, oh yeah, absolutely you can have coffee.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: No problem.

Amanda: Are you going to give the old coffee maker a Viking burial? Just send it out to sea –

Sarah: You know –

Amanda: – and light it on fire?

Sarah: – I think I have to take it out to the transfer station, which is where the recycling that is technology goes for the county? I think I have to bring it out there ‘cause there’s too many electronic components for me to just chuck it? I think I have to take it to a special place.

Amanda: See I’ve never been –

Sarah: And then chuck it! [Laughs]

Amanda: – I’ve never been to a transfer station, but in my mind I just picture you cradling your, your broken coffee maker; walking this, like, desolate desert area littered with, like, the graves of other pieces of technology; and –

Sarah: A wind is blowing, yeah.

Amanda: Yes, and you just scouting the perfect place to lay your coffee maker to rest.

Sarah: I’m pretty pissed at it. I might drop kick it.

[Laughter]

Amanda: Just chuck it.

Sarah: But yeah, I’m in a position where it’s like our, our coffee situation is precarious, and it is not good.

Amanda: Oh boy. Soon the, like, Wendell household is just going to dissolve into chaos, the longer –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: – they go without coffee.

Sarah: Oh yes; smoke will be coming out, like, through the little exhaust beds, and my neighbors will be like, we’re hearing weird noises. [Laughs]

Amanda: Or the smoke could be a signal that, like, a new coffee maker has been chosen!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Habemus caffe!

All right, so what were your favorite books of 2019?

Amanda: So I had to do some research and look at what I’ve read, because 2019 has been a long year.

Sarah: Hasn’t it been? Have you seen all these threads of, like, here’s what happened in the past decade, and I’m like, I feel so fucking old, and I’m just looking at 2013.

Amanda: Well, I was looking at books that I read, and I’m like, oh shit! That was in February of this year!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: I thought that that was last year! So out of my top five, three of them were published this year, and two of them are more backlist titles that I haven’t mentioned on the site, and then I just, like, read and really enjoyed? So we’ll start with the ones that I read for Smart Bitches, and it’ll probably be a no-brainer for those who have, I don’t know, read my reviews or kind of remember those things?

Polaris Rising, which was this year in January or February, and I’m just so glad there’s more sci-fi romance going on. For too long, there has been nothing, I feel like –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – and I’m just kind of really glad that this series is doing well, and it exists, and the second book just came out, and I reviewed that. But yeah, Polaris Rising.

The next one, The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. She’s so good. She’s one of those authors that makes me so glad to read the genre and that, you know, like, her words are out in the world.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, you get to be alive at the time that this book, and you get to experience it.

Amanda: Yes! And it’s definitely one of those books where you get jealous of other people who get to experience it for the first time.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s big praise! That’s real big praise.

Amanda: Yes. And at the bookstore that I work part-time at, that was my best of 2019 staff pick.

Sarah: Wow!

Amanda: So it’s on, like, a little display.

Sarah: It has a, it has its own little podium?

Amanda: Yeah, it does!

Sarah: Nice!

Amanda: And, like, a little, little shelf talker? I don’t know if anyone reads those, but – [laughs] – it’s there!

And then the third one that I reviewed for the site was The Blacksmith Queen.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: Which was just so fun. It was so wild, and I rem- –

Sarah: Cathartic.

Amanda: Yes.

Sarah: So cathartic!

Amanda: I remember being worried that it wasn’t romance-centric, and it wasn’t, but that was okay! And I should have never doubted G. A. Aiken/Shelly Laurenston. I was a fool!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: So those are my three that I’ve talked about on the site that I just really loved. They’re all different in the feel of them.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: All of them gave me, like, really good experiences.

My other picks are So Wild by Eve Dangerfield. I picked this one up on a whim. I think someone in my romance book club had mentioned Eve Dangerfield, and for a while people kept talking about her book Act Your Age, which has, like, an age difference, I think, and was not my thing. It’s not my catnip, so I didn’t read that one, but I was very curious about her books, because everyone’s like, it’s pretty sex-positive; it’s, you know, really hot and steamy, and her characters are great. So I was rooting through her backlist like a little truffle pig, and –

[Laughter]

Amanda: – and I landed on So Wild, which came out last year. And it’s about a trio of sisters who take over their father’s tattoo business, and the father is adorable, and I won’t tell you what happens to the father, but he becomes out of the picture. Not dead, but he’s just out of the picture. And he is this lovely, hippy, like – I can’t remember if he’s vegetarian or vegan, but this lovely, like, hippy, tattooed dad who is an über feminist and loves his three daughters, and I hope at some point Eve writes a, a book about him and him finding a Happy Ever After, because he’s just, he kind of, like, stole the show in the scenes that he was in.

The oldest daughter and the youngest daughter are both in the tattoo industry. The oldest is local and works at the shop. The youngest is kind of like an influencer, and as someone – you and I both follow a lot of tattoo artists on Instagram – that’s what she does. She, like, shows her work –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – on Instagram and is, like, Instagram famous for her tattoo work. And the middle daughter is, like, the buttoned-up daughter who has kind of left the fold and, like, works at, has, like, an MBA or, like, works in accounting or something like that. And all the three sisters come together once their dad leaves to kind of, like, revitalize the shop, and this story is about the oldest sister and their former next-door neighbor who they kind of had a, you know, enemies-to-lovers, secret crush thing going on, and he moves away, and now he’s back as an adult, and he’s hunky.

Sarah: [Laughs] Isn’t that always what happens?

Amanda: Yes! And it was just really sexy and really good. The second book, which I haven’t read yet, that I don’t know why I didn’t immediately read after this one – [laughs] – because it’s my jam, is the buttoned-up sister and one of the tattoo artists at the shop who speaks like five words in a day. Like, he is stoic and gruff and doesn’t talk. So yeah, I just really liked it a lot! I will definitely be checking out more of her books, and I might even read Act Your Age, even though it’s not necessarily my catnip, just, just because I enjoyed the characters so much in this one book.

