[MUSIC]
It's a good title for a different book.
Groundhog Day meets lifetime movie.
And also I have a son and I'm so afraid he'll turn into a murderer.
So like everything about this book felt very personal to me.
>> The fact that I just kept falling asleep.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Really, it's says something to me about the quality of the book.
>> It felt like a postpartum questionnaire.
>> [LAUGH] >> When she's like, I was so relieved to find out that he was a cop now.
I would prefer to have like a cool painter husband.
>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[MUSIC]
>> Hello everyone and welcome to Mean Book Club.
This episode we read Wrong Place Wrong Time by Jillian McHallister.
>> Yeah, three day.
>> I would wrap up.
>> You know that expression.
>> Who? >> Wrong time.
>> Yeah, exactly.
Is that a legal expression?
>> Yeah, I think it's a legal, I think it's in law.
>> Cool.
>> Yeah.
>> It's like a defense.
>> Expose fact, wrong place, wrong time is Latin, I think.
>> Expose fact, no.
>> What is that?
>> That sounded cool.
>> Claire, that sounded cool.
>> That means like after the fact.
>> Yeah, it sounds like he can't use it.
>> I thought it sounds right.
>> I think he can't.
>> We play really.
>> It would be charged for a crime for a law that's made after.
>> I think that's-- >> That is ex machina.
[LAUGH]
>> Carpe Diem.
>> Say, but Claire does have the right definition of expose fact,
it just has nothing to do with Wrong Place Wrong Time.
>> Oh sure.
>> No, I was just listing different laws, though.
>> Very cool.
>> Thank you.
>> We are Mean Book Club.
We read New York Times bestsellers that are recommended to us,
typically from people who, you know, were in book clubs that I don't know,
like the book for some reason and they just want somebody who can yell about them.
We are your hosts as always, Sarah Burton.
>> Clara Morris, Johnna Scrabis, and Sabrina B. Jordan.
>> And we have some special guests this time.
So I'm going to go ahead and draw them, please hold your applause to the end.
Okay?
Our first guest is a time travel expert who in her free time and also for
money is a cover designer for gallery and atria books at Simon and Schuster.
Kelly McAdams.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Oh wait, hold till the end.
>> Our second guest, our second guest knows her mother fucking words.
She has a PhD in creative writing and has published poems, essays and interviews.
She works in advertising as a creative director and copywriter.
Susan Reach everyone.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> And together they host the book squad goals podcast.
>> Can I just say two other people?
>> We weren't here because that's too many people to have.
We thought six voices that sound exactly the same was just the right number.
>> Yeah, we thought A would be just confusing.
>> That's a wish.
>> We really failed at holding our applause and so to those,
to those reviewers out there who make fun of us for barely being educated,
you might be right about us, but did you hear how educated our guests are?
>> I know, there you go.
>> I just want to not be.
>> I'm not.
>> No, looking for a time travel, time travel.
>> I'm not, that was Susan making a joke in the email thread.
Susan was like, but Kelly, you're a time travel expert and I'm not.
>> Well, Kelly, you're being too modest.
>> Kelly, that's a thing that exists.
>> Yeah, you can't fault.
>> At any time, if you have a question about time travel, Kelly.
>> Kelly, we're going to get to that section.
>> Yeah, we're going to get to you.
>> Okay, sure, sure.
>> I do have thoughts.
>> So it's good to have you here.
>> So first, let me tell you guys,
who recommended this book while we're reading it?
It came from listener Michelle Pibouchet.
She said, this book spent five weeks on the New York Times Vesteler list this year.
It was a res pick.
The premise sounds enticing a mother witnesses her son commit a murder.
Then her days start going to reverse her veil, how they got to that moment.
Multiple book podcasts say this totally goes off the rails and was complete disappointment.
But it somehow still hasn't insanely high, 4.12, good reads rating at the time of the email.
Would love to see this device of book discussed amongst you ladies.
Will Sabrina love it?
>> Perhaps, will John point out its flaws and still give it a solid four?
Probably.
Will Sarah hate it lightly?
Will Clara hate it most definitely?
All right, so she knows this.
>> I've got really seen Michelle.
>> Yeah, thought insulted?
>> No, that's, because I'm an, I have an optimistic worldview.
I'm a nice person.
It's a hardly insulted.
>> I just thought she's going to be right about this.
>> I think we're going to, this is my prediction.
>> Mm.
>> I'll tell you what, I really like the author.
I've seen her Instagram page.
She's really cute.
She seems nice.
She has a gorgeous dog named Wendy.
It's going to be hard for me to be that mean.
>> She's just like judging a book by the cover, but the author by the way.
>> The author by the way.
>> I'm the worst thing I've ever heard.
>> Is the way of saying it?
>> Hey, whatever's going to be a first segment.
>> No, no.
Actually, I was going to say, when we do, when we do, do, Clara's favorite segment,
read it by, yeah, do, do.
>> Right.
Read a book by its cover.
It's going to be really important that we have Kelly here, since she really knows the cover
design.
>> That's so true.
>> She'll be really great on this segment.
>> Wow.
We're elevating the segment in a huge way.
>> Yeah, I will say, despite all of the hate that that segment frequently gets on the
podcast, I love that segment.
>> Wow.
>> It's nice to show off the cover.
>> Wow, you know.
>> Even on, you could, on the medium.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Which is my major problem.
>> Just described well enough.
>> Okay, are you listening?
>> I'm sorry.
>> Is, are you listening?
>> Have you ever heard of Word as worth a thousand pictures?
>> Never.
>> Never have.
>> No.
>> Never have.
>> Well, educate yourself.
>> Okay.
So everyone, how did you read this book?
You know, did you get a library, audiobook, just, you know, scream out loud, tell us what
you did.
>> Library, audiobook.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I did audiobook at high speed and it kept glitching so it would be really high speed
and then it would be like, at that, it, what, it was so painful is the worst reading experience
I've ever had.
>> I can't believe you did this at high speed because I was British.
>> So short.
>> It's so short.
>> It's easier to do at high speed if it's for the.
>> No.
>> I was a great, why would that be true?
>> There were parts I thought I was having a stroke because I couldn't understand a word
that was big.
>> Yeah, okay, down when that happened.
>> Yeah, you can.
That's such a good point.
Susan Kelly, did one of you guys read the book or did you both also do audiobook?
>> I did audiobook.
>> Oh no.
>> From audible to like the worst kind of audiobook.
>> I did, I also did.
>> Yeah, I'm trapped into my audible contract where I have like 12 credits and then I'll
use one and it's like you have a new credit this month and I'm like afraid of canceling
it that I'll lose all of the.
>> Yeah, yeah, some cost fallacy happening.
>> I know that's like, well, thank you.
>> Wait a minute, if you cancel?
>> I think you have to buy, you have to use all your credits and then cancel.
And then you can still access the things you've bought without reading them, yeah.
>> Wow.
>> It's Amazon.
>> We're never going to get out of it.
We're just, I don't remember for life.
Like I know.
>> I'm disappointed that nobody read read the book one because it's going to be really bad.
>> Well, we're going to talk about how I read it.
>> I'm so sorry.
>> Wait, you don't know.
>> So, that's everyone, so.
>> Sabrina, how did you read the book?
>> And okay, for the record, I got.
>> She tried to go first.
>> I got a paperback copy out from the library.
>> Did you read that?
>> Listen to my story.
I did.
>> I started reading it.
I read it for a while and then I checked the calendar and realized it was the wrong book.
>> Then I had to listen to it on two times speed on a YouTube video because there was no time
to get it from the library.
>> Which book are you actually reading?
>> I was reading November 9th by Colleen Hoover.
>> Oh man.
>> We have a lot of date and month books this season and it's made it confusing.
>> Interesting.
>> If only you could have gone back in time.
>> Would this be the thing you'd fix, Sabrina?
>> It would be the one thing.
>> Yeah, totally.
>> Yeah.
>> Understandable.
>> So, there, Sarah.
>> Thank you.
>> I showed you.
>> So again, as I was saying, no one read this book.
We ordered audio book.
I'm disappointed because I thought.
>> So we can't do a judge of book by its cover.
>> It's hard to do judge of book.
>> Yeah, sure we can Google it but we're not going to be able to do the.
>> But you'll be missing my video.
>> I'm not even going to take a picture.
>> I'm not going to take a picture.
not with a spot gloss on the title.
But that's just awesome!
- Ooh, wow!
- I'm sorry, I'm just kind of,
- That was a real terrible language of them.
- For those things.
I'm an expert on both.
- Looking at it?
Looking at it I agree.
Sabrina, I was gonna say spot gloss too.
(laughing)
'Cause I definitely know what that looks like in his.
- And what about these shiny letters, right?
- Just slightly raised?
- Yeah, it's like, if the,
yeah, it's like clear,
it's a gloss on top of the letters.
- But not necessarily raised, just like shiny.
- The rays would make it either raise UV or embossed,
depending. - Wow.
- If it's super raised, it's like, it's embossed
and then there's like sculpt emboss
where it's like, if you have like,
type that's kind of 3D and like,
it's kind of like, it goes with the 3D,
that's a sculpt emboss.
- I think I know exactly what you mean.
Yeah, this is definitely a spot gloss.
- The spot embossed, I agree.
- Yeah, this is it.
- Wow.
- What I do you think about the cover, Kelly,
is it eye catching?
It's red, it looks pretty good.
- Or is it basic?
- Lock, there's a window.
- It's fine.
- Like, whoo, damning.
- I think, go, get our getter.
- This is like, and I have designed
many a thriller cover at this point
and like, you're not allowed to be super creative here
when you're doing a commercial book.
So like, this is not the designer's fault
if it's not that interesting
because basically you come up with interesting ideas
and you take them into like editorial to show
during the meeting and then they're like,
could this look more like that one,
Jillian Flynn book?
Or, and then they'll give you like a list of books
that they want it to look like
'cause those books sold well.
And so, essentially, there's a formula.
Yeah.
I have to tell you, Kelly, that has gotten me before.
I got a book recently because it looked like into thin air.
It looked like the cover.
- Wow.
- It tricked me.
- You know what?
That's so interesting because I'm always arguing
about nobody buys books that nobody looks at a book
and thinks this looks like another book I liked
so I'm gonna buy it, but you just proved me wrong.
So I'm gonna have to come up with a new strategy
for arguing about it.
- You can still say it, just don't let your boss
listen to this.
- Or just say, or instead of nobody,
just say only dumb, dumb, stew that.
(laughing)
- I was doing the same joke, Sarah,
but say only one unique person, like the applied
that the unique meant stupid,
but not that I got you.
- I got you.
- I like it, I like it.
- Bold.
- I'm also,
- Yeah, overall it's not bad.
It's not bad, it's not super interesting either.
- I also just in terms of the audio book
first, the actual book, I suspected,
I would have enjoyed the regular book better
than the audio book just because of the nature of the book.
I thought it wasn't well suited for audio book, but.
- I don't know if you can get that stuff.
- Because it's a lot of stuff,
I feel like it would have, if I had been willing to go back
and look for details that I missed,
that were clues that I couldn't have possibly known
until later in the book,
I would have been a more enjoyable experience perhaps,
but as it was happening,
and I would have an urge to go back,
I would just get mad and be like, "No."
