After Rapture Party

Sometimes, the literary crimes in these books feel so targeted that we wonder if the authors used a time machine specifically designed to tick us off. While Erin & Tori spend another week lightly dancing around subjects that they are woefully unprepared to discuss, the Young Trib Force splits the party: Lionel heads to the deep south for military training, Judd to a reeducation camp by way of...

Calling all death care workers: what happens to a body if you leave it warming in a casket for 10 hours? Erin & Tori imagine Bruce to smell pretty rank after he had to spend his entire funeral listening to Rayford Steele's apocalyptic preaching from beyond the grave. While the church congregants prepare to go into the storm (book title mention!), Judd gets abducted in broad daylight and a...

Another book, another lament from Erin & Tori regarding the amount of brain cells needed to piece together plot events that just don't make a lick of sense. After Judd & Ryan pull a Scooby-Doo on Buck Williams (those meddling kids!) by following him around Israel, Judd thinks it's totally chill to swing by the Israeli police department to absolve a heretic. Back in the states, Vick...

Even in death, Bruce Barnes manages to give Erin & Tori more layers to peel back (against their will). The Young Trib Force splits the party, sending the boys on vacation to Israel while Vicki hangs back at home to pray. Erin & Tori spin their wheels trying to figure out the cartoon physics involved in a Spy Kids-esque plane escape. In the confessions department, which host/lifelong Gleek...

Spoiler alert: the latter half of Book 9 is so especially stale that not even a tender Judd/Vicki chin lift could save it. Erin & Tori speed read through Ryan's brief stint as Home Alone's Kevin McCallister in favor of discussing scholarly Revelation lore with the After Rapture Party's biblical consultant, Geneva K. Willis. Geneva provides an invaluable look into three rapture prin...

This Heavenly Father… or rancher daddy? The Young Trib Force continues to feel God’s power, except when it comes to kidnappings (or murders or suicides or crush reciprocation). Erin & Tori thoroughly enjoy spending alone time with their favorite child, Ryan, and his new posh girl bestie that looks like a boy, Darrion. On this week’s confessions: who converted their dead grandfather’s shirt int...

Forget the quote game, listeners should grab their In-N-Out John 3:16 milkshakes and take a sip for every time Tori starts a sentence with "so, basically." Erin & Tori don their military fatigues (actual pronunciation: FA-ti-gyoos) and run drills in the woods with the militia as Book 8 comes to a nuclear close. The death strike in question conveniently rids us of a much-hated charact...

Calling all students of Global Community High School to the auditorium for an emergency assembly: we're getting UNIFORMS! Erin & Tori dress the part as they begin speedrunning the most event-packed installment of the series so far, Death Strike (not a relevant title to this half of the book, unless you count Tori's desire to suplex Coach Handlesman). Vicki gets adopted, Nicolae's p...

Ring-a-ding-ding, guess what Sunday brings! (A good ol' fashioned lobotomy.) Because they picked the same sage Pastor Bruce quote from Book 7, Erin & Tori make their way to downtown LA to report on the area's most infamous, Bieber-loving megachurch (led by a stand-up comedian with very expensive veneers). An exercise that begins rooted in positivity quickly takes a turn for the worse a...

Dear After Rapture Party guests: grab a beer and find the nearest buddy, because we've reached a MONUMENTAL TURNING POINT! After Erin & Tori realize that their show's premise has dire consequences, we dive headfirst into the latter half of Busted! to find Vicki grappling with her new Jewish foster family, the Steins, and her search for their not-dead-but-also-dubiously-discussed-renega...

Here's hoping that the title Busted! only refers to Vicki's stint in juvie and not... anything else. While Erin & Tori guide each other through Book 7's frequent rapture lore dumps in between musical interludes and Houdini facts, the Young Tribulation Force fails to fly under the radar which draws the attention of everyone's favorite roid-raging P.E. teacher, Coach Handlesman....

Another day, another post-rapture sting operation (but this time, it's in the form of a psychological experiment). Erin, Tori, and new doggy sidekick Phoenix dig into why trailer park trash Shelly is going to hell, Bruce's eternal disappointment in his chosen teens, and Judd's inability to let women live their lives. Reviewers this week include one very lucky soul who skipped books 1-5...

