The Teacher by Frieda McFadden

Join us as we discuss our August Book Club Selection: 

The Teacher by Freida McFadden

 Trigger Warning: Due to the nature of this book, there's a lot of triggering content involving pedophilia and grooming behaviors, and we will be discussing all of it. 

Synopsis: Lesson #1: Trust no one. Eve has a good life. She wakes up each day, kisses her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye. Addie can’t be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that’s what everyone says. But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet…

Transcript

SPEAKER_05: 0:00

Why do I read? I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. For me, it's books, books, books. But mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone. I guess people like to read about the things that they want most and experience. These books feed me. Once upon a time. I read it in a book once.

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

Is this a kissing book? I don't care. I'm not ashamed of my book. It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas, thinking.

SPEAKER_03: 0:26

I thought weeks ago forbidden like reading.

unknown: 0:29

Books!

SPEAKER_02: 0:30

You have never interested me. I have many leather-bound books. My partner smells of rich mahogany. Now, when you read, don't just consider what the author thinks.

SPEAKER_05: 0:40

Consider what you think. Love that book. I hated that book. How can you read this? There's no pictures. Don't read this book. Those books are good. This might be the best book I've ever read. We're gonna go read. Go ahead, read, read. Why do I read? I read because this world is not a bad dream.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07

Hello, good morning.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10

Guten Tag.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11

Guten Tag. Uh we usually record at night, but today it's a little different.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15

I know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15

Because this summer has been different. We're switching our wine for coffee.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22

Yes, I have water.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24

Mine's all gone.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26

Mine's just ice cold.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

I should have brought water. I left it in the other room. Oh well. Um, how are you?

SPEAKER_03: 1:36

We've been troubleshooting for about two hours. So let's just not pretend. Like one. Yeah. Oh yeah, more like one. It feels like two though. Because I hate it. I hate troubleshooting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48

One day we're gonna hop right on and everything will be exactly the way it needs to be.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53

Particular podcast has taken a really long time to get together because we have Lee rescheduled so many times.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01

This summer has been crazy. I don't know why we thought to launch a podcast when all the free time that we normally have disappeared when the kids are home from school.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12

I don't know why I thought for the summer I would have more free time. Right, right? There was like a part of me that thought, oh wow, you know, this is gonna be great. It's just gonna be so easy to do everything in the summer. No, it's not nope.

SPEAKER_01: 2:29

We we learned a lot of things about a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02: 2:33

Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:35

Let's get into it. Hey, bookmates. Hello, welcome. Here we go. As you know, we've been reading The Teacher by Frida McFadden. Um, and for anybody who's not familiar with the book um or is just kind of tuning into us for the first time, it is a thriller. Lita picked this one. Lita, do you wanna sum it up?

SPEAKER_03: 3:02

I'll sum it up. I'll kind of tell you a little bit about why I select No, I didn't plan the fact that this is coming out in August. I know everybody's going back to school. Um that is I know because we had a list of all these books that we were trying to schedule kind of a lineup for ourselves, and I just threw this one in there and it just happened to fall in August. But I didn't know anything about this book when I selected it. Uh I knew it was a thriller, I knew it was about a teacher, um, and I knew that I wanted to try some Freedom McFadden because I had never read her before. So I selected this one. Um, it's one of her newer books, one of her newer thrillers. Uh, and I just picked it out of the blue. Yeah, I know, but she's got a lot of really high-profile bestsellers. Uh, and I just randomly picked this one. Honestly, I had no idea. I just thought it was gonna be kind of like a a crime thriller of some kind, uh, but it ended up being something completely different. I'm sure we can see that.

SPEAKER_01: 4:07

I agree. Kind of uh so it it basically follows a teacher, his wife, and um a particular student who um becomes a problem. And but it yeah, like you said, it ended up being a lot different than I thought it would be. I've never read Freedom McFadden before, so um so let's let's dig into this book. Spoiler alert. Uh just like always, spoiler alert in effect, there is nothing that we will not be discussing about this book. Every in-out little thing, plot twists, major plot twists, we're gonna discuss everything book club style as if everybody has read it. So if you haven't read it, pause it, go listen to it, go read it, come back, or if you don't plan on reading it, you can do like the podcast book report version and listen to us talk about it.

SPEAKER_03: 5:02

Also, I'm just gonna add in there, we're gonna talk about all the things. Anything triggering, anything sexual, any cussing. Um, you know, there's this book in particular, I'm just gonna go ahead and preface before we get started, is very triggering uh to people. This book it contains depictions of pedophilia and um grooming. Uh grooming behaviors uh with a teacher and a student, uh, and is a very large part of the book, constant part of the book. Um and that could be particularly triggering to some people, especially people that have gone through something like that. Uh so keep that in mind as we are gonna start talking about this, that it's it's gonna have some, we're gonna be talking about some triggering stuff. So if that's something you don't want to hear or don't want to participate in, just hit the pause button and try a different episode.

SPEAKER_01: 6:08

Yeah, come back to us later or come back to it. That's also okay.

SPEAKER_03: 6:12

And also we need to do a spoiler alert for My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, because we are going to be discussing that book as well, because it's very similar to this book.

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

Uh yeah, because there are many themes in My Dark Vanessa that are also similar themes to this book in regards to grooming, etc. So it's gonna be part of the conversation today. Did you like the book? It's always the first question. Did you like the book? Kinda.

SPEAKER_03: 6:52

I didn't, I didn't. And I'm sure that we'll get into those reasons why. I right off the bat, I did. I loved it when I started it. Uh by the end, I wasn't I was confused. I wasn't really sure how I felt from the first page to the last page. It went from like a five star to like a lower star for sure. I was like, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 7:17

Yeah, I did you like it? I would say I'm gonna say the exact same thing. Kinda. I I started out with a certain opinion of it, not amazing, not terrible, just kind of like, okay, like this is, you know, I'm here, like this is fun. But then then the end, and then is what actually happened that ended up changing my opinion of the book is I reread it because it had been because I we I finished it. Oh went on vacation.

SPEAKER_03: 7:49

You read it twice.

SPEAKER_01: 7:50

Yeah, so I went on vacation and you know, we hadn't recorded it yet, and so it had been like, you know, two or so weeks since I had finished it, and it wasn't really fresh anymore. And it's such a short book. I mean, the audiobook on a 1.2 speed is like less than eight hours, and you know, I have a lot of time during the day, so I'm like, I'll just speed listen to it again, now knowing everything that I know. And then then the more I sat and thought about it, my opinion changed.

SPEAKER_03: 8:19

This book is is not at all what I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna be like a a crazy teacher. Or it was gonna be about a crazy student, and right. So that's what I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna kind of move in that direction, and that's definitely not what this book is at all. Yeah. Right. This book is very dark, twisted.

SPEAKER_01: 8:44

So I wouldn't even say it wasn't my cup of tea, but for me, it just there wasn't anything uh that brought something new to the table for me. Like, I feel like I've already read this book. It just it kind of felt like a little bit of a book equivalent of lifetime movie of the week. Like, not bad, but super cliched, super p predictable. I it didn't break the genre to me. I'll never shame anybody for liking a book that I didn't like, and I can see why people enjoyed this book or were was blown away by it. But for me, it was just kind of like, oh, there was there was not one thing in this book that I didn't see coming.

SPEAKER_03: 9:26

Most of it was predictable, I felt.

SPEAKER_01: 9:29

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so to sum up really quickly, we have we have Nate, Eve, and Addy. Those are our three main uh people in the book. Eve and Nate are husband and wife, they're married, they're both teachers at the same high school. He teaches English, she teaches math. Addy is a student who's in both of their classes, and she is kind of has a bad reputation because um shit went down the previous year with a teacher, and that teacher had been fired due to suspicion of something inappropriate happening between them. We don't know if it's true or not true, but enough rumors was going around to where it became an issue and he was fired. So she kind of already is going into this new school year as a junior with a bad reputation, having to defend her actions, and you know, kids and teachers alike are already judging her. Um Addie has a best friend named Hudson, um, who they had a bit of a falling out. They'd been best friends most of their lives, but they had a bit of a falling out. We don't really know why yet when the book starts. And we quickly learned, too, that Eve is having an affair uh with a man named Jay, who is a shoe salesman.

SPEAKER_03: 10:46

Oh my god. You know what? You are so good at this. Like you're just doing this like off the fly, like right out of your brain. Are you even reading this? Like, are you are you just saying all that? Like, it sounds like a freaking news article. It's so perfect what you're saying. No, this is a great description because this is not how it would have been coming out of my mouth. Would have been like, yeah, Eve, Eve and uh Nates, they're married, they don't really like each other at all, but they used to. That would have been like how I describe their marriage. Like, oh yeah, and they're teachers at a high school, and he's really hot, and she's not at all, and everybody's like, Why are they married?

SPEAKER_01: 11:27

But those are those wings are all two-too.

SPEAKER_03: 11:30

Very good job of describing the synapses without it sounding messy and giving just the right amount of information.

SPEAKER_01: 11:38

All right, cool. I just drank coffee, so my mind is my mind is fresh.

SPEAKER_03: 11:43

My mind's more like jabba jabba jabba jabba jabba. My mind is George of the Jungle, Brendan Fraser, when he drinks coffee for the first one. That's my mind.

SPEAKER_01: 11:53

That's so good. So that's kind of where we start the book. That's we we don't have a ton of context for a lot of things, but and Nate and Eve have been married for like nine years or something. Their marriage has become super stale. Um gives her exactly three kisses a day, one in the morning, one at school, one before bed. Like it's they have planned sexual encounters, like first Saturday of the month.

SPEAKER_03: 12:20

Uh that right off the bat, ugh. That is so that's such a weird idea, like scheduled sex sessions.

SPEAKER_02: 12:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:27

Every first Saturday. Like, oh, how romantic, how romantic. Right? That is so odd to me. It really removes the passion of the moment. Uh, when you schedule, like, oh, it's Saturday.

SPEAKER_01: 12:42

Well, it just makes it seem so transactional instead of something that's meant to be enjoyed and shared between two people. And she does make it clear that like when they first get together that everything was super hot and heavy when they were first together, and now it's not.

SPEAKER_03: 12:58

So she also how do you plan your passion?

unknown: 13:01

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 13:02

Like, huh, I'm going to be passionate on Saturday at exactly 11 a.m. on June the second.

SPEAKER_01: 13:08

Like, what plan to be spontaneous tomorrow night, so be there.

SPEAKER_03: 13:15

Not in the mood right now, but I thought the prologue was super clever. It creates an atmosphere that gets you guessing right off the bat. Yep. You're just looking for those clues. If for people who didn't read this book in the prologue, um, it's just someone digging a grave in the forest, and you don't know who it is, it's obviously gonna end up being one of the three characters that you're introduced to uh immediately afterwards. And so the whole time through the whole book, it's uh your your brain goes back to that prologue. Like, is this the moment where it turns into someone digging the grave? Who is it gonna be?

SPEAKER_01: 13:58

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03: 13:58

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 14:00

I agree. Like to the point where my very first note of the whole book, uh just in the first few pages, I already wrote down it's name. What do you mean? It it was kind of both like I I knew that he would be kind of the the bad guy of the book. The first page when she starts saying Eve is talking about her life and like everybody says I'm so lucky, it's mostly because of my husband's name. Like, oh, so he's gonna end up being like a total piece of shit. Got it. So I are first page I thought that. And then chapter 11, uh, it's that's super early in the book. It's only like 50 pages in. Uh my theory that I wrote down was I hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_00: 14:46

I gotta fix my chair.

SPEAKER_01: 14:47

I says okay. Well, I says I do. I I says I do. Uh my theory was that early. I said Addie killed her father. My I had thought that art is the one that helped her bury the body because she came to him for help, which was why she was outside his house that night. And I thought that Nate was the one being buried because he was inappropriate with her. Like that was that was my biggest theory early on. So I was right about a couple of those things.