(laughing)
- Fuck that.
- Yeah, fuck that.
- Also, I already don't use the 24 hour clock,
so for me, whenever she was reading,
like what day and time it was, I was just like,
that sounds like a binary code to me.
I have no idea what that means.
- British.
- It set the book in the future for me.
- Yeah, right.
- Yeah, just made it up.
- Some sort of a novel time system
that no one in the world uses.
- That reminds me the first time I read 1984,
like the first line of that book,
'cause the clocks were striking 13,
and I was like, "Oh, this is like in the future."
- Oh, yeah.
- Thank you, we had a whole big conversation about this.
- Yeah.
- I was like, "This is futuristic."
Like, "Way, I've never heard that before."
- I have that same experience with the clocks,
which is like,
- Striking. - Striking.
- Yes, and it's the intended experience, that's right.
- I think so, because everyone's always like,
"Wow, what a great first line."
It's like, he's just saying one o'clock.
I don't know what clock struck, what?
- It's a British author's thing.
- I can't believe we're rehashing this.
- Probably with this one o'clock.
Sorry.
- Why not?
- No, it's good.
- It was a formative moment in my literary upbringing
to learn about the 24-hour clock.
- Right, you guys.
- And now it's back, because this book goes back
up every day, and she tells us what time it is,
and minus two means two days ago,
for when she does sun murdered.
- Is it pretty annoying?
- Yeah, way to do it.
- I do think just using simple dates would have made me
- But you shouldn't need more to tell us.
- Yeah, and she didn't need to tell us
what time it was at any moment.
- No, because it wasn't like,
"Oh, this was only a couple minutes."
Like, no, 'cause it was always like,
I woke up in this bed,
because in my twenties, in my apartment,
like she always,
- And I was so,
- And I was thinking up.
(laughing)
- Literally says at one point,
- But it didn't have so much college in it.
- Sarah, I feel like you should make us do the summary.
- Oh yeah, we could do the summary now.
- Sure, yeah.
- Seems good.
- Fine, fine, fine, yeah, yeah, let's do the summary.
- Okay, before we do the summary,
I just came up with a way to just one line it for this book.
It's Groundhog Day meets Lifetime Movie.
Okay, now we can do your summary now.
We've done my summary.
- Hair, good one.
- I had a one line or two.
Benjamin Button Mom Detective.
- Oh, that's good too.
- It's a school.
- And it's just that I see that my role in the summary
is calendar.
I thought I should get a little personality in before.
- I get mine.
- Mine's smash cut.
- Actually, Sabrina got the words wrong.
- Where is the picture?
- It's at the bottom of the, yeah.
- So I didn't think Sabrina was gonna be here,
so Sabrina, that's why you have to get the picture.
- All right, me?
- You got a last minute at him.
- Claire, you actually have the juiciest role I would say.
- Oh, cool, okay.
Something you really think you're too thin too.
- All right, I'm the star, so that's hard to.
- All right, whatever guys, let's do it guys.
Let's do it.
And here is your summary.
- October 30th, two o'clock.
- Look Jen, it's our goofy ass son.
- Yes, Kelly, my loving and trustworthy husband,
our nerdy Todd is almost home.
He was out so late.
- Wait, who's that man walking up behind him?
- Stab, stab.
- Oh my God, you murder.
- Why did you do it, Todd?
- Why?
- Maternal whale that breaks the space time continuum.
- Oh, smash cut, two!
- You're supposed to do the yell.
- Oh, I was supposed to actually do a maternal whale
that breaks the space time continuum.
- Yeah.
- Be careful, you might actually bring the space time.
- Oh, I'm tired.
- Smash cut, two!
- Minus one.
- October 29th, six o'clock.
- Wait, Todd, why are you home?
You were arrested, Paul.
- What, you pray for me, mommy?
- October 29th.
- Oh, it's October 29th.
- I'm time traveling backwards.
- Why?
- How?
- I can't focus on that.
- I need to focus and figure out how me being a bad mom
turned my son into a murderer.
- Buy Jen's sweetheart off to do more
under the table paint jobs and also never travel
or fly on a plane or do anything requiring identification.
- Bye, babe.
- Oh, look at that.
It's the murder weapon in Todd's backpack.
- Smash cut, two!
- Minus two, October 28th, eight o'clock.
- My God, I took the knife away from Todd
but I'm still time traveling backwards.
So I didn't stop the murder?
Like, did my son strangle him with his bare hands?
Or did he just buy another knife?
- Smash cut, two!
- Minus one, oh three, May 21th, 1900.
- Focus, Jen.
Listen, observe.
Don't let your mommy brain mind munder.
- Ooh, are these breadsticks?
- Sorry son, but I have to mysteriously leave
your birthday early.
- That's fine, dad.
I'm just surprised it's not mom leaving early
since she's usually the accident.
- You're a bad mom.
- Do her a bad mom.
- Smash cut, two!
- January, I don't fucking know.
- I miss when I could just move forward in a nice orderly way.
Today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow.
But I'm a calendar and a book that's in a time spiral
so this is what I do.
I guess you could say I'm actually very important.
You wouldn't get what's going on if you didn't have me.
What's that?
You don't know what's going on and you're not sure you care.
Hmm, fuck.
Just skip to VM.
Ooh, Sarah, you gave yourself a good part.
I gave my...
And me a good part secretly.
- Yep, that was gonna be all.
- I love that twist.
I actually wrote a summary that was just one,
like a normal summary and then I was like,
oh, I forgot that it's more fun when you give people parts
but it was hard to do it for this one without
give you it away, everything that happens.
- I think that's not it.
- I just wanna apologize for not doing a Welsh accent.
I thought about trying it and then I was worried
so I didn't do it.
- I would have liked to hear some people do it
at three times speed too, just to see if we could understand.
- Oh, that would have been good.
- Easier to understand at three times.
- I don't have that, I don't understand how they're doing.
- Certainly not.
- I watch Love Island.
I have to use the subtitles.
I don't have that.
- I do love how much credit writing the summary
is getting for being a semi-difficult task.
- It is. - It is.
- It is? - I never knew.
- Yeah, it's hard.
All right, Janna, that's why we just call the good reason.
We just call the summary directly on our podcast.
- Mm-hmm.
(laughs)
- And then we make fun of it, but none of us are like,
well, we could do it better.
(laughs)
- Yeah. - No.
- Janna, do you wanna do Janna's jugs?
- Yes.
Ba-da-ba-ba-ba, it's Janna's jugs.
Hello, everyone and welcome to Janna's jugs.
Today, Janna's jugs is a gin and tonic brought to you
by our sponsor, Clara.
- Oh, so you didn't come up with a one?
- No, I mean, you know, I thought it would be really cool
to throw it over to somebody.
Tell us about the gin and tonic you made yourself, Clara.
- Well, I didn't know I was doing Janna's jugs,
so I don't know, I didn't make it really to the book at all.
- Okay.
- Well, it's related to the book itself.
- Well, it's related because it's a gin and tonic.
That's what the person brings to the book.
- Did they drink that in the book?
- Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right, British gin.
- Right.
- I made it downstairs, I made kitchen,
and I put it in a mug.
- Woo-hoo, very British.
- Yeah, I'm a little disappointed.
I feel like you could have put a little more effort into it, Clara.
- It's a G&T.
- Or find a new college.
- They do go to a G&T.
- They do go to a college.
- I'm trying, I'm trying, what do they do?
They drink in the show, do they ever even drink in the show?
In the book?
- I feel like someone orders a G&T at some point in the book.
- Let's go with that, that's what I'm talking about.
- I think it happens off book, you know?
Like we don't read it, but we don't.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that works, that works, that works, that's fine.
So, for yourselves, the G&T, that's usually equal parts,
gin equal parts, tonic, and a little spritz of lime,
as much as you like, serve over ice,
with a little sprig of,
gin of per berry, if you want.
- Wow, and if you're allergic, like I am, to gin and tonics.
- What could that mean?
- What ingredient are you allergic to?
- Y9 tonic.
- Is it a Kynon?
- It's a Kynon in the tonic.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was exasperated at Claire, I'm not.
- I'm a subredator.
- I'm a high doctor.
- She's a high doctor.
(laughing)
- It sounded like maybe you just had like,
had a bad night with gin or something.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I'm allergic to gin in that way.
(laughing)
- John, when you said it was gin and tonic,
I was so excited to be like, what a coincidence.
That's what I am.
And then the rug was pulled out from under me.
- I just wanted to give you an opportunity to shine
and I threw you the baton, Clara,
and I watched it.
- You threw the baton at me.
- At least you did.
- You don't throw a baton.
You pass a baton just in the end.
(laughing)
- You unsuspectingly threw it.
(laughing)
- Strike you in the head.
- Javit and Felt.
- And you ran off.
- So last time I, let's have an opportunity.
- Ridiculous.
- All right, well.
- Ridiculous.
- You ready for everyone.
- Thank you for John and John's jokes.
We're gonna take a quick commercial break.
- Da-da-da. - Da-da-da.
- A little bit about the book.
- Hawthorne and then we'll dive in, right in.
- BRB.
(upbeat music)
- And we're back.
- All right, we're talking Wrong Place Wrong Time
by Jillian McAllister.
I feel like we've gone over a lot of the information
from this book, even just from Michelle Booshay,
who recommended it.
She kind of told you everything you need to know.
But, you know, it was a hard cover fiction,
"New York Times Vest Seller," Reese,
where there's been book club, book with the spot gloss.
- Club kick.
- With the spot gloss.
- Yeah, she got her first one.
- A little bit on there, which is always really annoying
for a cover designer when they're like,
can you put this horrifying burst in the middle
of this thing that you designed?
Thanks.
- Where?
- Oh, the Reese's thing?
- Yeah.
- Mm-hmm.
- But you gotta put it, you know.
I don't, I don't read it if it's not.
- There's like a, it's awful.
I won't get it.
- What about like a Barnes and Noble by one,
get one 50% off sticker?
Do you find that any hands is a cost?
- We have to do those too.
And you wanna know what sucks is that they are so fucking stupid
that we have to make a fake version for every book we do
that's going to have like special Barnes and Noble.
They're called prop additions,
which are like proprietary additions.
I don't know why it's called that.
I'm not, that smart.
But anyway, we have to do--
- You know a special, different files with these stickers on them.
But they're not the actual sticker.
It's just like the placement of where we want the sticker to go.
And then we have to send these files to Barnes and Noble
or Target or whatever so that they don't fucking put a sticker
like in the middle of like the title
of the author's name or something.
- That's so interesting.
- It really is.
- Yeah, that is cool.
- Such a waste of time.
- But you also know it's one of those rules
that's in place because people like someone broke it.
They needed to be like,
you guys, we just have to tell them what to put the sticker.
- Yeah, two stickers.
- Do you get the tip of right?
- People are in it.
- Or the sticker like sticker here.
- Yeah, like sticker here.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Well, we do have to put in the file.
We send them the file and like the layer is like sticker layer.
Like do not leave on when printing.
Like,
- Oh, I'm sure they messed that.
- Yeah, but they do not put in mouth.
(laughs)
- Ooh, we'll see.
