Bookwild - Non-Thriller Books Thriller Readers Will Love with Amy Allen Clark

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

This week, Amy Allen Clark, host of the Book Gang Podcast and the Book Gang Book Club, joins me and shares 5 non-thriller books she thinks thriller lovers would love!Books Amy RecommendsWe Are Watching Eliza BrightRust StardustThe WarehouseAll's WellOne's Company  Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

I am super excited this week to be with Amy Allen Clark, who is Mom Advice on Instagram and the host of her podcast, The Book Gang. So welcome to the podcast, Amy. Thank you so much for having me. This is so fun. I love a good crossover episode. I know. I know. I thought that was so cool.

I basically posted a little while ago about just kind of like having multiple co-hosts on the podcast just to kind of switch it up little bit and you reach out and said you'd be happy to be on and I was so excited that you mentioned it. So I'm just super excited to get to know about like your bookstagram journey, your podcast journey, just all of it. Oh gosh. Well, the podcast is newer. So I have been in the online space for 20 years. I can actually like empathize and like really like when people are doing these thrillers where they're exploring like mom influencers. I'm like, I was, one of those. I know the real stories and I can see why they inspire some plots for thriller writers. But yeah, I've been doing this for that long. My son was about a year old when I started

and now he's turning 22 in the summer. So that just tells you how long this whole gig has been going on. And I originally was in the like good living on a small budget space. So I did DIY craft and food content. I did a lot of unusual things for profit back in the day. I was constantly doing like TV tours and I did my local news every week and I would help promote different products that came out and it was just a really crazy pace. I think we probably did, you know, 10 to 12 like sponsored things. It was like starting the project from scratch. like whatever that was, it could be a fruit, it could be a yarn line, it could be anything. And I was doing a lot of that kind of work. But I was getting to a point, you know, just age-wise,

it's a really hard space to like constantly be hustling like that. You know, I really admire people that can keep pace like that and also keep balance in your life because it's really, really hard to do. But I was feeling like it was pulling away from who I was now. Like my kids get older and I'm not as into doing that kind of thing anymore, but it was always into reading. So we had a book community and I think it really originally started just me posting like pictures of books that I was reading. And I noticed that there was much more engagement on that than a lot of the other things that I was doing. So I decided to branch it out into like a Facebook space and it ended up just really growing from there. I think we have about 5,500 people in that Facebook group. And it's just

women who really love talking about books. And it just felt natural to kind of move into the space. You know, with moms, they aren't necessarily sitting down and like reading web content. There used to be a time where, you know, you would do a diary entry and everyone was like on board and they had time to leave comments and interact. I just felt like I was in an empty room all the time now. It's like, how can I still feel connected to people while also honoring that I'm at a different life stage? And this is where I landed. So I'm very grateful to like YouTube bros who taught me how to do things because I needed that mansplating. for a minute so I could figure things out. And I'm really glad because, you know, the conversation

that we're even having today would have never happened had we not sequed. So, yeah. That is so cool. We talk about being graduates of YouTube University all the time because just like everything that we even do with clients is like stuff that we were able to find on there. And it really is like there's some, you can learn all kinds of skills. If you just find the, right person or the right channel or the right playlist on YouTube. So that's super cool. I need to join your Facebook group. I need to just be on Facebook a little bit more is the other thing. I've gotten partial to like Instagram and TikTok. So why not add something else? You know, I mean, you have to think too. Like my demographic is a little bit older than yours. And that's where my people are.

So they are around that age and that's kind of the hangout spot. I love TikTok. I like that because I don't have any social obligation to do anything with it other than be a consumer. And everything else takes a little bit more out of me. So it is hard to like evolve and, you know, create anything in those kinds of spaces except for that, you know, groups are really great because they want to be there. And they're like really excited about the things that you do. So yeah. Yeah. That's funny that you're just kind of saying that in general.

I think the other cool thing about groups is like you already go into it knowing that like all of you have a very intense maybe for joining a group interest in like a certain niche or a certain hobby. And so like I think I've talked about on the podcast before. So everyone can hear it again. But it like I'm more introverted by nature. Like that's what I'm going to default to. but when I started like wanting to have a podcast and like initially it started with just like talking to authors I was like how is this going to go and I still get nervous sometimes before I like start talking to someone that I haven't talked to. And then anytime I start to get nervous, I remind myself I'm like, this is a person who like you already know that you like share a big favorite thing.

So like you guys are going to have plenty to talk about. You're not going to have to talk about like small talk like it's going to be fun. And I think that is like a really fun aspect of like groups around hobbies. Yeah. And especially book people. I just there's something special about the community. I have not met a lot of like terrible people in the book community. It's like there's a reason because, you know, people who are drawn to books and literature are empathetic and they care about the world and they want to get a new viewpoint.

And so it's really easy to make a space where people feel at home if you're naturally, that kind of person. So I just think, you know, books are just a great scaffolding for relationships, you know. Yes. It really is. Story probably isn't general. It's probably like, because it's so fun to talk about stories, whether it's like TV or movies or books. Like there's, there's so much that you can talk about even just in one story, basically. So you also have your podcast, the book gang. So how did that kind of come to beat. It was it kind of at the same time as the group? So the group started earlier. And we even hosted an in-person reading retreat. Now this is prior to the pandemic. So this is going to be an annual thing. And then it was like, oh my gosh. Like now I'm trying to like relaunch it.