SPEAKER_03: 15:20

My thought right on the bigger. But then we have I know this is kind of marketed as or Frieda McFadden is kind of marketed as a thriller, but I didn't consider it to be a thriller. It really reminded me of a noir fiction. If you ever read any of those, right, yeah. It's very similar to the um, you know, the film noir adaptations, but um I got a little interested in that and did a little bit of research because I know that there's different terms for everything. But a noir fiction, the definition of a noir fiction, is a subgenre of crime fiction that's categorized by dark themes, pessimism, and flawed characters. The term comes from the French word noir, which means darkness or of the night. Noir fiction is often inspired by film noir, a genre of crime movies that began with adaptations of hardboiled detective fiction classics. But the reason that it really uh reminded me of those films is because most of the time in things that are depicted as a noir, the characters, like it said, are all darker. They're all flawed. There's no clear hero. It it's really even the detectives in those old detective movies are flawed or have done bad things, or they're or they do bad things to get what they need out of people. Um, and that's what I felt about this book. I thought every single one of the characters was off.

SPEAKER_01: 16:57

I agree completely. I at one point I wrote down, um, I really wish I had someone to root for in this book.

SPEAKER_03: 17:03

Oh yeah, because there really isn't. At first you think, okay, it's gonna be Addy, and then you think, no, it's not Addy.

SPEAKER_01: 17:10

Do you know? Do you want to know when they were talking about Nate? Do you know who I pictured the whole time as Nate?

SPEAKER_03: 17:16

Oh my god, no, let me guess. Uh yeah. Now I gotta think about it. Peter Pan. Pete What?

SPEAKER_00: 17:26

No.

SPEAKER_01: 17:28

Such a weird Did I picture animated Peter Pan as the teacher? No, it did not.

SPEAKER_03: 17:36

Okay, uh, Ryan Reynolds? No. Ryan Gosling. No. Oh shit. Is it someone we know? Okay, now we're playing 20 questions. Now it's on. Okay, is it someone we know? Yes. Okay. Yes. Uh is it someone that looks similar to his characterization?

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 17:53

Or is it just someone random?

SPEAKER_01: 17:55

No, it's not random. Like it it okay, not someone we know personally, someone a celebrity that like you are familiar with. Celebrity.

SPEAKER_03: 18:02

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:03

Yeah, definitely a celebrity. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_03: 18:06

Um good looking.

SPEAKER_01: 18:08

Ew, no young, good looking, but but there's something off.

SPEAKER_03: 18:15

Um Kevin Spacey? Lena, what are you doing? There's something off. Uh Peyton Manning.

SPEAKER_01: 18:27

Young. I said young, good looking. Oh, young. Uh Kevin Shelly. Ew, no. I do not get the hotest actor there.

SPEAKER_03: 18:37

Young, young, young. Give me a movie. Give me a movie. Give me a movie. Okay, can't give you it's a show. Paul Wesley.

unknown: 18:45

Yes!

SPEAKER_01: 18:50

Yes! There is no way. Did I really guess it? Wow. I went through a little bit. Yeah, the whole time I was like, I was picturing Stefan in a cardigan. The whole book.

SPEAKER_03: 19:01

And then because immediately when you saw that, I was like, oh, he's kind of like Stefan a little bit. Maybe poesly. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 19:08

But you know, like in the in the in the vampire diaries when he's like ripper Steph, and he's like condescending and manipulative, and obviously into teenagers. Hello. Oh yeah, that's true. You know, so I don't know. I just uh I I kept picturing Stefan in a cardigan and just that kind of quiet way that he has that's talking, and you know that he's thinking something different than cut that's coming out of his mouth, you know, just that way that he has a ripper Stefan? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 19:39

Or when he's like pretending to be an asshole. I'm fine. I feel perfectly fine. Yeah, yeah. And he has like that like that at the beginning. When he's like when uh he's Lena's like, you're lying to me and stuff, like you're obviously you're not okay. And he's like, I'm fine.

SPEAKER_01: 20:00

Fine, good. But he has that like I'm charming, but there's something sinister underneath it. Like he does that really well, and so that's how I just like was picturing the whole I was just picturing him as like the hot teacher, like the Pedro Pascal teacher. Uh or something. So they're not that old, like, but he's supposed to be 38 and Eve is 30. So like he's not like an old, old teacher, you know. Like he's still I mean, he's like my age. I'm 37, so you know, like that's not that hit that's still pretty young.

SPEAKER_02: 20:36

Yeah, that's pretty young. I mean, we like to think it is.

SPEAKER_01: 20:42

We'll go with that. Just in the in comparison to like the the teacher that she was supposedly to have had a an affair with art, Tuttle, what you know, he was old, like an elder like he's always described every description of him is like Santa Claus.

SPEAKER_03: 21:00

Yeah. Like that's how he's described in in the book. I thought that Nate, uh I don't think that she was shy about making Nate creepy. I can't decide if like she was making that extremely um obvious because uh it almost felt like rushed a little bit. Uh like somebody who is committing these kinds of crimes have most likely, especially if they're the age that Nate was, they don't just start doing this at that age. Okay. Yeah this has been going on, and they even preface this towards the end of the book for a really long time. And the and people who do things like this, uh, they have really mastered the craft of manipulation. Yeah. Uh and I almost feel like she intentionally made it super obvious um to rush the story along. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:56

And also, this is a super short book, too. Like it could have been. And she could have delved into things a bit more. And there's a lot of dead space in the book, too, because there's constant POV switching between um Addy and Eve. Um, we don't really get Nate's POV until the tail end of the book, but pretty much the most of the book is just Eve and Addy switching back POVs very quickly. Sometimes like one page and it's back to Eve. One page is back to Addy. So there's a lot of pages in here that are just like dead space.

SPEAKER_03: 22:28

I really enjoyed it. I was like, oh, I love the pacing of this book, like it's going so fast. But you feel like you're getting a lot of character development because there is so many POVs. You know, you've got three POVs. But actually, what's occurring is that you're getting no character development because every little bit that you spend with the character is so short-lived and really doesn't go into their psyche, into their thoughts very heavily. It's very surface. So over the course, a lot is happening, but you're not really getting connected with those characters.

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

I agree. That's actually exactly how I felt uh through the book. Because I because I was like, I'm halfway through this book. Like it feels like things are trying to happen, but like nothing's actually happening though, because it is constant switching back and forth. It kind of like again, like a like a lifetime movie, like okay, we're going to a commercial break. Like, hey, but nothing happened really. Can we get back to what we were kind of building up to?

SPEAKER_03: 23:37

Although the writing style was that way. I actually thought the writing was fantastic. I thought the opening was clever. It really catches you and holds on to you. Uh, not one character isn't off in some way. Uh, it leaves you wondering what they could do, say, or think next. It keeps you engaged. Even though you're not getting the character development, you you're there. Like you want to know what's gonna happen. Um and the environment itself, just the way that she describes it, creates suspense out of nothing. Just the way that she describes even the simplest of tasks, like how people are chewing their food. It it creates an eerie environment, and I I enjoy that. So I do think that she's talented. This book fell a little flat for me though.

SPEAKER_01: 24:31

I will say I agree with everything you just said, but then the ending happened and it undid that for me. Because especially, especially during the reread, it made me pissed off. And I'll get into why. Um, because because it is so good. It it is uh like the build-up is really good, and then when you finish the book and then you go back, it's just um I felt different. We'll get in, we'll get into it.

SPEAKER_03: 24:58

One of my biggest questions was, you know, like I said, she was kind of rushing the story along, I felt like sometimes with the character development. But with Nate, for someone who's supposedly a seasoned pedophile predator who has been preying on these students for a long period of time for years and years and years, uh, why is he so bad at it? Like I thought that too. You know, he's really he's really bad at like concealing the fact that he's acting weird. It's super weird. Like as soon as he starts the abuse with Addy, he's a dick to her on her birthday, like immediately.

SPEAKER_01: 25:31

So we find out basically that you know Nate's not only just obviously Addy is not his first um rodeo with this, and we find out at the very end, too, that he did it with Eve as well. And that was not a surprise to me. I called that early. Uh, when the fact that they have an eight-year age gap, and she I noticed through the book that she was very specifically not talking about her in Nate's beginning because she references a lot, like how things in the beginning were so romantic. He used to write poems for her, and it used to be hot and heavy sexually, and now he's like at the beginning of the book, he had zero sexual interest in her, zero, and that's why she's having an affair. And then there are comments throughout where her parents didn't like him, and she was like, My parents were right, I should not have married him, and them being together caused a rift with her parents. So I'm like, what would be the reason why? Like, because on paper, everyone likes me.

SPEAKER_03: 26:38

That's a great observation, and I think you're a hundred percent right, and I did not catch that at all.

SPEAKER_01: 26:44

Because like on paper, he's a very good that's very subtle. He's well educated, he's charming, everybody likes him. I'm like, what would be the reason why her parents wouldn't approve of that or like him? And like, oh, well, he probably groomed her first. So, like, I I picked up on that early on, and then with Addy and everything like that, not only with Kenzie and multiple other students.

SPEAKER_03: 27:07

I guess that makes sense too, because I think there's a reference, there's a there's a part at one point when she finds out about Addie uh and the fact that she's gonna be in Nate's class. This is at the beginning of the book. Now that you say that, it's like all coming, it's like rushing in all the thoughts. But she says that she's worried about Addy being in his class. And I remember thinking, why would that be your reaction? You shouldn't be worried about Nate unless you know something about him. But now that you say that, it makes complete sense. She did know. Well, and she just missed he just hadn't been caught with another student before besides her. Wow, that's a great option. I love that. That makes me like this even more. Okay. It makes it even more intricate.

SPEAKER_01: 27:58

That actually is does does the opposite for me. I did not feel this way the first time I read it, but knowing everything that I knew and then I finished it and then went back, I feel like there's a right way and a wrong way to do the unreliable narrator thing. There's a huge difference between like misdirection and then just lying. For her to maintain the shock factor of every single twist in the book, especially the Hudson twist, she lies to the reader in their inner monologue. Things that should be in their inner monologue isn't there. And the only reason it isn't there is because we the reader need to be shocked by this later. Especially Eve, because we're in her POV the whole book, so she has to specifically not think about or address a major part of her life, uh, and a huge part of her and Nate's personal relationship and history, which just isn't realistic and is very obviously omitted when you know everything in the end. The fact that Nate groomed her first, like, why stops being interested in her sexually? Why isn't her first thought, I'm too old, he's gonna start doing the same thing to younger girls as he did to me because we were so young. Like you're uh thinking you're a high school teacher, and that wouldn't be problematic for your marriage. Like you started. Well, I think there's a couple things there.

SPEAKER_03: 29:19

Like, I think that he intentionally stayed with her, maybe for reasons we don't even know. Maybe because she was gonna talk, maybe because he wanted a cover for his behavior. But obviously, just like in My Dark Vanessa, yeah, yeah, and it's because it's very similar themes to this book. Um, it almost kind of like a copy, but we'll get into that. Now in retrospect, because at the beginning you're like, wow, this is a really weird regimen. Okay, obviously he's a pedophile, but it makes a lot more sense when you realize that when they started their relationship, she was a child. And now he's not interested in her anymore, and he only he schedules down to the minute because he probably can't um perform when he starts uh starts up with Addie and he like is aroused and then he'll come home and like get get it on with her, and she's like, ooh, maybe our marriage can be saved, but he's really just because he's you know horny for the the young girl in his class.

SPEAKER_01: 30:24

And again, why wouldn't some of that occur to her? And and I and I get like the the shock factor and the twists and stuff, but I guess for me it just felt like a little emotionally manipulative, and I would have preferred to know some of this going into it because that's such a more interesting book. The the complicated dynamics of that and the fact that they're both teachers, they're they're going to work in the exact same environment that they started their relationship in, and and to not talk about any of those things just feels like a like a lie. And I I when I reread it, it that's what kept making me mad because I'm like, we should be hearing this, this, this, and this. And you're the only reason you're not doing it is so that you can shock us later and be like, surprise, gotcha. Yeah, but and and you know it's interesting because I was like, Am I being a little bit too like me about it? But I I read a couple of articles about the book, and I'm gonna quote someone an article that I came across by Ph Diva blog. Um and because I've never read Frida before, so I I don't have any context for her other books or her writing style other than this book. Um me either. So she says uh Frida did her classic technique where she doesn't know how to disguise a twist, so she has a narrator lie in their inner monologue. And I'm like, yeah, so I'm like, okay, I felt that way, but apparently I'm not the only person who's like, omiting the way.

SPEAKER_03: 32:02

Here's the thing though. Is that's a great question though, is omitting lying. Are we just seeing like a snippet of their thought? But now you're like just like we were saying before though, it's just we're seeing just a little snippet of their thoughts because it's just moves so quickly. Uh I think it's kind of smart.