- Jillian McCanister, she's British obviously.
She was raised not far from Birmingham.
Born 1985, she is a lawyer,
solicitor in British speak.
- So cute.
- She finished her first unpublished novel
while suffering from glandular fever for two years.
She grew old.
- She got a ton of rejections.
- Couldn't have been that bad, huh?
- Then she realized she needed to write a novel
with a better hook, yeah.
Are you saying you wish the glandular fever, right?
Killed her?
- Well, it just sounds like the,
she's asking for sympathy
and the disease couldn't have been that bad
if you wrote a book during it.
- Yeah, some bitch.
Anyway.
(laughs)
- I just don't know what it is.
- Is that a disease that people know of?
- We just don't know her. - We just don't know her fever.
- I don't know what it is.
- It does sound like an old fashioned British disease
from when they were like colonizing places.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah.
- It's syphilis.
- Like is that another version of tuberculosis or something?
- It's syphilis.
- Let's see that out.
(laughs)
- NHS, okay, all it's mono.
- It's mono.
- She had the kissing disease.
- It's mono.
- Okay, I feel less bad that she.
(laughs)
Two years of mono.
- Two years of mono.
- It's mono.
- It's a long time to follow.
- It's mono.
- But that was because she kept drinking over her antibiotics
and she kept in college.
- Who?
- I don't think I had mono that long.
- Also don't people just have mono for a long time
because they're like, I'm so tired and I don't know why.
And then they just go for like six months being tired.
- Yeah, that's what I thought in monos.
- Months, I've had it for months,
but it wasn't like two years seems like she got it.
- Well, I feel bad for her mono.
- All right, well it worked.
Mono, like a mono.
- Her debut novel published in 2017,
everything but the truth.
It was a Sunday Times Vest seller.
And so she's really seven novels.
Each of them has been a top 20,
I think Sunday Times Vest seller.
A lot of them on the New York Times list.
She likes mom thriller books
and she has a beautiful dog named Wendy
who added that, Johnna did.
It's cool that we were able to hit on it though.
- What kind of dog you found?
- Golden Retriever.
- Yeah, bit basic.
- They're not basic, Claire.
They have the gentlest match.
- Oh, she's a lot younger looking
than I was expecting.
- She's 38.
- She probably gets more talks.
No, I'm just kidding, I don't really know.
I mean, I want to.
Sounds like a good idea.
Anyway, thank you. - She does.
Thank you.
- Ron Place Wrong Time.
She said was inspired by Russian Doll.
So she was watching with the Netflix show,
"Russian Doll," which is obviously Groundhog Day Style,
but she thought that if she just did a Groundhog Day Style book,
it would get boring.
So she was like, I'll just move it backwards.
And that's where the idea for this book
was birthed.
All right, guys, let's talk this book.
Let's talk about the characters.
Anybody want to dive through the characters quickly?
Who feels like they have, who feels like maybe someone
who didn't listen at three times speed,
maybe someone who really thinks they understood everything
that happened when I go over the character?
- Sure.
I'll take the challenge.
If you're not drifting off
when you're listening to something at a normal speed,
I don't believe it.
- And imagine how hard it was if you drifted off
listening at the three times speed.
(laughing)
- I admittedly drifted off a lot during this book.
So I just can't wait to buy all the things that I missed
because I just couldn't focus.
But yeah, Clara, go ahead.
- Characters, main character, Jen,
the bad mother/lawyer.
She's our main character.
She's the one moving backwards in time.
She's the one who's stabbing.
- She loves to eat.
She has big appetite.
She'll talk about that a lot.
- It makes no sense.
- Most of you know what I'm talking more about?
- The appetite than the actual eating, I feel.
Next, we'll talk about Sun, Todd.
Okay, I feel like they describe him as nerdy.
He's into science.
It's surprising to her.
She's not into science.
She's into divorce law.
And her husband, next character,
Kelly is into doing building and remodeling,
laying tile and painting.
- Never flying on a plane for any reason.
And as a perfect ass.
And his last name is brotherhood,
something that Jen never questions.
That's unbelievable.
- Wait, they said it was a common nickname in England.
They say that in the book, I feel like.
- They said it's like a common nickname.
And he's like, when I take my fake name,
I know this is a spoiler, but turns out,
Kelly brotherhood is not a real name.
Imagine picking a fake name,
I'd be like, my new name is gonna be Kelly real name.
- Okay, guys.
I do think brotherhood might be an actual surname.
Okay.
- Still weird, but it's a real name.
- It's not a real, this is fictional,
so she could have picked a different surname.
- But it does seem goofy.
I don't think it's a guy.
- It's not, it's extremely rare, I think, but I think it is.
- Yeah.
And I think to the genesis.
- I think it's a surname.
- Yeah, and to Johnist point, Kelly chose a new name for himself
and he chose his brother's name,
and then put the last name brotherhood.
It's like, why are you leaving breadcrumb clues?
- I think it's a bit of a no.
- Right.
- So the interesting, maybe we should just get to that,
the interesting thing about Kelly is that he used to be,
am I jumping in too much?
- You wanna do the,
- But it's certainly the reveal of the ball.
- Yeah, do we wanna wait to save it for the twist?
- Okay.
- Like getting the twist, maybe just leave it there.
- But he has no family.
- Yeah, he has no family.
He doesn't, he only does no friends.
- No friends also.
- He doesn't try to make friends.
- He doesn't try to make friends, yeah.
- But it doesn't matter if he doesn't know about him.
- Yes.
- He did when they met ask her a lot of interesting questions
and in the big later, she first said that about him.
- What her involvement was in the operation of her dad,
what for?
- When she first did that, when I first met him,
it was so good, we talked all night,
he asked interesting questions.
I was like, why isn't she telling us what,
like what a shitty author,
not to tell us what those questions were.
And it's like, it's because it's gonna be part of the twist later.
Who is next?
- I don't think we know.
- Okay, no.
- She's got a dad.
- Okay.
- She's got a dad.
- She has a dad, runs the law firm.
He is, when we meet her, he has passed away
and she's like pretty emotionally sad about it,
talks about sort of missing the moment
and having to identify his body and so like that.
And it's touching.
- And then there's a sad.
- Todd's girlfriend.
Yeah, there's a first.
- I think we're even so clear.
- It's clear, thank you.
I was like, I wrote Chloe and I did this for a while
and I knew the whole time.
- I was like,
they also discuss and, okay, so this is like,
something I wanted to bring up between Jen and Todd.
She's like, often we'll describe her relationship
with her son is like wanting, you know,
we had that joke about her being the absentee parent.
But she also told a story about like him breaking up
with his first girlfriend and showing her the texts
and like having, and it's like, what?
- Fucking kid would ever do that with any mom.
It's like, I don't think you guys are just--
- I don't know.
It seems, yeah, that's a good point and also I was like,
is this an only child thing?
I feel like that's the one.
- He also is coming through like, she wants more connection
with her own children.
- She doesn't have kids.
Actually, this is kind of interesting.
So I'm gonna put it in and say this.
- Oh, then she--
- She was really interested.
- She was apparently, until she wrote this book,
she did not want kids.
She was like, like, did not, and she wrote this book,
in writing this book, she changed her mind
and decided she wanted to have a kid.
- No, she was one of those two little fellow
in love with her own care.
- Kind of, and then there was some whole thing
where she was, I guess she's pregnant now
and there was something where like she brought up naming
the per future son Todd and her husband was like, no.
- No.
(laughing)
- And then she went to Todd to be my baby.
She's definitely had her baby because--
- Oh, she's had her baby.
- When I was looking at pictures of Wendy.
- Oh, the baby was in her.
- Okay, okay.
- How much are we gonna have to hear about her Instagram?
(laughing)
- Gloubby and her are incredible dogs.
They have very soft mouths.
But can I say one thing?
- Whoa!
- I don't know, I didn't.
- Why would you describe it that way?
- They've soft mouths.
- But you are.
- Pick up eggs with their mouths.
- You sound like you're in your kids.
- Okay, but when you say--
- You sound like you're in your kids.
- You're a gentle mouse.
- You're kissing the mouse.
- You're pressing the mouse.
- You're a soft mouse.
- I was a warm soft mouse.
- No, every time I French kids are golden retriever,
I think of how soft the mouth is.
- I didn't say soft lips.
- And it's a soft mouth.
- You came close.
(laughing)
- I did it.
- Okay, people that know--
- Oh no.
- A soft mouth.
- I know.
- Can we turn the tables and come back to how Todd's
a little bit creepy though because there's also a moment
when at 18, the mom and dad are hugging.
And then he comes over and inserts himself in the middle of them
for this big three way group hug and I was just like,
no.
- No.
- No, no, no.
(laughing)
- Yeah.
- Not happening on a normal, every day,
like at 18 year old boy does it come up to his parents
like they're like, oh, they're looking out the window.
They look really happy.
I'm just gonna squeeze.
- If my son doesn't try to hug me when he turns 18,
I'm gonna think I was a bad mom and I turned him into a murderer.
That's what I'm gonna say.
- Wait, but her son didn't do that
and she did turn him into a murderer.
- You're doing great, Sarah.
- Oh my God.
You know what, honestly, I know we got some moms in this group.
This, the mom stuff really did affect me,
the like mom guilt stuff.
Anytime she talked about the mom guilt,
I was like, oh yeah, oh yeah,
I always think about how I'm fucking up.
It was a lot, but it did get me.
- It kind of pissed me off,
'cause it felt like, fuck off, like this not.
I don't know, I felt a little shoehorned into me.
The fact that she'd be like, he's a murderer
and immediately be like, did I breastfeed enough
or something?
- Yeah, I was just like, how many years were missing?
- Yeah, that was really.
- As a strictly formula only mom, I was like,
- You're always wondering, does it,
you're like looking at the formula,
you're like, which of these brands says it won't create a murderer?
Okay.
- Oh my God, how like what are you good girls?
- So, like the chances are lower.
- Yeah, good boy.
- That good boy.
- That's great.
- That is honestly when the doctor was like,
you're having a girl, I was like, oh thank God,
I don't have to worry about being a school shooter.
(laughing)
- Yeah, I do.
I guess I've never been like that.
- It'll be your fault too, if it happens.
- I am gonna, he's just gonna,
I'm gonna make my son popular in that way,
I don't have to worry about that kind of murder.
Maybe a different kind of murder,
but if he's popular, he has no reason to commit.
- You have to worry about like a drunk driving.
- Yeah, it's the drunk driving murder.
- Or like an OJ murder.
- Oh yeah.
- Or a affluenza, yeah, sort of.
- Yeah, yeah.
- God dammit.
- Well that's cool, a lot of cool stuff to think about.
- Yeah, that's yours ahead.
- But, yeah, I guess, I thought,
I liked up top, I guess I liked the concept of the book
where, or at least I thought, I thought I was like
own Ventiv or like, okay she's gonna figure out
the why I go back in time.
I do think I usually like what my sci-fi books
to have a little bit more explanation of the time travel
or.
- Yeah, it seems like at the very end,
the explanation was like, "Mom stuff."
- Yeah, it was his terrible, his terrible dream.
- I was like Harry Potter explanation.
- Yeah, I thought it was a mother's love.
