Booktails Podcast

🦇BLACK HISTORY HALLOWEEN 5🦇 🚨Trigger warning🚨:This book and our conversation on it includes graphic violence including infanticide and sexual assault. Look after yourselves.  This October we are celebrating Black History Month and Halloween together- delving into spooky, paranormal tales written by black writers. 🐈‍⬛ For our final book in this series, we had to pull out the big guns. It’s ti...

🦇BLACK HISTORY HALLOWEEN 4🦇 This October we are celebrating Black History Month and Halloween together- delving into spooky, paranormal tales written by black writers. 🐈‍⬛ This week in ‘White is for Witching’ by Helen Oyeyemi, a haunted house is calling your name and no matter how far you go you won’t be able to escape its’ secret passageways and ghostly footsteps… 🧙‍♀️ Miranda is slipping aw...

🦇BLACK HISTORY HALLOWEEN 3🦇 This October we are celebrating Black History Month and Halloween together- delving into spooky, paranormal tales written by black writers. 🐈‍⬛ What’s next in our Jack o’ Lantern of Treats? ‘The Gilda Stories’ by Jewelle Gomez 🧛‍♀️ A runaway slave from Mississippi becomes a humane vampire and travels the US for over 200 years watching society change around her.  Ex...

🦇BLACK HISTORY HALLOWEEN 2🦇 This October we are celebrating Black History Month and Halloween together- delving into spooky, paranormal tales written by black writers.  If you haven’t already, go and check out last week’s episode on Die for Me by Shirlene Obuobi, with special guest Alyssa from Stories and Spoilers Podcast!  But next up we have another treat for you: the deliciously creepy ‘The R...

🦇BLACK HISTORY HALLOWEEN 1 🦇 This October we are celebrating Black History Month and Halloween together- delving into spooky, paranormal tales written by black writers.  Up first we are so excited to team up with Alyssa from Stories and Spoilers Podcast who recommended this book to us!  Paranormal romance. Strong female lead.  Age gap.  Chosen family.  And so much more!  This week’s book is ‘Die...

📆BIRTH YEAR PICK 2: 1994 📆 Before we get into spooky season it’s time for a ✨Booktails Interlude! ✨ We are doing a two book series based on our years of birth! 🐣 Up next, Rachel has chosen a book published in 1994, Serena’s year of birth: ‘By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept’ by Paulo Coelho. It’s a timeless tale of a young woman at a crossroads in her life who reconnects with her first l...

📆BIRTH YEAR PICK 1: 1990 📆 Before we get into spooky season it’s time for a ✨Booktails Interlude! ✨ We are doing a two book series based on our years of birth! 🐣 First up Serena has chosen a book published in 1990, Rachel’s year of birth: The Game (first published as ‘Invitation to the Game’ by Monica Hughes. 🎲 We have just three words to sell it to you:  Dystopian. Game.  Survival.  ♟️ And...

End of Days 4 🛘🔥☄️🌊 This series on Booktails Podcast we are using the enduring narrative of the four horsemen of the apocalypse as our inspiration to read four books based around War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. 🏇🏇🏇🏇 And now here we are at the end of the end. It’s time for possibly the bleakest of all: famine. 🌾 Our book for this topic is Kirstin Hannah’s ‘The Four Winds’: the heart wrenc...

End of Days 3 🛘🔥☄️🌊 This series on Booktails Podcast we are using the enduring narrative of the four horsemen of the apocalypse as our inspiration to read four books based around War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. 🏇🏇🏇🏇 Today, step up to the stage Pestilence! That’s right! We’re talking locusts, demons, disease and all things plague. 🦗 And we’re travelling back to medieval Black Death times...

End of Days 2 🛘🔥☄️🌊 We know what everyone’s first thought is when they hear “four horsemen of the apocalypse”: sexy. 🏇🏇🏇🏇 When we found out about this Romantasy series you know we had to choose one for our end of days series. And yes before you ask, the idea of the mythical bringers of war, pestilence, famine and death as romantic heroes is DEFINITELY problematic. But maybe also camp and fun...

End of Days 🛘🔥☄️🌊 It’s the end of the world as we know it here at Booktails. 🌏 For the next few weeks we are using the enduring narrative of the four horsemen of the apocalypse as our inspiration to read four books based on War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. 🏇🏇🏇🏇 We are starting with the most brutal and mysterious of them all: Death. But what do we know of the big man with the scythe? 💀 We...

Enemies to Lovers Summer 4 🍉🕶️ It’s summer, readers, and if you’re not already feeling hot you’re about to! Here at Booktails, this year’s summer series is all about that most beloved of tropes: when the enemies finally become lovers! 🔥 Sadly we have come to the end of our pastel stack of romance reads and it is time for ‘Summer in the City’ by Alex Aster. Yes, of Lightlark fame! ☀️🌆 New York i...