SPEAKER_01: 32:20

There's a but there's a difference between the misdirect and then the lying because when you know the twist and then you reread it, all those little signs, Easter eggs should be there. And then when you reread it, like, ooh, it was there the whole time, but I totally missed it because it was nuanced and she kind of directed you over there, but the truth was always there. The only thing you were lacking was context, right? Like it, but it was always there, like that's the difference. But if it's specifically lying to the reader about things, and it's an interesting approach to writing a twist.

SPEAKER_03: 32:56

I did not think this book made any sense. And honestly, when I was done reading it, I was just like, what the hell? But I didn't make those connections till you just said them, and now I get it. This is why you should do book club. Because that actually just this conversation is making me see things I didn't see.

SPEAKER_01: 33:18

Well, and that's that's what I mean. Like, I I did not feel this way until I reread it. Because, you know, when I finish it the first time, I'm like, okay, maybe it's a solid three, you know, three and a half. Like, I wasn't bored, like I liked it okay. Like, I liked it. Like it was it was kind of like a popcorn movie book kind of thing. What really downgraded it for me, because it made me feel icky, was that every single gotcha twist in this book, every single one, involves the sexual abuse of a minor. And that felt Yeah, that felt really that felt icky to me. Instead, and it fell exploitative instead of like like with my dark Vanessa, it really gives you that um insight into that situation and how difficult it would be as opposed to this. It's like gotcha, he's a pedophile, she was a pedophile. I mean, we learned that Eve also, when we have the Hudson is actually Jay twist and is also a pedophile and has been grooming him and has been sexually abusing him, also.

SPEAKER_03: 34:22

Is it clear that she knows that Hudson is a teenager? But how would she not know the captain of the fucking football team? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 34:34

She does know. This is what I mean. Yeah. One of the biggest questions that uh readers have for this book afterwards is did Eve know like Jay's true thing. She has to. Well, number one, I don't get why this is even a question, because even if she didn't know him from school, like a 30-year-old woman is gonna tell the difference between sleeping with an adult man and a child. Number one. Number two, even if he's not in her class, like he's in her school, he's like you said, he's a very popular kid in school. He's with Kenzie and all the popular kids all the time. There's no way she doesn't peripherally know of him. And if you pay attention, and I did in the reread, she never says that he has a wife and a baby. She she always refers to the woman as she. Uh, so when you know what you know later, like, oh, it's his mom. It's his mom calling him, and he has a baby brother because Hudson has a baby brother.

SPEAKER_03: 35:28

He did have a baby brother, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:30

And so she never, and that's why she's always like, we don't have a future together, not because he's married with a child, but because he is a child.

SPEAKER_03: 35:39

When Hudson comes, because it's Hudson that comes and picks up Eve, obviously. Oh, don't even get me started. I have so many thoughts about that. Okay, first of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, if it is Hudson and why does she call him a different name? Okay, that is so weird to me.

SPEAKER_01: 35:59

Well, like uh number one, because we the reader have to not know who Jay is. And at the very in the very last page or whatever, when the Hudson twist is revealed, one of his uh football mates says, Oh, bye Jay. And Addy says, Well, why does he call you that? Like, oh, because my last name is Jankowski, and that's a mouthful, so everybody on the team just calls me Jay. So that's like his nickname at school.

SPEAKER_03: 36:29

Oh my god. That's so stupid.

SPEAKER_01: 36:33

Not only this, but the author um herself, Frida McFadden, has acknowledged in an interview that yes, Eve does know about Jay's identity as a child slash student. So Frida herself has said this.

SPEAKER_02: 36:50

So she's also a pedophile.

SPEAKER_01: 36:52

But yeah. So and on page on page 82, the first time that we're seeing an interaction between Eve and Jay slash Hudson, she talks about meeting him for the first time in the shoe store because that's where Hudson works. Page 82, she says, There was something familiar about him, although I couldn't quite place it at first. Oh, she's already seen him around. It's but it is very, very sneaky. Well, see, and that's it, and but that's the only time where like there's a couple times where like it's the misdirection versus unreliable narrative. I'm like, okay, well placed, well played. And the way that she um, you know, always references uh Jay's uh female as as she. Like he never says his wife or his girlfriend. It's like, oh, she's calling him. And he she never says his baby, it just is the baby. So you're you know, it's kind of that misdirective, like to where you automatically think, oh, he's married with a baby, or at least with someone with a baby. So like, yeah, that was well written and sneaky right there, but again, it's icky because because he's a he's a child, and then we're then we we feel kind of this like righteous indignation for Eve when like oh, so not only is her husband cheating on her, he's he's cheating on her with a minor, like he's he's a he's an abuser, he's this, he's that. But then you know, and like at my first reaction was okay, it's extra bad that it's a student, but on the face of cheating, like you can't really be mad that he's cheating on you because you've been cheating on him for months. Like you don't really have a right to be mad about the cheating part. Like you can be you can be mad about the student part, but you can't really be mad about the other part, and then doubly when you know it's like you had it you did it too with also a student.

SPEAKER_03: 38:52

Well, I think that that is the crazy twist part. I just think it's kind of it's too kitschy for this subject. Yeah you know, she exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 39:04

That's from what I understand.

SPEAKER_03: 39:06

She pumps out a few books a year. Okay, she's one of these authors, she's a full-time author. She writes constantly, she's always pumping out thrillers like in her genre. She's very uh fast-paced with her writing. Uh, and this is a very serious subject that children actually go through.

SPEAKER_00: 39:30

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 39:30

That yes. Uh and it is it's kind of jarring to pick up like a an episodal like read that is so fast-paced and where the subject matter is so heavy and so realistic. Exactly. There's this weird acceptance in Hollywood, in society, in literature, of these kinds of uh situations where it's it's like even over time, even at the beginning, uh like with Lolita, that is one of the and I've read I've read Lolita, I've read My Dark Vanessa, I've read this book. Um, it's very accepted in literature. Um, Lolita is hailed as one of the best books ever written, and it is about a man, a grown man in his 30s or 40s that's in love with a 12-year-old girl. It's very like sensationalized. There's several depictions of that in film. There's several movies that have been made of it, and she's supposed to be like a little kid. And I think that in literature, one of the reasons that it's it's mostly accepted is because that was one of uh the first books of its time that was really written uh from someone's perspective in that way that had kind of a dark brain, and people just were floored by it when it came out. But now I think that people read it for a different reason.

SPEAKER_01: 41:02

Right. But also think about societally back then, older men did marry young young girls slash women.

SPEAKER_03: 41:12

Right, but that kind of literature was not common. Like that, um, like okay, that this whole book is this guy's thought process and he's in love with the child and he's he's obviously he's wicked. There's something wrong with him, like he's mentally ill or or something. Um and I think that but in my dark, Vanessa really shines a light on the grooming behaviors that occur that can occur in those kinds of influential positions, like a teacher and a student, but it's very serious toned and it doesn't really glamorize it as much as highlight it to start a conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 41:50

It also takes the time to let that play out for the reader, because like you know, sometimes if it if that's never happened to you, I think it's easy for people like, I don't understand how that could even happen. You know, and in my dark Vanessa does a really great job of really getting into those small nuanced moments where you can totally see how it happened, like the the grooming process, because like you like you pointed out, Nate goes from like zero to like letting her feel the boner in his pants, and then they get right into it, and like that's not realistic. And I would think that in a more realistic uh w setting that you know Addy the teenager would immediately be uncomfortable, especially with everything that just happened with art, and and that whole thing just being like, Whoa, that was that was weird, that was so it that whole thing just happens too fast, and and my dark Vanessa does a really great job at really getting into to that aspect of what it what it actually looks like and the process like the very gradual process of of that that grooming, and then to the point where it's it's told in two timelines because now Vanessa as an adult is trying to process that because in her mind it's still not abuse to her, and she still maintains a relationship with him, and it's not until she starts like having issues and like going to therapy that she even starts to recognize that what happened to her as a teenager was wrong, that it was abuse, and and and that's more realistic to uh you know, or at least it feels like to me, because I've not I've not obviously gone through that.

SPEAKER_03: 43:34

I'm gonna read a note that I wrote for this because this kind of like sums up the seriousness, I think, of this subject, uh, which I do not think should be taken lightly, and it should not be a common trope or sexual theme. In I do not think that that is a subject matter for like an everyday reader, and I do not think that it should become a trope. A teacher to a child. Being a teacher in this context is very powerful. If you're a teacher at a school to a child, um, they have teachers have significant influence on a child's mind, and using that influence to take advantage of a vulnerable, young, developing hormonal brain is one of the most wicked and disgusting things that you can do. Um this can steal and completely destroy a person's innocence in a traumatic fashion. Uh, and teachers have a responsibility to protect their students from this by establishing unshakable boundaries that they never waver from, such as getting too involved with the students' personal life or making them part of your personal life. Uh, there is a wall there and a line that should never be crossed. And obviously they cross it in this book, but it's almost like a flippant. It's just crossed so flippantly. Um that it's a little jarring and it puts a bad taste in your mouth.

SPEAKER_01: 45:07

Yep, and that's kind of where I landed. I'm like, if if it wasn't this subject matter, I feel like I would have enjoyed it more. But then it just like knowing everything and then all and then in the rereading of it, like writing issues aside, just like I'm like, I just kept thinking to myself, I'm like, every single twist of this book is is like gotcha, everybody's a sexual predator. Woo! Like, no, no, no, no. That's not how that's not how you do that.

SPEAKER_03: 45:36

I'm actually saying the word like pedophile a lot. Um, and I'm not saying predator a lot because I consider these people to be pedophiles. Okay, Addy is 16. How old was uh Kenzie when he started his relationship with Kenzie? 12? 14. 14, 14, 14. Okay, I'm still thinking of Lolita. Sorry. Yeah. Um, yes, 14 years old. He he is a grown person with influence over them. I mean, uh not just influence, power to grow for over their grades, over their life. She, I mean, they're children. In my mind, they're children. So I consider all of these characters, not all of them, but Eve and um Nates, in my mind, are 100% pedophiles. I do not think we're predators. I do not think that there's like, oh, they're close to the age of consent because Addy is technically 16. She's a junior in high school, okay? But I have a junior in high school. Literally.

SPEAKER_01: 46:41

Pedophiles are also predators, obviously.

SPEAKER_03: 46:44

Like, well, yeah, they're predators, but it's I just feel like that word is not as serious as pedophile. Like you have been actively uh sexually abusing children for a long time. You're a pedophile. You're not a predator, you're a pedophile. Let's just talk about something a little lighter for a second. Yeah, let's let's go back to the beginning. Okay, how let's talk about Addie for a second because I have a thought about Addie. Um Addie Severson is terrible at sneaking around. At being like a sneaky snake. She is the worst sneaky snake. Okay, she is like kluts too. Every time she like goes anywhere, she's breaking something or like knocking something over. So uh breaking into Kenzie's house was a m was a mess. She was a mess during that whole encounter. And also, that was very anticlimactic. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh wow, nothing happened. Okay. Weird. You didn't do something, you didn't piss on her shoes or something. Like, I would have done something in there, you know. Do something. Okay, while we're put her toothbrush in the toilet. Like, do something to her. Um breaking into Eve's house, she came in through the kitchen window above the sink. That's the window she picked. Okay, okay, so like, I thought I heard something, and then there were like 10 crashes from the kitchen, and I walked in there and I was like, Addie?

SPEAKER_04: 48:20

And Addy was like, What are you doing here?

SPEAKER_03: 48:23

This is like you didn't even consider that you just literally knocked everything off the kitchen counter on your way inside. She probably didn't hear me. She probably didn't hear me, like, breaks 10 plates or something. Like, what? Oh my gosh. And my favorite part that made me laugh so hard when she was sneaking and running around on Eve and Nate's lawn in the middle of the night. And like, she like went outside and was like, and she like literally ran right across the yard right in front of her.

SPEAKER_00: 49:06

And he was like, Addie? And then she was just like hiding in the bushes. Like, she can't see me. My disguise is perfect.