But yeah, that was the plan was to kind of move towards events because people really crave interaction. I do think particularly I and I'm not like pigeonholing anyone. But I do think that Gen Z, and millennial readers have a harder time making real-life connections because so much of our life is online. And one benefit of being a Gen X mom is that we had to do real life for a really long time before we got access to social media and all of those kinds of things. And so my like friend group came from real life connections and then social media was just like the buffer space, right, like to kind of round out who I was. But I have. had planned to kind of move to events. I unfortunately have a chronic illness and things got really

hard and like being immunocompromised. It just was a really difficult time. And I had gotten really, really sick, ended up in the hospital and just could not physically even like get out of bed for at least a year. I was kind of navigating that terrain. And that's kind of where I decided, oh, you know, what could I do that could be different? And one of the things, that my physical therapist was really working with me on is that I needed to move to voice because my joints, I have a lot of issues. I have a condition called Eller Stanlo's syndrome. And it basically makes where your joints don't stay in place. And it creates a lot of pain within the body. And as I've gotten older, the issues have gotten, you know, more intense

and less to be able to manage. And so she was like, Like, you know, I really don't like the idea that you're typing all the time and I'm not trying to tell you what to do. But I think that one thing that you could do is kind of start moving towards voice. So when it came to that, it was like, well, you know, that is I know how to make long form content. I know how to tell a story. I've had to do this like for commercially. I've done theater. I've done a lot of other things.

So to me, it just made sense because it was like an extension of the work that I do. it was just a lot of hard work and practice because telling stories about books that get people who want to tune in, you know, not to mention sound, editing, all the other aspects that I don't think people realize for one finished hour you've got so much cleanup unless you have two people who know what they're doing on a microphone, right? Right. And so a lot of my time was just learning how to do that, learning how to tell stories. the first episodes are terrible.

I would not, I would give like maybe a one-star recommendation. I'm like in this echoy room and trying to make sense of how I was even going to tell a story in a microphone, really scripted. Although I do like scripts, I think they're important for me for telling stories. But I think it takes a skill set that I didn't have. And one of the best parts about doing this is learning to tell stories about books so that, you know, you can get new readers to pick up something. that would be out of their wheelhouse or, you know, learning to share literature in general.

It's just it's a skill set that I didn't really have refined. And this has been a really good practice for that. Yeah. I have to agree with that completely because I, so I started mine out. I started one call between the lines a while ago where I just interviewed authors. And so it was kind of the same thing where it was like I didn't have an interviewing skill set. And so even like figuring out what to talk to them about like had to like kind of think through that. And then my co-host for Killing the Tea, which is now I've kind of combined the podcast together into book wild. We just had like really instant chemistry and it was like, oh, this would be really fun to like do something weekly with someone who like I know I can talk to books about. But you do like,

learn along the way, like even how to talk about a book without spoilers to your point about telling a story about a book and like why you loved it and like what the journey of reading it was like for you. Like you do have to like find ways to like be excited about it and talk about it and also not spoil anything, which is like also so difficult with like thrillers too. Like other books as well. But like sometimes you want to be like this one's so twisty and you're like, but you don't want everyone to know about every twist either. So I totally feel that. I think that's so cool. It's such an empowering story too, though, that it kind of came from like, okay, because of a like chronic pain that I have. You weren't like, oh, I'm just going to let this stop me from doing anything. You were kind of like,

I'm going to find something that I can do that like does work really well for me. So I think that's just like, I love how empowering the story is. for your podcast too. Well, I hate to be inspirational because I will say that there was a point where I was like, I'm ready to give off. Like, this is just, I had a good run, right? I could have left it where it was. I could have retired and been like, I'm not going to do this anymore. My brain is so busy. And I do think if you make content, it's very hard to say, like, not always be thinking about how can I, like, how could I use this or what could I do? And so, you know, it just, it made sense. And also, the fact is that a lot of people with chronic pain find solace in books. And they find that books

are where they can have a safe space. And so those two communities really marry each other well, because a lot of people can relate to that. And it's something that you can do. It keeps your brain busy when you're having a bad pain day. And if anyone has chronic pain, one thing I've really learned about it is that, you know, my brain's incredibly busy when it feels consumed by like what's hurting in my body. It's hard to be thinking about books when you're so distracted about what's going on inside of you. And one solution that I found is that doing an audio book with a Kindle copy keeps my brain out of that cycle because I have to keep pace with it. And there's two things going on and it keeps my brain busy. And I think that's one thing that.

I'm learning is that even when I feel like, oh, this pain is so much, like, I don't know if I can concentrate on a book. Usually if I marry those two things together, it's just like it keeps my brain engaged and kind of pulls away from what's happening around me. That is so cool. We talked about that on a podcast like months ago because I saw some girls on TikTok being like, this is how I read. And I was like, what? Just because for me, it sounds overstimulating. Like, it would just be too much for me. But when you explain it that way, that makes a lot of sense that, like, it's giving your brain multiple things to focus on. Because I've had the similar experience where, like, I think reading, especially more than TV helps me if I'm, like, anxious or, like, my, like,