- I thought it was a clever because we're like
experiencing it from her point of view
and she doesn't know why it's happening.
So it's a perfect excuse for the author
to not have to really explain.
- Sure, but she still goes to see a physicist
and actually let's hand this over to Kelly
since she's our time travel expert.
Maybe you want to talk a little bit about this
like type of time loop or spiral or whatever.
- And you can't talk too long Kelly,
so just everything you know.
(laughs)
- Okay.
(laughs)
Yeah, I don't know anything,
but I will say I have some major issues with this, okay?
As a person who has no expertise
on time travel whatsoever,
I will say that to me,
this is very problematic as a time travel narrative
if you think about time travel,
the way that we understand it and especially later,
they even mention the idea of time existing
rather instead of on a linear path time exists on a plane
and all points of time are happening at once.
One really great example of this theory
is the movie Arrival.
I don't know if anyone has seen it,
but it's a great movie
and it also is a really good demonstration
of what it is for all of time to exist at once.
So that being said,
when Jen goes back in time one day
and has a conversation with Kelly and tells him,
our son is going to commit a murder tomorrow
and Kelly is like, what really, that's crazy?
And she's like, yeah,
and then she goes back the previous day
and she's like, oh, I have to tell him again
and she's like, our son is gonna commit a murder tomorrow,
prove it to you.
If that happened, then the first time she went back,
he would already know, okay.
It's making me raise my hand.
Zoom does this thing where like if you put your hands up,
it's like, yeah, oh my god, really?
(laughing)
Everyone's right.
- Yeah, look at everyone trying.
- It's not regular.
- I don't know if I just have a new order.
- No, everyone's not the other order.
- So for our listeners, we're all listening to this.
- We're all listening to this right now.
- Kelly, all right.
- All right, go ahead, emoji.
- Brief digression.
Anyway, so like, she would already,
he would already know this
when she had this conversation with him.
Same thing with Andy.
If she went to talk to Andy, he would be like,
oh yeah, you contacted me two months ago about this
because if all of this stuff,
it should have all already happened.
So to me, it's a huge problem
that she keeps going back and doing things
that are supposed to have a ripple effect
in this timeline that she is enacting,
but none of those things are reflected.
And even if it's only in this little timeline
that she herself has created
with her strength of her mother's love,
all of these things should already have happened.
The same thing actually happens.
We like, like fuck Harry Potter and fuck JK Rowling,
however, a similar thing happens in book three
of Harry Potter, where Harry is going to die
at the end of the book or whatever,
and then he sees a stag and a light
and he thinks that his father has come to save him somehow.
And then later when he uses the time-turner and goes back,
it's actually him saving himself.
But so like, we experience him having like,
the future happen at the present,
but we don't understand what actually happened until later.
But all of it is accounted for, all of it happens.
The way that it was going to happen.
- It is.
- Address the fact that she's,
no, I mean, I might be wrong, but what you're saying makes sense.
But don't they just sort of write off the fact
that nothing is butterfly-affecting by being like,
it won't stick until you get to the magic thing
that makes it stick.
Like, I think they have some bullshit like that.
- Yeah, but it's, they were--
- They were not arguing against, yeah.
- It's not explained well.
- Right, but to me it doesn't, they don't explain why.
Like, there's not a role in that.
- That certainly don't.
- Explains that to me because even if like,
it in the future when she goes back to the present,
like, nothing was butterfly-affected except for that one thing,
like in this closed loop that she has created,
it should be impacting, in my opinion, as an expert.
- Yeah, it would have made more sense.
- Every time she goes back, it should make a new parallel
in a multi-versa.
- Yeah, we'd love more, mom.
- But they don't address that at all.
- It seems like she, when she went back,
she should have been like careful to like act as she did
or tried to re-enact the day so as to not butterfly affect
or change everything.
But I also had the same thought, I mean, when we get,
like, I'm not gonna say what happens at the end,
but like, I was just like, oh, wouldn't,
we go back so far in the time and the thing she changed,
is like, okay, your life would not be like,
just exactly the same except for one different thing.
(laughing)
- That doesn't make any sense.
- Right, because she actually changes a major thing,
which is like the way that she and her,
well, we can talk about it.
- Yeah, you know what, I guess where,
I maybe we just should go with twist now,
'cause it's gonna be so hard to keep talking.
I feel like twist twist twist.
- We twist twist.
- There's a lot of, there's their twist,
they're red herrings.
How do you guys wanna do it?
You just wanna just like go through and order,
or you guys wanna shout out your faves or anybody,
- Did anybody predict, I'm, did anybody,
you wanna go in order?
- Right, fine, we'll go in order.
- No, no, no, I was just saying order.
(laughing)
It was a question.
- I just guessed it at the thought of it.
- I don't even know, 'cause again, I spaced out
during the good center of this book,
so I feel I'm a bad person to lead this,
but I can say, well, the first,
like red herring twist was that like,
she's describing the stabbing at the very beginning,
and it's supposed to make you think,
it's supposed to like make you think,
oh, son got stabbed, but then it's like,
oh no, Todd did the stabbing,
which she didn't get me on that one.
Okay, I knew it was Todd who did the stabbing.
- Was that supposed to be a twist,
or were you just like, listening, not?
- No, I mean, no, I think it was.
- No, I think it was, it was, yeah.
- It was such a damn trick, it was like,
the stranger reaches into his pocket,
a stabbing habit.
- Yeah, that was really bad,
so I'm in there, so I'm in there.
- They revealed it from A, it was pretty quick.
- Yes, it was pretty quick.
But I mean, it was almost giving you a taste of what's been done.
- Exactly, it was a stab.
- Be on your toes.
- Yeah, exactly.
- You know what, I'm still kind of pissed,
I didn't get to read a book about a mother dealing
with a son who killed someone,
like the book that they set up in the beginning,
which is like, oh my God, what can I do?
My son killed someone, and now let's have the mother's
perspective, let's have the book.
That's what I was told I was getting,
and now I have to have the stupid backwards thing
where I don't find out what happens
until the end of the fucking book.
- And I don't even feel like I really understood
what happened with why I was stabbing?
- I don't know why.
- Him doing the stabbing is like,
that doesn't check out for me.
Like, Todd as a character does not display the like.
- Aggression, the heroicism, or whatever,
heroism.
- I mean, I don't know.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And she also talks about like how Lanky and like,
we kiss him the whole time.
- Yes.
- Like if she's like, the little time bitch,
and all of a sudden he's like, I can kill.
- Yeah.
- I would have liked--
- If you do want to read a book about a son who kills someone,
and then the mom has to actually deal with it,
we need to talk about Kevin is--
- I was just kidding.
- Oh no, I've seen that before.
- John and I went up with a couple of things together.
- In good.
- I don't think I can watch anything with son's murdering
or murdering anything I can do.
- I would not recommend it for you specifically.
(laughing)
- It's just from what I know of you
and what I know of your son, I would--
(laughing)
- The fact that you have a son is an idea to play.
Maybe don't.
- He's a lovely boy.
I'm sure you board you, but you can be on your toes.
- Yeah.
- I'm trying my best.
- Make up.
- You know, I put him in pink shoes.
I'm trying my best with this boy.
- I don't think so.
- Oh, pink shoes, good, good.
- Yeah.
- That's the worst you can do.
- So let's try and set him up.
- Okay.
- Should we just yell out the twist?
- Yeah, yeah, let's yell out.
- Yeah, let's scream out the twist.
She's going back in time and then she finds what out?
- Okay, so there's chapters with a police officer named Ryan.
- Yes.
- Oh yeah, we get a little bit from his POV
and it's like, oh, that's great.
- He's like a rookie cop.
- And then you're like, oh, he's,
his brother's name is Kelly.
- Oh, so then we find out that Kelly,
that's the first twist.
- Oh, so then you think that the cop is his brother
and that Kelly is the older brother
that he's been referencing and he's like,
in hiding or something.
- Yeah, and you think Kelly is a bad guy.
- And the older brother is a drug addict, drug dealer,
mafia guy.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So it's like, okay, I get it.
I see what's going on.
Kelly is hiding his identity from his wife
because he's a bad guy.
I think the next twist is Todd.
She's following, the mom is following Todd
to find out like what in his life leads to murder.
And she overhears them on the phone
talking about all these mafia people and then he says,
okay, bye, see you at home.
And that means Todd is working with Kelly.
Uh, oh, spaghetti.
- Wow, the two men in our life have been lined up.
- He's got a hat.
- And then you find out, I don't know if this is the next thing
you find out, but then you find out that it turns out
Ryan and his chapters like blah, blah, blah,
with my brother, it was really bad.
And then they found him after he killed himself.
And that was why I decided to take on his name.
And it turns out that all of Ryan's chapters
have been happening in the past
because Ryan is actually the husband, Kelly.
- He needed a undercover.
- Ryan goes undercover into the mafia
as Kelly's brotherhood.
And then we find out that he, the mafia, he is still twisting.
- We're working with Jen's dad.
- That he is beloved dad.
- He is the bad guy.
- That's the closest one I got to getting
because when she talked about the dad dying,
I thought maybe the mafia had killed him
'cause he was involved or something like that.
I knew something was fishy with the dad early,
but that was the only one.
- I was in the dark,
just garlic bread.
- The only twist that I figured out
was the final twist that the missing baby is clear.
- That was the only one I didn't do.
- That one felt obvious.
- I did not figure that one out,
but I wasn't trying.
- Oh, that was okay.
- Yeah, it wasn't.
- It was a mess.
- No more.
- Am I different than didn't care.
- Yeah.
(all laughing)
- I did, but I also had the same thing
that I didn't really predict anything except for that
'cause once it got to like,
oh, once it was the dad was involved,
I was like, okay, what character have it we tied in
and not yet?
Oh, Cleo, oh, age, Marx, out, it's the baby, okay.
It's gonna be the baby.
It was.
- Right, and she kept being like,
there's one thing left that she's not figuring out.
What is it?
Something else is bothering her.
- For a little context.
- And there was so much obsession over the baby.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Go give the goddess the goddess.
- The undercover cop, Ryan into Kelly.
was investigating mafia people who were stealing cars
and what really chapped him was they stole a car
that had a baby in it.
- Poor five.
- And then the baby was missing.
Baby Eve, and then the baby was missing.
And so that was his big problem
and he does all this undercover stuff
and they never find the baby.
- Disturbing, I can't hear things like this.
- I can't hear stories like that.
- Well, I don't know, the premise of like,
the mother put the baby in the car.
The car is running, the mother runs inside
to get her phone and the car is stolen.
I don't know that I would leave a baby in running car.
- My question, I have is, and maybe it was answered
and I wasn't paying attention.
But like, so did the criminals just raise baby Eve
in this other timeline?
- Yes.
- And then she became Cleo.
- Yeah. - Her name was Cleo and she dates Todd
for some reason.
- So the bad guy, yeah.
- We don't ever look like that.
- 'Cause she had two dads.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- You know, my two criminal days.
- I remember Jen being like, seeing the picture
of Cleo's mom and being like, she looks nothing like her mom.
She must look like her dad instead.
And it's like, no, she doesn't look like any of these people
because she was stolen.
- She was stolen baby.
- Nice.