SPEAKER_03: 49:19

I was like, oh my god, Addy, you're so stupid. Like, you should not be sneaking around. You're terrible at this. And then she was like, uh, I literally saw you because she brought her in the she brought her into the principal's house the next day. And she was like, Wasn't me. I wasn't there. She was like, I literally locked eyes with you. Like, I saw. I don't know what you're talking about. It wasn't me. Wasn't me. Oh my god. I was like freaking dying laughing. I was like, oh my god, she just like literally just like ran across from like this.

SPEAKER_01: 49:54

I did think that she the whole book I did think to myself that Addy was like either super stupid like that or also like very immature for a 16-year-old, too. Like she was super wine.

SPEAKER_03: 50:07

Okay. Uh I have a reference quote for how cringy Addy sounds. Okay, this is in Addy's head on page 247 referencing uh Eve finding out about Addy and Nate's relationship. Uh, and this is Addy's thought. If someone took a knife from the kitchen and stabbed me right in the chest, it would be about this painful. I don't understand how it could be over. Just like that. Yeah, I get that it's bad that his wife knows about us, but Nathaniel and I are soulmates. It doesn't seem possible that she could snap her fingers and it's over just like that. Right? Yes. Yes. Also, that poem that Nate writes for her, or that he wrote for Kenzie, or whatever. The frickin poem poem, the with the cherry red lips and the pink cheeks.

SPEAKER_01: 51:02

Oh, give me a break.

SPEAKER_03: 51:05

Um, yuck. And also, if a guy wrote me that poem, um, I would be so weirded out by it. I would be like, Right, uh, this is weird.

SPEAKER_01: 51:16

You know what I wrote down right when I think right when I heard that, this is what I wrote down. The life nearly passed me by poem, but he gives that to all the girls. This clearly isn't his first time doing this. Like I mean, it's so obvious from the beginning what he's doing that he's he's gonna start grooming her and Right, but like but immediately I was like, the fact that he's going straight into this, like it's because it's worked before. And I it did even cross my mind like I bet he gave that to Eve too. And then in the end, it's supposed to be this like big reveal, like, oh, the first time that he wrote me the poem, and it was it would it was the same, the same poem. Um okay, so here I do you want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_03: 51:55

Kind of like, but you know, going back to my Dark Vanessa, like the similarities. If you're if you have them side by side, there are so many similarities that you probably couldn't count. Like with that right there with the poem thing, like in that book, it was Lolita. It wasn't the poem, it was the book. He gave them each a book, Lolita, and had them read it as a reading assignment. And that was like the beginning, the first step in his grooming. Um, you he would say something like kind of uh uh flirtatious about like how beautiful they are or something, and then the next time he would see them, he'd give them that book and say, I really want you to check this out and read this. I think you're mature enough to handle it. Like a kind of giving them uh boosting them up, boosting their egos up um while also playing on like their need and want to be mature people because there's nothing that teenagers want more than to be treated like an adult. They want to feel like an adult. Um, and that's what he does in My Dark Vanessa. He makes her feel like a grown-up. Like I'm gonna treat you like you're a grown-up. Um, and in this book, he does the same thing, and he uses the exact same techniques as My Dark Vanessa.

SPEAKER_01: 53:13

Um And I feel like I'm like I'm gonna sound like a broken record because I'm like, oh, this is derivative from this book, but it really it really was because the whole time I'm like, this is my dark is this book is trying to be My Dark Vanessa and Gone Girl and doing neither particularly well, but but they shouldn't be together in the same savage. Well, okay, I shouldn't say particularly well, but like I t I take issue with the unreliable narrative thing, but there is a there isn't a time and a place for it. Um, but this this book was not for it. And this this subject matter was it that was not the right way to utilize that. Uh can we talk about some of the things that happened in the book that made me laugh out loud? The Addy Eve confrontation felt weird. Like she doesn't even address the fact that Addie broke into her house and she's like, I was just gonna talk to you. I'm like, but she broke in. Wait, that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_03: 54:12

Like she's like she like comes in the window and like knocks all that shit over. And she like is like, should I put on my shoes before I go into the kitchen? And then she like goes into the kitchen and she's like, Addie, and she's like, Mrs. Benna, you're here. What are you doing there?

SPEAKER_01: 54:31

But the whole time I was like, not only was Addy super bad at it, but Eve's reaction to it is also just like, um, hello, like you hear someone break into your house and you just like, oh, go check it out instead of like grabbing your phone, getting the hell out of there, calling the police. Um, and then you're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_03: 54:46

If you go there to talk to her, why would you break in? Why wouldn't you just knock on the front door?

SPEAKER_01: 54:52

That's what I'm saying. It's like, okay, okay, I'll get into that thought later. But just on the baseline of like Eve's reaction to it, like, why would she hear someone breaking in and then like, I'll just go in there and turn on the line, see what's see what's going on in the kitchen? Instead of like making like having like a realistic reaction to someone breaking into your home. But then even when they're talking to each other, she the way that she's talking to Addy is so weird. Like the things that she chooses to say are so weird. Like, I don't understand her approach. Like, she someone has just broken into your house, and you're gonna go on to tell them how you're gonna go report them and ruin their whole lives. Great idea. Like, like, why wouldn't she? And here's the here's again what maybe uh should have been Eve's reaction when she's like, But me and Nathaniel are in love and we're soulmates and he just doesn't love you anymore. She should have been like, Honey, sweetie baby, you have no idea what you're talking about. And like trying to not only give the like um we're both victims here because I mean Bet he didn't tell you that I was also your age the first time he fucked me, and that, you know, like in kind of doing all this to kind of show Addy the type of person that Nate really is, as opposed to like Well I think that that would have made more sense.

SPEAKER_03: 56:18

Why didn't you why didn't you call the police? Why didn't you do this? But now that that you've read the whole book, you realize that you don't want the police sniffing around this situation if you're Eve, because she is a pedophile. She's right. So I mean, you don't know that then, so you're like, why is this happening in this way? Like you're just thinking these things, but like it really starts to make sense when you get the whole picture of the story.

SPEAKER_01: 56:49

But then the thing is is that nobody like but Addie and Nate, like she has the leg up on them because Addy and Nate know nothing about Eve's personal thing, like they like because Eve has actually been smart about going about it, like they, you know, she's very under the radar with that, so nobody knows about it. Um so like they have zero leverage to use against her. So if anything, if she wanted to make Nate pay, like why not blow up his whole life?

SPEAKER_03: 57:20

Why not She's not just blowing up his whole life? I mean, what's she gonna do? He did this, he did this. You know what happens in those situations, just like in My Dark Vanessa, when it took the turn that it normally does when you're talking about sane people, you just they keep doing the abuse until eventually you do it to the wrong kid. And they talk. And then it all starts to unravel. But that's that's like a damn breaking Eve doesn't want to get mixed up in that because she was probably the either the beginning or one of the first people that he abused, and so you're you're talking about shining a spotlight on everybody involved. I mean, when you're talking about something as serious as that, the police are gonna be digging up everything they possibly can. They're gonna be looking through everything. I mean, the police find out, you know, they go through her phone, they see that she's having conversations with Hudson. Now she's a a predator. She's getting arrested. Like, there's so many people. It's like dominoes.

SPEAKER_01: 58:30

Alright, so you're right.

SPEAKER_03: 58:32

So, like, all of her weird all of their weird reactions to everything is because there's a secret agenda that we don't know about yet.

SPEAKER_01: 58:39

We find out all these things about how calculating Eve is and how she's also, you know, an abuser and going through all these things and how calculated and manipulative she also is, so it doesn't hold up later for her to be stupid the the way that she is. You know, someone breaks into your house and you tell her how you're gonna rule her ruin your life, and then even again when Addie has bashed her brains in, like she's lying on the floor, and then she comes to and Nate's there, and her first thought isn't like, why isn't my husband helping me by calling the police? And he's he's above her saying, like, you can't you can't tell anybody about this, and she's like, No, I must go to the police because that's the rule. She didn't lie.

SPEAKER_03: 59:30

I was like, What? You're not gonna lie and be like, uh no, baby, I love you. And then you go tell me.

SPEAKER_01: 59:36

Exactly. Isaac Sons just attempted to kill you, and that's your like okay, but then again, like you just pointed out, she's also doing the exact same thing, and then being like, Well, I'm a super big rule follower, so I must tell the principal because that's the right thing to do. And she's already willing to yeah, exactly, because she's willing to blow up their whole story, and maybe she's more willing to do that because it would definitely take any heat off of her and she would be the victim in that situation. Like, oh my god, you're okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:08

No, I don't think so. I think it's more realistic that it would give him incentive to stop because she wants him for herself.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:19

Okay, obviously, no, because she said she's done with him. She's like, I he's out of my life, we're getting a divorce. Like, she's the second she saw him with Addy, she was immediately done with him. Immediately. She's like, We're getting divorced, he's out of my life, I gotta get out of here. And when she even talks to Jay about it, he's like, You need to be out of this marriage. She's like, Yeah, no shit, what can I do? And can we also talk about the fact that this would never happen? Both Jay slash Hudson and Nate immediately when we find out about these situations, their first response is like, Well, if she were dead, we wouldn't have to worry about this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:01

Eve, I'm just like Eve, you're you're such a ding bat. Like, you're talking about not just ruining someone's career, all right, ruining someone's entire fucking life. Their entire life, ending their life, pretty much, and they are gonna have a whole different life if you tell someone. Uh, when you are dealing with something that serious, but you have no idea what someone is capable of until you try to literally ruin their life, like to take everything from them, their livelihood, their freedom. I mean, they will do at this point, at that point, they have nothing to lose. So why would you pretend you go and you do it in secret? You don't tell them you're finished, mister. Like, because they're gonna be like, uh, I have to do like that's your fight or flight. They're like, I have to do whatever I have to do to protect myself. The next step is then gonna be you're getting murdered. Like, you're getting murdered. You put your situation to get murdered.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:13

A thousand percent. And then in Eve's situation, uh attempted murder has already happened, and she's still digging in, like, but I have to do the right thing and tell the principal. Like, how about you just play it cool, bitch?

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:27

How about you be like, come on, babe, let's go home. I forgive you. That's what I would say. Like, oh, come on, I'll blow you on the way home. Whatever you need, I guess. She just got bashed in it and said she could be like, What are you she should have pretended to be a member?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:44

Right? Oh, how about I this is exactly what I wrote down. Uh, when when that is happening and he is strangling her, and the last part of that uh that chapter is like, and that's the last thing I saw before I died. I and this was probably the wrong reaction to have, but I literally just Yeah, why did she write that?

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:07

If she didn't fucking die. That that did make me mad. I was like, okay, why did she write that she was dead then before I die?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:14

And then she's telling me how she does the plot twists because she just lies to the reader. But also, I don't like that, but I also laughed out loud and I was like, ha, she's not dead. And I go, I wrote down, I'm putting my money on a buried alive scenario. This is the most cliche book ever.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:33

Um, how hilarious is it that after she got buried alive and like slumped into Hudson's car, that she then all dirty and shit in the same fucking clothes went and slept in the shed in his parents' backyard for like three days. Right. What are you doing? Like you're sleeping, you're like all dirty. You didn't even like go home and get clothes, like you're just like sleeping in this high school kid's shed for three days, like all fucking dirty. Right, waiting for your opportunity for revenge.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:06

Okay, so let's let's talk about let's let's let's talk about when when the burying scene is happening, we think supposedly that Eve is dead. I immediately thought, of course, I'm like, okay, well, Addy is clearly being murdered next. Like he's gonna kill her, bury her in the hole with Eve, because that's what would make sense in this scenario, because that's like tying up loose ends. I'm like, why the fuck would Addie?

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:35

Why would they be tying up loose ends so that you're creating more ends? You're creating more problems for yourself because you think that they're not gonna like they're already thinking that you slept with Addy, like they're not gonna think it's suspicious that your wife and Addy disappear.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:51

But also, like, why would he but he leaves her there to finish burying the body by herself? That was so stupid. That was so stup, like the logic makes no sense because not only did he leave her alive like as a witness because you know uh of everything, but like the second that you take off, do you you don't think that Addy is not gonna think like that motherfucker just left me here alone? I'm gonna go blow his shit up. And she obviously sees the the things on the neck, so she's now questioning she has to question the fact, like, did I even kill Mrs. Bennett or did he kill her?