OCD is trying to, like, spin me in circles all day long. Reading, like, TV, I think it's easy to, like, you're just, like, kind of watching. It's there. It's easy to get on your phone and scroll, just do all of that. But when you're reading, like your mind is having to, especially a fiction, having to like make that image for you. And then all of a sudden you kind of are settled into another world. So I've had that. I've had that same experience, but I see how pairing the audio and the words together would kind of like double up on that experience. That's really cool. Yeah. And you can read at the speed of light. Like I don't know if everyone realizes this because you can go so much faster if someone is reading to you. Like, it's almost like, I'm like, okay. And we ended up

hosting at one point an ADHD expert. So if people have difficulties with reading and like keeping, you know, stories in their head because their brain is so busy. I know that my spouse has ADHD and he really has a hard time, like connecting with with books. And that way, it takes a lot of concentration. But she said, you know, doing that audio book experience is really good. But, but with the audiobook, she recommends for people who maybe have, you know, difficulties concentrating to play like a mindless game on your phone. But it keeps both cylinders engaged. So if you're not, if you're wanting to be still and do something, you know, that's audiobook and you're finding, oh, my mind's wandering all the time, which it happens for people in pain or people who have those

kinds of neurodivergent things going on. It's just like it's a wonderful way to like engage with books in a different way. And the next. thing about ADHD, you know, people is that they like fast talkers. So you can speed it up as quick as you want and you can get it all like in at the pace that your brain is working. So I thought that was a really helpful tip. Yeah, that's what my husband does this too. He lists it at night. He'll listen and read to books. And I thought that I figured that was where you were heading because he will listen at like 1.8 speed. And like if I like even hear it around him, I'm like, I feel rushed. I feel stressed. Like, can we just slow this down? But it works for him.

So is this where I say I'm a 2.25, I think, is my thing. Yeah. You are? Oh, yeah. I just like, and it sounds like turbals, you know, and I like, I like it. I like it. I need it coming to me as quick as possible. Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. Um, so you kind of read, you read all genres, right? Like you're kind of equal opportunity. with your genre? So we we do a book club through our Patreon and that book club, I feel like I want to give people a tastemaker experience. So for me, it's really important that we have like a book from every genre that we possibly can. So we may be reading historical fiction, crime fiction, fantasy, a thriller, young adult, a Southern story. Like they're all different kinds of stories.

And so with that in mind, I'm always reading all different genres. It really challenges me because we all have our comfort genres. But it's a good exercise to get people out of their comfort genres and get them talking about things that they wouldn't normally experience. So we have done all different kinds of books. I love like being a curator that gets to create like 12 different kinds of experiences for the year and that they all get to be touched upon. in some way. And what I, the feedback we hear is that a lot of people would have never picked up a book because it's not their comfort genre, right? And the point of a book club sometimes, like not always, and not everyone is motivated by book clubs. But sometimes it is to just, you know, be able to try

something you wouldn't. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. And it's okay. And the best part is sometimes when it's like equally like everyone loved it and everyone hated it. Um, because then you get to have these really great conversations about why something's polarizing and those usually you owe the best kinds of conversations it is it is like it's fun to agree with someone on a book and it's really fun to like be like what do you think about this and like this was so cool but it is more like dynamic in terms of a conversation when someone does have some like different feelings about something and like it really will change your perspective on some of the stuff that happened that part is very fun. Yeah, I love it. I love being the person that is trusted to curate stuff for people,

because I'm not a good, like, if you assign me something, I'm like, I don't think I can do that. But so, like, I really appreciate people who are like, you know, they're reading the assigned work and showing up and so thoughtful about everything. And one thing that I am learning is that it just takes a lot to lead a group that's going to have a really great conversation. And so we send our book club guides out, like before a first. few days before and we work in three headlines of things that are happening in current news and like try to make it as immersive of an experience as possible so that when they have that experience, they can replicate that so they can print that out and take it to a local group and have like

a test audience like with us and see if it if it's something that they want to incorporate in their own community. So yeah. That is so cool. That is really cool. How many like, Like, do you have a, how many books do you average reading, like, a month to be able to pick that many of them? Well, I would say I'm anywhere between 8 to 12 a month. But, you know, it just depends. Like, I'm a mom, so it just depends on my reading habits. I try to get in at least, like, 100 books. I'm usually around 115, right in that range.

But, yeah, we do a summer reading guide in the summer with, like, all the upcoming, like, releases and I only curate like I do a fall guide but I don't do a spring so it's kind of spring and summer so people can get some stuff from the library and then after summer reading guides done I start placing book club for the year because we do that in January we make a big announcement and they get all 12 books so I think that that helps people with the library holds or you know they they can ask for things for Christmas we try to get that to them in time I guess we announce it in December I should say in December they get that list and then they can ask for those as gifts or however they want to curate or shop secondhand. This was our first year that we did entirely backlist. I thought that was going to make it much

easier because, you know, doing the new and the fuzzy, that takes a different kind of wheelhouse. But honestly, like, I was like, oh, my God, the whole world is my oyster. Like, I can pick anything from forever ago. And it, it was like, I was like in my head about that for a long time. Oh, I bet. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes when you like remove like parameters, it's actually a lot harder to pick stuff. It was. It was so overwhelmed. I was just so glad like to be done like picking those 12 books because it's just it is an intimidating process to say like here's the 12 books. We do try to get the authors if they want to be involved. Backless year was tricky because a lot of people don't want to come back on a book that they wrote like, you know, 10 years ago. Sometimes like in the case of like we're doing kindred. So Octavia Butler is no longer here. So it's cultivating different kinds of experiences. So we do parallel chats with people.

