(upbeat music)
- The other one I'm talking about is so fucking horny.
- Okay, that's my genre.
(laughs)
- I mean, that sounds actually really good.
Can you text me?
- I fully will be reading the sequel.
- Oh wow, no hesitation.
- It's like, okay, the world has magic typewriters
where two people can communicate by putting letters
in their closets, but the world war one,
trench warfare, like why don't they have magic guns?
(laughs)
I don't think they have magic bombs.
- Do I wish this book was ordered here?
Yes.
(upbeat music)
Hello everyone and welcome back to Mean Book Club.
This episode we read Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross.
It's a lot of ours, guys.
Yeah.
(imitates grunt)
It makes you wonder.
- Makes you wonder.
As always, I am one of your hosts, Sarah Burton.
Hello, I'm Clara Morris.
- Hi, I'm Donna Scravis, just kidding.
- Oh.
- It's Sabrina.
- Oh my God, yeah.
Donna is sadly not with us.
And every time I say that it sounds like somebody has died,
that is not the case, she is just hopefully sleeping
or something.
(laughs)
- I thought that you were gonna say,
it always sounds like I'm not sincere.
(laughs)
- Yeah, also.
- I also thought, well, that's just all 100% of the time.
So, I don't think that's unspoken.
- But we are Mean Book Club,
we read New York Times bestsellers
that you guys think shouldn't be.
So Clara, why are we reading Divine Rivals?
- This was recommended to us via email from a reader,
I mean, a listener, God damn it,
from a listener named Baron Warthington.
She emailed, they emailed to say,
either I didn't read the same book as everyone else
or everyone else is a moron.
This is supposed to fall into an enemy's to lover's trope
and the main characters have all the chemistry
of two dead fish floating beside each other.
- Oh!
- The book also has a huge problem with tell, don't show.
The author is definitely trying to capture all the whistful,
falling in love, feelings of a Taylor Swift song.
But the only thing it achieves is the forced,
we've known each other for two seconds
and now are in love moments of a Hallmark Christmas movie.
Baron, I would say this makes it sound
almost better than it is.
(laughs)
I'm very grateful.
- I agree, like Taylor Swift, Hallmark movie,
I meant, I'm 100% at it.
- Yeah, I feel like we didn't read the same book,
but I also liked this book, so I'm just gonna be in a nutshell.
- So you don't know what fantasy.
- No, I do like fantasy, I don't normally like,
why is this fantasy?
- It was vaguely.
- How is this not fantasy?
There's a new set of gods and there's a kind of a magic typewriter.
There's magic.
It is lightly fantastical, but it also is lightly world war,
what, it just hit me.
- It hits the things that I think I imagined
like 13 year old me reading this
and I would have fucking loved the shit out of it.
And I just really lived through that past version
of me when I was reading it and I knew
this would have hit all of my boners.
- Interesting.
- Boner for history, Boner for some mythical fantasy.
- I don't think people like you see in the boner.
- Straight up, give me a nose blade.
- Totally, totally.
Okay, but how did you guys read this one?
- I took Sabrina's advice, which was a free audio version
on YouTube.
- Oh nice.
Yeah, I did an audible, I had, did the one.
- Yeah, credit.
- Oh no.
- We did a free month, we'll see.
- We'll see if they, as usually happens,
I forget to cancel and I'm tricked into paying for.
- Years in a year.
- It's a tanglesil audible.
I cannot get out of a Philadelphia inquire.
I needed to like read an article.
- You're not in Philly anymore.
- Yeah, and I just needed to read an article once,
it didn't even have to do with being in Philly.
And like, you have to call the cancel,
it's always a whole bunch of,
- That's crazy.
- They always say there's 16 people ahead of you.
I can't get out of it.
- Wow, that's not like a scam.
- It does, but I don't know what to do about it.
- Yeah, paying them.
- Cancel that credit card.
- Cancel it.
- Yeah, cancel it.
- Cancel it's a credit card.
- I also did the YouTube that I had recommended,
but I speeded it up two times.
Did you, - I speeded up to,
like sometimes one and a half, sometimes one, two, five.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that's just trying to get through.
- You guys had like a British person reading it though.
It was like a normal, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, I think it was the real audio book.
- Yeah.
- Nice.
- All right.
Clara, I believe you're a little summer.
- You a little summary for us?
- Yeah, Clara classes it up with a summary.
- More, right, right, right.
- So what I do for the apartment is like,
- No, it's just gonna be me.
I'm on edge in Philly.
- That was, I took the summary from the publisher,
and I sort of annotated it.
- Okay, that's fun.
- Okay.
- You don't want another voice for the annotations,
you just wanna do it all yourself?
- Okay, yeah, someone else can do it, that's fine.
That's fine.
I think, yeah, I think it's fine.
- I think that Rina did you wanna do the annotations?
- Yeah, she pretty can do it.
- The annotations are parentheticals.
- You get it.
- Okay, and you'll do the annotations or,
- No, no, one person just, you get it.
- Oh, okay.
- It's a monologue.
- Okay.
- Are you nervous?
Do you want me to do it?
- No, I don't want you to do it.
I want me to do it.
- Okay.
- I'm just, I'm hard to see.
Because I don't know how to make it bigger.
That's all.
- Full plus.
- So, baby.
Now I gotta move it over.
Okay, cool.
- Here we go.
- When two young rival journalists, not a thing.
Find love through a magical connection.
A magic typewriter that essentially lets them text each other.
They must face the depths of hell in a war among gods.
After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again.
But humans are the ones doing the fighting.
But 18-year-old Iris Winno just wants to hold her family together.
Her mother is suffering from addiction,
and her brother is missing from the front lines.
Oh, some stuff is magic, but nothing
that can actually help you if your family's in trouble.
But hey, grocery stores have a thing where only products
you can afford come to the front of the shelf.
So that's neat.
The end, both the journalists become war correspondents,
fall in love, get separated,
and her lover has to be like the devil's war correspondent
in the end.
See this equal.
- The end.
- I like that the end of it was all friends.
- All friends.
- I know, that's where I go.
- Because the publisher one doesn't like want to give away the end,
I guess.
- Of course.
- So it didn't have anything there,
so it had to be all annotated.
- Okay.
- Thank you Sabrina.
- Fair fair. - Thank you for trusting me with this role.
- No problem.
- Wow, amazing.
Oh no, realizing we don't, John is on here,
so we don't have a, John is jugs.
- Here we have a John is jugs.
- I could jug it up.
- Okay, you got it?
All right, go ahead Sabrina.
- Sabrina's jugs.
- Ba da ba ba ba.
Sabrina's jugs.
Hey everybody, welcome to Sabrina's jug.
- She's milking in.
(laughs)
- Too intro.
- We just gave her, we just gave her the spotlight.
She's taking it, okay, go ahead Sabrina.
- Okay, so my drink of choice, my jug is the blood of virgins,
and that is because seemingly out of nowhere,
they reveal to us pretty deep in the book
that the characters we've been following are virgins,
and it is just a weird reveal in the way that they do it.
Nothing wrong with being a virgin,
but the way that they revealed it was weird,
and so it would also be weird to drink the blood of virgins.
Ba da ba ba ba, that's John is,
- I don't know, John a jug, non-john a jug.
I agree with you, I was not a fan of that reveal,
it felt pointless and it was just like,
it just was so YA in a bad way,
like, oh, we have this couple,
and I gotta make clear that they're virgins,
and they can't have sex till they get married.
It's just like, I don't know, big eye roll, big eye roll, about it.
- It was, it came off so strange,
and also, I mean, I don't wanna get too into it,
but I felt like the way that the book was written,
even though they are adults,
it just felt the whole time like they were children.
So when it was revealed that they were virgins,
I was like, yeah, they better fucking be.