And then my last one, I finally read it, and I get what all of the fuss is about!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: I understand now! I –

Sarah: You, you get it!

Amanda: – I read A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare.

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And you are not a historical person!

Amanda: I’m not, but I read it. I picked it up because, I think I was, like, in a slump. I, 2019 has been the year of slumps.

Sarah: In so many ways, right?

Amanda: [Sighs] I don’t know what it is. Something is in the air. But I picked this one up because I wanted to continue the series. I read the first book and thought it was okay. You know, it was lovely, and it was nice, but the characters weren’t my, like, trope-y goodness? And this one was, and I’m like, okay, well, why don’t I just read it?

Sarah: Yeah!

Amanda: And so I checked it out from the library, and I was up until two o’clock in the morning reading this.

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: And it was so good and so lovely, and –

Sarah: It’s like a hug, right?

Amanda: Yes! And I think –

Sarah: Those books are like a hug!

Amanda: We talked about I think Colin, the hero, on the Sex Puppy Rec League?

Sarah: Yes, he’s totally a, yeah, he’s a sex puppy.

Amanda: Yeah. And it’s just so good, and I loved kind of the opening of the heroine just, like, storming into his house at, into Colin’s house at night and is like, listen, you’ve been flirting with my sister; I don’t approve of it. She deserves better than you, so I will give you all the money I win from this scientific contest if you just leave my sister alone and go to London and never come back.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: But it was wonderful, and I get why it’s a favorite for many Tessa Dare fans. I read another Dare, I think like the year before, When a Scot Ties the Knot, which was also very good, and I think, like, Elyse gave it an A or an A-, but I can’t decide between the two, which one I liked more, because they are both so good. But it gave me the, the exact same feeling of, like, a nice warm hug and being exactly what you need. If I have to, you know, describe or pick a book that gives you the ultimate romance reading experience –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: – I think A Week to Be Wicked would be high on that list.

Sarah: It is, like, the finest high-grade historical cozy romance.

Amanda: Yes. And I loved it. It was fun. It made me cry – in a good way.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: It was really good.

Sarah: Are you going to read the next few books in the series?

Amanda: Yes, slowly but surely. The next one, I think, is about, like, the teacher, and then, like, there’s the guy who, like, who’s always loved her, if I remember correctly; I can’t remember the titles.

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: But there are so many books –

Sarah: What?!

Amanda: – just in general. [Laughs]

Sarah: No!

Amanda: There are so many books!

Sarah: Dude.

Amanda: It’s like, yeah, that one sounds good, and I’ll read it – eventually.

Sarah: There are so many books being published now. It can be really overwhelming.

Amanda: I’m just, one day I’m just going to be crushed to death by the towers of books in my house. Like, I know that’s how I’m going to go out, and that’s fine.

Sarah: Nooo!

Amanda: [Laughs] That’s fine with me.

Sarah: But you’ve got all those shelves!

Amanda: Well, trust me, the space fills up quickly.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: And now there’s, like, no more space for shelves, so there are just little mini-piles scattered at the moment.

Sarah: Of course.

Amanda: Yep. So those were my, my five that I read in 2019 that were just lovely and wonderful.

[pause]

Kiki: So I’m Kiki, and I am currently, I’m in a phone room in my office building on my lunch break – [laughs] – ‘cause we have these very cool little, like, phone rooms that sort of help block sound, so I figured I’d snag one of those for this, and I’m in Boston!

Sarah: Sweet! I love those rooms that get super quiet; I find them very restful.

Kiki: Yes, they are. They’re like, and they’re, you know, it’s, it’s, I kind of like it ‘cause there aren’t any windows. It’s kind of like a safe – what are those? Like, panic room things? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Kiki: Which I think says a lot about my personality, that I feel very comfortable in panic rooms.

Sarah: I like being in spaces that are really quiet. When I –

Kiki: Yes.

Sarah: – can’t control what I’m hearing it stresses me out!

Kiki: Yes, yep, same. I listen to, like, I tend to listen to a lot of, like, white noise and stuff like that?

Sarah: Oh my gosh, me too!

Kiki: Just ‘cause, like, like, being able to control, like, the sounds that I’m hearing, and also –

Sarah: [Whispers] Yes!

Kiki: – if I listen to enough white noise I, like, stop realizing that it’s happening, and that is like a very – I, like, feel like I reach a certain, like, plane of transcendence or something. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I have all of these different things that I listen to while I work. Actually, before we started recording –

Kiki: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: – I was listening to a three-hour YouTube stream of a library during a thunderstorm with a fireplace, so every so often –

Kiki: Oh, I’d love it.

Sarah: – you’d hear some, like, like a pencil scratching on some paper –

Kiki: Yeah.

Sarah: – and then you hear thunder and rain and a fire crackling, and you’d hear someone turn a page, and I was like, I don’t know what it is about this, but it is hitting the exact right spot in the back of my brain –

Kiki: Yes!

Sarah: – and I am just so relaxed right now? [Laughs]

Kiki: Oh yes. I, I, in college, found a ten-hour – and it’s called “Celestial White Noise” –

Sarah: Oh, oh!

Kiki: – and it is how I graduated college. It’s incredible.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Oh man! “Celestial White Noise.”

Kiki: Yeah!

Sarah: Sounds like a dream.

Kiki: [Laughs] It was fantastic, and there were some days where I would, I would get through the whole ten hours, so.

Sarah: Oh man. So tell me –

Kiki: Yes.

Sarah: – what books did you absolutely love this year?