So if that author won't come on and talk about their book, then maybe we can get a new author who has a similar theme and she can talk about how they work together. And the patrons, the community pays for that because we want to get them an experience that really makes it immersive. So yeah. Yeah. That is so cool. I need to get links for all of this from you.

people can sign up. Yeah, sure. There is no pressure. It's like a very low pressure thing, but it's just really fun to be a curator for that. Yeah, totally. So I thought something fun to talk to you about, since you do read multiple genres, as we were just discussing, would be books that you love, that you think non-thriller books that you love, that you think thriller books that you love, that you think thriller readers would also enjoy. So I am kind of selfishly interested in this because I am someone who stays in the thriller genre. So I don't have as many of these recommendations, but I'm super excited to hear about them because

I'm always interested in trying some more genres, basically. But sometimes it's like a little daunting because you're like, oh, I'm probably not going to like this, but what would I like? I wanted to hear what some of your thoughts were. Okay. Well, first of all, I just want to say I am the perfect person for this job. And I, like, I treated this like, this is just an assignment for me and you. And, like, people can hear it, but this is really just about your particular reading life.

I went through your Goodreads account. So that's where I started. And this was actually a lot of fun. So I should say first, I am not on Goodreads anymore. Like I'm very low active on there. I do the Storygraph app. I moved probably around 2020. We hosted the founder of the Storygraph app.

And I was so like inspired by her story. I'm like, I'm going to move my reading life over there. So I don't have like current stats, but I am going to tell you since 2020 what our comparison is between our reading lives because I thought that was really interesting. That is so cool.

Okay. So Goodreads said using their comparison tool. basically, if you look at, I don't know if people know this because I didn't know this, you can open up someone's Goodreads profile and you can open up the books that they read. And then after you open that, you can hit compare and it will pull up your reading life with someone else's reading life. So like, you can see, okay, how much overlap do we have? What do these two? Like, what did I rate it versus what did she rate it and all of that? So basically, I pulled up the comparison tool and it said at that point, since 2020, we had 187 books in common. That was actually very surprising to me, but also that our

tastes are 85% similar for the books that we rated. So I would imagine, you know, just based on that, that it probably goes beyond that, but we were like an 85% like match. If we were like Tinder, we would have like been like, yeah, this works. That is so cool. Okay. So I have picked a literary fiction thriller. It's like kind of adjacent to thriller to start out with a historical fiction novel, a science fiction selection, a literary horror, and a weird fiction pick. So that's where we're going to go. So I wanted to start in kind of your thriller spot. This is kind of a techno thriller, but it's a little bit more literary than I was expecting just because it has a very unusual narrator. And I don't think that a lot of thriller readers have read it. So that's why I think this is a good book for you. It's called We

Are Watching Eliza Bright. It's written by A.E. Osworth. And this novel explores the impact of internet culture on personal privacy, identity, and an ongoing fight for gender equality in male-dominated spaces. Specifically, we're going to talk about the gaming industry. So that's where this character is. So Eliza is basically only one of of two women who are hired as a programmer at a gaming company. And I would say that her presence is not welcomed at all. There's a lot of office banter, like chatter going on, that she ends up finding out that they've been talking about her.

She's become this like big source of ridicule within the company. She's being harassed a lot. So she brings it to her boss. And he basically is like, well, you know, boys will be boys. That's kind of where he is. And he never, like, backs her up. He doesn't do anything. He takes no action at all.

So she's like, fine, if you're not going to do it, I'm going to take this incident to a journalist. And basically, all hell breaks loose as people start to target her, things become dangerous. She's getting harassed a lot. But what makes the story so crazy is that the author uses a Greek chorus style of narration. And that chorus is that chorus is. an anonymous mob of gamer bros who see eliza as an intruder inside of their world so specifically these voices are 4chan and reddit users so if you've ever been on either of those spaces you know that these people are not necessarily the most reliable right and that kind of feeds into an unreliable

narrator choke and you'll be reading these observations that they are like typing out on these threads. And sometimes they will be like, oh, we love it or we hate her or we could be like loving and hating her at the same time, which we see a lot happening with it like all the different social media aspects. You know, we could, you know, totally love someone and think they're a hero. And then like the very next day there, we're like, we always knew he was like a terrible person, right? But imagine that being the narrator as you're experiencing this book. It is so dark. Right. It is so tainted. It is so. unusual. Like I've never experienced a book like this before. So I was looking up what the author

was trying to do for this. And I found this great interview that they did on Pigeon Press, where they said basically, the thing that readers seem to have the hardest time with in this book is my decision to include the Reddit narrators who are cruel, racist, sexist, and violent. And sometimes they're really difficult to read. And I think it's totally fair for readers to question why we should give more airtime to this kind of ideology. But I believe and still believe that focusing on them so much makes all the arguments that I want to make about how young white men are radicalized on the internet,

better than having any other kind of narrator could. And I believe that we make our social problems worse when we refuse to look directly at them. Fiction is the perfect space to explore what that witness could look like because within the context of the story, at least the consequences like this company, the characters, the narrator themselves, they're imaginary. And we can think deeply about all of this without really hurting anyone real. And while I felt like this one for me, for my book club, you know,

of midlife women, it wasn't necessarily a great pick for my book club. But if you had a group that isn't afraid to tackle something really big and maybe dissect the internet together and like what we're doing to each other, we are watching Eliza Bright by A.E. Osworth is like a really good pick. It came out in 2021. I just think it's missed the thriller audience entirely. I hope that your audience will pick it up. Yes. I totally agree because I hadn't seen this. The cover is so cool. I love the cover. I love the concept. And it was making me think of Kate Brody wrote Rabbit Hole. It came out either at the beginning of this year or the end of last year. And she didn't use it like a Greek chorus, but there are long sections of the story where you're learning about the story through

Reddit. And it's similar. Like, it's, like, kind of hard to read some of it because some of the people are so terrible. But I love the point that you brought up that this author of A.E. Osworth brought up that they said, this is a place where we can look at it without it harming anyone. I do think that's, like, something powerful that books can do. So you've got me sold on this.