(laughing)
- I mean, the way the book was written was like,
yeah, I'm sure that they're virgins.
- Yeah, I'm tired.
- I talk about it.
They've never had it, they know, of course,
we know that they're virgins, no reveal is necessary.
- Yeah, yeah.
- That's why it was so hot when she was sitting on his lap,
and it got bumpy.
- Oh yeah.
- That's something that would be really hot
if you were like in middle school.
- That's what you're talking about, hitting you in the lower.
- That would be hot.
(laughing)
- Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you guys never went on those like,
you know, you get to go on a school field trip,
you're in the back of the bus,
you're in the back of the bus, you know?
What are you gonna do?
You're gonna have some fun.
- You're gonna sit on the lap,
you're gonna drink out of a water bottle,
like you're French kissing it.
- Nice.
Yeah, hell yeah.
- That didn't happen in the book just in my life.
(laughing)
- That one, yeah, that one felt real.
(laughing)
- Oh man, 'cause if it had happened in the book,
I would need to ask you for like a time coat for that.
- Yeah, then I would need to take a bathroom break.
(laughing)
- All right, speaking of breaks,
we'll take a quick commercial break.
We'll be right back before we go into the background
of the book and then just start having fun chatting it up.
- BRB.
(upbeat music)
- And we're back.
- Ah, please.
- Tell us everything you have discovered in your research.
- Okay, let's start with our author, Rebecca Ross,
double R.
She grew up in Georgia, went to University of Georgia,
she had got a degree in English,
and she now lives in, you guessed it, Georgia.
With her husband and her dog,
who she describes as Frisbee Obsessed,
which I feel like is a bit derogatory towards the dog.
And I, I think I support it because you also had
a Frisbee Obsessed dog.
- Well, it wasn't obsessed, he liked Frisbee a lot.
- I never said it. - All right.
- Okay, all right, all right.
- I honestly think I put,
I think I am sort of trying to attack it a bit
with the idea that John,
was gonna be here in any information
about the author having a dog makes John.
- I was gonna make her like, yeah, you're right.
- Yeah, so I had to knock it down a bit.
So yeah, I don't know.
- Eh, this is a little derogatory towards the dog.
- Okay, okay.
- Rebecca is a self-described coffee addict.
She likes vintage type writers.
- Oh, really?
(laughs)
- Okay, so she also likes stamps.
- Wow, she's from the 1920s.
- Oh my God.
(laughs)
Before she tried to be a writer,
she worked at a Colorado dude ranch.
She worked as a school librarian.
And I don't know what this is,
but she called it a live time captionist for a college.
- I'm assuming that means like the college subtitles.
- Station, yeah, she had to write the, yes, subtitles.
- Yeah.
- That's my guess.
- All right.
- So those are some of her jobs before she started trying to write.
In 2014, she became a writer because she had an epiphany
where she saw herself as a 70 year old,
and this is her words, mortal.
- Mm.
- Mm-hmm.
- Who had never dedicated herself to writing.
And it rocked her this vision.
- So she just saw herself as a 70,
- Like a normal 70, 70.
- Yeah, 70 year old, and that was--
- Person who had never tried to be a writer.
- And she was like, "I can't let that become me."
And she then she started writing a novel in her spare time.
She admits that the first attempt wasn't great,
but then she got the idea for her book, "Queen's Rising,"
and within 48 hours she had a draft that she wrote.
- No, she wrote a full book in 48 hours.
- That is what she said.
- Yeah, that's not true.
I don't believe it.
Let's see, she's written a lot of what is called duologies,
so it's like series that just have two books.
And a few standalones.
She writes adult fantasy and also teen fantasy.
La 2022, she published something called River Enchanted
that is an adult fantasy book.
So I guess like a load of rings,
or maybe that's code for sex book, adult fantasy?
It could be, it depends.
I hopefully, we can only help.
Lord of the Wings was not, did not have the sex in it,
but a lot of adult fantasy does.
- Okay, okay.
Good, good.
But I don't know if this one is sex.
So that's just a little background on her,
who she is, has she gotten to writing.
This book, we can talk about a bit, divine rivals.
As of this recording, it has spent 28 weeks on the young adult
hardcover, New York Times bestseller list.
It's like number two, it doesn't show any signs
of abating, the sequel to it, which came out recently,
I think this week, the week we're recording.
- I think, oh, that's number one.
That's number one.
That's why we couldn't get this book
at the Lothagodam library.
- Yeah, that's right.
- Then we're checking it out.
Get ready for the new one.
All right, Rachel Ross says,
as I was writing this book, okay, so she wrote it in 2020.
She wrote the book in 2020, like very pandemic.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So she said to herself, like,
I wanna write a book about two people falling in love
and let that be the driving force of the story.
So I guess this was her first sort of romance,
like she says normally romance is her sub-but plot
or her B plot.
- Less interesting in her book, suddenly.
- I'm like, I can't make that plot, but it's me.
- Yeah, you know what?
I tried the typewriter thing.
People falling in love is a driving force.
I would say that this, the thing that immediately struck me
about this book is that when they started writing
letters to each other, they were like,
oh, this is who's got mail.
This is who's got mail.
Why are you who's got mail set in a fantastical World War I,
setting?
And I was like, wow, I didn't know I needed these things
in my life.
I realized this is exactly what I did need.
So thank you for that, Ross.
I had to say that.
- I felt it was similar to dating apps,
like texting someone on a dating app
because you don't really know what they look like.
I mean, you get their pictures, but you don't really know.
And then you can get your hopes up, like, waiting for a response
when you thought you wrote something really witty
or something, and you have to wait for a response.
That's the way they had to wait.
So it was reminiscent of that to me.
I've never seen you got mail.
So maybe you got to see you've got mail.
It's a classic for a reason, you know?
- You've never seen you've got mail.
- I've never seen you've got mail yet.
- Oh, it's going to probably need to be a bonus episode
of some sort now that I'm here.
- How about that sounds like fun.
- That would be a really good bonus episode
because it's like about a bookstore.
- It is.
That's how we make it work.
It's about a bit of time.
- But it's not bad, right?
Like we wouldn't be pooping on it.
- Well, we could be pooping on you for never having seen it.
- Yeah.
- Doesn't sound like something I'm going to allow.
(laughs)
- There's plenty to talk about with you got mail.
- Okay. - It's great.
But it's great in the ways that we could really talk about.
(laughs)
Oh man, just in time when you had chats
with people who'd use an answer, you didn't know their names.
- What a nice character he owns.
- He tells like a, like a Barnes and Noble.
- Like a Barnes and Noble.
- Yeah, and Tom Hanks character owns like a Barnes and Noble
that's putting the, what's her name?
My God.
- Meg Ryan.
- Meg Ryan, of course.
- Of course.
- Meg, it's putting Meg Ryan's little bookshop,
like little local homegrown bookstore out of business.
- It's like Rich for his poor.
- But they are messaging each other.
- And he knows it's her.
- But she doesn't know it's her.
- Oh wow, that is a lot like this book.
- It is really in the book.
- The book is really poor.
- It's very similar.
- And there are rivals that just like me know.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Wow.
- It's a really, I was like, I can't believe,
I should have giggle,
but I'm like, she has to admit that she got this,
we've got male, because this is so male.
- Yeah, so that's exactly the same.
And then there's also this thing that comes up every now and then,
it doesn't come off that much really in like the day to day,
but every now and then they're like, oh,
we live in a world where there were mythical gods
and they're at war for some reason
that we will occasionally talk about for a long time,
but everyone believes it.
Like some people like seem to not believe it,
where they live, like it's one of those,
it's kind of like Game of Thrones.
And the Game of Thrones, there's like a bunch of magic
that people think is like extinct or back,
in the olden days that starts like coming back.
