Bookmates Book Club Podcast

In our second episode, we discuss our June Book Club Selection:
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Synopsis:
Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.
She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die

Click here to send fan mail!

Support the show

Want to support our show? Subscribe at the link below to receive episode updates and a shout out on our show!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2359887/support
Find us on social media! We want to hear your thoughts!
https://linktr.ee/bookmatespodcasthttps://www.bookmatespodcast.com/
Email us at [email protected]

In our first episode, we discuss our May Book Club Selection:
The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter.
Synopsis:
In the quaint religious town of Seagate, abstaining from food brings one closer to God.
But Beatrice Bolano is hungry. She craves the forbidden: butter, flambé, marzipan. As Seagate takes increasingly extreme measures to regulate every calorie its citizens consume, Beatrice must make a choice: give up her secret passion for cooking or leave the only community she has known.
Elsewhere, Reiko Rimando has left her modest roots for a college tech scholarship in the big city. A flawless student, she is set up for success...until her school pulls her funding, leaving her to face either a mountain of debt or a humiliating return home. But Reiko is done being at the mercy of the system. She forges a third path—outside of the law.
With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, Beatrice and Reiko each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.
A startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act.

Click here to send fan mail!

Support the show

Want to support our show? Subscribe at the link below to receive episode updates and a shout out on our show!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2359887/support
Find us on social media! We want to hear your thoughts!
https://linktr.ee/bookmatespodcasthttps://www.bookmatespodcast.com/
Email us at [email protected]

Welcome Bookmates! We're Double Booked for April!

Join us as we discuss 2024's Goodreads Choice Award Winner and Book of the Year Finalist:

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Does it earn its title?

Though this was very different than we expected, we really enjoyed it! Thought provoking, funny, while poignant. This book sure made for some deep thoughts and fun conversations!

What did you think of The Wedding People? Do you agree with our take? What was your biggest takeaway from this book? We want to know!

Synopsis:

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

Click here to send fan mail!

Support the show

Want to support our show? Subscribe at the link below to receive episode updates and a shout out on our show!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2359887/support
Find us on social media! We want to hear your thoughts!
https://linktr.ee/bookmatespodcasthttps://www.bookmatespodcast.com/
Email us at [email protected]

Welcome back to Bookmate Besties! We are joined once again by Tiffany's sister, Deynece, to continue the saga as we discuss A Court of Mist and Fury!
Synopsis:
Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she's now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.
As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre's hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future-and the future of a world in turmoil.

Click here to send fan mail!

Support the show

Want to support our show? Subscribe at the link below to receive episode updates and a shout out on our show!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2359887/support
Find us on social media! We want to hear your thoughts!
https://linktr.ee/bookmatespodcasthttps://www.bookmatespodcast.com/
Email us at [email protected]

Welcome to our Season 1 Finale episode! Join as we discuss our final book of 2024, a poignant and sweet winter romance for our December Book Club Selection!
A Winter in New York by Josie Silver
Synopsis:
A young chef stumbles on a secret family recipe that might lead her to the love—and life—she’s been looking for in this stunning novel.
When Iris decides to move to New York to restart her life, she realizes she underestimated how big the Big Apple really is—all the nostalgic movies set in New York she’d watched with her mom while eating their special secret-recipe gelato didn’t quite do it justice.
But Bobby, Iris’s best friend, isn’t about to let her hide away. He drags her to a famous autumn street fair in Little Italy, and as they walk through the food stalls, a little family-run gelateria catches her eye—could it be the same shop that’s in an old photo of her mother’s?
Curious, Iris returns the next day and meets the handsome Gio, who tells her that the shop is in danger of closing. His uncle, sole keeper of their family’s gelato recipe, is in a coma, so they can’t make more. When Iris samples the last remaining batch, she realizes that their gelato and her gelato are one and the same. But how can she tell them she knows their secret recipe when she’s not sure why Gio’s uncle gave it to her mother in the first place?
Iris offers her services as a chef to help them re-create the flavor and finds herself falling for Gio and his family. But when Gio’s uncle finally wakes up, all of the secrets Iris has been keeping threaten to ruin the new life—and new love—she’s been building all winter long.

Click here to send fan mail!

Support the show

Want to support our show? Subscribe at the link below to receive episode updates and a shout out on our show!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2359887/support
Find us on social media! We want to hear your thoughts!
https://linktr.ee/bookmatespodcasthttps://www.bookmatespodcast.com/
Email us at [email protected]