Okay. This one sounds great. I have never stopped thinking about this book. And I wish that I felt more comfortable in my own group to talk about it. I think it would be a great one with girlfriends, like local friends to talk about. I will say it does become really like it makes you feel terrible sometimes. Like to read the viewpoint and how unfairly she's being judged by everyone. I would not do this on audiobook.

Like I can't imagine hearing that in my ears. But I would say that reading it, I could take a little break from it. And I think it's important because I think that I think it's very easy to villainize people on our sides of the keyboards. Right. But when we have to like really acknowledge like this is a real human being and we meet them in real life, I mean, everyone has a story. And it's it's never fair to be hurting people like this on the internet. And I think it's just a really thoughtful, you know, thing about social. commentary about how we treat people on the internet yeah yeah i'm always intrigued by those stories

that reminds me of i just saw i don't know if you've ever seen those clips of like dogs that are like like and it by a glass window or something and they're barking at each other and they're going crazy and they're going crazy and then like the door opens and they see each other and they're just like fine they're like oh you're just a dog i saw that when yesterday and someone like the top comment was like this is literally people behind a keyboard versus like when they see them in real life So it's totally reminding me of that. It is so true. Yeah.

I love it. I'm going to be adding this. I'm going to be prioritizing this one. Well, good. I think you're going to love it. I just think you will. Yeah. I think so too.

Totally. Well, my second pick for you is a historical fiction book. And this is like a five-star experience. I know you and I both interviewed Crystal from Did You Hear about Kitty Car? Yes. She's so amazing. And so I was like, I want to give you one historical fiction pick that I think you would really sink your teeth into. This is a very dark pick, but it's called Rust and Stardust.

It's written by T. Greenwood. I didn't know anything about this book when I got into it. I was like absolutely shocked about every aspect of it. Both like the writing itself is incredible, but the story itself that it was based upon is even more like. heart wrenching, I guess, is the best word that I could use to describe it. Basically, I did not know, and many readers probably don't know, that the novel Lolita had been based on a true life kidnapping crime. So Rust and Stardust really pulls back the curtain on the case and chillingly illuminates what all this girl had been through. So basically, this is a historical fiction pick. But in 1948,

A Sally Horner, she was really desperate to get into a cool club with a group of girls from school. And as part of her initiation process, she had to steal a notebook at a local drugstore. Basically, what happens is a man who is with the FBI sees her take this notebook at the drugstore. And he tells her that she has to pay for her crime and that he's not going to rat her out to her parents as long as she follows all of the instructions. So she doesn't hear from him for several months. This is how well-plotted this is. But in June, shortly after she turned 11 years old, the man stopped her on her way home from school and convinced her to come with him to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Now, Sally believed he was taking her to a court hearing because this is her punishment for stealing this notebook.

So he poses as a family like a father from a friend from school, and he offers to include Sally on a beautiful beach vacation. And Sally's mother, she has debilitating arthritis. She has a lot of pain. And she knows she's never going to give Sally this experience, right? She's never going to be able to take her on a beach and do all of these things that this guy is pitching. And so even though she doesn't know him and doesn't know this family, she begrudgingly accepts because, you know, he's so convincing and, you know, Sally wants to do this. So basically she has no idea that the guy is a dangerous child predator who had,

just been released from the prison. And Sally is his latest conquest. But by the time her mom realizes that something's wrong and it's called the police, her daughter has disappeared. And of course, this is in the 1940s. So this is such a frustrating process to witness. It would be unbearable if it was your little girl, like, who had been taken because everything is so slow about this case. When I read this, my heart was like in my third. throat. Like I can't even describe how good Greenwood tells this, even in like the very scary bits of the story. Now, the reason why I bring up Lolita is because this is notable, not just in this book, but there is also a true crime book called The Real Lolita. And the author had discovered that this,

you know, author was fascinated by the idea of a middle-aged man's obsession with a young girl for many years, and that plot reoccurts in several of his earlier works. And he was struggling with a draft of Lolita when Horner's kidnapping had made the news. And many people are convinced that he used the story as scaffolding for this novel after stumbling upon the note cards in his archives where he had transcribed this story while writing the book. Now, the goal in sharing Sally's story is obviously, this is such a literary moment. We all are familiar with Lolita. I don't know how many people are actually familiar with Sally Horner's story that inspired this work. And I think it's not only important, but I think it's vital to understanding this book. So again, that novel is Rust in Star Dust by

T. Greenwood. It was a 2018 historical fiction gem that I think is both dark and also deeply pointed. Wow. That has some wild true history behind all of it. Yeah. That is crazy. And that it's like about like a book that's so popular. Yeah. And after you read it, you're just going to be truly down a rabbit hole because you're going to want to look up the pictures. You're going to want to look up the family story. You might want to check out the true crime book. I felt like Greenwood did an adequate job that where I didn't feel like I needed to, you know, go get another book on it. Like I was just horrified that this had happened and I had no idea that it had happened. I'd never heard her name

before. Just the whole whole thing is just so wild. And even though I'm setting you up for that, I feel like the majority of the story is her and him and what happens after. And it is following that road trip experience and for what it is. If you are particularly sensitive to that kind of content, it would be one to skip. But I just think it's such an important aspect of, you know, just thinking about Lolita and thinking about the things that we interact with or why someone might want to tell a story like this. I mean, obviously a lot of books are inspired by headline news. Like we could even say Jessica Knowles book, you know, we, we see things that happen in true crime and we want to re-explore it or like explore those stories again.