And then so you're slowly introduced to it
in the before- - I don't know that was like
what happening in Game of Thrones.
- Well, we read the book, you guys,
you guys are in the book.
- You're in the book.
- I don't know, the fucking, that was like,
I was gonna get it immediately four years ago.
- I know, but I read that book so many times
and I watched the series.
- That's your problem.
- You didn't know I like fantasy so much,
this is what I'm getting.
- I guess this was just, I just,
we don't read a lot of fantasy.
- Projected on to you, I don't like fantasy.
I'm always like, well, what's gonna happen
when they get back to their real lives?
- Oh no.
- Yeah, I don't know.
- No, I just like it as excuses for like things,
big things to happen, I don't know it.
- Basically, you'd be reading this book
and then someone would say, oh my God's instead of,
oh my God, and you'd be like, oh yeah,
there's a weird fantasy element.
(laughing)
Because it is true at the beginning especially,
it's so funny because it's like,
they're just working for a newspaper
and fighting over a columnist position.
It's like very basic.
And I also just love the fact that it was like,
this, the rich guy, his family was making him be a journalist
over going to like school for literature.
I guess I should say his name, his name is Roman Kitt,
he's like the other, one of the main characters.
His, he's from some rich family,
his daddy is making him become a journalist
because it's prestigious.
I just saw those, as someone who went to school for journalism,
I found that hilarious.
I'm like, no, this is sad, this is,
well, I mean, I'm not saying like going to school,
university or literature is the right solution,
but I'll tell you what, you know what,
daddy should have been having you do is to go to school
wealth management, you know, like let's lawyer,
like doctor, let's see bigger, what are we doing?
What are we doing here?
- Yeah, well it's a writer writing about writing
and how good and holy writing is.
- Yeah, very much so.
It was nice to imagine a world where,
I mean, a columnist at us,
- It was kind of shitty newspaper.
- It was like, yeah, totally.
- One that was like, let's not cover the war.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- And how prestigious a job can it be if a 19 year olds
who didn't go to college can get it
with a, didn't experience without a degree or experience?
- Yeah, a lot of stuff that didn't think quite that up,
but it was very, that was very funny to me,
but a Roman Kitt and he's kind of like a well dressed
handsome, know-it-all, who, - Richie Rich.
- He thinks he's a shoe in for this columnist position,
but then Iris shows up and she kind of,
she said, I think a high school dropout?
And she's obviously poor and he's like,
looks at her and he's like, she's not,
this is a joke, you know, I'm gonna get it.
She's not gonna get it, but then Iris ends up being very good
and then you find out, oh, what happened is she had a dropout
to like take care of her mom?
Why'd she have to drop out?
I forgot again.
- It seems like it was because her brother joined the war
is why she dropped out.
- Yeah, and then her mom like fell apart though, I think,
in the early joint couple.
- I don't know.
- It didn't, it didn't hold together too well for me.
I will say, I will give the disclaimer
that I was not particularly interested
in what was going on in the book.
So it was really hard to focus.
- Mm-hmm.
Yes, I will admit that I fell asleep reading it
and just kind of let it go.
The parts, you know, that,
- I can't believe it was that.
- Like the YouTube had it in the three parts
and I was listening to one of them and then,
in the morning that part was completed.
- I just liked Roman and Iris.
I think they were mean to each other.
Like it wasn't a full on enemies to love his trope,
but it was like they were mean flirtatious with each other,
which is my kind of flirtatious, you know?
Like that's how I relate to people.
You just really mean to them.
- I guess like you kind of just hit on
what was a problem in the book for me is like,
you know, you said it wasn't exactly enemies to love his.
It also like wasn't exactly a war.
It wasn't exactly a newspaper they wrote for it.
Like just everything, everything felt so low stakes,
which is so crazy when we're talking about gods
warring against each other,
but it was just like the drama I never felt it.
- I would say, maybe low drama, like in terms of,
oh, we're just trying to see who will win the column,
but like, then her mom died.
- Like what?
- To my like,
okay, I missed her mom dying full of this.
Her mom dies, which is why she doesn't get the column
because she like, cause her fucking mom dies
and she can't like finish writing what she was writing.
- She also does this annoying thing that only happens
- She doesn't tell you.
- Book club books where she like has the excuse
so I was like, I'm late because my mom died yesterday.
- And she doesn't say anything.
- Absolutely, absolutely so stupid.
But Roman knows because she's been sending the letters to,
she doesn't know as Roman, but,
- Yeah, let's explain that really quick.
- Yeah, yeah.
- To the best of our ability.
Her and Roman have magic typewriter
so they can write a letter, put it in their closet
and it goes to the other person's closet.
And Roman.
- They didn't know, I was sitting no was magic.
It was just something she's heard her like,
grandmother used to do.
So she did it, wrote a letter to her brother
cause her brother's at war and she hasn't heard from him
and she's just like, she doesn't think anything
will happen from it.
She just like is doing it kind of like cathartically.
But then she gets a response
and from someone who's like, I'm not, I'm not forest
but I got your letter and then she starts corresponding.
But the person, the person is Roman kit.
Roman is aware he has a magic typewriter
and he also because of what Iris describes
as like her job and stuff immediately knows it's Iris.
He says he first thinks Iris is fucking with her with him.
So that's why he doesn't reveal himself
but then he just kind of like gets in this loop
of not revealing himself who he is
and starts to like fall for her
and they kind of are falling for each other
but like in person they're very much at odds.
And what I think is, I mean, why?
- Except for when they have like a really friendly lunch
together and they're fresh
and she helps him with his article
even though they're in competition with each other
and she makes his article way better.
- Right, for some reason.
- Yes.
So then they're obviously this, not is,
that's why I say it's like they could have done,
this book could have been stronger
on the like having to be more enemies in person.
But in honesty for them to end up together,
they did have, he did have to slowly like win her over
in person as well.
This is what happens in whose, you've got,
whose, you've got me all.
He has to start winning her over in person as well
so that he's trying to convince her that the person he sees
is as good as the person she's falling for over
- Secret, magic.
- So, one of her add that in the way
that she doesn't tell her boss that her mother died,
Roman does because he's like it's unfair for me to win the column
because her mom just died.
And then the guys like, I don't care,
the boss like I don't care your article is so good,
you get it anyway.
And Roman doesn't say that she helped him.
(laughing)
- But also so funny to be like this,
these words are so much better, more powerful
and meaningful than this woman's dad.
The guy was such, like such a bad editor,
manager, whatever the fuck he was.
- Yeah, truly.
But also like they keep complimenting each other's writing.
I guess I accepted it.
I feel like we heard a lot more Roman kids writing
than we did irises writing.
Did you guys feel like that?
- I mean, I know we didn't have the letters,
but like, I feel like we got a lot more Romans
and I was like, well, if irises is so good,
why don't we hear any of her article or her anything?
- We never heard anything.
So for like maybe once when she was like
doing a myth about the gods,
but no one could possibly pay attention to that.
- But the men's were the Romans.
- Yeah, yeah, I did, I was maybe slower to get into the myth part
but like once I realized, because it wasn't like,
there was not any payoff until later.
Until the war we actually, they became war correspondents
is when I think the book really picked up
because then they're both there in war
and they have to be like close with each other
and they're forced to be together,
which is I think fun, hence the, you know, driving
and iris sitting on Roman's lap, seeing.
- Right, it felt like I needed the rules of the magic
explained to me before then, because it was like,
we're getting a war that seems like a normal war
and then every now and then.
- It felt very world-based, very true.
- Yeah, it was a very dangerous warfare.
- But like, there was some mythical creatures we hear
- One side had mythical creatures and one side didn't,
it was like, are the humans fighting monsters
or they're humans fighting humans?
Like, I don't know, I don't know what the rules are
of the magical.