- Yeah. - So you didn't even like take her,
I just, like they didn't go stuff out.
- Move her that far.
They didn't steal her very far at all.
She was just in the same town.
- Seems like, you know, it was a different time.
It was early off, it was a different time.
- We gotta take a quick commercial break,
but we'll be back and we're gonna really scream
about what annoyed us the most, the RB.
(upbeat music)
- We are back.
Okay, so those were the twists.
I think we got all of them.
- I do think it's hard because when we talk about it,
like I do think, oh that does sound like
a kind of interesting story, but like,
I feel like the way it's told was such,
was so slow and like a lot of details that I need to know.
- It twisted to be less interesting.
So it was like twist, her husband's in the mafia.
Twist, he's a good guy undercover cop.
- Yeah. - A pun.
- That's less interesting.
- Twist her dad is bad.
- All like him.
- Bare.
- Him doing all of this because he went on one fucking date
with her and he was so wild.
- Oh, fuck.
- I am wild.
- So the reason he's still Kelly instead of like not being,
instead of breaking his undercover with her,
is like very convoluted, but it's basically like,
he wants the mafia people.
- Mopsy of people.
- Dad is in the mafia to a very small,
because he's providing tips to the mafia.
He can't reveal that he's undercover.
- I don't think the dad is anything to do with it, does he?
- I think he just didn't want to tell her.
- I know, I think he did it.
I think he did it because he was a piece of,
if he like revealed, if he didn't stay undercover,
he thought they would all come after him
because they'd realize he was undercover.
So he thought he would just go away.
- But he also quits the police.
- He quits the police and assumes the actual fake job of.
- Right, right.
So they remodeling houses.
So quitting the police, but keeping the
under cover identity for some reason.
- It is confusing.
- Why do you have not quit the police, I guess is.
- Because he couldn't, he couldn't stay undercover forever.
Like eventually he would have been pulled out.
- But he does though.
- He does, yeah, like a name.
- But without the police protection.
- But he's still walking around with that name.
- Seems safe for him.
- And his boss is like, I get it, man.
See you later, you're on your own,
which is not how that works.
- Yeah, it's also really funny that in one of the,
like time she goes back, she like goes to the police station
and is like, I know Ryan, I know his undercover thing is Kelly.
I have to report a crime.
It's like, okay, I think you ruined his life.
If you said you know, his undercover name is Kelly.
- And you think he's dead, man?
- All right, sure, let me go get him.
Not like, oh no, that, a real,
- That person doesn't exist.
- Also, they're like, you got us.
- He doesn't have move away.
- Yeah, like he stays there.
- This is where I tried everybody else from the,
like it's not like this, the logic wasn't the only person
in the enterprise.
- The logic wasn't that he was like trying to get away.
It was, I feel like he was trying to hide in plain sight
with the gang that he was like, I'll just,
- Well, they do move away for a while,
really, on your, like a remote town or whatever.
And then she's like, I need to go to my job.
We need to be closer,
but she does make a point at the beginning
of being like Todd won't, or Todd.
I keep thinking Todd is Kelly in this person.
- 'Cause it's an older name, it's not a name of you.
- Yeah, and because Kelly is my name,
so I'm like, that can't be a husband.
But, she says like, he won't let us live in,
directly in Liverpool because he doesn't like cities
or whatever.
So he is like, so lightly outside of where they were,
but because that was where he met her
and that's where her job is,
she like needs to be in the area, I guess.
- He sounds like it's difficult to live with.
- Yeah.
- Like, he won't do.
- Yeah, I would piss me.
- Yeah, I live in Liverpool, I can't get on a plane,
I can't make a friend.
- I can't make a friend.
- All night, silly, a weirdo husband.
- I can't pay a tax social.
- But they fucked, they fucked guys.
- And also she does take last name,
I just really thought.
- So goofy brotherhood, it's so goofy.
- Yeah, so she must have had such a brother ID.
- Also, when he gets re-involved with the criminal enterprise,
and maybe they cleared this up and I just missed it,
I forgot to disclose that there was an hour
and a half of the book that had to skip
because I was coming up on time.
- I forgot to disclose.
- Why then does he not go to the police
and say this person was just released from prison,
there are known criminal,
by the way, you know that I'm credible
because I was an employee here undercover
with this exact person, catch him instead of fading back
into being a part of the criminal enterprise
such that his teenage son has been murdered.
- I would like to know the answer that Sabrina
and on top of that, I still don't understand why Todd
did the murder, could somebody explain it?
- Right.
- So I can give context, I can give context
for the listener who didn't read the book,
which, no, no, judgment, of course.
So the main leader of the gang,
- It doesn't mean we don't know why.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The main leader of the gang gets out of prison,
like when this book initially takes place,
the start of it, the gang leader,
his got, or the mafia leader, whatever,
has gotten out of prison and wants to restart with Kelly
and that's who Todd murders.
And I guess he's dangerous
'cause he wants to restart with Kelly
and also he's looking for who betrayed him
so undercover cops betrayed him, he knows that much.
So what was your question, Sarah?
(laughing)
- Why did Todd do the stabby stab?
- Okay, because he was trying to protect his dad.
- But like was the guy about to murder his dad?
Like was he coming to murder his dad?
- I think Todd assumed.
- That seems like a pretty big assumption.
- And it makes me think Todd has some,
I think we need mental health.
- Yes, and I think we need to go back.
- To whether the murder had-
- The mom did to him to make him so mentally unstable
that he would make that job.
- Yeah.
- I think it was.
- That she wasn't enrolled in science.
- This is the worst parenting.
- Dad keeps the secret from mom.
He's like, okay, Todd, you know,
that's how the cats out of the bag.
Yes, I was, all this stuff made bad.
- Did he just tell Todd or did Todd discover something?
- I think Todd found out pretty good.
- He was like, "Son, you're 18 now."
(laughing)
- Well, Cleo, Cleo, no.
- Cleo doesn't know she's kidnapped.
- Well, Cleo.
- I assume.
- But her uncle and other guy were part of the,
her daddies.
- I'm worried.
- I get so much about this.
- They like-
- They like these were in the mafia.
- And so that's why I wonder if a closer read
would have perhaps done this book more job.
- Yeah, true like.
- No, I don't think so.
- No, no, no.
- Because she does seem to know something
because like when Jen goes to talk to her,
she acts super sketchy and weird.
And she also does like pickups and drop-offs
for her uncles, which is why they,
like she shows up at Todd's house to drop
or pick something up I guess, or something like,
like that's how her and Todd meet.
- Why did he fall for this drug deal either girl?
- On his weirdo and-
- Yeah, she's hot.
- But then like later-
- Most girls haven't given him a lot of attention.
- But why is this girl like Cleo?
- Cleo as a troubled kidnapped child.
- Made in-
- But she also-
- Okay.
- Yeah, yeah.
- She didn't see their flags in that situation.
But then later when she is not kidnapped
and we fixed it, she's still with Todd.
So like is that supposed to be-
- Okay, it's a statement about how-
- So that's how-
- They're just meant to be.
- They're meant to be.
- And just to clarify basically when mom goes back
to time and fixes everything,
the whole situation resets and Cleo,
the missing baby was never missing at all.
She's just always been safe in her family.
She's always been named Eve and she and Todd
are hot and heavy as her.
- They're still soulmates.
- Despite her completely different upbringing
because nurture doesn't matter.
Is that maybe what she's talking about?
- Yeah.
- She said-
- I don't think she meant to-
- I feel good about that.
- She liked that message right now.
- But that's what she meant.
- I mean maybe she meant to do Sarah.
- Yeah.
- Because also like, it turns out it wasn't her fault
that Todd killed someone.
So maybe she doesn't mean that nurture doesn't matter.
- But can we talk about how what an aloof dumb bitch
this lady is because it just feels like she missed so many things.
She's going back in time.
It's like she really had the blinders on with all-
- She's really busy.
She's a lawyer.
- She's a lawyer.
- Here's her always working.
They do not have time to-
- They don't have time to analyze their lives.
- And especially-
- The worth is-
- Oh yeah.
- Especially if you make a good joke,
she's not gonna ask another question about it.
It's like, yeah.
- That's good joke.
I'm okay.
- I thought this was the reason she's maybe a little bit of a bitch
and I'm sorry to say it, but okay.
So she goes back in time, right?
And she goes back to like the week before her dad dies
of this illness and finds out
that there is like a treatment for the illness.
There's like a scan you can do.
- Oh yeah.
- Or something like a medical procedure.
- Maybe my biggest thing with the book.
Go on, go on.
- And she goes, she's like,
ah, you know, maybe I should tell him to get the scan
and then extend his life.
And this is before she even knows
that he has any criminal background at all.
This is just like, he is the most beloved man in her life.
And she goes, maybe I should tell him to get the scan
and then she goes, ah, you can't save
everybody.
(laughing)
- She's just like, well, it's so weird
because she also, she does save him
when she goes back the first time to his death.
- Yeah, I control herself.
- John, I think it, she does know he's in the mafia at this point.
I think the first time when she goes back and saves him,
she doesn't know he's helping mafia,
he's not in the mafia, I'm just spoke.
He's just helping them a little bit, giving them tips.
But then the second time,
your help advice is not to save him.
She knows he's been giving them tips
about what cars to steal and it seems like she's using that.
- Almost as a reason to not tell him to get a health scan
that would save his life.
- She should die.
- And literally, the ice cold can't save everyone.
It's like, you didn't save fucking anyone.
- Yeah, there's not, you saw him, yeah.
- No one.
- Like 9/11 still happens.
(laughing)
- There's a lot of them.
- She only goes back and saves everyone.
- 2003.
- Maybe the big one.
- What happened?
- Yeah, it's real.
- But that's an example.
- At the end, my point proved in Sabrina.
- With the dad.
I feel like at the end, she asked if her dad is still alive
when everything's reset.
She's like, "Is my dad, oh yeah, I'm died."
And then, that's how she finds out what happened
because she let him die by not telling him about the scale.
- So he just died the same way?
- And then when she wakes up,
- I feel like how is she now?
- I don't know, like again.
- I think it's just a lie.
- Implies.
- I feel very about like, none of the butterfly effect stuff
will happen based on whatever day that she goes back to.
The only changes that will stick are the day she ultimately
goes back to before coming back to the present.
So I guess like maybe the first time she saved her dad
by calling the hospital or whatever
when he was having his aneurysm,
she was like, or whatever it was that he had.
She was like, not, she didn't, hadn't had that conversation yet
with Andy maybe.
Oh my god, it's making me lose my hand again.
(laughs)
- It's kinda hard to move.
- It comes up, okay.
What happens is like a little hand emoji pops up
and then it has like a ticking timer
and it's like, if you're not able to,
- Time is up.
- It will raise your hand.
- Frog play.
- But.
- But anyway, I think maybe she hadn't had
that conversation yet with Andy where he's like,
none of this will stick the first time
and so the second time she's like,
oh I already have that conversation
so I know that the butterfly effect won't work.
And if I try, if I tell him to get the scan,
but then I'm still going backwards,
he, that conversation will never have happened.
- But she could do it on the last day, right?
- She could have done it.
- She could have said she had an-
- By the way, in 2020-
- Get it, yeah, your stomach scanned.
