Booksmart

It's Halloween ya'll (basically), and it's time to get spooky! In this book club episode, Sue Ann a.k.a. Ma (Sunny) and Helen Sharp (Allie) review Shailee Thompson's slasher rom-com 'How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates'. This debut novel follows cinephile Jamie Prescott, who gets caught in the middle of a murder spree at a speed-dating event with her best friend Laurie and must...

On a very special episode of Booksmart for asexuality awareness week, Allie Daisy King had a chat with Alice Oseman, English author, illustrator, and screenwriter best known for creating the beloved Emmy Award-winning & New York Times best-selling queer series Heartstopper. Alice is openly aromantic asexual, which lends itself well to her plethora of characters on the aroace spectrum through h...

In this bonus episode of Booksmart, hosts Sunny and Allie meet with Canadian author Bal Khabra, of the beloved hockey romance series Off the Ice — which includes Collide , Spiral , Revolve , and Embrace . Khabra rarely does on-camera interviews and is notoriously private, but in this exclusive interview, the author shares her observations on the growing appeal of the sports romance sub-genre. The...

In this very special episode of Booksmart , co-host Sunny had the sublime opportunity to interview English actress Daisy Edgar-Jones for the Sense and Sensibility junket held in Sydney last week. Edgar-Jones plays Jane Austen's beloved Elinor Dashwood, the sensible older sister of Marianne and Margaret Dashwood, whose emotional restraint is tested when she grows attached to Edward Ferrars. The...

Welcome back to book club friends! Things are heating up down under, hence our desire to choose Jenny Jackson's New England set contemporary novel 'The Shampoo Effect' as our September book club pick. The hype surrounding this book has been hard to ignore, with VOGUE calling it one of the "best books of 2026".  Many readers have likened the reading experience to overhearing j...

The BookTok girlies have been blessed with yet another book-to-screen adaptation with Ali Hazelwood's 'The Love Hypothesis' dropping on Prime Video. But the real question is, does this adaptation and its stars Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman have chemistry? This is one of the many questions we answer in this podcast review of the buzzy adaptation, discussing the changes made from the boo...

In this episode of Booksmart, hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King take on the current romantic fiction boom and share which new love stories you should be reading. Print sales of romantic fiction have reached an all-time high worldwide, but the genre (and its many sub-genres) isn't just outselling mystery or sci-fi; it's expanding the market with its more inclusive and diverse stories....

What are these intentions Jessy speaks about, and are they good? Well that is what we are here today to find out. Welcome to  Booksmart’s  August Book Club episode! This month, we’re diving into  Good Intentions , the buzzy debut novel from Sydney-based author and entrepreneur Jessy Wu. Jessy describes the book as a college coming-of-age story meets corporate thriller - and honestly, it’s every bi...

In this instalment of Booksmart , hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King travel 125 years back in time to 1901 for Netflix’s adaptation of My Brilliant Career , the landmark Australian novel by literary icon Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, better known as Miles Franklin. A foundational feminist work in the Australian literary canon, My Brilliant Career first made its way to the big screen in 1...

In this bonus episode of Booksmart, host Allie Daisy King sits down with Australian romance author Tierney Page, known online as TierneyReads. Page is the author of the 'London Hearts' trilogy, known for their swoony male love interests, relatable heroines, and taboo romances. But she's also beloved for her viral, unfiltered, and NSFW TikTok reviews of dark romance novels. Listen to he...

In this book club episode, Sunny and Allie review Muñeca by author Cynthia Gómez. The short novel comes in at under 200 pages and promises a Gothic queer love story featuring witchcraft and revenge. Listen to hear the Booksmart girls unpack whether Muñeca's stunning cover matches the book's content & debate whether a novel set in the 1960s can be properly considered Gothic. They delve...

In this episode of Booksmart, hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King sit down with Sydney-based professional fangirl Cazzie Ahmed (@filmgirlcazzie). Ahmed tells us how harnessing her long-standing affinity for pop culture has helped her build a loyal network of more than 12k followers and a side hustle that is swiftly becoming a 5-9 outside of her already full-time 9-5 career. The girls discuss t...