- I agree that was confusing because you're right,
the bad side, the clearly bad side,
had both mythical creatures and humans
and I didn't quite understand
because there was just only a god enver and dacr,
was it a dacr?
- A dacr, there's no such thing as each other.
- I don't know, to god on each side of this war,
which also somehow seemed like it represented
the area you lived in.
- Right, but that doesn't make sense.
- But then they also, one of the gods was like,
the good god was like, her whole thing was like,
I play music and I help people who died find the afterlife.
- Right, that was her thing, which I guess is nice for us.
- He could heal people if he wanted to,
but he doesn't want to.
- Yeah, he would have been a god.
- He's like more like a Hades type character.
- I think, why would humans ever be on his side
was never really exciting?
- It wasn't clear until the very end, then you were like,
oh, they're not choosing to be on the side.
He's just taking the dead,
he's forcing them to be on the side
by taking people who are almost dead
and forcing them to fight, giving them life
in order to fight for him.
That's what he was saying.
- Was it clear throughout the book,
and this is genuine, because I was.
- Okay, okay, okay.
- Like, was it clear throughout the book,
like why, like the views of God one
and the views of God two,
and like, I kept like trying to place this in like,
Republicans and Democrats have gone against each other.
Or was it like not clear what ideologically separated that?
- No, I think it was more of like a benevolent versus,
like an evil.
- Yeah, it was just generally good versus bad.
- It wasn't worth it.
- It was a jilted lover, like the one guy was the other.
- Yes, it wasn't love with the other,
and she tricked him.
There's one of the stories, medical stories,
is about her tricking him.
- And I just don't understand how a war with humans
is going to solve this, like,
there's never going to be a situation where like,
since he can heal people,
but we've killed so many of his side
that he's going to surrender.
- Yeah, just doesn't make sense.
- Because he's taking the dead from our side,
and yeah, it seems like that is it.
- He can take his own dead as well.
It just, I don't see why he was in this.
- It's like, it's impossible, the gods wore.
- I don't know.
- You think the humans should just give in
and look to the evil god?
I kind of feel like that, Enver,
she needs to step up where the fuck is she?
- I don't see how the humans are helping Enver.
- But I'm assuming that, you know,
we're going to find out, as always,
when things are just good versus evil,
that good will try at people,
because even if evil is all controlling,
you can never control people's hearts and minds
and souls and all that kind of shit.
- So they, well, now find a way.
- It might also sound like we've been discussing
two separate books.
(laughing)
- There.
- But I thought this was all very lightly part of the fuck,
or again, it could have been my attention.
- It was, yeah, it was the backdrop of the book.
It was ever present, kind of.
- Kind of, like I'm saying, you'd forget,
and then someone would say,
"Oh my god, instead of oh my god,"
and you'd remember again that this has
an annoying element to it.
- Yeah, well, it starts with her brother going off
to the war, but then there's--
- And then it switches, and for definitely for first half
of the book, there's like, you know there's a war,
you know she misses him, this is kind of happening,
but it is in the distance.
So I would say it was pretty light until she becomes
a war correspondent, and then it became very heavy.
- It seems like it could have been more clear.
Like, this god wants this,
this god wants that.
- When we're-- - I don't know.
I feel like it was, I would argue it was too black and white.
Like, I actually like it better if there was more,
like, sincere reason why people would be on
Daker's side that like made, you know what I mean?
Like, it's so simplified to good,
for a sequel that, I mean, like, and you know,
I guess the lot of fans, I mean,
so is Lord of the Rings is like that as well,
but, yeah, this isn't Lord of the Rings,
though.
- Well, I think it's bad.
(laughing)
- Okay, well, I think it's good.
- All right, let's take a quick commercial break,
and then you got a point to make,
and then Claire's got a speech, she's definitely gonna say it.
- We are, we, I think it's good.
- Okay.
- All right, and we're back.
I don't have a point, I just didn't like it very much,
but it's confusing and weird.
(laughing)
- All right.
It was a weird mix of things.
I will, I agree with you, just the,
like, World War One, yeah, mythical mythological fantasy,
like YA, it was, but it was, for me,
it was like, these are things, all things I like,
so I was so happy to have them mixed together.
I wanted to bring up that, one of the funny things,
that it's like, it feels very,
it's really set, like, in the past, World War One,
it's like, oh, their families are forcing them to marry,
their marrying young, it kind of has that old timey feel,
but it was very progressive.
There were a lot of, there were gay characters and stuff,
you know what I mean?
- Oh yeah, there was that lesbian couple who had a guard
in the B&B.
- Yeah, everyone was chill about it.
Nobody was like calling them friends all the time,
you know what I mean?
- Like, so I mean, I guess that happens a lot,
'cause it's a fantasy, so it's not like,
it's actually a World War One epic,
but it's kind of like, yeah, let's do it,
do history, but let's make it actually fit into days,
social moors, kind of.
(laughs)
- Well she wants a disill.
- Yeah, you better add some gays, you want a disill.
- You want a book disill?
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- Devils. - Let's see.
- I feel like the characters weren't that old.
- Let me talk about, I need to talk about the marriage.
- Yeah, let's do it.
- Okay, so this I did catch, this I felt,
(laughs)
I can participate a little more.
Okay, they have their little enemies to love us, TRO.
We can talk more about the discovery of the typewriter
and whatever, but like, okay.
- Okay, they wrote the letters to each other.
He always knew that it was her.
- Yes. - She did not,
actually before we get to the marriage,
can we unpack of that?
And again, this is probably just because I couldn't focus
on it, how did he always know that it was her?
- Because she wrote that.
- She wrote about her job and she knew immediately who,
and he thought, he--
- Did she sign her name, Little Flower?
- Yeah.
- She might have known it.
- It was for us. - It was pretty obvious.
But so he was vague in his responses
and chose not to reveal that information
that would letter down.
- Okay.
- So they'd be writing these letters.
And they'd be writing.
- Harvard, as he goes by, his name is Roman C. Kit,
pretty on the nose there.
She's Roman C. - Roman C.
- Roman C. - Roman C. Kit.
- She-- (laughs)
- Not yet, not yet.
- Throughout the book she does give him like,
Roman conceded Kit, she's always like filling in the blank
for the seat, it's like, but she knows her lover's,
her letter lover's name is Carver.
- But in, and think about it, she was made there.
- Yes, they are Irish.
- So the way that she discovers it,
he like wants to tell her, but they're,
now they're journalists, they're captured in war,
and they're in some battlefield or something.
He kept wanting to tell her, but like,
the timing wasn't right, you know,
she's tearing up a down in his lap.
- An excellent decision.
- Yeah.
And then he gets some shrapnel in his leg.
And I don't know, he has to go to the infirmary
and she's like so scared and he's like,
"Dang, he's like my bag, my bag."
And she's like, "Who cares about your fucking bag?"
He's like, "My bag!"
'Cause he needs her to know that it's him.
Anyway, she opens the bag and she's like,
"Oh my God, the other, the letters."
He's the other typewriter and she's instantly excited
and then reasonably, she's like,
"Wait a second, has he been playing me?
Why has he?"
He told me whatever, but then she talks to him and was like,
"Hey, what's up?"
And he was like, "Sorry, I just, I wanted to tell you I couldn't."
And then she was like, "I think we should get married."
And they,
- First she tries to leave the room
and then he gets up and waddles and kisses her
and then she used to be angry for a few days.
And then she used to be angry for a few days
and then they decide, "Let's get married."
- It's frustrating.
- A few days?
- Feels like a stretch, but it probably is true.
- It was, it literally was and it was stupid.
- Yeah, but then they like, and then it's like,
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
I want to get married," which again, I at this point,
I like forgot that they weren't children
and she's like, "Yeah."