Enemies to Lovers Summer 3 🍉🕶️ It’s summer, readers, and if you’re not already feeling hot you’re about to! Here at Booktails, this year’s summer series is all about that most beloved of tropes: when the enemies finally become lovers! 🔥 Up next is our first foray into Ali Hazelwood: ‘Not in Love’! 🖤 Rue is a badass sexy scientist, whose only romantic entanglements are hookups which can never re...

Enemies to Lovers Summer 2 🍉🕶️ It’s summer, readers, and if you’re not already feeling hot you’re about to! Here at Booktails, this year’s summer series is all about that most beloved of tropes: when the enemies finally become lovers! 🔥 Up next in our pastel coloured range of romance reads is ‘Beach Read’ by Emily Henry. And we all know you can’t go wrong with Emily Henry.  Romance writer Januar...

Enemies to Lovers Summer 1 🍉🕶️ It’s summer, readers, and if you’re not already feeling hot you’re about to! Here at Booktails, this year’s summer series is all about that most beloved of tropes: when the enemies finally become lovers! 🔥 We have a pastel coloured range of romance reads to share and we are starting off with ‘Enemies to Lovers’ by Laura Jane Williams (you have to respect that namin...

Local Voices 3 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This summer we are delighted to be bringing you some more interviews with local writers! 📝 The Scottish literary scene has never been stronger, and these writers are some of the most exciting working at the moment! 📚 This week is the turn of Ambrose Parry and ‘The Death of Shame’. 💀 In the latest Raven and Fisher adventure, they must investigate the mysterious death of a...

Local Voices 2 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This summer we are delighted to be bringing you some more interviews with local writers! 📝  The Scottish literary scene has never been stronger, and these writers are some of the most exciting working at the moment! 📚 For this week’s episode we had so many laughs chatting to Andrew Meehan about his newest book, Hey Man. 👬 This little gem of a book is the story of a frien...

Local Voices 1 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 This summer we are delighted to be bringing you some more interviews with local writers! 📝  The Scottish literary scene has never been stronger, and these writers are some of the most exciting working at the moment! 📚 We are starting off with someone familiar- Chris Brookmyre joins us to discuss his newest book, Quite Ugly One Evening.🩸 Jack Parlabane is back again, a li...

Pride Stories 4 🏳️‍🌈💖 Voulez-vous to come on a coming of age journey with us from 80s Blackburn to the Australia of today and back again with a little help from Bollywood, musical theatre and ABBA? Gimme gimme gimme! 🎶 That’s the name of the game and we will be thanking abba for the music, both metaphorically and as actual characters in the book, examining the tragic music teacher who shows Raf...

Pride Stories 3 🏳️‍🌈💖 Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today for the third  instalment of this year’s Pride Stories season, and it’s time for the wedding of the year! 💒 When the groom’s best friend and bride’s brother are sent ahead to prepare for the happy day they initially think the trip will be a nightmare, but soon sparks fly and their time trapped together will seem much too short…🎩...

Pride Stories 2 🏳️‍🌈💖 Once upon a time there was a princess, 12 identical huntsmen, a wicked stepmother, a talking lion and some magical teeth. And that’s only the half of it. 👑 We are so excited to be joined by this book’s author, Ry Herman, today to discuss familial and romantic love, imposter syndrome, the enduring appeal of fairytales and many new LGBTQIA+ picks to add to our TBR! 🧚 So, ma...

Pride Stories 1 Happy Pride month Book Besties! 🏳️‍🌈💖 We are starting off STRONG with the wonderful tale of a lesbian retirement community in the apocalyptic near-future. Resident Hannah is ill and has decided to end her life on her own terms and is celebrating with the party to end all parties! But will the long lost love of her life reply to the invitation before time runs out for good? 👩‍❤️‍...

Bookshop Pick 2 We are continuing our Bookshop Picks this week! We found ourselves with a couple of episodes to fill before our next theme so we decided to have some fun!🕶️ Rachel and Serena set off to their local bookshop and decided to choose each other a random book!📖 But it wasn’t quite that simple! They had to choose two prompts from a hat to dictate their choice and had only ten minutes to...

Bookshop Pick 1 It’s a bit of a different one for us this week! We found ourselves with a couple of episodes to fill before our next theme so we decided to have some fun!🕶️ Rachel and Serena set off to their local bookshop and decided to choose each other a random book!📖 But it wasn’t quite that simple! They had to choose two prompts from a hat to dictate their choice and had only ten minutes to...

Recent Adaptations 4 Blessed be the fruit 🍈 This week we are returning to Gilead to meet Agnes and Daisy and see a whole new side of a certain aunt we thought we knew. 🤫 Expect discussions on the differences in style between the Testaments and the Handmaid’s Tale, insights into entirely new factions of Gilead society and beyond, changes between the book and the adaptation and how scarily the Tes...