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:28

You're not gonna be able to tell. He's so stupid. Does he not think that they'll be able to tell that the the hands prints on her neck are not grown man-sized and not like teenage girl sized?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:40

Right, exactly. And that uh fingers like a coroner wouldn't be able to be like, okay, yeah, she had some blunt force trauma, but cause of death was strangulation, so clearly not. And it looks like a man's hands. Right? Like even more stupid if he wasn't gonna kill Addy, if he when he leaves her then. Why not like phone in an anonymous tip so the police would catch her in the act of burying her? Because Addie's one that killed her.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:08

Why not just kill her right after you're done burying your wife and just dump her in the same grave? How hilarious is it that Hudson came and picked up Addy from there and then turned around and had to come pick up Eve from there?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:22

Kate, I wanted to get into a whole thing about this because not only He didn't even ask any questions to either of them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:29

He's just like, uh hey, you're the second girl that I've picked up from this spot. What's going on?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:34

See, this is this is actually, and I think would have actually uh elevated the book maybe a little bit, like problematic things aside, but if we we never ever get Hudson slash Jay's POV, so we have no idea or context for the type of person he is. Like in the end, should we be scared for him or Addy? Because that that also changes a lot of things in the book because you know, uh Hudson and Addy were best friends, and then they accidentally kill Addy's dad. He falls down the stairs, he dies, and because of that, Hudson stops being friends with Addy because he's so traumatized by this that he's like, I can't even be around you without seeing his dead body at the bottom of the stairs and feeling so guilty. Like, I can't even be friends with you anymore. So that's his reason for stopping uh the his lifelong friendship with Addy, but then immediately is just like Eve says, I'm gonna fucking kill this guy, and he's like, Okay, I'll help you do it, and literally helps Eve commit premeditated murder. And who did he do that for? Did he do it for Eve or did he do it for Addy? Because I remember thinking before we knew who Day was when she confides in Jay that Nate is having an affair with Addy. Jay has a reaction to that, and I was like, hmm, that's an interesting reaction. So is it that he is on board to kill Nate because he uh did that to Addy or because he did it to Eve?

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:18

I think he's just realizing in that moment that him and Addy have something severely huge in common that they didn't even know that they had.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:27

So we get the like trick writing versus good writing, and then when she does finally drop that because the whole the whole book I did think, I don't know what it's gonna be, but there's gonna be a Jay reveal because he's gonna be someone that we know, and there's a limited cast in this book. So like Hudson wasn't on my radar as Jay, but he wasn't not on my radar because there is a limited cast of characters in this book, and I'm like, there's gonna be a weird thing, Jay, like a Jay reveal, and it's gonna be someone we know. At first, I thought that Jay might have been Shelby's husband, East friend from school, but then she kept saying how her husband was like a tech guy. I'm like, okay, so it's obviously not um him. But she drops the Hudson twist and then just ends the book, so it leaves you with not only like a whoa, what is that? It it reveals a lot of things, but also makes a lot of plot holes and a ton of unanswered questions, and then you're just done. And I was laughing out loud.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:29

I think the only part where I like literally laughed out loud was when she was running across the front lawn when she was like adding it because it just made me think of those TikTok videos where like the kids are hiding in the house or the business or whatever, and they like run past you in the dark.

unknown: 1:09:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:48

You're like, who's there? And then like I also laughed when she said that thing about the shed. When he would she was like, I was just sleeping in his shed. I like freaking died. I was like, no. Like you would get out. Maybe you got your purse, like you would do something, but you wouldn't be sleeping all dirty in that boy's shed.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:12

And like for days and she trusts the teenagers as no one ever goes in there. Like, yeah, but you're a teenager, like maybe dad's gonna go mow the lawn tomorrow. Like, you don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:22

Like, yeah, why would you put yourself in a situation where you're where your students' parents find you sleeping in their shed? No, that didn't happen. Like, I don't hear about the twist. Like, that is the most unrealistic thing in this book that you're gonna sleep in that shed for three days all dirty in you're in a student's backyard. Right? No, totally not happen.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:53

So I said, where did you ask? I was like, well, for me it was a decent read until the epilogue. I said, I I finished the book and I I was like, what the fuck was that? I said, first off, I'm laughing out loud at the Nancy Drew wrap-up monologue.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:13

Because he can't do it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:15

It's just like that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:16

It's just like that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:18

I immediately was just like uh picturing her voice. Like the the if you've never played the Nancy Drew game, like that you finally solve the the mystery, and then it's like she's writing a letter to her friend, or her dad is like, well, that was a crazy summer, and here's what happened. Like Yeah, and then it explains all the questions you had. Alright, so this is the epilogue. It's like six months later. This year's definitely been wild. After Kenzie and I had to talk to Detective Sprague, she attempted to get an officer to bring in Nathaniel, but he took off. Guess he knew he was in deep trouble, and decided it was better to disappear than be labeled as a sex offender. They might have searched harder for him, except Mrs. Bett suddenly materialized. She had some story about deciding to take a bus somewhere and get away for a few. She paid in cash, she said. She had no idea everyone was searching for her.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:18

You're fucking killing me. I cannot with you right now.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:26

Sprague had my story on record about Nathaniel, like what Nathaniel and I did to her, but she refused to confirm it. And she was not, in fact, dead and buried, so there was nothing the police could do. Of course, Mrs. Bennett and I both know the truth. And we both know that if I had buried her with dirt instead of leaves, everything could have gone very differently. In any case, she never returned a case of mine.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:56

You are a hundred percent right. Oh my gosh, that is too funny. Oh my gosh, you know what we should do right here? Like in this section, you gotta put one of those things in the YouTube.

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:09

Dear Bess, I'm just about finished with my renovation work and counting out all of those gold coins. Lewis was behind all of the accidents, hoping to pressure Rose into selling the house so he could find the treasure himself. Although Rose and Abby may not have a legal right to the gold, the bank the coins were stolen from will still give them a reward for finding it. The house also has gotten a lot of publicity with all the news stories. And the place is booked solid for the first month of its opening. I guess a haunted bed and breakfast with hidden treasures is all the rage these days. Even if there are no such things as ghosts. I think. See you soon, Nancy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:53

Guys, if you want to be visually stimulated, we have a YouTube with visual stimulation, and it will have extra things in it. Sometimes pictures and videos. If you want to check us out on YouTube at Bookmates Podcast, yeah, I was just dying at that at that Nancy Drew.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:11

It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:13

Right? That that is so accurate to you. Like, what a ridiculous way to end the book. Like, really?

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:19

And like there's and so there's no resolution for any storyline, any character, like, oh, he's a sex offender, whatever. The police just stop looking for him because but they couldn't find him. Like, that's not how that works. You put out a bulbo and he's on the list.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:36

It's like when the um when the superheroes start monologuing like the supervillains, kind of like in the Incredibles when he's like, You got me monologuing. Brilliant! That's what it's like. Like, you're just like, ha, and here's how I did it. You kids. Exactly, exactly. Okay, so I'm gonna read a couple of notes that I had just to add some thoughts. Uh, I loved the environment she created. Uh, I'd like to see a little more depth. Um I'm interested to read some more of her books. I think there's enough there for that I want to kind of explore some of her other writing. Um, but on page 11, this is in Eve's head. And this is a thought that she has while they're carpooling, they ride together to school. But they're writing to they don't normally go together, but they are this day. And she goes, I am so lucky. I have a beautiful house, a fulfilling career, and a husband who is incredibly handsome. And as Nate pulls the car onto the road and starts driving in the direction of the school, all I can think to myself is that I hope a truck blows through a stop sign, plows into the Honda, and kills us both instantly. It gets kind of bubblegummy sometimes when you're in people's heads.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:02

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:02

So I enjoy like a good in-depth like villain thought.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:08

Yeah, it's an honest moment. Yeah, I I mean I can I can totally see see that for sure.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:16

Just thought that it was an interesting thought because it kind of like uh paints a picture of these characters really quickly because this is like within the first two chapters. I mean, this is page 11.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:28

Right off the bat, these people are dark, they're a little bit darker.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:33

Right. Well, and also that she's not happy. Like, whatever, yes, and and you and it does make you wonder is she being unreasonable or is that how it is? Like, is he a nice guy? Uh from everything that she's saying, like, oh, he's a nice guy, nice blah blah, but I just like would rather not be here. It it paints a picture really quickly, which is good writing. Like, the you you immediately get the state of what their marriage is like, where like it's it's not only stale and just kind of uh wash, rinse, repeat at this point for them, but also that she's not content with that, she's not happy with it, and instead of addressing it, sh that that's the thought that she's having. Like, she she was content to just kind of keep doing that thing and being unhappy. And like, I would rather a car slam into us than even like also talk about the problems or address the problems in the marriage. That's a crazy thing. I I don't know if that's I don't know if that's realistically.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:33

I just thought like right off the bat, I was like, oh, this is like we're just starting out here. Like, this is just a really dark thought. Um, I mean, I've had I I I've been at a customer service desk before and wanted to smash someone's face through the through the glass right on the table. Like like thinking about that, like man, I would love to just take your face and just smash your face. But because you're being awful and I hate you. I mean, but I would never act on that, but I have thoughts like that. Do you think thoughts like that? I do sometimes. I mean, not really relating to my husband, but like just in general, sometimes I'm like, man, I would love to just drive through you into a tree. That would be great. Well, I mean, I just mean that in general I think that people have violent thoughts like that, uh, and that nobody ever talks about that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:34

Like, you know, that's like the thought like that is something that you have in your head and you don't say it out loud. Okay, another another thought that I wrote down. This is my last note before I'm done with my notes uh and ready for our final thoughts and quotes and one-star readings. Um, Hudson is Polish, which I thought was kind of cool, because I'm Polish and they're not usually Polish in the novel as I read. Um for reference, if you are questioning if Hudson is Polish, for reference, you can check page 24, uh, where it says Hudson's dad, on the other hand, was the janitor for an elementary school. He was frequently seen pushing a mop and bucket through the hallways and yelling angry curses at kids in Polish. So Hudson's dad is like really Polish. He's like from Poland.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:33

Hey, representation.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:36

Representation. If you're a Polock like me and you're not represented enough, there you go. This terrible character is Polish. I really did like um the writing stuff, uh, the nuances of Poe. I'm a really big fan of Poe. Uh, Edgar Allan Poe. And as far as like his stories, his books, uh, it's really more like short stories, but I've I've read most of his work and and I liked some of the juxtaposition. I thought it was a little fascinating. Uh, I also liked the fact that he buried her without shoes as a fuck you, which is so twisted. Um, because she was obviously obsessed with shoes in this book, and they talk about shoes constantly. Eve is constantly talking about shoes. Um, and so because she has this like kind of shopaholic obsession with shoes, he buries her without her shoes. Um, and I thought that was like a really interesting touch, like a serial killer kind of a touch. It was really creepy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:45

I mean, I already kind of already said this, why he wouldn't just stay there and made sure that the job got finished. Because you're also putting this huge like your wife is murdered and in the ground, and you're gonna leave the tying up of loose ends to a teenage girl that you just pissed off by leaving her alone in the woods without a ride home, and you just like was expecting that to work out? Like, what was the plan?

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:06

Oh, you're gonna leave her her phone and her purse and anything that would like make it seem like she was robbed in any way, like to cover your tracks. Oh, and you're not gonna go through her phone and see if she told anybody either. You're gonna just put her phone in there with her, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:23

But she did it on Snapflash. Every time it said Snapflash, I laughed out loud.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:28

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:30

Yeah, they say snap flash, but it's really Snapchat, is what she's talking about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:37

But she says things like Netflix and other things like that in the book. So I don't know why Snapchat was the But it I it just laugh made me laugh.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:45

No, but I did love the post up. I loved the the kind of the um nods to the raven. There was like a couple nods to the telltale heart because the telltale heart's about like um he kills somebody and he can't deal with the stress of it, like it's making him paranoid and crazy. Uh, it was kind of like a nod to that and the raven. Um, I found that kind of fascinating. I liked that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:11

So it's interesting that you say that because I think I had a a different reaction to that. I kind of eye rolled like, oh, another writer is obsessed with Poe, and we're gonna use all these like you know, Poe things to to progress the plot along. Like the way that she again, even the end was rushed too, because she kind of wants to mind fuck him with with the Poe stuff and the shoes and then the Raven references. It's it's really rushed and really sloppy, and obviously, immediately as the reader, you're like, okay, well, Eve's clearly not dead, uh, because who else would do it?