And then all of a sudden he's pervertrobed
and then they like, they so quickly get married,
like I feel like it would have felt more real
if they didn't get married,
they didn't get engaged and married,
like if it was just like,
"Oh my God, we're in the early stages of love."
You know, kind of like,
like PETA and Katniss in the Hunger Games,
but they got the vampire book.
- The vampire book.
- They didn't get married until the end of book four.
- No.
- They had a baby before then.
They got married like book two.
- Okay, book two.
Okay, but those books were really fucking long.
- Okay, anyway.
- It was a long content.
- Anyway, it was like 2000 pages.
- But it's still the same thing.
We have to get married before we fuck.
And I think in the end, I agree,
I did not need them to get married,
but then I'm like, okay, but we're pretending
it's old timey world of one.
Maybe people would just get married earlier.
Like, I'll try to like be open to this.
But in the end, I'm like, well, you know, I want them to fuck.
So I'll let them get married.
That's how I landed.
- That's how I landed.
(laughs)
Yeah, I wanted them to be able to fuck.
And if those are the rules of the world,
I mean, do I agree with it?
No, I mean, if you think if you're gonna be able
to have gay characters, you can have primarital sex,
but you know, whatever we're--
- Wait, what does that mean?
- I just mean like if you're gonna be able to--
- Is that mean just mean the gay's--
- Just mean gay's are premise, but yeah, yeah.
Yeah, can you tell me, is that exactly what I'm saying?
I'm saying if you're applying like today's outlook
on social mores, like let's, why are we,
let's just apply them all, like let primarital sex be fine in NBD.
- Again, it's like, what are the fucking rules of this world?
- Where, you don't know.
I don't think this was well established.
Just tell us, just make it clear.
- But also like, it made them rush into a marriage.
Too young.
- I'm not sure.
- It's not a time concern, they were 13 years old.
- Well, that's what I was concerned about first,
'cause I was like, they're married and they're happy,
they're together, this is not what I need.
I needed them to be pushed apart,
I need them to be at odds.
And so I was very happy with the ending of the book,
'cause I said, okay, they set it up for the second book for me.
They will be on opposing sides,
they will be rivals once again,
and that's what I wanna see,
how does he rivals who wanna fuck?
And that's what I want.
- Well, maybe they'll be rivals again,
but her own favorite man in the world is also on the other side.
- Well, but he's, okay, so at the end,
the town that they're staying in as these war correspondents
gets attacked, basically they get separated,
there's like a big bomb that blows up,
and all the sun's underneath gas mask is pulling,
iris to the side, she thinks of first it's Roman,
but then it's not, it's her brother,
for us who she's been searching for.
And she really liked her brother.
- No.
- Apparently he's not in the book,
except in the big, very beginning.
- But you knew he was gonna come at some point.
- Yeah, but he kind of forget about him too.
- It was gonna surprise me if he didn't come back,
'cause it was so much a set up.
But anyway.
- It would have been really crazy if he was just dead.
- It would have been really,
I thought she would have been dead.
- You know what, honestly, it's a dead one.
- It would have been cool.
But it turns out he was fighting for the good people,
but he pretty much got almost deaded,
and then the evil god brought him back to life,
and because he gave him his life,
he's like you're to fight for me now.
So he was fighting for the evil side,
which is why she couldn't find him,
and he basically was a, no, I was just called POW.
What's it called when you leave the war when you're just...
- Oh, A wall.
- A wall, thank you.
He was A wall.
From the evil side, so you had to support him,
but it was suspicious.
But anyway, but in doing so, they pretty,
I think obviously set up that what's happening to Roman,
probably is that he is about to die,
and the god's gonna get to him,
and so he's gonna be fighting on the other side of the war
in the same level.
- And is he gonna be brainwashed?
Is he like, that's like their brainwashed,
because his brother wasn't brainwashed.
- Right, so he's going to be fighting on the other side
of the war out of like an obligation
that the brother wasn't brainwashed.
- Yeah, I guess that's true.
There could be your, he's...
- Yeah, we don't know fucking anything about him.
But it was enough for me to say,
'cause I liked it better when they were,
you know, being horny for each other,
but also arguing, and so this is...
- I mean, this one, thank you, Rebecca.
- It feels like the end of one of the Hunger Games books,
where Pat and Sampita, same side, same side,
and then all of a sudden they see Kat and Sampita
as like a capital person, and it's like,
how will they ever come back together?
- Right, it's great.
- I don't care about these characters.
- Oh yeah, I would say that as like,
that's kind of a rip off of something good.
- Right, you've ripped it off,
and you've made it devoid of any interest.
Like you ripped it off and made it bad somehow.
- I just disagree, I just liked them.
I liked both of them.
I liked them both.
Iris...
- Maybe Claire and I really did suffer from not paying attention
to the whole book.
- I don't know.
- Iris isn't funny or cool or good at anything.
Apparently she's good at writing, but I'm very...
- Hear it.
I wanna see the proof.
- She was me and she was brave.
I like, I always like when they have female characters
who don't take shit from men, or like,
she's like, I'm gonna go to war, I'm gonna do these things.
Like, she's not like being weak or damsel and just stressy.
- I like that.
- I like her character.
- Yeah, I like that she is...
I like that the book has female war correspondence
and females who are brave like that.
But yeah.
- But I think that maybe her mother's death was
kind of just papered over, kind of was like, wow.
Maybe there was a lot of trauma there
if your mother had an addiction issue
and was spending all the money,
and then she died suddenly.
A lot of issues she just kind of isn't dealing with, I would say.
- Yeah.
- I would have that.
- I guess I don't really feel like I know her.
You know, like, I don't really know what her character is.
She seems, at times very dumb and frustrating,
she didn't know.
She didn't know, Roman.
- And yeah, she didn't know Roman
and then like just the things that seem to move the plot along
like her not telling the boss about her mother dying.
So like she loses the job.
Her being mad at Roman for not telling her for two days,
you know, like it's just seemed like
would this character do that?
Or do we need her to for the plot to move forward?
- Right.
I guess those were like two very minor,
are like, well they're way heavy on me.
- She's way heavy on me.
- She found the right.
- Yeah, I don't know.
They didn't, it wasn't, those two incidents weren't something
that like went on and on for hundreds of pages.
It was like pretty shortly resolved.
So they didn't bother me as much.
Look, it was not perfect by me.
- Thank you.
- But I, I don't, I just,
are you gonna read the sequel?
- I fully will be reading the sequel.
- Oh, well hesitation.
- No hesitation.
- You should look on YouTube to see what's the,
- Oh, they got it up.
I will check that out.
What's it called?
- Don't know, don't care.
Link me again.
I don't know, I gotta, is mine?
- Although I don't know if I really want to listen on YouTube.
I really like listening on my phone, like on walks and stuff.
Can you like look away from YouTube?
- So, okay.
It's a little annoying.
You can like scroll up and has to
- We could probably
- corner of your phone.
But that's, it's okay.
- You can do that.
- You can do okay, all right, all right.
- But you can't, you can't put your phone to sleep.
That is,
- That's the only thing.
- Or you can probably get a free trial of YouTube premium
and then you put your phone to sleep.
- I've definitely done that before.
- All right.
- But I mean, I could drag in.
Sometimes I do more than once.
- And look.
- And these are just some handy tips you get.
Wait, listen to Mean Book Club.
(laughing)
- I see a lot of you read books.
- Oh my god, and it looks like it's one,
one video.
- Oh really?
So it is up there.
Well, this is huge.
- Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
And it's hard because I'm actually reading
another fantasy series right now
that something I try to get mean book club to do
but you guys wouldn't take it.
- And you're in this reading for fun?
- That's not wrong.
- Oh, I wanted to read it.
- And I'm very grateful I did.
- Yeah, it doesn't sound like it would be
a good mean book club then.
- Well, no, I think given your,
how I like this and you didn't like it,
I think probably would be.