Kiki: Oh, this was, this was a lot of fun to, like, put the list together and also just sort of, like –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: – reflect on how varied my reading has been this year? So I have come up with four titles, and two of them are sort of just, like, authors in general that were, like, blew me away this year.

So my first is actually, I know it’s been brought up on the podcast before, but earlier this year I read From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty, which is –

Sarah: I love that book!

Kiki: Oh, I love it so much, and I sort of, like, picked it up on a whim, and it just, like, blew me away. One of the, I think, the really interesting consequences of having read it is that it, because it was talking so much about, like, the human body and, like, how we treat the body in death, it actually, I think, helped relieve some of my own body anxiety that I’ve been dealing with for years and years, which is sort of an odd thing, because my, my body is very much alive, and Caitlin Doughty is talking, you know, talking about bodies after death, but there’s something about normalizing the body in death just, like, felt like it was normalizing bodies in general?

Sarah: Oh no, I totally understand what you mean.

Kiki: Yeah.

Sarah: After I read that book I began thinking of my body as my house.

Kiki: Yeah.

Sarah: This is the house I live in.

Kiki: Yep.

Sarah: I’m not trading it in; I can’t get another one.

Kiki: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: My brain and this house, they go together –

Kiki: Yep.

Sarah: – and it is my job to figure out how to best care for my home.

Kiki: Yes!

Sarah: And when I started thinking of my body as my home, it changed the way I thought about it and treated it and, and talked to it even.

Kiki: Yeah.

Sarah: And reading about her travels around the world –

Kiki: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – so, so basically, the book is the one where she travels around the world and learns about –

Kiki: Yes, yeah.

Sarah: – how different cultures interact with the dead.

Kiki: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And their own dead, basically.

Kiki: Yeah, yeah.

Sarah: It was, it was transformative for how I looked at my own body too. I completely agree with you.

Kiki: Yeah, and just, just, like, it brought out in me, like you said, just, like, this deep desire to care for my body as, like, something that is, that is living and one day will die, and, like, I wanted to, like, hold myself very, very gently.

Sarah: Yes!

Kiki: That’s, it was just, like, this very beautiful, like, transcend- – I remember, like, crying on the T reading it ‘cause it was just, like, it’s, it’s so, it’s so beautiful, and I think it, it, one of the things that I always worry about when white people travel to other countries and write about their cultures is, like, a feeling of voyeurism making things exotic, and, and that was really not the experience of the book at all.

Sarah: No. I think it’s because she’s so fluent in –

Kiki: Yes.

Sarah: – all things dead.

Kiki: Yes! Yeah, yeah. And so there was such a beautiful care given in the writing of the book, and –

Sarah: Yes! Yes!

Kiki: – I, I love that. I think that that sort of comes out in some of the other books I’m also going to talk about, even though they are much different, that, like, the, the care with which it’s held is something that’s just, like, really, really important to me, so.

Sarah: I completely agree. That is such a great choice, too. What other books do you want to talk about?

Kiki: Okay, so the next ones are all, we’re, we’re transitioning into, into all romances. We’re moving forward. So the next book I want to talk about is Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLean, which I think came out last year, I believe? I’m not totally sure. But I read it earlier this year. It was actually one of the books that I wrote about when I was applying to become a reviewer. It was one hundred percent my favorite historical of the year. And so it’s the first book in her Bareknuckle Bastards series, and it was full of really good brother angst, which I love. I love good brother angst.

[Laughter]

Kiki:  And had my favorite type of heroine, which is someone who just kind of makes a total nuisance of themself? There’s something about women who just kind of appear into the hero, or maybe the heroine’s life and just kind of really wreck it in a beautiful, beautiful way.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kiki: And not necessarily ‘cause they’re trying to cause trouble, but just because their entrance sort of disrupts everything the other person knew to be true about themself in the world. In this book particularly, Felicity, who’s the heroine, was one of those people who just like talking circles around the hero – [laughs] – which is also something that I really love, where you just sort of get a hero who ends up tied up in his own knots by, by everything the heroine sort of sweeps into his life.

Sarah: Yes. Heroines like that take up space, and I love that.

Kiki: Yes! That’s, that’s the perfect way to put it. She had such a, such a presence. Historicals are such a big subgenre? You know, I don’t, I don’t expect them to always be super, super groundbreaking or, like, they’re showing me something that is brand, brand new, but I sort of felt like this one did? And the, I think part of that was the setting. It was, like, very much removed from like a, like a ballroom romance, which obviously there are a ton of historicals that do that. The atmosphere of this book in particular was, was so rich and alive, even though it was, like, mostly in the dark and, like, I think almost exclusively took place at night. It felt, it felt like something new, which, like I said, like, sometimes historicals don’t always do that for me, and I don’t, I don’t need them to. I know what I, I like knowing what I’m getting into sometimes. But this one felt, it felt like it was opening new doors. That was, like, deeply, deeply exciting to me.

And so book number three is, I have it written down in my notes to myself as Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert/Talia Hibbert at Large.

[Laughter]

Kiki: If I had to choose just one that I, that was my favorite out of the year, Get a Life, Chloe Brown was my favorite by her of the year, but I read her for the first time this year, and if I had to make a big, long list, I think a bunch of her books would be on it. But so Get a Life, Chloe Brown was, I think, believe came out the beginning of November and is about, you know, a grumpy, chronically ill heroine who sort of falls in love with a grumpy former artist hero, which is also one of my, just, I love grumpy people. [Laughs] I really do!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kiki: I think part of it is that I am also a grumpy person very often, so I like seeing myself in that? One of the things that I really love about this book was that it, it wasn’t like a heroine, you know, starts out grumpy and, and becomes un-grumpy. She very much, very much sticks to it for, for the duration of the book, which I love! Like, like I mentioned, Chloe, who’s the female lead, is chronically ill; she has fibromyalgia and chronic pain. One of the things that sticks out to me most, there’s this line, and I don’t, I don’t know if it was part of the narration or if a character actually said it, but it, the line is basically talking about how folks with disabilities are not desexed? They don’t stop being sexual, sexual beings. It feels deeply revolutionary every time I see something like that in, in a romance. I, I recommended this book to someone that I work with, and she was, like, over-, overjoyed when I sort of gave her a brief summary of it, and she was like, like, isn’t it so nice to, like, see people that, like, feel like real people in romance novels, and I was like, yeah! [Laughs] It’s fantastic!