And I think it's it's important to also know like the touchstones of what that is. Yeah, totally. That is so. I like didn't expect to just like not even know any of these books, but you are just like bringing some gyms to the surface that I'd never heard about. And you're, you sold me again. Okay. My TVR is going to be so long by this. Awesome. Well, I love it, though. I'm glad because I was like going through all your good reads and I'm like, okay, she does like his circle fiction and I, yeah, I knew you did that interview and I'm like, I just think this is one that's easy for a thriller reader because you are like, your heart is just like pounding because you're like thinking about this little girl and what's happening. And then after you can actually learn more about her and about her life. And I won't spoil anything for anybody beyond that. But I think it's a really important.

and relevant story. It sounds like it. Yeah. I definitely want to know if anyone else reads it as well. Yeah. Well, my third pick is because I saw that you really liked Blake Crouch. Have you read? Oh, I do.

Okay. I was like, I think you did. Okay. All right. So I was like, I want to touch on that a little bit. And I wanted to pick one that had kind of a thriller-e plot to it. So this is a backless science fiction selection. It's called The Warehouse by Rob.

heart. I think this is going to hit so good in your wheelhouse. It is kind of like a black mirror episode. And I would absolutely recommend the audiobook experience because the narration on this book is particularly impeccable. So basically, in the story, we have a company called Cloud, which has taken over the entire American economy. The company itself has become its own little private oasis, at least that's what it seems like. There are these open floor plans and vast warehouses. And at this point in this dystopian kind of world, the entire world is reliant on them for food, for shelter, for communication, also for currency, which is kind of like an interesting concept in this book. And anything else you might need, it's all just right there for

you. But basically, there is a woman who knows that there are secrets that are lying within these walls, and she decides to operate undercover. And she targets this man who seems incredibly happy with his existence there and very unsuspecting of the evils that are lurking inside. So he is the perfect pawn to try to manipulate and get inside, uncover all these terrible, sorted things that the company has done. But what makes this compelling isn't necessarily just that, because I think that is compelling on its own. But it's told in multiple POVs. And I think that's one thing. that thriller readers really like. But one of those perspectives in particular is the cloud company's founder. So he is an older man. He has had a full life, but he is diagnosed with cancer. And I think

what makes this compelling is that he didn't start from an evil place. And a lot of things that we interpret as evil, like big corporations or big back stores, not all of them. But most of them, somehow start in the seeds of, I'm just a family who's trying to pay my bills. I'm trying to start a business. And this kind of really dives deep into where he started. Like it's that that homegrown feeling that, you know, makes you feel that small town feeling like he was just a guy. And the accent that they do for him is just like perfect. It's just like I can't explain it, but it almost is like a classic story like where you like expect like this guy to like tell you and he's telling you about. his life and you start to realize like, oh, he's not as evil, even if things go off the rails, right? There was a good seed that started that. I used to work for Walmart and I did a lot of

mom blogging for them. And we would go to these like museums or things around the town where you got to learn about the founder, like look at these images and like people have strong feelings about if they hate Walmart, right? There's a lot of people that won't shop there. or they've had bad experiences. And this kind of goes into that museum aspect of what's curated for, you know, the public about where it started from. For better or worse,

it started in that way. So it does get very science fictiony. It does take some really weird bends at the end. But I think the warehouse is just a great book for readers that not only want to analyze, like, our big reliance on, you know, these big box stores, especially post-pandemic, as we're kind of siloed and isolated from our communities, but also that we analyze, like, our response about something being inherently evil. Like, maybe there are reasons certain things had initially existed, and are we willing to

contemplate where things start from? So I just think it's a great one. Yeah, everything you just said there at the end is what I really enjoy about sci-fi. and speculative fiction. Sometimes you hear both of them together, where it does make you think about how things are. And you mentioned Black Mirror at the beginning of it too. Like that's so much a show that does that same thing where it's like it doesn't always even pick a side. It's just like here's an issue and like let's look at the different perspectives or the different angles that exist within it.

I do, it is one of the things I love the most about sci-fi. Light Crouch, who you also mentioned, does do a lot of that with his books. And I just, I need to bump this one up on my list, too. I read The Paradox Hotel by him. And that is up in one of my just like top favorite books of all time. And it looks at time and grief and relationships in a really interesting, way. And so I'm such a fan of his. I'm like, you've convinced me I've got to go read more of his backlist. Well, you know he has a new one coming out this summer too. So like, I have it.

Okay, I have it too. Is it Assassin's Anonymous? Yes, I love the cover. I'm so intrigued by the premise. So I, yeah, I'm very excited for that one too. Yeah, me too. I feel like this is such a great, like, pick. And it's like a good one too. If you have a book club and you're like, oh, we want to dip our toes. I think this was one of my first. Like, It wasn't my first, but it was probably one of my earliest picks for science fiction for our group. Okay. I am going to talk about one that I'm not sure if you'll love it, but I think you'll like really love the concept of it. And that's like my favorite thing is when people do something super inventive with a book.

I'm going to talk about Alls Well by Mona Aywad. Are you familiar with this book at all? I'm familiar with her. I don't read a lot of horror. Okay. Okay. This is great, though. This is perfect.

It's a revenge story, and I think you're really, really going to like it. Bunny is the one that I think she's most well known for. That's like the book talk book. And I'm like, that is not her best book. I think this is her best book. And it has such a clever concept. So basically, the narrative revolves around a woman named Miranda. She is someone whose life closely mirrors a lot of the challenges.