But it is that book.
- It's a really like a lot.
- Yeah, she does usually like YA,
but I guess neither of you are big fantasy people.
That's why you might not like this other one,
but she's not there when I'm talking about this.
- I'm not sick.
- So fucking horny.
- This other series I'm reading.
- I might like that.
(laughing)
- It's actually really good.
- Can you text me?
- Yeah, horny.
- Okay, that's my genre.
That's my, yeah.
That's what I was surprised because I was like,
I usually don't, it's hard for me to like YA now
because I'm like, I wish this was hornear
and I do I wish this book was hornear?
Yes, but because of the topics that hit
were so like in my wheelhouse
and it gave me that feeling of like, you know,
being a middle schooler and like going into the world.
I really don't know what to say.
- I didn't even think of that.
I didn't even think to think of--
- What books did you like in middle school?
- You just read sports biographies, didn't you?
(laughing)
- Probably.
I liked the giver.
- Yeah, I probably liked the giver.
- The giver, the giver.
- Okay, get a personality, Clara, come on.
Give us, like, what's Harry Potter?
- You can tell us you like Harry Potter.
- The forgotten door.
- Oh, can I read that?
- Some other side.
- Okay.
- That book in my heart.
- Wow, I don't remember any others.
- I read a book in middle school.
How I told you guys was very before called one fat summer.
- And I was on the reading team,
which was like, love--
- A competitive team?
- It was competitive reading me.
- Okay.
- And there was like a list of 30 books
and the team went to competition
and basically like had to beat other teams
and answering trivia about--
- I can't believe you never talked about this before.
- Yeah, and-- - Giving that we're in a book club.
I cannot believe.
- Okay, but go ahead, keep going.
- Okay, so my dad's ex-wife was my middle school librarian
and she was like the faculty head of the reading team
and she assigned, we split up the list of 30 books
like everyone read like five.
And she took me aside and she was like,
this book has really mature themes
and I'm only gonna assign it to you
because like, you know, there's a fear
like with the mature themes that like others can't handle it.
And I read it and I was like,
and it's all about like feeling fat and body dysmorphia
and that type of thing and I read it
and I was like, that bitch is trying to give me
bot dysmorphia.
(laughing)
Because I'm her ex-husband's daughter to another woman.
And I don't know if that was true, but--
- I'd be suspicious.
- It's suspicious.
- Yeah, it was a pretty good book.
- She's setting you up to be like a sexy book,
but instead it's like, this is gonna maybe fuck with your sense.
- I actually, I didn't think it was sexy.
I thought it was like the other kids were too dumb, you know?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, it's just kind of a compliment.
- Yeah, it's like this has a potential to wreck you.
- But she's trying to destroy my life.
- Yeah, did she also give you go ask Alice and say,
like this is a really cool,
these are some really cool ideas in this book?
- She did not, but actually I just remember,
I said it was middle school and now I remember it was actually
ninth grade, she was still ahead of it.
No, that's not true.
I was in it in ninth grade separately, separate one.
And there was, I was in the King and I
and there's a song in the King and I that was like,
♪ Small house of Uncle Tom is small house of Uncle Tom is written by a woman ♪
♪ Harriet featured still ♪
- Anyway, I knew almost all the answers
to the Uncle Tom's cabin questions from the King and I.
- Yeah.
- That I would say, don't they do like a whole Uncle Tom's cabin
in the King and I?
Like they do a whole, it's like a whole musical number, right?
Of just Uncle Tom's cabin.
- Yeah, I think that's what I was so wild, right?
- I know, I just mean it's not like a part of a song,
it's like, oh yeah, oh yeah,
called like, "Fuckin' 10 minutes, they're just doing a book."
- Just a book.
- For acting out for you.
- A book from you inside a musical.
I just think that's so funny.
- Yeah.
- Oh, I don't think I like musicals.
- We know, we know, we know.
- Well, this is new information that confirms that I don't like them.
- I don't know, I wouldn't start.
If I was trying to get you into musicals, Claire,
certainly King and I would not be the one I'd put you on for a certain way.
- Wicked on the other hand.
- Yeah, that would be nice.
- Oh, and that's gonna be movie soon.
- So, I'm not gonna watch this.
- Go watch it in a musical.
- You guys like musicals?
Most people do.
- No, come on, it's so annoying.
- That is true.
- How about instead of plot or character development,
we sing a song.
- Yeah, sing a little song.
- How about we do that?
- That's a simple five doesn't.
- Come on.
(laughs)
- As a writer?
As writers, you guys like musicals?
- Yeah.
- That's good music.
- I don't like something just because it's a musical.
- There are actually, I would say I'm more discerning than a lot.
I'm not like a Broadway head.
- Yeah.
- But there are a lot of musicals that I like wicked, for instance,
which I just saw for the first time.
- Just seems like that story.
- I've always been in a long time.
- The story is always pretty light.
- Not in wicked.
- Okay. - Some of them, yes.
That's what I mean, some of them are, yes,
but some of them are only seen hairspray.
- And we're singing in the room.
- But there are some things that are usually,
do you watch Disney movies?
- They all fast-forward into the songs.
- No. - That's wild.
- Lion King, you didn't listen to any of that music?
- I did sometimes, but my preference would be
to fast-forward through the songs.
- Well, my preference would be fast-forward through the talk.
(laughs)
- (singing in foreign language)
- Beautiful, super enough.
- So good. - Okay.
- All right, guys.
- Let's give it a go.
- I'll be right back.
- Okay, I have an answer as the author, if you guys want to.
- Oh, okay. - Okay.
- I haven't even done one of those in a while.
- I certainly.
- I think I might not have blacked out the answer,
so don't look at that one.
- I'm not looking. - Okay.
- Okay.
I'll be the interviewer.
Rebecca, you wrote, you said that to get inspiration
for your next book, you were kind of stuck.
You wrote random sentences and a journal trying to find
that inspiration.
Could you share with us some of the sentences that you wrote?
The random sentences that you put in a journal
that became the inspiration for divine rivals?
- Sure, sure, sure.
Of course.
Hold on, let me give you a second.
Let me give you a minute.
- Oh, you have the original with you, I see.
- Yeah, I carry it everywhere because you never know
when in divine inspiration will hit you.
- Okay, okay, here it is.
As she walked along the plane,
the heavens opened up and spoke.
And that's it, that's all that says that you won.
A little bit later, and it says this,
I am an old computer.
I was here in the before time,
before the electricity, before the internet.
I am wise, I am eternal.
And that's actually a typewriter speaking.
You didn't know.
- Some examples, I think they really got me
to where I wanted to go.
- That's so cool, yeah.
- Thanks, thank you for sharing.
- Rebecca, same question.
Would you mind sharing with us some of the random sentences
you wrote that became the inspiration for divine rifles?
- Yeah, yeah, of course, I would absolutely love to.
And I'll have to editorialize a little bit,
and I think you'll understand why.
So I wrote, oh my God, so much sun today.
But I actually put my, when I wrote, oh my God,
and then I just like my handwriting was like a little weird
and the next word, so I started too close to the word God.
And then it came as, oh my God's, oh, much sun today.
And there was a space between the S and the O too.
It was really weird, but it was, it was like divine intervention,
which is the exact thought that I had,
and I was just like, oh my God,
this has to be the premise of my next book.
And it seems like you probably had a lot of sun that day too,
so that might have been--
- So much sun that day.
And I was also outside in some trees and I wrote,
oh, the trees in the forest are so enrolled.
And so that's how I got the idea of the name
of Iris' brother, forest, and also how I thought
of the theme of green for the evil God in the book.
He wears like emeralds and stuff, which of course represents greed.
And yeah, so that's--
- Oh wow.
- I love that forest, never heard that name before.
That's so, would you?