Extra, extra, read all about it: Judd wants YOU to know that the Underground (book title mention!) secret school newspaper was allllll his idea. The start of Book 6 brings forth illicit teacher pick-ups, staying up until 5am to create fonts, and verbal abuse from Pastor Bruce (what's new?). There's also some good ol' Catholic and Jewish shaming with which we're growing extremely fa...

Even though they're absolutely, no question, 100% on God's side, Erin & Tori cover all of the sick atheist disses the students bring back to Nicolae High one month post-rapture. Judd and Vicki battle their way through a very realistic portrayal of religious oppression from school admin, who are moonlighting as literal Disney villains. Lionel and Ryan are nowhere to be found! To round o...

Get your spirit sticks ready: the Young Trib Force is going back to school! Or rather, Tori & Erin discuss how annoying it is to constantly ruminate on the concept of school without actually going there in Part 1 of Nicolae High. Remember how we used to get semi trucks on the highway to honk their horns for funsies? That tactic actively works against Vicki as she's chased down by the conse...

It's Hell Mail numero dos (that means 2), in which scarred After Rapture Party listeners write into the show with wild church stories of their own! Anonymous emailers tell all: a sales-y poolside chat from an employee of Jesus's MLM, a long-forgotten church girl who loves to lie on Facebook, the world's shoddiest purity talk, and a very special update regarding last installment's a...

Spraining your wrist on a jet ski is a lot like putting your faith in Pastor Bruce Barnes: you're only gonna take an L in the end. The Kid/Junior/Young Tribulation Force (they're still workshopping the name) test Erin & Tori's patience as they doubt Carpathia's identity as the Antichrist because he's a total hottie. Speaking of hotties, Tori reminisces on the Bible teacher...

Antichrist whomst? Forget about that guy: Facing the Future is all about our teens nabbing the real criminals who are hellbent on committing insurance fraud. Erin & Tori read on in abject horror as a gaggle of "good cops" let Judd & Vicki gamble their odds of surviving a sting operation (and take them to Waffle House afterwards). Confessions this week include two very different e...

Check and mate, authors: Tori & Erin discover in finishing Through the Flames that they technically can re-write these books to fit their hearts' desires based on a spiffy little thing called fair use. That's how they'd actually prefer to spend their time, considering the latter half of Book 3 mostly features Judd and Lionel donning their best Jason Bourne impressions while Vicki f...

Resuming their 40-book journey with a newfound vigor, Erin & Tori curb their thirsting over the (blond, Romanian) Antichrist Nicolae Carpathia as he wins Judd, Vicki, Lionel, and Ryan to his cause by reciting every country on Earth in alphabetical order. Also, are we positive the Antichrist isn't actually Pastor Bruce Barnes? This week's confessions theme is: moments so mortifying that...

Welcome to the first installment of Hell Mail, in which the (equally traumatized) After Rapture Party listeners write into the show with wild church stories of their own! Anonymous emailers regale us with tales featuring "interesting" characters at church (who most certainly shouldn't be around children), scrubbing grout to become godlier gals, and a certain pastor who put a ring on...

Erin & Tori finish icing the cake that is Second Chance, which comes too little too late since Vicki is starting her 7-year rapture diet (staying skinny for God is priority numero uno, the authors have led us to believe). Judd becomes a father, Ryan is 12, and Lionel contemplates how morgues work as the group works to stay under the radar (ACAB) and figure out how to move forward in a world wi...

Erin & Tori climb aboard the After Rapture Party express to discuss the second installment in Left Behind: The Kids. Everybody deserves a second chance (book title mention!), and we're hoping our protagonists don't need a third... or fifth.. or seventh and final chance. Erin & Tori walk through moments of perfectly normal teen self-flagellation, slow-speed car parking, and little b...

Listen to Erin & Tori grow fatigued in real time as they wrap up the second half of The Vanishings, in which the authors extensively & dramatically draw out an event that happens in the blink of an eye. Runaway planes, tankers, and limos wreck our teen protagonists' lives and they must find solace with the one adult who definitely doesn't have any weird intentions: Pastor Bruce Bar...

In the opening installation of what's shaping up to be quite a long marathon, Erin & Tori recap the first half of The Vanishings! We meet the four teens we're following along this 40 book journey: Judd the runaway, Vicki the rebel, Lionel the liar, and Ryan the skeptic. Aided by the literary world's most clunky exposition, we learn all about why these teens denied God and where we...