And the other thing that I, really stood out to me about Talia Hibbert’s books in, at large, is that there’s this really beautiful balance of, like, funny and serious in a way that does not compromise on either? It’s genuinely funny; it’s not, like, working really hard to be funny, which is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Sarah: No, it’s not a gimmick.

Kiki: Yeah, it’s not a gimmick; it’s not trying to be quirky; it’s not trying to be cutesy. It’s just, like, genuine, genuinely really funny and is able to hold space for deeply serious emotional traumas. The, the balance always just feels just right, and that is something –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: – that I think is really, really hard to make happen, and it’s something that I am often searching for? And so finding it in Talia Hibbert’s books, especially in Get a Life, Chloe Brown, like, feels, it feels like I won something. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Kiki: And the, sort of the last thing that I’ll say about Get a Life, Chloe Brown is that, so I am deeply invested in HEAs that don’t rely on marriage or children as proof of relationship success, especially in heterosexual couplings, because I feel like they just don’t happen as often as I would like.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: I have a very, very deep investment in that there are other ways to be happy that are not –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: – like, inherently heteronormative?

Sarah: You don’t always have to have the government involved.

Kiki: Right? Exactly! We don’t, you know, you don’t always have to, you know, sign off ownership of half your stuff. [Laughs] Without, hopefully, giving away too much of the ending, the, the HEA is very much tied to this idea of, of people working on their emotional health –

Sarah: Yeah.

Kiki: – and healing and, like, it, it sort of ends with this idea of, I’m committed to working on me, and I’m committed to working on us. That is something that is deeply romantic to me, is just the idea of, like, it is not perfect now. I’m working on being better and being a healthier version of myself because I deserve that –

Sarah: Yes.

Kiki: – and I’m working on –

Sarah: Yes.

Kiki: – on doing that because we deserve that, and, like, that commitment to growth and that commitment to healing –

Sarah: And work!

Kiki: And work, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah!

Kiki: – is, like, oh, it’s, yeah, like, it’s, like, one of the most romantic things I can think of, of, like, I’m genuinely going to try to be, to be a better version of myself, is, like, that’s the, I think maybe the biggest HEA that I could imagine in a lot of ways? I, I say sometimes that when, when a romance novel does its job right, I can feel it in my chest, and, like, I, you know, my chest sort of tightens in this really nice way, and it feels, like, it feel it in my body, and that’s how I felt reading Get a Life, Chloe Brown.

My next and last pick is –

Sarah: Bring it on!

Kiki: – I, I think this is my favorite erotic romance of the year, maybe one of my favorite romances ever, I think?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: And that is Private Eye by Katrina Jackson. So this is the second book in The Spies Who Loved Her series?

Sarah: Right.

Kiki: Now I do not tend to read romances with, like, law enforcement. It’s just not, it’s not what I do; It’s not what I like. Not super interested in, like, spy novel stuff either.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: I think because I watched too many crime procedurals growing up.

[Laughter]

Sarah: That’ll happen.

Kiki: Yeah, so I’m sort of over it at this point. But I sort of just randomly picked up the first book in the series and really liked it and then was like, well, I guess I’ll just read the second one, and the second one blew my socks off, changed my life. I get, like, fluttery just thinking about it?

[Laughter]

Kiki: I just, it, like, fills me with, like, such warmth and joy and, like – [sighs] – is phenomenal in all ways that a book that can be phenomenal. So it’s about a woman named Maya who’s a plus-size Black woman, and she is a cam model, so she’s a sex worker, and her love interest is Kenny, who is a spy, Asian-American spy, who started, he, he basically started watching her channel to, ‘cause he needed to run, like, a background check on her, because her –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Kiki: – roommate was being, was the main character of the first book, and he needed to run a background check basically on –

Sarah: Right.

Kiki: – on Maya. And so he watched once to run his background check, and then he just kept coming back! [Laughs] Essentially, fall, you know, falls in love with this, this cam model who he builds, you know, they have private chats and stuff like that, and they sort of build a, a relationship like that, and eventually they’re brought together when the CIA needs to use her chat page, basically, to, I think, I think it’s to hunt down an arms dealer, I believe?

Sarah: As you do.

Kiki: As you do! It’s, it sounds absolutely wild, and it works –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Kiki: – so well? Part of what works really, really well in, I think, in this as, like, an erotic spy thing is that, like, the sex and the spying are, like, inherently connected, and so it, every, it flows so smoothly? So you’re, like, doing spy stuff, and she’s doing, like, one of her, like, like, shows, and it’s, it’s, like, I never would have thought of it, and it is phenomenally done. [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s so cool.

Kiki: It’s, it’s so, so cool. It’s intertwined, it’s, like, intertwined beautifully. There are a lot of things that, like, I really adored, but one of the things that stood out to me most in this book is that, so Maya, like I said, she’s a cam model, so she’s a sex worker, and she is, like, really proud of her work and, like, works really hard, and it’s seen by everyone in her life as, like, a very legitimate career, ‘cause it is!

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah!