- Right.
All right, I guess when I saw some of her real--
- Yeah, I really do, this is, I'm really excited to--
- I only have, she only shared one of her random sentences.
- Okay, okay.
- A girl-- - Just kidding, you're not a bad girl.
- A girl who writes letters to her missing brother
and the boy who reads them.
- Okay, that is exactly what happened.
- Without a story.
It's like, what?
- Do you mean her brother?
- Yeah.
- And then she said, so that--
- Or a male man.
- Yeah, a male man boy.
- A male, a male, a male boy?
- A male man.
- And like, you'd think it would be like,
I don't know her brother's friend.
Anyway, she said she like letters, she'd love that sentence
and she'd let herself start to scheme and say,
well, what's going on?
Why is her brother missing?
Who is she?
Who is the boy who's getting the letters?
How are the letters getting sent?
- Matt T didn't really answer, she just said magic.
- Yes, I love, I love his answer.
- Yeah, fuck yeah, I'm not gonna tell you,
I'm gonna say magic.
- Yeah, it's like, okay, the world has magic typewriters
where two people can communicate by putting letters
in their closets, but the world's essentially--
- Which is essentially--
- The world war one trench warfare.
Like, why don't they have magic guns?
(laughs)
Why don't they have magic bombs?
- I will, I think they're, I feel like,
well, there are magic bombs on the from the gods
from the evil guys' perspective.
- Okay, but it's not magic in the way
that the typewriters magic.
- No, you're right, you're right.
So obviously-- - Nothing.
- You're right, that's a human way, I don't--
- Or like the grocery store is.
- So there has to be a way to, and I assume this,
if this doesn't play into the second book,
I will be angry, that there must be way for humans
to either use the magic or work with the gods
to create things, because why would they,
why, it's not just that they're making their mythical creatures
that exist, they're also there are these magic items
that were made by humans, so how did those come to be?
- And why do you know?
Make some magic in the war, or some magic
that helps in some way?
- Right, why haven't we as humans,
like in our world, been able to make some magic
like that, you know, and's wars?
- 'Cause they're humans.
- Yes. - 'Cause we're humans.
- It's fucked up, guys, it's fucked up.
I wanna listen to some world, but one history now though.
- Certainly not me.
- No, I'm not ever, I'm not ever doing that.
- No, man, really?
- I'm really good at that.
- Listen, I'll say I would like to be interested in history.
- You never listen to Dan Carlin's hardcore history, I know.
- Yeah, I did, and if I'm being totally honest with myself,
it was just like everybody was listening to it,
and I was like, yeah, I love this too.
- You said, all that I remember was,
I don't even remember it now, it was like he pronounced.
- Sounds like he's got a funny voice.
He's got a real nerd voice.
- Yeah, it sounds like Pat and Oswald.
- But he pronounced?
- Exactly, he would be into history.
- What was the name, not Attila de Han, but,
who's like the, I don't know.
There's some--
- Ginghis Khan?
- Yes, yes.
- 'Cause there's a lot of something like Ginghis Khan.
He pronounced it like, he pronounced it from my mouth.
- Maybe he pronounced it.
I bet his pronunciation was right,
that's all I can say.
I have so much trust in that man.
I also really like behind the bastard to another history.
- I like, I don't know.
I just, you know what?
I just, this is what I like.
- I know what I'm not in a shape.
- I'm not in a shape.
- History, and I think my comment of like,
I would never go listen to world on history is more about,
I will never be influenced by this book to extend something
about this book.
Like, I'm not fucking, you know what I mean?
- You don't wanna be inspired.
- Yeah.
- I don't want to be inspired.
- All right, fine, fine, fine, fine.
Well, let's see, get a quick commercial break,
and then let's come back and do Goodreads, Five Star,
Hate Rates, et cetera, et cetera.
All right, we'll be right back.
- Hi.
- I have to plug in, so we're gonna lose a lamp.
- All right, thank you.
- And if you guys enjoyed the light,
we'd have a really good, and I really have.
- It's really good light.
- I got two lamps going.
- Okay, we're down to one lamp.
- All right, okay, still pretty good, so pretty well with.
- Wow, that's good.
- You have to push the right lamp to keep.
- Yeah, yeah, my gosh.
- All right, yeah, yeah.
All right, and we're back.
All right, fuckers, let's do Goodreads, Five Star Reviews,
and now none of these were written by me, you guys,
before you make the joke.
But here, I'm in says, did I finish the book,
or did the book finish me?
- My goal.
- That sounds funny.
- Perfect, perfect, perfect.
Everything down to the last minute, my new detail,
this book felt heavenly.
It was deep down, soul-touching,
and had a demonic possession over me.
Iris and Roman had my whole body creased and shivered
from their banter rivalry letters.
Like, goddamn, they were made for each other so perfectly.
(laughing)
- I'm sorry.
- I like you.
- Are you sure you don't like this, Sarah?
(laughing)
- I just think business is so obviously written by like
a teenager, I loved it.
- Everything outside the romance was actually interesting too.
Oh, fucking hit.
The plot, the war, the mist, the gods that are fighting
for some fucking reason.
- The way that sat there, for what felt like 10 years,
looking out my window and slowly tried to process
what the fuck I just read?
This is definitely one of my top books of the year.
I'll always be thinking about these characters
on the forefront of my mind, five-star.
- I'm giving that review of Five Stars.
(laughing)
- It's a great review.
I love, it's Five Stars but she agrees with me.
Nothing is explained.
(laughing)
- I'm giving up, but this is true, she did say that.
- All right, Jessica says,
"This story has the same effect as seeing a glimmer of light
whilst being held in space immersed with seemingly
impenetrable darkness."
- This is also obviously a high school writing.
(laughing)
- Laying it on.
- There is such a light and ethereal quality to it
which helps lift the heavy and traumatic events the plot
and the writing also really suits both
Iris and kids' personality as well.
To me, it doesn't feel like an author telling a story
about two characters but rather two characters,
telling their story themselves.
- It's funny that both of those reviews
had that kind of cadence of like, did I finish this book
or did it kind of me?
(laughing)
- It's a common response for this, I guess.
I just think that's something that they say.
I think that's one of those.
- It's just commoners.
- The teenagers, they like to say that.
- They tell they speak now.
- They're like, oh my God, did you finish that pasta
or did the pasta finish?
You know, they'd say it for everything.
- Really?
Should I start saying it?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, or should it start saying me?
- You're doing it.
- All right, here's last one, Adira, she says,
crying, screaming, throwing up, praying to the goddess
that is Rebecca Ross.
This book isn't utter masterpiece.
Ross is pointing at writing a masterful display
of human emotion is amazing.
And I'm looking forward to reading more books from her.
- She goes, this is the longer one,
so I don't need to go on.
- I really like the beginning.
- Crying, screaming, crying, crying, crying, crying.
- That's really good. - That's what you need to know.
- Roman Iris, the relationship was so full
and perfectly orchestrated.
Every scene with them together had so much meaning.
I was never bored.
- Oh, and she says also has,
Roman Kitt, the best fantasy MMC that I've ever witnessed.
The one seat in the car scene
in another book I would totally skip it,
but I'm not ashamed to say that I may or may not have memorized.
We don't know.
Roman had his flaws.
No, he didn't, but he treated Iris with utmost respect
while still managing to be cheeky
and raising the bar for men everywhere.
Five stars.
(laughing)
- I love teenagers sometimes.
- Yeah, that was great.
- They scare me though.
- They scare me, of course.
- Of course, you know, they can't, don't make eye contact.
(laughing)
- All right, let's do the hate rates.
- Or go ahead, go ahead.
- I was just gonna say, I just remembered something
which is he describes in his letters
before Iris realizes, knows who he is.
He has fully physically described himself.
(laughing)
- Yeah, with the chin and everything.