In this hotly anticipated book club episode, Sunny and Allie review the most talked-about book of the year: 'Yesteryear' by Caro Claire Burke. This debut fiction novel draws on our growing cultural fascination with "tradwife" influencers, the alarming rise of conservative values among young women, and the "angry women" who can't bring themselves to look away from th...

In this bonus episode of Booksmart , hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King react to Prime Video's television adaptation of Carley Fortune's popular young adult romance novel, 'Every Summer After'. The show, titled 'Every Year After' , dropped this week, hot on the heels of the streamer's very successful adaptation of Elle Kennedy's 'Off Campus' series, but...

In this episode of Booksmart, hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King sit down with seasoned Australian journalist and television presenter Georgie Tunny on the launch day of her debut novel, Over to You . Over to You follows three best friends — Carter, Naya, and Greta — as they navigate the competitive Australian media industry while trying to hold their friendship together. Tunny draws on her m...

In this very special mini episode of Booksmart , Sunny is joined by the brains behind Netflix’s adaptation of 'Remarkably Bright Creatures', author and executive producer Shelby Van Pelt and Director and writer Olivia Newman. This conversation sees Sunny talk to these incredible minds about the book-to-screen adaptation process, the difficulty of grounding a story about an octopus in reali...

In their fourth book club episode, Sunny and Allie review 'My Dear You' by Rachel Khong. The book is a collection of ten short stories, written in as many years, exploring race, connection, transformation, and grief. Khong's protagonists compel us to confront some of life's biggest questions, hidden beneath the veil of unusual, paranormal scenarios. Here, Sunny and Allie reconsider...

The original hockey romance has finally gotten its own TV adaptation. In this episode, Sunny and Allie review episodes 1-7 of Prime Video's new 'Off Campus' series, based on the best-selling novels by Elle Kennedy. But unlike their prior discussions on book adaptations, only Allie has read the books the adaptation is based on (and trust me, she's read them enough for the both of us...

In this very chaotic Booksmart special, Allie holds Sunny hostage to explain all thirteen books in the ever-expanding 'Off Campus' universe by Canadian author Elle Kennedy ahead of season one of the screen adaptation dropping on Prime Video on May 12. Elle Kennedy is one of the pioneers of the contemporary sports romance novel. Her first hockey romance novel, ‘The Deal’, was released in 2015, year...

Move over Sylvia Plath, a new foundational feminist author has entered the chat. Dee Salmin, esteemed radio presenter and modern dating, sex, and love expert, has released her debut book, ‘It’s Not Love, Actually’. From ‘Boy Sober’ to ‘Femcels’ and the timeless question of ‘are the straights okay?, she tackles myriad topics present in the lives of young folk in 2026. In this episode of Booksmart,...

This is not a drill. Gus Everett has been found (DEAD). Sunny and Allie have convened interstate for an emergency Booksmart recording in response to the news that Patrick Schwarzenegger will be the leading man in 20th Century Studios’ adaptation of Beach Read by beloved author Emily Henry. Spoiler: like the rest of the internet, they’re not happy. Listen to find out why. 

In their third book club episode, Sunny and Allie review  ‘If I Ruled the World’  by Amy DuBois Barnett. The book, which has been compared to  ‘Devil Wears Prada’  and  ‘Empire’,  takes readers on a wild and immersive journey through cut-throat NYC in the late 90s based on DuBois Barnett’s real-life experiences working as a Black editor at major American magazines. It’s a messy, honest love letter...

What happens when a devoted reader and book content creator gets a book deal? Hosts Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King explore this and more with their first guest, new author Lily Crozier, who released her gothic Beauty & The Beast retelling 'Vow of Eternal Night' earlier this month. Join them as they discuss working in publishing, writing redeemable yet convincing villains, and debate...

What makes a good romance novel? What turns it from a read that that simply fills your time, into something occupying your mind, day and night, eliciting giggling and the kicking of one's feet? THAT is the question that Booksmart sets out to answer in today's episode, using B.K. Borison's And Now, Back to You as a case study. This episode is brought to you by QBD Books, bringing books to readers f...

Does depicting taboo relationships automatically mean endorsing them? Does having an interesting personal story automatically make you a good storyteller? And further, how does an author follow up a seminal debut? These are the central questions that Sunny Adcock and Allie Daisy King set out to answer in today's episode of Booksmart, using writer and former child actor Jennette McCurdy's f...