Kiki: And so, like, when she has a milestone that happens, like, on the website that she works on and it’s treated like a major career milestone and, like, celebrated by, by the people around her, and it was, it felt so pro-sex-work and so, like, this, I consider this to be my gold standard of sex work in romance. Kenny was also deeply supportive of her sex work, and, you know, part of it was, like, they’re, that’s what brought them together; that’s how she, how they sort of first interacted and very first met. He loves her so loudly, it’s, like, really beautifully overwhelming sort of. I, I sort of love any book in which, in which a, a Black woman is being loved really, really loudly. And –

Sarah: It sounds like all of the books that you’ve picked have a theme of characters and their emotions taking up ample space –

Kiki: Yes.

Sarah: – as much as they want.

Kiki: Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, people feeling really big feelings and that being okay and, and being celebrated and, and sort of being cared for and being held? The space is held for, for really big emotions in, in all directions, and also that, having those people sort of be held in their really big emotions too I think sort of was, was a bit of a trend for me this year.

Sarah: It’s a good trend! 

Kiki: Yeah, I think so! I think so! Hoping, hoping to carry it, carry it into, into 2020, so.

[pause]

Ellen: This is Ellen. I am in Chicago!

Sarah: Very cool! I think it’s one of my favorite places, except when the weather is trying to kill me!

Ellen: Yeah. Which is unfortunately about fifty percent of the time.

Sarah: Easily fifty. Easily fifty percent. So what were some of your favorite books of 2019?

Ellen: So my initial list was really long, and I had to try to pare it down a little bit.

Sarah: Yeah, I’ve heard that.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Heard that before.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah. So I would say my top five that I read this year would be Crier’s War by Nina Varela; the, books two and three of the Regency Imposter series by Cat Sebastian; Gideon the Ninth; the most recent Hidden Legacy book by Ilona Andrews, Sapphire Flames; and The King’s Man by Elizabeth Kingston, which I think did not come out in 2019, but I read in 2019.

Sarah: Well, like I said, every book is a new book to whoever has not read it yet.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So, so I know from your review, and I know from the book, that Crier’s War is incredible. What made it one of your favorites this year?

Ellen: I think the quality of the prose was really gripping and unusual in a way that really stood out to me. I am, I’m not the kind of person who feels like I need really, like, dazzling prose to –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Ellen: – enjoy a book, but I felt like it was just so poetic and the imagery was so rich that it really made me, like, linger over the book and really savor it, which kind of made everything else that I liked about the book, like, stand out even more. Like, I thought the worldbuilding was incredible, I thought the main relationship was really interesting, so, yeah, I guess those are the reasons.

Sarah: Did you highlight a lot of it?

Ellen: Yes, I did.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So what about the Cat Sebastian books? Tell me about them, please.

Ellen: Those are just really, really comforting, like, warm books, especially, like, it’s, it’s really nice to read books where, especially, like, bisexuality is so, is treated as just such, like, a normal thing and like a part of life, especially in –

Sarah: Super ordinary, right?

Ellen: Yes, especially in a historical book, because I feel like that’s not something you see a lot. And her dialogue is just incredible, it’s so snappy and witty, and yeah, they’re just really, like, warm, fun books.

Sarah: Aw. Well, that’s picks one, two, and three, right?

Ellen: Yes, although I counted –

Sarah: Did you –

Ellen: – Regency Impostors as one entry. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, you don’t have to. You can, you can, you can squeeze ‘em both in there, and I won’t, I won’t, I’m bad at math! Like I said, there won’t be any math; I’m very bad at math.

Ellen: Okay, great. [Laughs]

Sarah: So what about Sapphire Flames? Have you read the whole series?

Ellen: I have, and I love them. They’re my favorite Ilona Andrews books, so I was really excited to learn more about the other siblings, and I kind of thought going into it, I had not been super interested in the hero based on his sort of brief appearances in the other books, but then I thought actually in the book it was, became very interesting and mysterious, and now I’m very invested in the mystery and the relationship. And I also just found the whole exploration of the idea of, like, having a power that makes people love you to be very intriguing.

Sarah: It’s, it’s a weird mix of, of a, like the familiar love potion trope, and then the effect of actual human charm.

Ellen: Yes, exactly. Yes, it’s very interesting.

Sarah: It is; it’s really cool!

Ellen: I really like that I feel like all of, all Ilona Andrews’ books, they do a really good job exploring the sort of implications of whatever the kind of like supernatural element is. Like, they always really fully explore what it, it would actually be like to have that. It’s never just kind of like window dressing.

Sarah: Right. It’s never, it’s not like an accessory that you take on and off like a scarf. Like, now I can make you love me –

Ellen: Yeah.

Sarah: – now I’ll take it off and now you don’t. Exactly.

Ellen: It’s –

Sarah: The, the implications and the, and the meaning and the motivation that changes because you have this power is, is something that’s present in all of the worldbuilding.

Ellen: Yes. Love that.

Sarah: So tell me about King’s Man, The King’s Man book.

Ellen: So I love that book for a few reasons. I love Wales. I almost focused in my undergraduate career on, like, medieval Welsh mythology. So I love Wales, love it; there’s the Wales connection. Love that it’s medieval. I also thought the relationship, I mean love that the heroine is, like, this badass warrior chick, and I thought the relationship between the her-, the heroine and the hero was kind of unusual and interesting. It was kind of like a slightly different twist on, like, enemies-to-lovers that I found satisfying.

Sarah: Have you read, speaking of Wales, the Evan Evans mystery series by Rhys Bowen?

Ellen: I have not!

Sarah: Okay. I – so, this is, this is a terrible recommendation, because I loved the –

Ellen: [Laughs]

Sarah: One, Rhys Bowen has a habit of having the romances of her characters in a long mystery series sort of spin their wheels and develop in very frustrating ways –

Ellen: Oh.