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:48

That's what I thought. I was like, it could be or Jay that it's well. I think that a lot of that goes. Have you read Edgar Allan Potal? Have you read any of his work? Mm-mm. Well, I would start uh when you're reading uh just read The Raven and Telltale Heart if you want to have a reference for this. And it's a short, like The Raven's a poem, it's not even a a short story, it's a poem. Yeah. But but the telltale heart past that the telltale heart is about a man who uh he kills someone, and then he's like, I've got I've this is the perfect plan, this is the perfect murder, and he like chops him up and puts him throughout his house, like in the floorboards. Uh I don't know. But he basically kills and dismembers this guy or this woman. Yeah, it's a woman, he can hear her heart beating. Like he starts to hear her heart beating, and uh then the the police come and he can just hear her heart beating, and he can hear it, and it's getting louder and louder and louder, and it's in his ears. And he's but it's really his heart beating because what's happening to him is he is so stressed about getting caught, he's so paranoid about what he's done, he's so plagued about the the the idea that that he's done this and everybody's gonna know about it, everybody could find out about it, the stress and the paranoia of the consequences in his own mind of what he's done, and then he ends up confessing. He's like, Oh my god, I can't deal with it. Like, I did it. It's playing on the Raven, which is his favorite poem, which is a great poem, but it also uses some stuff from the Tell Tell Heart because she's using the Raven to create paranoia as a form of revenge. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:45

I did like I like the idea of that. I just didn't think that it was like well played out in the book because it just felt like that whole part just was super super rushed. So I I didn't feel like we got the It was rushed. The whole book was rushed, the whole book was rushed, but like you don't get his paranoia, you just kind of feel like he's more annoyed about it than anything. Like, oh my god, I'm so fucking sick of this. I'm gonna go make sure she's fucking buried.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:10

Like it's yeah, he was like, What's going on? Like, what's happening? Like he thinks he's like going crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:15

Because he's he's not remorseful about what he's done. He's not, you know, what it like. So I think like I I think you're exactly right, and that's probably what she was going for with all those things. It just didn't land that way for me anyway. It was just super rushed to even feel effective. Cause it I think I wrote that down somewhere. It was like it felt too rushed to even feel sinister. If she would have maybe delved into it more or or played these parts out instead of just kind of rushing it along to the next commercial break, then it you know, because like we have a certain amount of runtime, we've got to kind of cram it all in there, and that's just kind of how it that felt. Um I don't understand that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:56

Like, if you feel like you're writing something and the potential is there for it to be deeper or better, why would you keep it so surface level? Why wouldn't you just keep writing and keep exploring and keep expanding that one project unless you have a deadline of some kind?

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:12

That's kind of how I feel about this. But she's not setting out to write a really in-depth, thought-provoking book. She's just wanting to write a popcorn thriller.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:24

You also want to not have to think about these things that we're talking about, but they're just naturally things that start popping into your head as you're reading, and that takes you out of the experience of the world that you're supposed to be in, too. Um, which I think detracts from the overall rating of any book that that happens in. It just takes it down and I completely agree.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:48

And I think you said that because I actually wrote something like that down. Um it was the very beginning of the book. Um it was ch it was chapter six. Um on page 33, we're in Addie's POV, she's talking about school and stuff, and she says, um, English is my final period class. It's also my best subject. Don't laugh, but my dream job is to become a poet. Blah blah blah. And I immediately was like, uh, I hate it when writers do that. Like, do not address me the reader. Like, now don't laugh. Like, who are you talking to? Like, nobody thinks that that way in their head. Like, oh yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:31

Yeah, you're uh I think that you're a little more critical on that kind of stuff than me. A lot of times I don't pick up on it even.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:37

Well, and it's not like I'm trying to be critical, but that's just like what the what my first thought is. And like for me, whenever I'm addressed as the reader, it pulls me out of the story because I'm like, ooh, I'm into this new world and I'm suspending my disbelief. Don't address me. I'm not supposed to be here. You know? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:55

For me, like that, those are just that that's something that always just pulls me out of whatever. book I'm reading. So I and the same thing I felt I didn't feel this way the first time I read it, but the second time it did feel like I could see all the trick writing everywhere and it just felt like like when you even like when you see a movie, you know, you go into it suspending your disbelief to a degree because in a really good movie or a really good book you'll forget that you're watching something that isn't real. You'll forget that you're reading about characters who aren't real because you're just so invested in the in the world because it's just so seamless, right? And when you like address the reader like that, or when you read a book back that is more trick writing than good writing, you see all those little things like like oh that set actually looks like crap is just a backdrop sheet. Like they're not even at the do you know what I mean? Like it it feels if it cheapens it the for the reread and so I I definitely my opinion changed a little bit more in the reread because I was able to see a lot more of those things um that I maybe didn't catch the first time.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:05

I'm actually I don't think I'm gonna reread this. I was thinking about it but I feel like I have reread it right now as we're talking about it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:13

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:14

You know, because I'm going over all my thoughts and all my references so I mean I I just don't think I'm gonna reread it. Especially since I really didn't care for the content.

SPEAKER_01: 1:29:26

I I know I predicted the the buried alive scenario and I know that there are amazing survival stories that exist but come on she got bashed in the head with a frying pan three times three times she gets bashed in the head and she's already unconscious and she bashes her a couple more times there's no way she does not have head trauma and she just like wakes up and then she gets choked out like she is not she is not still alive. And if she is alive she has massive head trauma brain bleeding like concussion at the very least she didn't just like wake up in a crib and be like huh I can't believe those fuckers like I'm gonna wait here until it's like she's like thinking way to first of all I love the Rapunzel mod.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:17

Okay the frying pan thing whatever but also like what kind of frying pan is this okay is this a cheap like Dollar Tree frying pan because they've got money problems. Or is it a light skill cast iron skillet because one hit with a cast iron skillet would freaking kill you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:35

Okay but also yeah there's that but even if it's like a light frying pan someone takes any object and hits you in the head as hard as they can with it you're you're injured like unless it's a pillow any hard thing that you're gonna bash someone in the head with is gonna leave a fucking mark. Like there's no blood she's not bleeding she's not bleeding all over the place like there's no blood and she's just there's no head trauma.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:03

If it's a head injury well right but it's head injury bleeds so severely too they're like the worst.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:11

And like even when and I know that because the rest of the book needs to happen this way they she you're not gonna go to the hospital like you need to go to the ho there's no way you do not have head trauma no there's no way you just go and chill in your student shed for three days like I have I know what like I have blood force trauma but let me just like spend the night in your shed and we'll just like mess with my husband's head for a couple days before we kill him.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:44

That's like that is behind the I just picture Eve like being all like dirty and bloody like her hair all matted and fucked up from sleeping on the floor in a shed like covered in blood and dirt and mud with no shoes on like okay no and you're just sneaking around just like Addy on the front lawn like putting shoes in places this will fuck with them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:13

No you wouldn't you wouldn't do that like and I also just the logic of like I'm gonna try to kill him like like I need to go to the hospital I've had a traumatic brain injury I think I I might need to be seen at least at least just like urgent care if not the ER you know right I mean geez right and like and also she would be unconscious she wouldn't just like regain consciousness immediately and and then be as clear headed as that like oh uh they tried to kill me like I'm gonna wait here till I hear no footsteps and then I'm gonna haul my ass out of this hole and then I'm gonna text Jay Okay so that's another thing I want to talk about.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:59

Can we hold on I gotta eat a piece of cheese or I'm gonna vomit.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:03

Oh okay one minute later what I wrote down after Nate is buried I said wow well saw Nate being buried from page one but still how unsatisfying the girls team up to go to the police Eve isn't dead after all so he's caught red handed on everything like the downfall of his reputation justice for the girls for Eve blah blah and Jay just being like remarkably chill with murdering her husband like what are we doing here? I I mean I think that that's the best j justice for a pedophile I mean absolutely but chill him capturing him just bury him alive I like that but I think that I also would have enjoyed like the comeuppance of like because nobody knows what he's done really I mean there's no there's no justice I mean like we know that he's dead and buried but also but Eve being the one to do it also doesn't feel justified because she's guilty of the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:13

Obviously I think that what he did to children is very satisfying that he is slowly drowning in dirty water.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:26

Right but it's not satisfying because Eve's the one that does it I think it's satisfying because he's fucking dead that's that that satisfies me yeah we the reader feel the justice but the girls don't as far as they know he skipped town and he's just on his own merry way and will never face any sort of consequence for for what he's done to them. So yeah we the reader get the like yeah fuck you you're you got exactly what you deserve but the girls will never know that there's never justice for them. There's never justice anyway well I mean for that kind of that's right but like in their mind he's out there still maybe preying on other people like that's like I didn't like that because oh yeah they're like you know we the reader get that but the girls the actual victims in this story don't have that closure from that situation.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:24

Well I mean for me I thought it was satisfying yeah it's it to me of course that's the most devastating part of this book is that we're talking about uh someone preying on children and exactly there's never gonna be a good ending for uh for me with this kind of subject I mean no matter what happened to Nate or anybody else those children are still traumatized and are still gonna have to deal with what's happened to them. Yeah people going to jail makes it easier but like just like as we saw in my dark Vanessa most of those people just end up killing themselves anyway whether it be in prison or um you know they don't want their life to be completely changed and ruined and everybody to see them as what they've been trying to hide a monster for so long yeah yeah you know so um the I think it's yeah I mean but he's but the point is though he's not gonna continue to re-offend Eve's gonna take that over I will say the only thing in this book that I did not see coming was that the other girl was Kenzie. Oh yeah that was surprising I thought that whole stuff with Kenzie was very anticlimactic.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:49

All of that stuff with Kenzie was very like super iron I I thought it was going to be Lotus.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:55

So I I did think that there was going to be another girl but I thought it was oh Lotus I I kind of wondered but the reason that I thought it was Kenzie uh right off the bat was because when she saw the poem she had a reaction of some kind one of two things either she knows because she's being abused or she recognized Nate's handwriting or something I yeah I I did not pick up on that one.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:29

What I did think though later when she broke into Kenzie's house and sees a note she assumes that it's from Hudson and then I was like okay so when she saw that note why didn't she either that it wasn't Hudson's handwriting and then when Nate writes her the poem not also writes Nate's handwriting I have a lot of questions there about Hudson and Kenzie um that I just feel like were unanswered.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:01

Like did Hudson know that Kenzie was having a relationship with the teacher um why was he so supportive of her bullying behavior? Why I mean yeah he started to kick back a little bit like what bridged the two and it was like oh I had a really hard summer and she was there for me okay like what put you guys in that situation where you became like best friends like I don't I never really there was no clarity there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:29

It was very messy and vague yeah and that's and that's what I said earlier where it would have elevated it more if we ended up with a Hudson POV even if it's just like a a chapter at the end where we got like a sum up of his motivations throughout the book. And also you know in the end is it's like three in the morning and it's like 45 minutes away he drives out there to pick up Addy brings her home stays with her a bit and then when Eve wakes up she says that she waits like at least an hour or more after she's heard the last footsteps so then she finally takes an hour digging herself out of the hole getting to the road finally gets a hold of Jay and then he makes the second trip back and then he's back for like the timeline is really messy there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:19

Like I find it hard to believe that a teenager that Hudson would not pick one of them to be like what the fuck's going on especially like you're telling me that he just picks her up from the same spot he just picked up Addie in and she's had her head bashed in and all of this stuff and she doesn't even know he doesn't even know that Addy and him are having a relationship like and obviously they're con they are conducting themselves in a way that is not legal as well so like why wouldn't he be like at that point like what the hell is going on like I just picked up Addie from here in the same fucking spot like it you know first of all that's gonna be your first thought process second of all why wouldn't he feel comfortable confiding in Eve about that when the situation is so weird right like I could see him maybe not talking to Addy about it because he doesn't really know that something is weird about it yet. But Eve? No.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:31

But he does know that because Eve tells Jay about Nate and Addie So obviously Jay Hudson is gonna immediately know he picks up Addy from the same place and he just like oh Nate just tried to kill me at that moment he knows like oh it wasn't just Nate that tried to kill you it was Audie. So this is where I'm saying like is he a good guy or should we feel scared for Addie like is he gonna try to get revenge because he's still in communication with Eve still thinks well of her smiles about her so like is he gonna do something to hurt Addie for this or are they ever going to address the fact that they were essentially having an affair with both of the Bennett's like what's Eve's plan here too because obviously Addie was a victim in the sense of what Nate did to her. Absolutely right but that is also separate from all of her other insane behavior like she was stalking art she was stalking Nate she broke into Eve's house broke into Kenzie's house um well that goes back to that noir thing every I mean every character you see in this book there's something about them that's off there they're all right but there's never characters they all have dark right but there's no consequences for her at all because she's also clearly not stable because she you know attempted to murder Eve helped bury her body um you know even with the thing with her dad so she's also and Eve knows this about her so why wouldn't Eve be like okay well you were a victim in this too but also so was I because you literally tried to kill me like you you're not a stable uh person.