- Yeah, yeah, he does, he does, but she just thinks
everyone's must be that his handsome like that.
- Yeah, sure.
- Yeah, we can hate rate this bitch.
I'll go first, I'll go two hour five.
I think that it doesn't make sense.
I think it was like two separate books, basically,
do your rival journal, you can get the magic,
get the rules of the world, right?
Then write your book, okay?
Tell me the rules of the world.
Reveal it to me through story, but early on.
And then write this, the book.
It gets two stars because it, I don't know, why?
It wasn't a horrible slog.
Like I said, you could fall asleep, wake up,
huge chunks would be done.
So, that's two out of five.
- This is why we just beat it up the skip over stuff.
- Okay.
- Okay, I'll go.
Also, it's, yeah, it's a 2.5.
Theoretically, I really liked the idea of the premise,
magic, enemies to lovers, writers, sure.
Like, I'm totally in on that premise.
And it just, it didn't land for me.
I don't know.
It was lacking all those elements.
- Yeah, it was, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It was lacking in all of those elements.
I needed a conflict to be like, oh my God, is this,
like, how is this going to resolve?
And that just didn't happen for me.
And that's okay.
Okay, you guys have enough.
- You guys have enough to have, she says 2.5.
- Oh, sorry, I missed it.
- All right, well, you guys know what's coming.
It's a 5 out of 5, definitely.
No doubt.
It's just a book that I was like, I wish I thought of this,
this whole, like, let's take, I've said it before,
let's take you, got me all, let's make it,
be in a sea-draight world war one-ish type situation.
Like, I'm like, I wish I thought of that.
I liked the characters, I liked the two leads.
I liked that they got to fuck.
I was worried about, there was like, a lot of resolution
at the end of the book, but then they gave me
the cliffhanger I needed, which helps me to imagine
another book where they get to be rivals
and horny for each other.
So I'm really excited for book two, great setup.
Yeah, fully, I would have, as a 13 year old,
I would have been, I would have been Jizz and all over the place.
Like, I loved it, 5 out of 5.
- Wow, all right, some different numbers across the board.
Should we do little fucker of the cast?
- Yeah, sure.
- Okay, Sarah, I vote Sarah.
- Okay.
- I don't understand why you like the book
and don't like other books.
(laughing)
- I mean, that's unfair.
That's from someone who just doesn't like all the books.
- And I don't understand why you can't be like me.
(laughing)
- Just feels like a bit of a pre-dissurring.
- I'm just sorry.
- 'Cause I'm just sorry.
I think if you were discerning, you wouldn't like the book.
(laughing)
And also at the start of, when we came back from commercials,
he said, all right, fuckers.
And he was like, okay, well, you're the fucker.
(laughing)
- Okay, all right.
- Sure.
- So.
- All right.
- I can go.
All right, I have to say, it's,
it's been a journey.
- Mm-hmm, wow.
When Clara gave me the role of the submarine,
I thought I really can't see voting.
This blessed angel to be the little one.
- I feel like I gave you the role,
but that's beside the point, but keep going.
- Okay.
- I don't understand where there was a turn.
- But.
- Well, I felt like Clara had the right to keep it
'cause she wrote it.
- That's true, that's true.
- And she gave it away.
And I thought, like, I don't see how this could flip.
But then just at the very end here,
we're doing our heat rates.
Clara was like, do you have a number revealing
that she wasn't listening to me?
- Okay, I was talking.
- Mr. Nuremberg.
- She really understood herself a whole
and she will be voting.
- That's interesting.
It doesn't even itself out.
- Or evening itself out.
- Well, here's the thing.
The mind really focuses on the most recent thing.
- Okay, sure.
- And that's the most recent thing.
- Well, this is the most we've ever agreed on a book.
So if you want to spoil that by voting for me, okay?
- But also here's the other thing,
like I think it would have been a pretty boring conversation
if Sarah didn't like it.
- Oh, okay, well, that's ridiculous.
- Yeah, Sarah didn't fully read the book, which you and I,
and I can't vote for myself.
(laughing)
- You and I, by admission, really missed out on some parts.
- I feel like I admitted that I missed parts of the book
that, but I wanted to write them.
- Yeah, I don't think I missed any information
that we talked about.
- Sure, I don't.
- I'm just saying.
- Like if I hadn't brought it up,
I don't think you guys would have known.
- Okay, maybe.
- Maybe.
- But anyway, that's my vote.
I cast it, so I can't take it back.
- Well then I wonder who Sarah's gonna vote for.
- Oh, damn it.
(laughing)
- Wow, I really didn't think I was definitely set up
to be taken down this episode
and be wielding so much power right now.
It feels, of course, as always, feels great.
- I would say though.
- You're gonna be perfect.
- I have to say, yeah, and certainly I will say,
Sabrina, this is a hard, I mean, I think it would be,
okay, here's what I'm thinking.
We'll try to be quick.
It would be fun to vote Sabrina
'cause then it's a three-way tie that could be fun, but.
- And we could call it a day.
- Sabrina and I really did,
we agreed on more things, you know,
re-musicals and stuff.
Then I do with Clara, but then I think,
you know, I voted Clara last time
because of her poor lighting and now her lighting?
- Oh yeah, I love her lighting.
- Yeah, I love her lighting.
- I love her lighting.
- Her lighting is excellent.
- It's excellent.
- It really feels like, if I'm applying that logic,
it couldn't be Clara.
- Thank you.
- But if Clara falls, listen to you.
Just doesn't have less than to me.
- Okay, well you also didn't like the lighting last time.
- Yeah, you know what?
I'm gonna say, I'm gonna vote for Sabrina
because she usually likes YA and I really,
I was thought coming into this,
she would be on my side and she wasn't.
So that just, it hurt and it's good,
I'm a really strong independent woman.
Like the lead character of this book.
- I accept it.
And if you had also cast that vote
because my bangs are too short
and they're making you wanna throw up this whole time,
I would have accepted that as well.
- Listeners, she cut her bangs.
- I think that's right.
- Well, my bangs already look fine.
- They look fine.
- I trimmed them this morning
and I made the great mistake of thinking,
it's fine that they're wet.
- Oh, you trimmed them when they were wet.
- Oh, that's not right.
- They were like only damp.
I was like, this'll be fine.
- I can't trim bangs, I have no, there's no.
It's hard, that's, I, what am I?
- It looks fine, Sabrina.
It looks normal.
- I would have thought that you did it.
- The whole far above my eyebrows.
- That's the way it's curling, yeah.
- Yeah, that's the way you're done styling.
- That's a style, that's a choice.
That's people, that's a cut.
All right, fine.
Oh shit.
We're supposed to usually tell you at this point
what book we're reading next episode,
but I don't think we've determined that.
- We haven't chosen.
- We don't know.
- We have to insist.
- We don't know, it's a surprise to you
and it's a surprise to us.
- Stay tuned.
- This is actually nice for me
because I was gonna text and ask what the next book was,
but then I was embarrassed.
I was like, Sabrina, I'm sure it's an email.
Don't ask, you can find it yourself,
but this is very good news.
It's very good.
Well, just for the recording purposes,
let me just say we are a meme book club.
You can find us at meme book club on all the socials.
Please become a patron of the meme arts,
join our Patreon.
And please send us your recommendations.
What have you been reading in a book club that's pissed you off
and you're like, "God, I wanna hear people
really complain and argue about this."
Please send them our way.
And let us know if it's a New York Times best seller
with a link and write us a cool description or summary of it.
'Cause you don't give us those links.
Yeah, you were much more likely to read the book
if you give us those two pieces of information.
And yeah, please share, let other people know about us.
Like and subscribe, I don't know.
Is that just for YouTube?
Whatever.
We'll see you next step.
All right, bye.
Bye.
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