I feel like that people who, like me, who face. chronic pain every day, she's just really having a hard time with it. So basically, what it happened was she was involved in a devastating accident and it halted her very promising acting career. Her medical practitioners are trying everything to get rid of this pain. And when these steps fail, they start to blame her for not girl bossing the pain out of her life. So, you know, chronic pain, truly it can feel relentless for the person who's trying to manage it. to build a life around it, but it also can feel incredibly relentless to those around you. And Miranda is at this point where she is in so much pain.

She is like laying down on the carpet in her office to try to make just her back pain more bearable. Her cardigans, her pockets, they're filled with pill bottles because the back pain is starting to consume her. Her marriage is fractured. She feels friendless and she feels alone. And it's gotten to a point where people now are saying out loud that quiet part, which is, we don't believe you, right? And to top it off, she is directing a college production of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, Thus the title. And she's blindsided when the whole cast decides to rebel and insist on staging Macbeth instead. So she's nursing this very bruised ego, and she ends up wandering into a bar

where she encounters three mysterious men. And these men possess a very intimate knowledge of what her story is and a tantalizing promise to her and her future where her show will succeed. Those who don't believe her will face consequences. And finally, her hidden pain will be acknowledged. So when Mona wakes up the next day, her body feels better than ever. It's miraculous. There is like mania to it.

Imagine being like incredibly downtrodden, your bedridden by what's happening to you. It consumes every minute of your day and then you wake up and everything is all gone. The only problem is that all of that pain and suffering transfers onto the people who said the quiet part out loud. So now they are cursed somehow and they begin to experience Miranda's pain and suffering. So I'm going to just admit that the novel does take some chaotic turns and it. it is very like on brand, I think, for this author to kind of do this fever dream sequence at the end. But despite all of that, I just found it just so emotionally resonant as someone who has experienced that in a practitioner's office. I think it's validating. It's stating how women aren't believed in these medical practices.

It's something that happens all the time, whether it's like our OBGYN care, whether it is chronic pain, whether it is a medical condition, even, you know, someone like my sister who works in the medical field is not being believed about things that she's experiencing. And I think that these kinds of stories, I don't want to say I wish someone has my pain, right? Because I think that's pretty evil. But I do kind of wish she had like one bad day where you could feel my suffering. I'd like experience it for yourself and realize like, okay, she's not blowing it out of proportion, right? I think this was really an interesting writing exercise from what I understand when I looked up the backstory to it. Something did happen to the author where she didn't feel believed and she was like,

oh, like, let me go to work, right? Let me play this out in my plot. And I just found it to be so validating in the storytelling of it all. So if you want to try a good revenge story, I do think all as well might be the perfect bit for you. Yeah. So, I am a sucker for a revenge story in general. I'm pretty obsessed with them, actually. I just love a good takedown or evening of the scales. And I have PCOS, which is a fun, tricky disorder that does all kinds of stuff to your body. And it's very common to go, when you said OBGYNs, it's very common to go in there.

And they're like, well, just eat less and work out more. And you're like, I am. And they're like, well, we need you to do it for six more months. And then you come in and then we'll see if anything has changed. And then we'll talk about your options. So I have experienced that. I've experienced that, like, exhausting feeling of, like, people generally thinking that you're exaggerating something or just dealing with something that's, like, losing weight is a lot harder for me than it is for other people. and it's like very easy to feel like no one believes me, which I'm not saying everyone doesn't.

But it is a difficult feeling when you are like not feeling not believed by doctors or having to go to different doctors to try and get someone to believe you. So I am all caught up in the idea of the revenge flipping it on all of her doubters. If you're having a bad painting, I would say like this is very like satisfying to like go into. Yeah. I know it can be particularly triggering too. there are times in this whole journey, I would have been like, I can't even read that because that would just absolutely destroy me. But then there was like a angry part of myself too that was like, why am I going through this? And like I feel abandoned at times. Like I have a wonderful support system.

But it is like it's a feeling where either, you know, you don't feel believed by practitioners or you lose your friend's circle or whatever that looks like. And, you know, it takes a lot out of people. I think it also made me think about, you know, in some aspects, how to hiring it is for other people around me, right? Like, they don't want to hear about that anymore. And, you know, it is very hard for that not to be the central focus. So I think it's just a good examination all around, whether that is your own internal examination or otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very intrigued. The cover's really cool too. It is so cool. And I haven't read anything that has magical realism in it. So that might be my first foray into some magical realism.

Well, I have a book list for you if you want it on Just Magic. Realism books that I think are really good. I don't like cheesy or hokey. I like it to have like just a light bend. So, but this one is definitely more fantastical. It's, it, it is horror kind of like I don't always see her. Like, I guess speculative fiction is tricky. Like I feel like it's a little bit like that. It's, it's, it's literary and it's, I don't know, it's a little different than just like straight up like a slasher book or something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. That's awesome. I'm excited for this one too. You're, you're killing it with these recommendations. Okay. But I think this last one is going to be my favorite to tell you about. So I'm excited.