- And by the way, and everybody in 2009,
just like buy house even if you're not ready,
just like, I would have liked that.
- No chance.
- Well, I think maybe,
maybe it's because in the timeline,
she ultimately ends up in.
She only knows about her travels through the past,
but she doesn't actually have an independent memory
and that version of her that lived through
from that day until 2022 present
doesn't know about any of the time travel.
It's just the time traveling version of her
that went back and knows about it
and the version that wakes up knows about it,
but the version that lived it
does not know about the time travel.
And so she could-
- Oh yeah, that makes me so tired.
- I know, I'm sorry.
- I'm sorry, I'm, I'm, I left, I left.
- It's so embarrassing.
- I am not here.
- It's so hard.
- She says at some point
where all these points red hairings.
And that's my question.
Why was she in any of those days?
Like why was time travel going back one day, two day,
five days a month?
Like why was she put in all those specific points
because like she did learn things at those points,
but there was absolutely no reason
that she had to learn them over the course of that many days.
Like she kind of just figured it out
from the point we get to at the end of the book
when she figures out.
- I think she needed some hints.
- I guess the universe thought she was maybe smarter
than she was, they're like,
you could figure out the whole thing here.
You could figure out the whole thing here.
- It didn't work.
- All right, 15th chance.
Here we go.
- This is really the last day for you to figure it out.
We're gonna say all of this, you're a baby, so.
(laughing)
- Well yeah, again, we don't have an explanation
for what actually happens and there are no rules.
It's just like her subconscious is doing all of this somehow
because she has an extremely strong subconscious,
which is like her, really?
Okay.
(laughing)
- Yeah, I thought they were like--
- It's very like, savings was in a play-apart.
Go ahead, sorry, Claire.
(laughing)
- I was gonna say, it's very annoying
that basically the butterfly effect was like,
only the things that you want to change.
(laughing)
- All of the things that will just make everything
perfect for you can change.
- Yeah, right.
- So sure.
- Ultimately you'll just have a different last name,
but the same husband.
- Yeah, no, he's a cop now, thank God.
- And he's happier.
- Yeah, but-- - That's a cop again, yeah.
- Absolutely.
It was like funny to me that that's like the end
when she's like, I was so relieved to find out
that he was a cop now.
And I'm like, is that really like a fun,
like a thing that you want to find out
about your husband in the future?
Like, I would prefer to have like a cool painting.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(laughing)
- I agree.
- As he was in the decorator.
- Sabrina, are you getting a glass of wine right now?
Oh, you're getting a brownie?
- So brownie?
- Brownie. - Wow.
- Oh, I love that.
- I love that.
- It's a little more than I want it,
but it's an awesome stuff.
- Okay, one thing this book does that really bothers me
is that we, the readers find out a lot of these twists
but then we have to wait a really long time
or hurt to figure out some of these answers.
So we're just like watching her go back in time
and we're like, uh-huh, it's your husband, yes.
And then she still has a long way to go
before she gets to that point.
And so that's why it's so slow.
- Yeah.
- Which begs the question, do we need Ryan's perspective?
(laughing)
- I don't know.
- Oh, no, those chapters.
- We're totally such a hard--
- They confused me if audio skimper.
- They so confused me.
- We'd be more interested to figure it out with her,
not like way before her.
- Yeah.
- I don't know, I liked it.
I liked having the information
and feeling better than her.
(laughing)
- It is good for making you feel superior for sure.
- But oh my God, seriously, the middle part of this book,
I just was like, you know, I really couldn't focus on it.
That's why--
- Yeah, there is a feeling of like, just fucking tell me.
(laughing)
- Tell me.
Just go back to Ryan's chapters, like I'm getting answer.
- Yeah.
It is such a promising premise,
but I think in general time travel books are just really hard.
- Yeah.
- She also, I read an article, an interview with her
from the Los Angeles Public Library,
and she mentions, like, she doesn't really watch or read
stuff about time travel, so she just kind of went into this fresh.
- Yeah.
- And it shows.
- Yeah.
- And she--
- And I wanna get pregnant, I love that.
- That's true.
- It is a funny journey.
- Yeah.
- It is so life-changing.
- Yeah, yeah.
- This is about how I could ruin a child and make him a murderer.
- Really maybe want to give it a go.
- What's a better now?
- I'm changed than what's happened to other authors,
where they've fallen in love with their main male character
than left their husband.
- Yeah, and they got divorced.
- Yeah, in search of a non-existent man.
- Yeah.
- At least she's been a little too old for a future child.
- To call her an ex-child.
- Yeah.
- Yes.
- Oh, yeah.
- Oh my God.
- The first red flag for me though, and I texted Kelly as soon as
I heard this sentence.
I was like, have you started this yet?
And she's like, no, I want to be fresh.
And I was like, okay, well, I just started.
Not that far in.
I'm interested in the premise,
but the author did just describe a smell as intangible.
(laughing)
- That's all smells automatically true.
- R.
And I was like, can you camp flag it?
- Touch smells.
- Talk to him.
- That intent was the whole world.
- The first red flag for me.
And I did write down exactly what the quote was just a second.
- Yeah, I love it.
- I love some quotes.
- Okay.
This was when she was towards the beginning
when she was trying to figure out what is Todd wrapped up in
that he's done a murder.
- My God, I hope we were done.
- I think.
- Yeah, I think we probably did.
Wait, where is it?
Oh, I might have just put it in my text with you.
So I'm gonna have to go to my text with Susan.
- While you're looking for that,
I just wanna say I think in the future,
we should add a first red flag segment.
- Yeah, I like that.
- Yeah, Susan and Kelly.
- That's fun.
- It's really fun to hear them about what you were like.
- The moment when the book became bad,
was when she said, okay, she said,
like what is it that made him do this, quote,
"teenage rage, knife crime, gangs, and Tifa?"
- Oh yeah!
- Which is it?
- Yeah!
- Oh yeah!
- And Tifa!
- Oh my God!
- For like, I got to cut out, I was like, whoa!
- That's so good.
- Yeah!
- Oh, that's funny.
- Okay, that's not the same thing I wrote down,
but the sentence, the director is almost exactly the same,
and it was in the same part.
Missing babies, police ID, what kind of dark world
has he been thrust into?
(laughing)
- Missing babies?
- You can tell.
- She also later, oh sorry,
she later mentions Trump and Q&A.
- Yeah!
- Like on the door of the safe house or whatever the fuck it is,
like someone spray painted, like just Q&A on the door.
- She's been pretty right.
- Like, I'm, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, it is.
- It is funny that there's like,
so much infusion of American politics and,
- For no reason.
- And too much about like Brexit, you know?
- I think it's, I think it's that we're just kind of uninformed
as Americans, generally.
- So, she versus us.
- So, fuck is this?
- She, like, they're not gonna understand
if I mentioned Boris Johnson.
- I just think that like, they think about worldly issues
where we don't think about it as much.
- Well, she doesn't care, but she doesn't know a lot about it.
- That's true.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- But talk about it.
- You also, I do wonder if they made edits
for the American version versus the UK version
because whenever a book does get published
in like a new format in a different country,
they'll change things like how they change,
again, bringing up Harry Potter.
I'm so sorry, fuck you, you're rolling.
How they mentioned, or how it was called the philosopher's stone
and then they changed it to the source of God
and for the American edition.
'Cause we're stupid.
- We're all stupid.
- American people.
- Yeah, I didn't know that.
- I've never heard of a philosopher in my life.
- I really would say change the word solicitor
to just say lawyer in this book.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, you'd think they would have changed that.
- Interesting.
- My dad is a philosophy professor,
but when I was really little,
he just told me he was a philosopher,
so I was going around being like,
"What does your dad do?
"He's a philosopher."
If you heard a little kid say that,
wouldn't you be like, fuck off?
(laughing)
- Well, you should have been telling people
he was a sorcerer because nobody--
- Yeah, childhoods, but man, that could have been real cool.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, you don't get fucked with your dad's sorcerer
if they're a philosopher, you get punched.
- Yeah, yeah, I'm going to fuck off.
(laughing)
- My dad always worked in treasure your money for,
and when I was younger, it was a chicken company
for a very long time,
and I told people he had the heads off the chickens
when I was little,
for some reason that's what I thought he did.
- That's a whole job.
He did not do that.
- Do you think you got to do it one time
if you work at the company?
- I think, I'm from you talking to my dad,
I feel like there's a tour,
and you're going to see it happen at least once.
I think you get to see it.
- But that sounds like a high-election.
(laughing)
- Yeah, it knows to be like, it's my least thing.
- See, it happens feels different than making it,
- Yeah, certainly, certainly.
- Anyway, this book, all right,
is anything else?
What do we got to a commercial break?
And then we can wrap it up with some good reads
and final thoughts and stuff like that?
- I love it. - We'll BRB.
- I've been enthusiastically supporting all of that.
- That's pretty great.
- I've been in retirees.
- Yeah, sometimes more in real than others.
I realized we also,
doing a do-in-a-do-in-pro-backed out-ice,
I went skin past that.
- I wrote that one in,
but I think we've hit on it a lot already.
The idea I wrote in was like, have a conversation between Kelly
and Jen about like him ever traveling anywhere,
but I feel like we've kind of--
- If anyone else has a good one, I would do it,
but otherwise I'm good to skip.
- Do I want to think of was her being like,
a little more direct with Todd
and like finding out what happened on day one?
(laughing)
- But, I don't know how interesting that would be.
- And dang the book very quickly.
- J.C.R.O, you mean like when he does it,
tell me what, why'd you do it?
- I think when she finds the badge
and missing baby poster confronting the,
the your son about it.
- Yeah, my being the,
- Right, she's like so afraid of like his stormy,
teenage emotions that she like won't have a conversation
with him.
- Which has the time travel.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- I'd rather time travel than have an honest conversation
with my son.
- And we've been back, we've been back.
- We've been back.
(laughing)
- I'd rather time travel than have an honest conversation
with my son is a really good title.
(laughing)
- So good.
- I don't know if it.
- We didn't touch on one of my favorite moments
of the book and I do the one.
- Okay, go ahead, Sabrina.
- So brave, okay.
- At some point in her dissent backwards,
she gets to a place where she's trying to figure stuff out.
She's at work, there's this new young person
she's supposed to be training at work
and she gets the brilliant idea to send this young woman
to go spy on her husband in the meeting that he's in.
Like, and the person has graduated from Oxford.
She's like ready to start her job as a lawyer
and she's like, yeah, that seems like a normal thing
that I would do in the course of my job is go spy on somebody
talking to another person and I guess it's under the guys
that it's like something for the divorce.
And so she goes and she listens and she comes
and she reports back and the report back is so funny,
to me because it's like, it doesn't seem like it was an affair.
It seems like it was a business deal
and the reason I think that it wasn't an affair
is because the man made a point to say
that he really loved his wife.
(laughing)
- It's so stupid.
- Hey, yeah.
Also, what is the term that the girl doesn't understand?
- He's inside.
- Yeah, she's like, she's so young,
she doesn't know that that means he's in prison.
(laughing)
- The girl is like, they kept saying he was inside,
which is weird because they were.
(laughing)
- I guess she went to Oxford.
