Mary: It’s time once again for YA Book Club, where we share our love of young adult lit by reading the most interesting picks we can find. Today we’re talking about Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White. This apocalyptic tale follows Benji, a 16-year-old transgender boy, as he attempts to escape his claustrophobic religious cult.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: Briefly, A Delicious Life
Kelli: Happy New Year! I’m allowed to say that through the end of January, right?
Emily: I say ‘til the end of February. Let people ease into 2023. Haven’t we earned that?
Kelli: We may be a little late, but better late than never, and we are finally ready to discuss Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens. I picked this book because we love queer ghost stories here, and I’m also a fan of queer historical fiction (girls kissing but it’s not ALLOWED? Sign me up). This one also sparked my interest in that it’s actually from the perspective of the ghost, which is something we don’t get all that often. Ghost stories are scary because ghosts are unknown, and with that element removed, a ghost story turns into something melancholic rather than horrifying.
How did you feel about the way this book approached ghosts?
Read moreIn This House, We Watched Skinamarink
Mary: Skinamarink was poised to be the hot new horror movie of the moment, if you take TikTok’s word for it. I kept seeing videos touting how scary the film was, or how it was the best in a new wave of analog horror stories. After the youngest member of my D&D party talked about how much he enjoyed it, and after it got a limited release for one weekend in my town, I bought a ticket and went.
It was… not what I expected.
Read moreOur Favorite Things of 2022: The Blog Post
(A24)
If you’ve been a listener of our podcast for a while, you know that we usually do an annual episode where we each list our three favorite pieces of media from the past year. We decided to do things a little differently this year and enter 2023 as haters (check out our Colleen Hoover Hatepisode for more on that), but that doesn’t mean we don’t still love stuff! Read on for our faves of 2022 — and let us know yours, too.
Read moreYA Book Club: Whiteout
Mary: It is officially the holiday season, and we’re beginning the celebrations with Whiteout, a collaboratively written novel by Nicola Yoon, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, and Nic Stone – all STARS of the YA genre!
Read moreLet's Get Weird
Roku Channel
Mary: We are here today to talk about our best friends, Weird Al Yankovic and Daniel Radcliffe. JK, we are here to talk about Weird:The Al Yankovic Story, a parody biopic starring Radcliffe and focusing on Yankovic’s life – sort of. I know that both of us have been hyped about this movie for a long time – years?? Hard to say – so what drew you to it? Did you listen to Weird Al growing up? Obviously Daniel Radcliffe was a draw!
Read moreYA Book Club: The Getaway by Lamar Giles
Emily: Welcome back to YA book club! We’re here to chat about The Getaway, the latest novel from Lamar Giles. We read Lamar Giles’ Not So Pure and Simple for YA book club back in February 2020 (simpler times), and we LOVED it. So we were super excited to pick this one up.
The Getaway is the story of Jay, who’s living his best life at Karloff Country, one of the world’s most famous resorts. We get serious Disney World vibes from this place. It is Disney World, basically. Anyway, Jay’s got good friends, a great family, and a job he loves, working after school at the property’s main theme park. Outside, the world might be falling apart, but inside the resort, people can escape from their problems. But behind this perfect community are dark secrets. When the richest and most powerful families arrive and don’t leave, employees discover that the resort has been selling shares in an end-of-the-world oasis. The world may be ending, but the most powerful people will remain safe. Now Jay and the rest of the resort’s employees will be the ones to care for them, whether they like it or not.
Spoilers to follow obviously.
Read moreSuch Sights to Show You: Hellraiser (2022)
(Hulu)
Kyle: A question: is it too much flesh or not enough flesh?
Mary: Wow, this is a big thing to start off with, isn’t it? For me, this Hellraiser has too much flesh, because I personally prefer the latex and leather of the original. That said, I think the way the flesh was stripped off of some of the cenobites was honestly very creative. I’d never have thought to use skin as a stylish hood.
But maybe we should back up before diving into such a question.
As you might have guessed, friend of the pod Kyle is joining me to talk about Hellraiser (2022), the latest installment of the Hellraiser franchise. It’s been years since we’ve gotten a Hellraiser movie, and even longer since we’ve gotten a good one. I know that we’ve both been eagerly anticipating this release, so I’m pumped to finally get to discuss it with you. Or, well, discuss it more. We did talk about it when we watched it! What stood out to you most about this film? What were you most excited to see?
(Some spoilers for the Hellraiser series to follow)
Read moreMy Best Friend's Exorcism: This Time There's A Movie
via Amazon Studios
Kelli: Regular listeners of our podcast and readers of our blog will know that there are several things we’re deeply obsessed with, and one of those things is the novel My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. We even did a whole episode about it! So you can imagine that we were very, very pumped when we learned that the book was going to be adapted for the screen, and that we’ve been waiting on tenterhooks ever since.
Read moreQueer Girl Book Club: The Verifiers
Emily: Queer Girl Book Club is back in action, and this time we’re talking about the mystery novel The Verifiers by Jane Pek. The Verifiers is Jane Pek’s debut novel, introducing amateur sleuth Claudia Lin. Claudia is a mystery novel-loving twenty-something who's just been recruited by Veracity, a referral-only online dating detective agency. But when one of the agency’s clients goes missing, Claudia finds herself breaking the rules to dive deep into the secret world of people’s online lives and corporate deceit.
Some spoilers to follow.
Read more