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:22

So here's my question are we moving in person but she's also 16 right but most 16 year olds don't act stably right but but okay well there's a difference between like teenager stable and then attempted murder like the way that she makes it he does like he does murder groom her though there is a there is parts in there where he's saying things like you know if only she wasn't around um she's the reason that like we can't be together. You know so he's dropping lines like that that everything that comes out of his mouth is meant that's a good point to do something or achieve something. So like him using that kind of language with her he's prepping her to believe that if you know this person is going to destroy his life my life this person is the reason why we can't be together if this person is not here all of our problems will be solved you know and you're being groomed in that way by someone who's also sexually abusing you and you've got your emotions wrapped up in that relationship and you're not mentally stable because you're 16 and you're not you know you're not picking up on any of this grooming behavior because you know you're a kid still so I mean to me obviously that's a really good point victim. Yeah Addy's the victim in this story but just like all the characters yeah there's something off about her too like she's a you know it almost she almost makes you wonder the entire book if Addie is behind everything. Like you're you're waiting to see you're chomping at the bit is this Addy's fault is this Addy doing these things is this Addy is she just like about to crack at the end of the book we we're just left with a ton of unanswered questions and some plot holes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:24

The final question that we really actually need to talk about because as much as I've gone over it I can't figure out the answer. Okay who is the narrator in the prologue? Obviously it's Addie can't be Addie why in this prologue it says that that they need to hurry because they have to get back to work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:49

Addy doesn't have a job so it's not Addy well it also says uh and I highlighted this it says the deeper I go the easier it gets to dig. The first layer of dirt was almost impossible to break through but then again I had a partner to help me back then. That was the other thing I have highlighted. Yep okay so then obviously this is uh Nate. So this is this right but is back when he goes back to check and make sure she's really dead. That's what this is because the first time he goes to dig the hole he mentions that they talk about the ground being hard and he had a partner doing the digging but it has to be Nate.

SPEAKER_01: 1:45:31

So it could only be Jay Nate or Eve let's let's take Jay out of it because he would say I he's not gonna go to his job in the morning he'd be he'd say something like I have to get back to school so the only people it could be is either Eve or Nate and it is unclear which of the two of them it is it has to be Nate though because of the partner comment but okay but when he goes back it's just he he does not dig again he's when he gets there it's an empty hole and then they shove him in. Not an empty hole. He does dig.

SPEAKER_03: 1:46:04

I remember him digging but like here it says so it's right before part three so oh you're right it does say that it's just an empty hole.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:14

You know what I really think I think that this is a um mistake that's that's that's what I think either that or a blatant lie because it because it never it is unclear and even in the end it's never made clear who the prologue is from but none of the uh the information that we have and this is where if you're gonna be in an unreliable narrator you have to keep track of your lies because now we are left with a huge unanswered question that literally started the whole story and we never know because she also never brings it back full circle to this moment. Right. So we don't know and that is another one of the biggest questions that I've come across who is the narrator I'm just like I think it's a police that's what I thought it's a hole.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:01

It's a hole unless unless it's Addie like after Nate leaves like after remember he leaves her there and she continues to dig remember right right right right yeah but it can't be Addie because of the the comment of like I have to get back to to work.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:20

It doesn't say work it says school no it doesn't yes does it yes it says I shiver as a gust of wind cools the layer of sweat on my bare skin with every passing minute the temperature continues to drop I've got to get back to work.

SPEAKER_03: 1:47:35

I'll dig a little deeper just to be safe on page two yeah this doesn't make any sense right like when you know everything's a hundred percent right because it can't be addie because of the comment about work and it can't be Nate because he doesn't dig a hole and even when Addie is there he doesn't dig he makes Addie dig. And then why would it be Eve because she doesn't dig either because the hole is already there unless they dig the hole deeper but it says that there's already well then also why isn't Jay there right and she obviously if she dug it before like right after she climbed out of there why would she have to be back at work the next day exactly yeah like there's so many questions and the last line of the prologue says after all I have to bury this body before the sun comes up and when her and Jay and Nate have their confrontation like it's in the daytime like it's not in the middle of the night like look at this listen to this right here. This says right here in the read in the reading group guide at the end of my book the number one it says how does the prologue set up the mystery of the novel as you were reading who did you think was burying the body were you right and they she never says though yeah unless she's just having us assume that that was like uh Nate and Addie burying Eve but that does not hold up that information does not hold up to what is actually in the prologue though. Does Addy have a job?

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:19

I don't remember Addie Addy does not have a job.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:22

This is saying it's Addy the online everything is saying it's Addie the prologue character is Addy she's digging the grade alone because Nate left her there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:30

Okay so then there's just like blatant lies to to in the the prologue that that's a blatant misdirection I have to get back to work I hate that's just makes me mad.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:42

Yeah that makes no sense why would she say that thing about work why wouldn't she just say school or just not say anything but because she says that specifically you're like okay you start to you you you you automatically eliminate Addie right and J. Yeah, what a mess.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:03

What a mess. All right. Uh we have we have a couple of listener questions or comments. Is from listener, Cindy, aka my mom. This is Peter. Cindy says, I never saw that ending coming, especially with all caps. No rule breaking Eve. So who knew that she was the biggest hypocrite ever?

SPEAKER_03: 1:50:36

It does preface that she is like a serious rule follower the entire time. And then it's like, oh yeah, except for this giant thing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:46

And we have one from listener Meesh. She says, The teacher has so many plot holes, I spent more time trying to put it together than Frida did.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:03

She also goes on to say that Bookmates is my new favorite podcast. So thanks, Meesh. You're our favorite listener. Just kidding. We love all of you. Listener Morgan says, so unsatisfying. This book is crap. I liked it at first, but the ending didn't feel complete. It felt rushed and very disappointing. It's a really sick book. The fact that he did this with multiple girl girls that are children, not okay at all. Absolutely disgusting.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:34

Well, yeah, it's disgusting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:35

But did you like it? We agree. We agree, Morgan.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:37

I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:39

She did not. She said this book is crap. And we also agree that it felt rushed and disappointing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:51:47

You know, I it was the ending for me that did it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:51

Yep. That was like a nail. Agreed. Um, listener Rose says the twist is that Hudson was the guy she was having the affair with. That poor kid. He was an accessory for three murders and was taken advantage of by his teacher, who turned out to be a hypocrite. There's no way she didn't know he was a student in her high school, right? Both teachers, garbage people. Sadly, she was also taking advantage of him as a student, but then to do the same? How are you writing about this subject so nonchalantly and not giving any trigger warnings or even giving the synopsis truthfully? Gross all caps. It's yeah. Like you have a responsibility. Like if you're gonna start that conversation, you also have a responsibility or to let everybody in on what you're about to be discussing, because not everyone is gonna be comfortable or wants to read a book for fun about this content, because this content is not fun.

SPEAKER_03: 1:52:59

My husband also read this book. Um Yeah? Yes, uh Jared read it, and he really didn't have a lot of opinions when he was reading it. Like he didn't because my my husband's a truck driver, guys, and he has the opportunity to listen to a lot of audiobooks and the vehicles that he's in, and you know, he drives for like 12, 16 hours a day, depending on what's going on, but he didn't really come home with any comments. Uh, I noticed while he was reading it, he just kind of was like, Yeah, well, I'm reading the teacher and I'm on chapter like 22. He's like, oh jeez. And also he drives so much, like he finishes a book in like two days, which is kind of cool. But he listened to the ending in the bedroom of our house. I think he was just close to the end when he got home from work, and he stormed out of the bedroom afterwards when he finished it, and he said the ending was so stupid. He was like, Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty bad. And he was like, No, but like it was Hudson that whole time. And I was like, Yeah, and he was like, that's so unnecessary and stupid. I hate it. He was like, I hate it. He was like, why did you make me read this book? And I was like, well, honey, I was like, when I started it, um, I didn't know that it was gonna end up being like this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:30

So he Yeah, none of us did.

SPEAKER_03: 1:54:33

He didn't he also mentioned what you had said about the narrator editing things out of um their thoughts um so that they could be revealed later on, and he did not like that. He said it was a lie, just like you. He was like, it's like she the narrator is lying to you. Um and I don't like that. It was like it was almost like he was like, How dare she do this to me?

SPEAKER_00: 1:55:04

That's how that's how I felt. I'm like, so am I like, don't don't lie to me. Don't lie to me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:55:11

Yeah. Uh one star reviews, one star reviews. So these are gonna are one-star reviews. I'm gonna read the ones that I thought were amusing. I've got I've got some other deets that I wrote down. So on Goodreads, the teacher by Freedom McFadden is rated a 3.94 out of five. So it's close to four-star average. Um, there are 452,171 ratings, uh, with the least amount of people rating this book one star. 1% of ratings are one star. Uh that averages about 7,382 people rated this one star. Most people rated it four stars, 38%, 173,000 roundabouts there. So the average rating is four stars on this book. Wow. Uh, which is interesting to me. Uh yeah, me too. Yes. So one-star reviews. Uh Kendall says, digging a grave is hard work. Hard work that would be worth every second for me if it meant I could bury every single character in this book. I think that's how you pronounce that. Urha says, um, I have never been this traumatized in my life, and that's a lot coming from a girl with Asian parents. That's what I was gonna play. Umia says, the weakest and most boring book I have ever read from this author. No development of characters. So this is somebody who's read her work previously, um, which is why I kind of took note of it. No development of characters, boring dialogues, repetitions, and worst of all, completely predictable plot with a small twist at the end that wasn't worth it. This book feels rushed and written for profit only. Uh, Matt says the literary equivalent of a to be original movie, just like what you were saying. That's right, yep. Um he also goes on to say, my dark Vanessa, if it was stripped of all emotion, nuance, and grit. Salacious and icky just for the sake of shock value. Truly an offensive new low for Miss Fredo McFlurry. Please don't let this near the Goodreads Choice Awards. I'm begging. Oh. And my last one-star review is from SC Thoughts, which is this is probably the equivalent to a wet dream of a writer that's working for the Lifetime Movie Network. Uh, which is almost exactly what you said earlier. And I thought that was kind of funny. Uh quotes?

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:07

Quotes. You want to go first? I did not have a favorite of the book. I have a favorite quote.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:15

I've got one.

unknown: 1:58:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:17

On page 30. Ready? I'm ready. If I were a cat, I would have peed on him. But since I'm a human, I plant a kiss on his lips. That's my favorite quote. I was like, oh wow, that is a weird thing to say or think. That's a very odd thing to think.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:46

Um, I guess okay, I take that back.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:50

That was Eve talking about Nate.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:54

Okay, I take it back. I do have a favorite. Um Eve and Nate are talking, and she's confronting him. And he's he's saying things like, Everybody knows it's like everybody knows that you're a complete mess, Eve. You're not exactly trustworthy. And she says, Excuse me, what does that mean? And he says, For starters, you're drunk at six in the evening, which she wasn't. She just like had like a little bit of wine. He ticks off on his fingers. Also, you hoard shoes, it's really nuts. If anyone got a look at our closet, they would lock you up.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:33

I feel like a husband getting shitty with his wife, it would be a lot more savage than that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:59:39

Right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:59:40

Like when you're fighting with your with your partner and you guys are really fucking mad, like you're not gonna say like weird things like that. You're saying stuff like, well, whatever, you crazy fucking shoe lady.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:53

But the thing is, is like you're saying like having a lot of shoes is like not a normal thing for most women. Like they lock you up for the the shoes that you have in your closet, you could crazy person with shoes. Like, it's not it's not that crazy like to have for a woman to have some shoes in the closet.