- I think fire her.
- She fired her.
(laughing)
- Yeah, she stupid.
- Yeah, they were definitely treating her like they worked.
Suddenly it was like also we work at a private investigation
agency.
- Right.
- Like that is not what lawyers do.
- Yeah, but if it's your first day at any job
and someone tells you to do that,
if it's your first job in the world.
- I'll do one of those.
- I was like, okay, I would have done,
absolute, I was a paralegal for a while
if they had said that I would be like,
(laughing)
- Yes, that's normal.
- Yeah, cool job.
- You're saying how much $30,000 is here?
- Yes, that's right.
(laughing)
- That's exactly how much I made
when I was a legal assistant.
- Yeah, that's a lot of work.
- I also was a legal assistant.
You guys.
(upbeat music)
- All right guys, let's do,
let's do a quick good reads, five star reviews
and then break into our hate rates.
- These scrolls, scrolls, scrolls.
- Okay, Heather said like, I'm obsessed, five stars.
- Okay, Heather, not much.
- Someone that's--
- That's just,
- The author has been about,
- He just smells.
- Oh, to read first.
- That sounds like somebody who went back
and looked for details within the book.
- Yeah, she had a book.
- She had a book.
- I don't do that.
- Charest said, whoa, what a fun ride.
Although I do have a bit of whip
last from all the twists and turns.
All the stars for this clever
mine better of a novel.
Addictive read, five stars obviously.
Okay.
- I'd love if she had given it four.
- I bet all of us are.
- All right, and then Natalie, finally, she says,
outstanding and my mind has been blown into smithereens.
I just wanna go back and read it all again,
which I will do when my sign copy arrives.
I can't even explain my thoughts clearly.
I'm in awe.
You actually just made me cry with its ingenuity.
Baster pieces, a deserved title,
and you deserve all the awards to go with it.
Now, a week later, I am still lost for words.
I have been telling everyone about it
even total strangers.
(laughing)
- I'm so excited about it.
- I have a question.
- I'm sorry, I'm lost for words,
but I have not checked the fuck up about it.
(laughing)
Also, it's a much longer review,
and I just, we're not gonna go with it.
- Also, I'm lost for words,
but that one stopped me.
(laughing)
- She clearly has everyone's sign version.
Why is she gonna mess up her signed version
when it arrives to reread it?
- Yeah, it's such a good point.
- Just keep reading your old same version
and keep that sign version nice.
- Spinachia replied to her.
- I will.
- It's Natalie.
- Yeah, let her know.
That's good advice.
- To the author.
- It did, she did say you deserve it.
- You know what, but sometimes you do find a lot of authors
that are on good reads that do seem to read stuff,
so might not be.
- Yeah.
- Might don't know if she is--
- I would not do that if I was an author.
That seems like a bad place to go.
I've just never seen that review.
- To be like you, yeah.
- Dear Gillian.
- I know who this is for.
- Yeah, yeah.
- How are you?
- I am fine.
- Thanks for asking.
- All right, okay, you guys,
let's do our hate rates, Kelly Susan.
These are out of five stars in the mean book club worlds.
That means like it could be a bad book,
but you can still give it five stars
'cause you really enjoyed it in the end.
Who wants to go first?
- I.
- Yeah. - Oh my God, Susan's so bold.
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- Okay, in the mean book club world,
I think it's like a solid four
'cause there's so much to talk about.
It requires the use of a time travel expert.
- Kelly, thank God.
- There's so many questions to be answered,
more red herrings than I've seen in a while,
and that earns it a four.
In real life, I gave it a two on good read.
- Okay.
All right, good.
Oh wow, official.
- Dear Gillian.
(laughs)
- Oh, I wanna see that review.
I'll go next.
I actually gave it a three in real life,
which I'm questioning a little bit now
that we've talked about it,
but honestly, I was expecting it to be so bad.
And it wasn't actually that bad.
Like for one thing, other than certain parts
like the intangible smell situation,
like the writing wasn't that bad.
And having recently read Colleen Hoover,
where the writing is so distractingly bad,
I was kinder to this.
Also, I do think that listening to it in a British accent
for me makes something better, just in general.
So I think in the mean book club rating,
I would give it like a four point five, honestly.
- Oh wow.
- I enjoyed it.
I was entertained.
And I'm so sorry.
(laughs)
- I'm gonna talk to Michelle, I recommend her,
and say, I really wanna give it a four, Michelle.
I'm like, I'm so close.
But the fact that I just kept falling asleep.
(laughs)
Really, it says something to me about the quality of the book.
And I don't think it's the same thing about me.
So I have to nudge it down to a three,
just for that reason.
But I totally agree with everything Kelly said
for the most part, which is,
it's not a terrible book, it's pretty well written.
You know, it's like a good idea.
It doesn't stand out among bad books we've read.
- Jenna, the sleep.
- I have a question about the sleep.
Are you a person who has trouble falling asleep
and would you wanna give points to a sleep aid?
Or is that an oxygen point?
- It's not usually an issue lately.
I have not been sleeping well,
but I think I generally don't need a sleep aid.
Any book I do.
- Gotcha.
(laughs)
- I can go since I've already been talking.
And I'll just scream over it and keep pushing through.
- But in time.
(laughs)
I'm gonna go three out of five,
which is pretty high for me, I'll admit.
But here's the situation.
Because they drag out what's happening
and there were so many twists and turns,
I found myself being like, "I want to know what happened.
I want to get back to the book because I want to know
what's fucking happened."
- Interesting.
- "Resucks."
I mean, I don't like that about myself
and I don't like that about the book.
Maybe that means I should lower it.
No, I'm gonna stick with it.
- All right.
(laughs)
So, three out of five, obviously,
there's just a couple of points for being stupid.
(laughs)
- In the time travel stuff, really.
- Yeah, real dumb.
And the mom stuff, I found pretty dumb and aggressive.
It felt like a little bit,
it went to like a postpartum questionnaire.
(laughs)
- Ah!
(laughs)
- Oh my God.
- Wow.
- So would you like to go and then say everyone's gone,
even though I haven't gone.
(laughs)
- Okay.
All right, so I,
- So would you like to say something?
- I would like to.
I would like to give it a two-
- My connection timed out so I don't know what happened.
- I'm doing all this mean to you, Sabrina.
(laughs)
- I'm sorry you were just so woken up.
- Okay, I'm up.
- I would say,
I feel like I'm gonna give an audio book version,
eight,
like three,
because I really had trouble like focusing on it
with the time travel and the,
like what's going on and repeating things.
And so like the big chunk of the book in the middle
was like very hard for me to follow.
That being said, I am pretty convinced
that had I read this in book form,
I would have liked it a lot better.
And so I think I give that book form of 4.5.
So what does that make?
What did I say?
Three.
(laughs)
Three, so.
- Yeah, I don't know how to do that.
- Three and then a four.
- So like a 3.75 round up to a four, I guess.
So I guess I give it a four on average.
I actually like the mom, I think in general,
the mom stuff really struck me,
even though I know it was maybe over the top,
it still, that was like the only thing that made me go.
And also I have a son and I'm so afraid
he'll turn into a murderer.
So like everything about this book felt very personal to me,
even though I have not time traveled
and my son has yet to murder.
(laughs)
- And Sarah, don't forget, he has Mike's jeans too.
So I think he has a really good chance of being normal
this night. - Oh, that's nice.
- I agree to say.
- You're welcome.
- Yeah, so four.
Go ahead, nobody, we're done.
Sabrina.
- Go ahead, Sabrina.
(laughs)
- I think I'm gonna give it a 3.8.
It's a little higher than a 3.5 for me, not quite a four.
- I'm so pissed.
- I think, just with the,
yeah, I get my own piss.
- This is my piss.
- Yeah, everyone knows what.
(laughs)
But this is, it's not one of my top favorite books
that we've read for any reason, like not so bad, not so good,
but I would definitely recommend it to somebody
if they were like, oh, I'm looking for like a fun read.
Should I read this and I would say yes to that question.
- Okay, that's a good point.
- It's not one of those where if you recommended, yeah.
- It is, the premise is, I thought it started strong
with a murder.
Sometimes books are so weird or freaky
that you can't recommend them.
Like the time I accidentally gave,
almost gave my mother-in-law a copy of Room,
the story of like,
woman that like raises a baby into a room
and needs all the stuff.
- A lot of mess up on it.
- You're not gonna arrest.
- Yeah, like, yeah, it's,
that's a book you don't wanna really recommend to people.
It's like, you know what I loved?
(laughs)
Room.
- I can't stop thinking about it.
This one is like, fine to say you loved it.
There's nothing that makes you sort of like a free yeah.
- And I didn't love Room.
- Okay, sure, I know what it was when I tried to
- I did love Room.
- And I have a couple of minutes.
- Yeah, we did a whole episode
about how much we loved Room.
- Oh, it's a book.
- Yeah.
- All right.
And it can be--
- So definitely go listen, catch that,
where the yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, books, squad, goals, check out the room.
It's a two-parter or just one, just one-parter.
- It will be a follow-up.
- We called it the Mel-Titty Spoon episode
because the child refers to a certain spoon
as a Mel-Titty Spoon.
(laughs)
- He had a weird version of me.
- Yeah.
- That's all I remembered.
It was a really freaky word for like when he wanted
to drink milk.
- Okay, I can, this all affects me differently now
that I'm thinking about it.
- Okay.
- Since I have a son who is a murderer,
but also he calls, he calls a nursing beastia
(laughs)
and I allow me to continue because I was like,
well, I guess if you're gonna say something,
I'd rather people not know what you're asking me for.
(laughs)
So that I could be just, but it's such a fine word.
- I think it's from like,
- I don't know, did you make a joke?
- I have some no idea where it came from.
- But it's like a...
- It's better than the word of the boy.
(laughs)
- It almost sounds like the scientist
of terrible things or something.
(laughs)
- Yeah, I got you.
- I got you.
- All right guys, should we do
little fucker of the cast?
This is everyone's favorite part of the cast.
Everyone always looks forward to it and enjoys it.
Both listeners and people taking part alike.
- I always come to this part of the cast being like,
oh shit.
- If I don't have...
- I've been ready for all.
- Oh great, great.
- Oh okay, that all exists.
- Oh wow.
- Sometimes the guests have some
- timidity with the player here.
- Please don't say Claire's child.
- Well it's easier because I do no Susan,
and that is why she is the little fucker of the cast.
And let me tell you why, because she said,
"Kanely, you're a time travel expert
"and set me up for failure."
- Okay, you did pretty good.
I thought you talked about it very well.
- I thought you mostly--
- I think I actually was playing at that.
(laughs)
- Oh, she's--
- Oh, it's Susan.
- She picked Susan.
Susan.
- Thank you.
Sorry, my connection's really bad.
We know.
- Oh, we could do.
(laughs)
- Cutting, John.
- I guess, yeah, that makes it easy.
I was gonna pick Sarah, 'cause I said that mean thing,
and then I thought maybe she'd pick me,
and then I was gonna pick Claire up.
- Wait, what was the mean thing you said?
- Oh, I said that Karen still had some of Mike's jeans,
so he might try that, okay.
- That's him.
- She didn't register that as me.
- I took it.