Sarah: – and in this particular one, I kind of want to smack the lead character on the head a couple of times. The other problem is that I love the audiobooks so much, because they take place in Llanfair – I’m not doing that very well – but the audio, audio narrator is much better at Welsh than I am, and there’s lots and lots of Welsh! Lots of it!

Ellen: Oh!

Sarah: And there’s Evans: Evan Evans is the policeman, so he’s Evans the Law; and then there’s a guy named Evans who’s the, the butcher, so he’s Evans the Meat; and then there’s Evans the Milk, who is the dairy guy; and there’s, like, a whole bunch of people in town named Evans, and this town is very small; and there’s a staggering number of dead bodies in a small town, as is normal in these series; but they are so very much drenched in all things Welsh.

Ellen: Oh, I love that.

Sarah: And I really liked it, so whether you read them or you listen to the audio, the problem with the audio being I think the first four are recorded, and then the other ones are not, up until, like book seven? It’s really weird. Because Evans, Evan Evans, is a police constable, he has the authority of the law, but compared to other members of the law enforcement around him from larger towns, he does not have a lot of power.

Ellen: Oh, intriguing.

Sarah: It’s, it’s a really interesting power dynamic, and it is so Welsh. So much Wales. Very Wales. Much Welsh.

Ellen: Love that.

Sarah: Yes.

Ellen: [Laughs]

Sarah: Are there any other books that you really want to, to mention or any stories that you’re really looking forward to?

Ellen: Well, definitely need to shout out to Gideon the Ninth.

Sarah: Oh, please! I almost forgot to ask you about that. Did that rock your brain as much as it did everyone else’s?

Ellen: It really did. I think it takes a little while to really ramp up in terms of the action, but I found the kind of, like, flavor of the world, which is truly very bizarre. Like, it’s kind of modern, but it’s like, and I mean it’s like the future and they’re in space, but, like, everybody talks very colloquially, but there’s also this whole element of, like, there’s all this, like, ritual and, like, nobility. So it has this weird kind of like future past feeling –

Sarah: Yeah!

Ellen: – that I really [indistinct].

Sarah: And they’re teenagers.

Ellen: Yes, and they really are teenagers.

Sarah: Yes.

Ellen: And they’re, like, kind of like teenage shitheads, which –

[Laughter]

Ellen: – which, like, I work with teenagers a lot, so love to have realistic, lovable teenage shitheads. And yeah, and the whole element of, like, it’s like they’re all kids and there’s, like, minimal adult supervision, and they’re, like, all involved in things that are just like way over their heads, but they’re very like, no, no, I got this, I got this.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ellen: So I thought the characters were great, I thought the humor was really good, so even though, like, I know that some people, I’ve, I’ve seen that some people feel that the first maybe half of the book is, like, too, there’s not enough, like, plot, but I thought, like, the worldbuilding and the dialogue were so fun that I didn’t really mind.

Sarah: And it seems like the common experience for people who have loved this book is that in their minds they hang out in that world after they’re done.

Ellen: Yeah! It’s like, yeah, it’s very, like, it’s bonkers, and –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Ellen: – I’ve definitely thought a lot about the world since finishing the book, and I’m very intrigued to see what happens in the next book, especially given everything that happened in the first book. I feel like we’re going to see, like, a new dimension to this kind of universe.

Sarah: Yeah, I think the second book is going to be much discussed.

Ellen: Yes.

Sarah: Both internally and on the internet.

Ellen: Yes. [Laughs] It’s already pre-ordered.

Sarah: So are there any other books you want to mention?

Ellen: Hmm. Well, I guess I would say I’ve spent, I’m really late to the party on Nalini Singh, and I’ve read most of the Psy-Changeling series this year during 2019, and that’s –

Sarah: Wow!

Ellen: Oh, it’s been delightful. It’s like whenever I feel like I’m in, like, a slump and I don’t quite know what I want to read, I just, like, return to Psy-Changeling and, like, read a couple books, and then it’s –

Sarah: Aw!

Ellen: – like, okay, I’m all good now!

Sarah: She is so consistent, and that world is so complicated and fascinating.

Ellen: Yeah. I think it’s like the consistency is probably what I appreciate the most, because even when I think like my least favorite books in that series are still, like, very good, and I feel like the margin between those and, like, the ones I’ve thought are, were just amazing is not very wide.

Sarah: No! Which ones are your favorites?

Ellen: I think – oh, all those titles are really similar, so I’m probably going to have to identify them through the couple. [Laughs]

Sarah: That’s totally normal for these series.

Ellen: Yeah.

Sarah: They, all of the titles are super similar and it makes it confusing, so the one with so-and-so and that other guy, that makes much more sense.

Ellen: Yeah. So I think the one with Judd, which I think is Caressed by Ice, is one of my favorites. The one with Councilor Krychek is really good. I was not expecting him to turn out to be a hero, based on the first few books. And the one with, I just read the one with the teleporter guy, Vasic?

Sarah: Mm-hmm?

Ellen: That one was also, I think, one of my favorites so far. I, I don’t know; I tend to really enjoy the ones that have a Psy hero more, I think.

Sarah: Oh, that’s interesting! ‘Cause there are some people who were like, I only want the shifters; bring me back, why are there not more shifters? I want the shifters.

Ellen: Yeah, I mean, I like the shifters. Probably my favorite shifter one is Kiss of Snow.

Sarah: That is a good one.

Ellen: But I don’t know; I just kind of like, I definitely like that sort of, like, hard, like, hard cerebral shell; like, man learns how to feel emotions.

Sarah: Yeah. Except for this, for this world it’s like all of the people who are Psy have to learn how to deal with emotions.

Ellen: Yes, they all have to learn how to feel emotions.

Sarah: Feelings are so annoying, oh my God!