So this one is really unusual. It's a debut. It led to one of our most thoughtful and impactful discussions on trauma, even though I think the story ended up being really polarizing among our readers. So you'll either like one start or you'll five star it. I think you'll five star it, but we'll see. The premise of this, it's called One's Company by Ashley Hudson, is one of the most unique immersive concepts that I have ever read in a book. Basically, the main character, her name is Bonnie Lincoln. She's gone through this very traumatic event. And it happens right at the start of the book. So that's going to, you know, set you up where she is in her headspace and everything. And she just can't manage life like after this traumatic event.

event happens. So she finds comfort in the glow, like a nostalgic glow of a 70 sitcom called Three's Company. So basically, Bonnie, luck would have it after all of this trauma. She wins the lottery. And she decides she can spend her money on anything she wants. She's going to spend all her earnings replicating the exact set of this show down to the smallest detail to recreate it as her lived experience in isolation, living each of these characters just as they were. So the reader follows along as Bonnie embodies each of them. I'm talking down to their commute, their work, their clothing, their conversation until she's done all she can to replicate that experience. It's this really immersive detailing that Hudson includes that are as riveting as

the concept itself and can only be captured by someone who had to have been as obsessed with this TV series as she is. So Bonnie tackles seasons of the show and she chooses a character to be her as she rotates each character from the minor characters to the more major, embodying them to their fullest. The problem is when reality creeps in and disrupts Bonnie's perfectly sitcom manufactured world. Are they real threats? Are they real threats? Are they perceived threats? Are the people real? Are they perceived? What's happened to Bonnie and what's fracturing her memory? That's what is going to really set the reader on edge. I think you'll love it, especially because Bonnie is just the ultimate unreliable narrator. And readers will also find it to be

quite symbolic of the explorations of the things that we do to escape our realities just on a really grand scale, it asks us to examine, like, what happens if we don't process our trauma? But readers should probably know that Bonnie isn't going to do a huge evolution, right? We're not going to see, like, a big, like, oh, you know, there's like this narrative arc where she, she grows and then she finds herself and that will not happen. Bonnie's going to be Bonnie. So if you don't like Bonnie at first, just kind of be like, okay, like, I don't know if this book is for me, you have to be okay that she's not going to be likable.

she's going to do a lot of things that are going to be upsetting as a reader. But if you aren't scared to get a little weird with like Bonnie's life, I think this one is so, so good. It is truly one of my favorite books. I've read it. I think I'm going on my third time. Just because every time I read it, I get something different out of it. I also like spent a whole like weekend watching like Three's company and I'd never see the show before. I know it as a touchstone, but I didn't like necessarily grow up with it. So I was like, I kind of want to watch this after reading all these like immersive details about the scene setting that was done. I mean, I can't even imagine like it's just the scope of the way that the set moves or like there was so much inside of this book that it's just mind-blowing.

Yeah. That sounds so creative. It kind of reminds me, obviously I haven't read it, but some of the quirkiness of it reminds me of made for love by Alyssa Nutting. which was like a book that was made into a TV show on HBO Max as well. And it's just like it kind of plays with like our relationship with like technology and some of that stuff. So it kind of is giving me the vibes of that. But as someone who loves to binge watch TV and binge read books, I do think it's always really fascinating when someone like this is like a vamped up take on binging. and like you said, escapism, like making it literal. And it is always interesting what comes up with our trauma that sometimes we aren't even

always aware of. So I had an experience like that a couple weeks ago where like all of a sudden some stuff came up and I was like, well, I haven't had this happen in years, but I do like know what this is and like kind of what's happening here. But like you do do some like you can feel confused by your own. trauma when it's not like totally dealt with. Yeah. I feel like we had such a great conversation, especially like the pandemic. And there are things that people were using as crutches to get through. So we talked about like what was the thing that helped you get through like the time where we were

in lockdown or something like that, you know, like an experience that we were all experiencing where we were isolated that was traumatic for many people. Like I think that it's important to kind of talk about that. I will say one tiny minor thing is if animal neglect is a problem. Like, if you're very triggered by what's going on with animals, this could be tough. We had a couple of readers that didn't like that particular aspect of the story. Yeah. But I would say it's neglect more than abuse, but neglect and abuse are the same thing. But I'm just, I know, like, as someone who deeply cares about animals, too, I just want to be aware that some people don't really like that. in their books and that might be a particular plot point for some people. Yeah, I'm with you.

Like animal deaths are very difficult for me, which it sounds like this is different. Yes. But it tends to also just like have to do with how the rest of the story feels around all of it or like how long I have to spend. If it's a death, that one gets hard. But it sounds like that's not what's happening here. So that's a good warning. Yeah. I'm excited for this one. I'm excited for all of them. I didn't know. know any of I didn't I was unaware of well the warehouse and technically knew the warehouse but he influenced me to bump it up my list otherwise I didn't know any of these at all so good I work here is done like I feel really good about it it would have like devastated me if you're like yeah yeah because like it is very hard to like it's so hard to like tell a book person

about a book they've never heard about like because you're like yeah it I just feel like we're so aware even if we don't read something you know yeah we we know we know we know we know we know what it's about. So yeah, that's great. I'm so happy. I am too. And the covers are so cool. It's been a very fun discussion. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Thank you for being on. And where should people follow you to and I can add links in the show notes too, but where's the best place from then? Yeah, they can find me as at mom advice on Instagram or on the booking podcast, which celebrates debuts, backlist books and under the radar books, like the ones that we talked about today. And yeah, you can also find me on momadvice.com. We do book lists for all of our podcast episodes.

So if you like listen to something and you're like, oh, I love this theme on whatever it is, we probably have a book list that's created with like 19 other books you can check out. So I hope that you'll browse around on those book lists. A lot of love and heart goes in and all of them are screened by me. Yes. Yeah, totally. Everyone needs to go check those out. because everyone's TBRs are probably going to grow after this. Yay!