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:15

Like maybe like to spend all your money on like a pair of Louis Vuittons, but like, yeah, women in general usually have a lot of shoes.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:24

Like, I just thought that that was like like, well, don't even get me like don't threaten me because I'll threaten you right because they would see your shoes and lock you up straight away.

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:35

Like, you got nothing, bro. You got nothing. You're on empty. Like, you're a pedophile and I collect shoes. So well, I guess she's a pedophile too, but right. Okay, um, I've got another quote here. Raddy's friend licking the ketchup off of a French fry had me gagging. Uh, her descriptions of food are super weird. Uh, okay. There was yeah, but there was like a scene where she was like, she was like, her she her friend came over and sat by her at the lunch table, and she had a French fry, and she was like scooping the ketchup and licking it off of the French fry, like sucking on the French fry to get the ketchup off. And I was like, oh my god, the fucking visual of that is so gross. Like, I don't want to think about that. I mean, I I it that was one of those subtle things that she did to like create uh like an eerie environment, those like subtle descriptions of like everyday things it in a creepy way, like she's eating the French fry all fucking weird. Uh, but on page 230, this line had me literally sick. Uh I freeze a piece of lettuce lying limply in my mouth. Gross. Oh, and by the way, try saying that five times fast. Uh lettuce lying limp limply. Lettuing limply.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:04

Lettuce lying limply, lettuce lying limply.

SPEAKER_03: 2:02:07

Lettuce lying limplo.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:12

Here's one that made me laugh out loud. It's in Nate's POV, and he thinks that Eve is dead, and he's annoyed that there's a package at the door. And it he says if there's another package of dirty shoes at my door, I simply cannot cope anymore.

SPEAKER_03: 2:02:37

Like it was just it just felt like it's not a good inner monologue.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:43

No, like he's a grown man, he's like, oh my god, like I cannot with this. Like I simply cannot.

SPEAKER_03: 2:02:51

A list of cringy uh grooming quotes that Nate actually says out loud to Addy. These are uh things that he says to her. Um it's just a whole list of them. Uh ready? Uh it was my pleasure. Ugh. Gross.

SPEAKER_04: 2:03:13

Gross.

SPEAKER_03: 2:03:13

Teacher saying that to a kid. I mean, come on. I wasn't about to let my favorite student get kicked out of school. Then I met you, and it's like I finally connect with someone for the first time in my life. No. I laughed out loud when you said that. I'm like, oh police. Yes. I'm trying I'm trying to resist you. Uh and these are like great examples of grooming. Like the way that they subtly manipulate uh the child's mind. But I will say you gave me my life back. It's another one. Um I'm meeting my soulmate for the first time. What a piece of shit. Who says that? Uh the soulmate one, gross. Uh, I thought you were angry at me and would never forgive me. I wish I could have met you back when I was 16. Before you were born.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:14

Here's one uh that made me laugh. Uh to page 291. Uh Addy has just finished burying the body. She's she's walking away, and she says, with that taken care of, I wander back out of the pumpkin patch, following the landmark of the sign for the entrance. I am certain we turned left when we came into the patch, so that means to get back I should turn right, right? Man, I wish I were better at math.

SPEAKER_03: 2:04:51

That's like the girlyest real thought of all the time. Oh, that's a great one.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:02

I like that one.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05:03

Or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:04

And this is Nate talking to Addy. Uh page 72. Addie, he says, I'm so elated you could make it. He says elated. Right? Like, oh hey, Addie, I'm so elated you could make it. Like page 97. Uh, the shower thing had just happened. Uh Addy's clothes were stolen uh from the the locker room. And she says, I grit my teeth. No, it wasn't. Look, I need my clothing back, okay? Clothing? Like, there's like two or three times in this book, like, I instead of just saying, like, God, I need my clothes back, she's like, I need my clothing back. Like, a 16-year-old I would not say that.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05:46

Where are my kicks? That's what I would say. Where are my fresh threads?

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:52

On on page 210, it's Eve, it's from Eve's POV, and they had just finished having dinner with um Shelby and her husband, and she's taking the garbage out, and she says, Tomorrow is garbage day, so I go back into the house to empty the refuse from our meal tonight.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:11

Refuse? What does that even mean?

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:13

Trash? Refuse. Like trash, like garbage, but like nobody s would ever say it that way. Oh yeah, and then again on page 329, um, it's Nate's POV, and um uh it's after Eve is supposedly dead. Yesterday I was playing the role of the disheveled worried husband. Today it is genuine. I haven't even managed to shower or put clothing on yet. Or put on the cross. Oh my god, there it is again. Clothing. Clothing. Like it's like there's like two or three times, or maybe even more. I I didn't mark all of them, but I'm like, what just say I put my clothes on? Like no one has ever said, like, I need my clothing. Where's my clothing?

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:56

I can't remember the last time I said clothing. I've probably you've probably said clothing more just now than I have in the past like ten years.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:03

Right? It just it was so weird to me.

SPEAKER_03: 2:07:08

Alright, so what was your final thoughts on this book, The Teacher, by Frieda McFadden? And what is your personal rating out of five stars?

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:21

My personal summary of the book was that I I didn't hate it, I didn't love it, I liked it less on the reread, and the longer I sat with it, the more problems I had with it, more just because of the uh problematic themes in the book and the way that they were handled. Um, I the reread just kind of honestly made me feel mad, and I didn't like the emotionally manipulative trick writing, like with the unreliable narrator stuff, and I really hated and what it all really boiled down to me and is responsible for my rating, is be is simply due to the fact that every single gotcha twist uh involves the sexual abuse of minors, and that felt icky to me, left a sour taste in my mouth. So my personal rating for this book is going to be a 2.5. On Goodreads, I'll round it down to two.

SPEAKER_03: 2:08:17

Very similar to My Dark Vanessa, almost taking that story and warping it into a darker retelling, if that subject matter can even get any darker. It is realistic and detailed descriptions of a pedophile teacher grooming a child under their influence uh for the purposes of sexual gratification uh and highlights the lengths each each of uh the two of them go to in order to protect their relationship over years of time. It takes place over a long period of time. There's a lot of character development uh in the teacher. Um, the subject is a really serious one. It almost had like a whimsical uh who done it kind of a vibe. Uh the story moves quickly, you know. We kind of touched on that earlier. Uh the the chapters are short, the grooming is rushed and clipped and cringy since we're discussing such a serious subject with the teacher. You know, in the end, we find out that Eve's also a pedophile. Uh, and uh, like you were saying, it kind of feels like that moment when the the curtain is raised at the end of the Wizard of Oz, and you're like, oh, you're also touching children. I mean, like, in general, I'm not a big fan of those kinds of storylines. Uh, I did not like Lolita that much. I liked My Dark Vanessa because I thought that it started a conversation. Uh, the teacher, I found the subject matter a little disturbing to read about in the context that it was put, and I was a little shocked uh at the format that she took towards that, and I didn't care for it. Um the one like thing that I wrote down that I really wanted to make a serious note about um is that it is acceptable to me if what you are doing when you write a book about children engaging in sex is starting a conversation about these things that happen, but not if your intention is to glamorize, capitalize, or mock the subject of pedophilia and grooming in your attempt to write a bestseller that panders to people who liked my dark Vanessa. I mean, I honestly can't figure out how I feel about this book, especially after the discussion that we just had. Uh there were, you know, Frieda McFadden is obviously a very talented writer. Uh, the book is very page-turning. I do want to read more of her books, but I did not care for this book as much as I thought that I would. So for me, it's two stars. Hey, so I think we did it again. We Yeah, I know, right? We did it again. We have like that would make our group reading two out of five stars.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11:08

It's it's two for good reasons.

SPEAKER_03: 2:11:09

Yeah, yep. It's a two and you know, when I started out, it was a five for me, and it slowly went downhill. I was like, no, it's not a five-star book.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11:22

Definitely, definitely not a five-star book. Um, and and here's the thing, and and I think that it's good that we have this conversation. Because I also, you know, reading some of the five-star review or four-stars review, I think that the the touchy subject matter like we've discussed, I feel like just kind of flew over people's head. Like that wasn't their takeaway. It was just like, whoa, the plot twist. Like, I didn't see that coming. Like, well done. But but that's not how that's not the thing that you should make a twist about. Also, uh another uh thing I would like to mention too. That also rubs me a little bit wrong. The and I felt the same way about It Ends With Us, is that this book is marketed in a very specific way. Popcorn thriller, here we go. And there is no trigger warning or any indication of what the majority of this book is actually about, which is pedophilia and the abuse of the sexual abuse of children. Even the back.

SPEAKER_03: 2:12:28

It says nothing. There's no trigger warnings. There's nothing about what this book is really about. It they kind of make it seem like from the the uh jacket, they make it seem like it's just uh there's something wrong with the student. There's something off about the student.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:46

I also don't like that, and that it that also makes it feel even more exploitative because it's not being approached in a delicate way, the way that my dark finesse is very honest about what the book's gonna be about. And like we're gonna we're gonna have we're gonna get into some uncomfortable subject matter, but we know what we're all getting into, whereas this it's it's not that, and it's just it feels exploited. If people are wanting to pick up a popcorn thriller who maybe have been groomed in the past or whatever, like that's not what they came to look for in this book. And right, yeah. And I think, and again, it's emotionally manipulative to the readers to not be upfront about these like very heavy.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:29

Like even on the cover, it says it's a lesson she'll never forget. Alright, what do we have next? Next next is Tiffany's pick.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:39

Yes, and I have chosen drumroll, please. The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. It is a debut novel, and it's supposed to be twisty and fun, kind of clue-esque. I'm going to read this little blurb on the back of the book because I feel like it sums it up perfectly and like is the thing that I read that made me want to read this book. Pop your favorite Agatha Christie Who Done It into a blender with a scoop of Downton Abbey, a dash of Quantum Leap, and a liberal sprinkling of Groundhog Day, and you'll get this unique murder mystery.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:27

Ooh, that's a great description. I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 2:14:31

Right? So you go into it knowing that Evelyn will be murdered, and the the person investigating this pops in Groundhog Day style to each person involved, each suspect that it could be, and lives in their head for a day.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:49

It's it's one of each witness. One of each each day, there's eight witnesses that have like a key to the murder, and he's gotta get in each one of them to put the pieces together.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15:07

But it also has to be one of them, right? Because it's a locked room mystery.

SPEAKER_03: 2:15:11

I'm not sure yet. You know, I think there's that's the mystery to it. I'm really excited about what this one though, because Me too. Um I feel like it it's gonna be like you said, Agatha Christie. And I love Agatha Christie. Actually, one of my top five books of all time is In Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. You sent me to read that. Oh! You should read it, and we should do it on here because it's fabulous. It's been around forever though, because Agatha Christie is like older murder mystery. Um I mean, she's she's the OG.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15:52

She's the queen. So yeah, we'll be doing that book, and uh dunnits.

unknown: 2:15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 2:16:00

I would like to know if people are gonna be taking notes to really try and solve the mystery. Because that's what we're gonna be doing to me. Because we write we write our notes for the podcast as we're reading, so I'm gonna be paying such close attention, it's not even gonna be funny.

SPEAKER_01: 2:16:16

I'm really, really excited about this one. Yeah, it's very Nancy Jilly look like I'm excited. Yeah, me too. September 30th. You guys read it, tune in with us, and if you have uh questions, comments, uh theories that you had, hot takes, we want to hear them, and we'll uh we'll shout you out on the podcast because we we we want you guys to be part of the conversation too. So find us online um on all of our socials on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. Uh, you can go to our website at www.bookmatespodcast.com. And you can also email us if you have something to say at bookmatespecast at gmail.com. And we love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_03: 2:17:07

Yeah, if you have anything to say, you can email us, even if you just have a comment, or even if you didn't like something.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:14

Yeah. Like us, follow, subscribe, and uh shamelessly, if you love the podcast or like it, um leaving us a review or rating it on Spotify or Apple because that also helps a lot. I think that's it for for this month. Um, bye, bookmates. Thanks for being here. I love you. I love you too.

SPEAKER_03: 2:17:38

Uh love you too, bookmates.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:41

All right, have a good rest of your day. I love you.

SPEAKER_03: 2:17:44

I love you too. Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:45

Okay, bye.