- Oh okay, yeah, that was nice.
And then Claire made such a big stake about being calender,
even though it was like obviously gonna be the best part.
It was clearly set up to you.
- I wasn't obvious.
But I'm gonna pick Sabrina,
'cause I think she's not here,
and she won't even know that I picked her.
- I'm here, I'm picking here.
- I'm just appearing.
- Her string was dark, and she came on bright.
- And we've forgotten her a few times tonight, so.
- I turned off my video to make the connection stronger.
Oh, so you heard it extra clear.
- Yeah.
- All right, well we have one for Susan,
one for Sabrina.
- Mine's John.
- I'll tell you right now.
- Well, John, you set me up,
- I'm petting the drink section.
You were like,
- Karen, it's six years old.
- It's genetic, so fun.
Go.
- Explain how I fist the book.
- If you would told me five minutes or like five seconds earlier,
any heads up at all, it could have made it fun,
but instead I was trying to stand still on a rug
that was being yanked out from under me.
- Claire, I also made a huge fan of your response.
- That's true, that's true.
- Claire in the future, a little lesson for you.
Success is opportunity meeting preparedness.
- And this bullshit?
- Vote for you even harder.
- Next time success comes out looking,
next time opportunity comes again,
I hope you cannot.
- Oh yeah, hey, this is just like being the little fucker
'cause I'm calling it right now,
other people are fucking you now.
I don't know.
- I don't know why I tossed it to Sabrina.
I'm gonna toss it to Sabrina real quick.
(laughing)
- Here's the thing, Claire.
- Oh, what the fuck, man, she voted for you.
- I know.
- But you did the interruption thing.
- You did it twice?
- You did it twice.
- I was ready to do it.
- It's a cool thing.
- I was expecting it.
- For getting, for forgetting.
- Which is worse, you would think.
- But.
- My ex-adana.
Your internet-
- You're cutting me off now.
- It takes you four years to come in.
- You're cutting me off right now.
You continue this behavior.
It's you, Claire.
- I vote for you.
- It feels normal because of your internet connection,
I think.
There are huge pauses in which I am talking.
- Wow.
This is the vote is kept.
- Okay, wow.
So just to recap so far, we have one vote for Susan.
One vote for John and one vote for Claire.
One vote for Sabrina.
I feel like, Kelly, I don't know if you're with me,
but perhaps we have a pattern or something.
- Well, Susan has to cast her about she did not vote for herself.
- Oh wait, did Karen Susan?
- Oh, you're right, Kelly voted for Susan.
Yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right, sorry.
Susan and I have yet to vote so we have a power.
- You have the power?
- Well, if I vote for you and you vote for Kelly
and then everyone has that.
- I could, yeah, I could.
- It could be you.
- Or you could vote for someone who's already been voted for.
- I'm gonna vote for Kelly, which I wasn't gonna do.
Like I was gonna be, I was gonna be brave
and like go, gonna be original members.
- Wow, yeah.
- Which one might you have gone for and why was Sabrina?
- Actually, I thought it would be Johnna.
- I know, that just makes sense.
- I'm an excellent host.
- Sabrina, did you want to vote for Johnna?
'Cause you could change it.
- No, nobody could change it.
- And you're interrupting Susan now.
- You're right.
- You're doing it to everybody.
- Ooh, I could change my mind right now.
No, I think I did Kelly a favor.
- You did.
- And she turned around and like,
- Well, it sounds like a very similar thing
that Johnna was saying to Clara.
So I think Clara and I had a similar violent
- And acted upon us.
- You guys are matching, Johnna.
- Kelly and Susan, you guys are kind of matching right now.
- I know, I love it.
Actually, we have a beautiful color story
of yellow, red and gray.
We all did really good.
We're all in different corners.
- Sabrina's wearing orange.
- Oh, yeah.
- Who's wearing orange?
Sabrina?
- I was like a blue.
- Blue, right?
- Oh, you're wearing red.
Oh, it looks orange and mine's gray.
- Red, red, yellow, yellow, blue, gray, gray, gray.
- Okay.
- So for the listener at home,
we're talking about the colors of our shirts
that we can see on Zoom.
(laughing)
- And that you can't see.
- I'll close the picture.
All right, so I guess...
- Well, Pesta on Instagram, so great.
- This.
- Yeah, anyway, about Pakelli
'cause I did her a nice thing
and she turned around through me and I was like,
"Oh, wow, this is like amazing.
"I feel like I've never, I don't know,
"have I had this much power before in my life?"
I don't know.
- Does Sarah have any votes?
- No.
- So it's either I vote for myself
or I make a little fucker at the cast.
- Be crazy.
- Yeah.
- She crazed it right there.
- Right now.
- Janna's easy, easy go to.
(laughing)
But that's what I'm saying.
It's too easy.
- Too easy.
- She can't get off 'cause it's too easy to...
- I'm low-hanging fruit.
- Has a guest ever won little fucker of the cast before?
- That's a question.
- I don't think so.
- Is this what you're gonna...
(laughing)
- Yes, it's voted for.
But never, never, never,
- You know what?
- Never taken home a win.
- Only secretly...
- You could make her...
- Have I forever harbored here?
- Okay, I got, I got a vote.
- I got a vote.
I think that helped me.
- Oh, no, no, no.
- Thank you so much.
- Oh, no, no.
- So somebody came in here real hot.
You know, came in real hot, thought like,
oh, I'm gonna cast with four comedians.
Let me, let me be funnier and let me say
that the book should be called,
I'd rather time travel than have an honest conversation
I saw it.
And let me just show them up.
So yeah, little fucker of the cast is Kelly.
- Kelly, I like that.
- Kelly, I like that pick.
- A historic win.
- Yeah.
- And let's record show for being the funniest bitch.
She got a little fucker.
Funniest bitch.
(laughing)
- I guess you've been bitch a lot this episode, I don't know.
- No, it's really, I like it.
- It's fine.
- You're reclaiming it, Sarah.
It's okay.
- Okay, so I'm comfortable with that.
- So let's do some plugs.
You guys, Kelly, Susan, tell us,
let's talk a little bit more about your pod,
in your blog and what are your next apps?
Again, wait, actually don't because this probably won't come out
for little bits, don't tell us about your.
But in general, like, basically, what's coming up?
- We'll come to the end of the year.
(laughing)
- Well, on our website, which is booksquadgoals.com,
we do have a list of our upcoming books
and you can see when the episode is coming out.
So, but yeah, we do, we have two episodes a month.
We're not smart like you guys,
and we didn't opt to do seasons,
so we're trapped in a contract with the rest of our lives
to just consistently be releasing episodes every two weeks.
But we do, it's kind of like a book club,
where we do, we each pick, there's four of us,
we each pick a book, and we like rotate.
- And you guys?
- And then on the off episodes.
- That's our, right? - I was saying,
it seems like all like different genres, so sometimes
that can piss people off.
- Yeah, we have pretty varied tastes.
We have a person who's more into, like, sci-fi
and we'll pick that kind of stuff or fantasy,
and then I feel like I tend to pick some literary things.
- Boring, which, yeah.
- It's, she's not wrong, listen.
- Sorry, I care about your reason.
(laughing)
- The most recent episode that we did ended up accidentally
being a hate episode because I picked a book
that I thought looked good and--
- By the cover, right? - It turned out it was a little bit,
yeah, I'm, yes.
And that's the problem with me is that I will,
I will judge a book by its cover.
And that's what they don't tell you is that, like,
they always say don't judge a book by its cover,
like the cover might be bad, but the inside is good.
More frequently, the cover will be good,
and the inside will be bad.
- Wow.
- Oh, I thought that that's what the expression referred to
until just now.
- What?
- No, I think it's like, don't judge a book by its cover.
You never know how wonderful the book would be.
- I was not a cover.
- Covers look fucking good, folks are right.
(laughing)
- I've said so much about you, Claire.
- Claire, you think about it as like,
in other contexts though, it's never like,
so when you say it about people,
it's never like you see a hot person,
and they're like, you would agree,
they might not be good.
(laughing)
That person might fucking suck, and you can't tell.
(laughing)
But the other episodes we do are usually based on,
like, we'll talk about a TV show or a movie or something
that's like an adaptation of a book.
So we try to keep it book related.
- Great.
- Yeah.
- Susan, do you have anything to add?
I just did the whole thing, sorry.
- No, I was actually hoping you would,
like you're kind of better at,
she's the one at the end of our episodes that always says,
like, here's that social media, here's our website,
so I knew she would be able to talk better than that.
- Oh great.
- Then I could.
- And it's why you thought,
if you're gonna talk about time travel.
- Yeah.
- If you're gonna listen to an episode,
Donna and Sarah were on an episode recently,
where we talked about it ends with us by calling her a classic.
- Yeah, instant classic.
- A horrible book.
A horrible, horrible book.
(laughing)
And yeah, that was the other reason that I rated this higher,
was because like, that was like the prep,
like I read that and I was like,
this is the worst thing I've ever read and then this is the--
- It did, it did, I didn't expect it to be worse than it was.
We, wait, what, three?
- I'm so sorry.
Can I just say one last thing about this book?
- Yes.
- The title doesn't really make sense.
- No.
- It does, that's why I brought it up early.
I don't think it makes sense.
- It does make sense.
- It doesn't make sense.
- It's a good title for a different book.
- All her books are like that though,
they're like one weird lawyerism,
that it just seems like that's just what, they're just,
I don't know if she titles something,
'cause they're so generic like that.
- Are all the characters in her books lawyer?
- A lot of it's court related, I think, or adjacent.
There's one about like a--
- I was actually kind of shocked to learn she was a lawyer.
- Yeah.
- Yeah!
I thought that was cool, right?
What you know?
- They always do.
- Right, but it almost sounds like someone--
- Like me, I love it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- It wasn't that specific. - Yeah.
- Well, she wasn't in divorce law.
Y'all, we are a meme book club.
You can find us on all the socials, meme book club,
email us, memebookub@gmail.com.
Please check out Patreon, become a patron.
You're gonna get bonus episodes.
You're gonna get photos of dogs.
You're gonna get handmade items from Johnna.
So, you know, Johnpon in.
- Handmade.
(laughs)
- You're so print-made.
- What kind of items?
- Bookmarks.
It's one item, it's about her.
- Okay, but there's people have been clamoring for more.
So.
- But I kiss every single one.
- Do you guys, what's our book next?
- With my soft gold retriever, though.
- Oh!
- That's why I was gonna vote for you.
What is our book next episode?
- No.
- Next episode, we are reading one day in December
by Josie Last Me.
- Josie Silver.
Has anyone, I guess no one started it?
Oh, you have.
- I have.
- Okay.
- It was one of the ones that came in from the library
as opposed to this one that I had to buy.
- Okay, okay, okay, okay.
- This morning.
- Thank God, so it's not a popular one.
- Well, we're doing it anyway.
Thank you guys so much for listening.
Again, thanks.
Kelly Susan from Being on the Cast.
It was super fun.
Congratulations on Little Fucker.
- The cast.
- Thank you so much.
- Can you hear my child screaming
from outside the room?
- No.
- Not gonna be a murder room, so.
All right, bye guys.
Bye.
- Bye.
- Bye. - Bye.
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