Ellen: Yes, exactly, and I, I feel like there’s –

Sarah: Like, why?

Ellen: For me, there’s something more satisfying about reading about a man learning how to do that, because I feel like that, like, mirrors, like, the real world a little more? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, I know what you mean.

Ellen: But in general it’s like men spend so much of, like, boyhood and early manhood, like, being told to suppress their emotions and be stoic, and, like, so – and then I think it’s true oftentimes in the context of, like, an intimate relationship, they have to, like, relearn how to, like, go into that kind of vulnerable place to have, like, an authentic relationship.

Sarah: I like when the story has a, a, a hero or character achieving emotional fluency, but not at the expense of the other character.

Ellen: Exactly, yes.

Sarah: Like, they, they recognize, yeah, they have to level up, and that is their job, and they have to do that.

Ellen: Yes, I love that. None of this, like, oh, you need to fix me.

Sarah: Nonono. I need to level up. That’s one of the things that I love most about a really well-developed romance over multiple books or a series –

Ellen: Yes, totally.

Sarah: Yeah. You have a character who realizes, I’ve got to get my poop in a group in order to be –

Ellen: Yes.

Sarah: – on the same level as the person that I like, and that’s on me.

Ellen: Yes. Truly. Getting the poop in a group: very important.

Sarah: Right? Adulting is hard enough without having to make another person an, an adult too. Unless you’re actually –

Ellen: Yes.

Sarah: – raising humans; that’s a different job.

Ellen: Yes, exactly.

[Laughter]

[pause]

AJ: Hey, guys! So I am AJ; I’m one of the reviewers at Smart Bitches, and I particularly like to review paranormal and LGBTQ romances, and I am in North America in the cold, cold, snowy mountains.

Sarah: Super awesome. So tell me, what are your favorite books of 2019?

AJ: So my very favorite book of 2019 – this is not going to surprise anyone – was Gideon the Ninth.

Sarah: Uh, yeah! Yeah, yeah.

AJ: Probably by a mile. I, I love her writing; I love the characters; I am on the edge of my seat for the second one. It’s, the suspense is killing me. I tried to get an ARC, and they were like, nah! And I was like, okay, I’ll wait, but I’m not going to be patient about it!

Sarah: [Laughs] What other books have you loved this year?

AJ: So I really loved Swordheart by T. Kingfisher? It’s one, I think it actually came out this year, or it may have been late 2018? But T. Kingfisher is the pseudonym that Ursula Vernon uses when she writes adult novels, and I love, I just love her voice. I don’t know; have you read any Ursula Vernon at all?

Sarah: I haven’t.

AJ: So she writes a lot, she writes Young Adult fantasy; she wrote a comic book that actually won the Hugo, Digger? Which is actually all available for free online, and I highly recommend that as well. I didn’t, didn’t read that for the first time this year, but I really love that. She has a very entertaining voice; it’s very down-to-earth kind of Granny Weatherwax-ish is the, probably the best way I can describe it, where her characters are just like, welp, I’m just getting on with things, and all of this magic is happening around me, and I just am going to deal with it and, and not allow any nonsense, so. Really enjoy that, and this particular book is about a woman who inherits a house, and her family is trying to get her to marry her cousin so that he can have the inheritance, and so try, in trying to escape, she pulls a magic sword that has a warrior in it that is now, like, sworn to her service, and then they kind of go on the run together.

Sarah: That sounds really cool.

AJ: Very – I really, really enjoyed it. It’s funny. It’s got some, some good slow burn, which is really my thing, and –

Sarah: I love slow burn!

AJ: Right? It’s, it’s so, so very much my thing. This is not on my list, but I was just starting to read a Cat Sebastian book the other day, and it was chapter two, and they were about to, like, get busy, and I was like, but no, wait! It’s too soon! Where’s my pining?

[Laughter]

AJ: I am a simple human. [Laughs]

Sarah: I understand completely! You want the piney fresh hero or heroine.

AJ: Exactly! Or both; both is good!

Sarah: Both is fine.

AJ: Exactly. Just lightly pine-scented.

Sarah: [Laughs] So what other book would you like to mention?

AJ: Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri is another one that I really, really loved. Aarya recommended that one to me, and she has excellent taste. It was, again, a very slow burn, lots of pining. There, there are some moments where the consent is a little bit questionable, because the heroes are jinn that are bound in service to somebody else, so they don’t have a ton of autonomy? And I thought she handled that very well for the constraint that that puts on it, and I didn’t feel like at any point that it was rape-y or, or nonconsensual? It was just a little bit, like, that was something that had to be navigated. It didn’t push over the line into non-consent for me. Part of the premise is that they are other – oh, they’re not jinn; they’re, deva is the name of, of their, like, race, and, and they can’t break their promises, so every time they make a vow they have to keep it, and that one is like a fake marriage. They have to make marriage vows to each other, and so that’s lots of – fake relationship is another one of my catnips, so.

Sarah: So if you had to rank slow burn, dragons, fake relationship.

AJ: Oh! You’re asking me to choose between my children here, Sarah! Geeze!

[Laughter]

AJ: Oh man. I think it would be that order: it would be slow burn, then dragons, then fake relationship. It is really hard –

Sarah: Or, you know, all three.

AJ: All three is great. Anyone who wants to, like, send me a slow burn, fake relationship romance with dragons, I will be on that train all day. Trying to think now if I have –

Sarah: [Laughs]

AJ: – seen one.

The next one is actually not a romance, but it was a really, really interesting book that I feel like would be very relevant? It’s called Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.

Sarah: I love that book!

AJ: Yes! Awesome! By Emily and Amelia Nagoski. I love, I love Emily Nagoski’s work in general, but that book blew my mind. There’s so much good information in there about stress and managing stress, and I struggle with anxiety, so any of those techniques that I can use is super, super helpful, and just the way that they, they talk about it was really, really accessible, I felt like.

