Besties and the Books Podcast

Send us Fan Mail It’s week 6 over here in our Besties & the Books Harry Potter Mini Episode Marathon!  Today we’re discussing the second to last book! The finale eve, if you will. And truly… we felt nothing. So we need to know. Is it just us and our hollow tin chests? 😂 Or did you need to be 12 to get attached to these characters?! Join Ashley and Liz as they read the entire HP series for the...

Send us Fan Mail Did you hear?! A couple of weeks ago we did our very first author interview with Lindsay Straube | @oxfordlemon and talked to her all about her new Amazon bestselling debut love triangle romance book, Split or Swallow.  So what are we doing today? We’re taking our deep dive into the plot, so this one if for all the girlies who’ve read it, and who have been DYING to discuss it.  Ar...

Send us Fan Mail It’s week 5 over here in this crazy Harry Potter whirlwind of a miniseries! Join Ashley and Liz as they read the entire HP series for the first time as full grown adults! Do you want our commentary? How about our thoughts on whether or not it’s controversial enough for our parents to BAN us from reading it as kids? We give you all of our opinions. Episode 5 covers book 5: Harry Po...

Send us Fan Mail Let’s talk about fall, bay-bee. Let’s talk about Hall-O-Ween.  Cuz we are fall girlies over here at the BATB Podcast! And we think a lot of you are too.  Today we’re bringing you a full episode of spooky season reads. Ashley and Liz count down five book suggestions (EACH) that we think will put you in the cozy Halloween mood, and that you definitely should add to your TBR! Then we...

Send us Fan Mail It’s week 4 of Ashley and Liz’s Harry Potter journey and BOY do we have some things to say about this 752 page book. Shockingly… Yes, we were banned from reading Harry Potter as kids, so we are spending these 8 weeks discovering everything for the first time… with you!  Episode 4 covers book 4: Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire. The first five-ish minutes are spoiler free with...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s Episode is BATB Podcast very first author interview! With none other than Lindsay Straube, Amazon BESTSELLING author of her popular love triangle basilisk romance, Split or Swallow. *Author interviews will always be spoiler free so everyone can enjoy them and determine whether or not we want to add these books to our never-ending TBR. So, proceed with absolutely NO caution...

Send us Fan Mail Here we are in week 3 of Ashley & Liz’s Harry Potter Minisode Series! Yes, we were banned from reading Harry Potter as kids, and yes, we’re reading them for the first time now as elder Millennials. And we wanna talk about them with you!  Episode 3 covers book 3: Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban. The first five-ish minutes are spoiler free with our one sentence rapid...

Send us Fan Mail We’re back in your ears with Part 3 of your favorite silly series where we respond to “Am I The A Hole” Bookish Questions from Reddit, and then pose those same questions to you, our listeners!  Do we think that curating your own free little library to NOT include ancient Tom Clancy paperbacks makes you an a hole? What about giving away the book your friend wrote, then gifted to yo...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to Ashley & Liz’s Harry Potter Minisode series!  We were BANNED from reading Harry Potter as kids, so naturally, we’d grow up to read them in our mid 30’s and podcast about it. Episode 2 covers book 2: Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets. The first five-ish minutes are spoiler free with our one sentence rapid star reviews. Then Liz takes us on a poetic journ...

Send us Fan Mail Where did we come from? Where did we go? Where did we come from… Cotten Eye Joe?  Today on the pod Ashley and Liz tell you all about our recent Alaska Cruise Vacay, and how much fun it was to buddy read our ARCs of Split or Swallow by Lindsay Straube @oxfordlemon while sailing through fjords and glaciers! It truly was magical.  Then we grace your ears with one sentence reviews of...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Ashley & Liz’s first mini episode bonus series, this round featuring Harry Potter!  If you’ve been following our “satanic panic” series then you know, we were BANNED from reading Harry Potter as children, so we’re reclaiming that experience for ourselves by reading this series FOR THE FIRST TIME as mid 30’s fantasy obsessed book podcasters. And we’re takin’ you all...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is exactly what it sounds like! After our last “unpopular opinions” episode, you all sent us your most unpopular bookish opinions so Ashley and Liz can react to them. And we sure had a blast!  We start off with some easy ones like: do you dog ear your pages or satisfyingly crack those book spines? Then we move into some more polarizing unpopular opinions about House o...

Send us Fan Mail Today is the day Ashley and Liz take the deep dive. You know us, we’re usually Sparknotes gals… but in order to paint the entire Satanic Panic picture we have to take you back to where it all began…so we did the research!  What exactly started our parent’s obsession with the occult, ultimately resulting in them banning us from reading Harry Potter? Was it Charles Manson, Ted Bundy...

Send us Fan Mail Believe it or not, we’re on our FOURTH installment in our Book Trope Series! Today is all about the book Ashley picked for Liz based on her top five favorite book tropes, and book boyfriend qualities: A Touch of Gold & Madness by K. L. Devore.  Did this book cover all of Liz’s bases? Like a morally grey MMC, mutually healing trauma, and enemies to lovers? Or did we uncover “ic...

Send us Fan Mail Today is the big kick off of our Satanic Panic Series! We laugh, we cry, we use this platform to help heal ourselves, and hopefully you all, by discussing topics that are difficult, but ultimately helped to shape us as people. First and foremost, take care of yourselves. Please be aware of Trigger Warnings, and adjust your listening as necessary. Your mental health comes first.  A...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re back for our fourth installment in our “Books That Made Us” nostalgia series, covering our reread of a classic: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. We venture back to highschool in the early 2000’s to remember all the books that made the deepest impact on us, even if we didn’t realize it then. The themes, the quotes, the characters… everything holds up to make The...

Send us Fan Mail We’re back at it with Part 2 of the popular series where we respond to “Am I The A Hole” Bookish Questions on Reddit, and then pose those same questions to you, our listeners!  Do we think getting upset at your coworker who won’t leave you alone about books is okay? Does telling your group of friends at a party that your husband isn’t “well read” make you an a hole? What about rea...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to the BATB Podcast, where your hosts Liz and Ashley pick books for each other to read based on our most liked and least liked tropes so that we can talk to you about them! Well… sometimes that’s what we do! Today is our first follow up episode to our favorite tropes / “non-icks,” where we report back on The Book of Azrael by Amber V. Nicole, the book Liz picked for A...

Send us Fan Mail You all know that as proud Millennials, Ashley and Liz like to use this podcast as a way to take us all back. So picture it. It’s 2004. You’re reluctantly reading some book your English teacher assigned. Maybe it’s The Great Gatsby, Fahrenheit 451, or Brave New World. You want to like it, you sort of do, but between the New Found Glory concerts and sneaking away to Warped Tour, it...

Send us Fan Mail Today we continue our ACOTAR Deep Dive Series into book two, A Court of Mist and Fury!  Come along this journey with us as we hash out all the major plot points, meet the inner circle, and ask important questions like IS TAMLIN REDEEMABLE? Do you want to discuss these books with us in real time? Find us on Fable @bestiesandthebookclub for more in depth discussion on this series, a...

Send us Fan Mail We love unpopular *book* opinions, yes we do! We love unpopular *book* opinions, how about you?! On today’s episode Ashley and Liz delve into the world of unpopular bookish opinions sent in by you, our listeners and subscribers!  Do we cringe when a popular book is being torn up in order to be rebound? Do books set unrealistic expectations for men? Was Fourth Wing overhyped? Is Sa...

Send us Fan Mail Today is all about the book that started it all: A Court of Thorns & Roses by mother herself, Sarah J. Maas. We take a deep (ish) dive into book one, and kick off our five-part ACOTAR series, because we couldn’t soldier on with this podcast and just skip over such an important part of our book journey! We also have a hilarious fave or fail of the week where we get into that go...

Send us Fan Mail On today’s episode Ashley and Liz respond to AITA Reddit questions with bookish themes. Do we think you should kick the husbands out for a weekly book club night with the girls? Is loaning out your mom’s books and not getting them back okay? What about being on your phone reading during formal events? You heard all of our opinions here first! Including our best and worst audiobook...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when Ashley and Liz accidentally read different books for an episode?! We thought we were both reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper - the middle school nostalgia read we previously picked for this series. HOWEVER… we didn’t. Listen on to find out how that snaphoo occurred, and what we thought about the nostalgia books we DID read. We’ve also got STRONG opinions...

Send us Fan Mail WHAT THINGS DO NOT GIVE US THE ICK?! There are so many! And we cannot wait to discuss them with you! If you’ve been following along, you know we did an entire series on “what DOES give us the ick.” So now, we’re flippin that on its head. First, Ashley and Liz delve into the world of book tropes, laying out our top five that we can’t live without. Then we move into our top qualitie...