Sarah: I love what I learned about how the physical body processes stress.

AJ: Yes, definitely.

Sarah: Excuse me.

AJ: Just the, finishing out the cycle is such a powerful concept, and I’ve, I’ve been sharing it with people left and right because, like, this makes so much sense for how you can just move past it and, like, close that, that loop. Those moments when you’re like – they, they really get you with that, like, you may feel this way, and I’m like, are you in my house? Like – [laughs] – hey now!

Sarah: [Laughs]

AJ: And, and it’s written for women, but I feel like it’s very, most of the content is very applicable, even if that’s not how you identify. There, there’s some, mostly I feel like they were addressing the, like, toxic stress that comes from being female-perceived in a patriarchal society.

Sarah: Do you know about their podcast? They have the 2020 Feminist Survival Podcast? [Feminist Survival Project 2020]

AJ: I was not aware of that!

Sarah: The episodes are very short, they are drawn from the book, and they talk about how to process stress with specific attention to the 2020 election and news cycle.

AJ: Yep, okay, I’m going to need that. I’m going to, I’m really going to need that!

[Laughter]

AJ: The fifth one that I have on here, this was my lucky year in the sense that this was the year I discovered K. J. Charles. It’s really hard to not just have an entire list of her books. I had, I had to pick, which was also –

Sarah: Yay!

AJ: – choosing between children. But the one that I chose ultimately I think that is my favorite that I’ve read this year was Spectred Isle. What I love so much about that one is the slow burn, because I’m very predictable, but it’s also the way that she addresses what the magical impact would have been if there’d been a magical World War I and just, like, the historical setting of that, and the way she ties it in a little bit with Simon Feximal, The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, which was her kind of previous book in that world, and I just really enjoyed how much work and thought she obviously put into the setting and the impact on the characters.

Sarah: So what did you like about the romance of that book?

AJ: I really liked that they were both, in their various ways, these very broken characters? They had, they both had PTSD; they both had, you know, one of them had lost his family, and the other one had lost his reputation; and that they were able to come together and, and find ways to heal together I thought was very powerful; and also they were very well-suited to each other. Sometimes you read romance and, and it’s like, well, like, I kind of see how you guys get along, but, but not quite, and this one was just like, oh, of course!

I would like to give an honorable mention in the K. J. Charles category to Band Sinister, which is the closest thing that I’ve read to a Georgette Heyer novel in a really long time.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. My thanks to Amanda, to Kiki, Ellen, and AJ for connecting with me, and in case you are concerned, for some inexplicably wonderful reason – I’m assuming, like, holiday customer service maybe? – Breville is fixing our coffee maker, despite it being two and a half years out of warranty? Either way, it’s on its way back to us, and we’re very excited! So extra big thank-you to Breville for fixing our coffee maker! [Laughs]

If you would like to get in touch with us and tell us (a) how much you love your coffee maker or which books rocked your world, I’m interested in both. You can email us at [email protected], or call 1-201-371-3272 and leave us a brief message; we would love to hear from you.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie and brought to life by the brilliant dual narration of Linda Henning and Tara Ochs. Perfect for fans of Susan Mallery and Jill Shalvis, two mothers – one pregnant, one sending her child to college – form an unlikely friendship, finding love, hope, and a new start at life in this charming, laugh-out-loud audiobook. A little romance for one and a confidence boost for the other, and for both of them, self-discovery, sisterhood, and a whole lot of pie. If you love girlfriends supporting girlfriends, and of course pie, this is the audiobook for you. Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie is available wherever audiobooks are sold. Find out more and get your aural romance fix from hachetteaudio.com. And stayed tuned after the episode: I have a sample of this audiobook for you to enjoy.

And if you’re enjoying the audiobook samples appended to the end of the episodes, would you let me know? I, I’m curious if you enjoy them as much as I enjoy listening to them while I’m in post production. I’d love to know what you think.

Thank you again to our Patreon community. If you would like to join our Patreon community, it would be wonderful if you did. The community keeps the show going, helps me make sure every episode is accessible to everyone, and is generally made up of truly wonderful human beings. Monthly pledges begin at a dollar a month. You can have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Thank you and happy holidays to our Patreon crew. You are keeping the show going, and this week’s episode transcript is entirely brought to all of you by you! Yeah, that works.

The music you’re listening to is Deviations Project. It’s Adeste Fiddles time, and this is “Coventry Carol.” You can find this album at Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you buy your funky music.

I will have links to our Rec League about sex puppy heroes, in case you’re looking for more. I will have links to the YouTube channels we talked about, including that ancient library room with pencil scratching and thunderstorms – I’ve been listening to it constantly – and to the Feminist Survival Project 2020. I will also link to all of the books we discussed, so do not worry.

As always, bad joke time. You ready? I told – [laughs] – I told this one to my husband while we were waiting to pick up our dinner. He actually laughed! And then I told it to my son, and he groaned at me, so, you know. I want to know what you think of this one. I like this one a lot. [Clears throat] You ready? Okay, here we go.

What kind of doctor is Dr. Pepper?

Give up? What kind of doctor is Dr. Pepper?

A fizz-ician.

[Laughs] Isn’t that dumb? I love it! That comes from gsmith123, and like I said, I’m fifty/fifty on members of my family enjoying this one. [Laughs more] Fizz-ician!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful, wonderful day and the rest of your week. We’ll be back next week with our final episode recapping our favorite books of 2019, and I hope you’ll share with us which ones you loved most as well.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[gorgeous music]

[excerpt from Forever Friends by Sarah Mackenzie, narrated by Linda Henning and Tara Ochs]