The Worst Bestsellers

Kait, Renata, and their guest Megan (of Academic Inquiry Into Popular Culture ) read X-Men: X-Cutioner’s Song by Scott Lobdell, Peter David & Fabian Nicieza, with art by Brandon Peterson, Jae Lee, Andy Kubert, & Greg Capullo . It’s an X-citing Peak 90s comics crossover event, featuring an overload of X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, and X-tra tight Spandex. Come for the incomprehensib...

Kait, Renata, and their guest Patrick read a book a ghostwriter wrote based on a computer game created by Tom Clancy based on a nonexistent website. If that sounds confusing, it’s still not as confusing as this corporate espionage-y Orientalist mess of a novel. Please don’t hack our website and/or submarine! Dot Com! Readers advisory : Here. Footnotes: Tom Clancy’s Ruthless.com o...

Happy early Mother’s Day! Kait, Renata, and their guest Rachel read their moms’ favorite book, One For the Money by Janet Evanovich. It’s the origin story of Spandex-clad rookie bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Fellow Jersey Girl Kait has a lot to say about the book’s portrayal of Trenton, Renata has a lot to say about her mom, and Duarte has a lot to say about Stephanie&#8217...

Kait, Renata, and their guest Caitlin read Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard . And–because we care about the youth of America–we also read the young readers’ adaptation, Lincoln’s Last Days , by Bill O’Reilly and Dwight Jon Zimmerman . These books put forth the truly shocking thesis that Abraham Lincoln was a good dude and John Wilkes Booth wa...

  For part 2 of Nemesis Month, Kait, Renata, and returning guest Naomi read Hollow Earth by Kait’s nemesis John Barrowman (and Carole Barrowman, with whom Kait has no particular beef). It’s a confusing middle grade novel about twins with magic art powers, and the totally not derivative secret society that wants to control those art powers. Or destroy their art powers. Or use their...

Kait, Renata, and Rob Lowe’s Other Nemesis Steve read Stories I Can’t Tell My Friends by Renata’s Nemesis, Rob Lowe. In addition to a lot of grade-A 80s celebrity gossip, we learned a lot about Rob Lowe, such as how important he thinks celebrities are and how Cary Grant once gave him a soap on a rope. Listen now to hear Renata over-explain why Rob Lowe is “a hot Paul Harvey...

Kait, Renata, and their guests Ally (of Join the Girl Gang ) and Katelyn (of Women of Library History ) read the classic evangelical Christian romance novel Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers . It’s AU Bible fanfiction based on the Book of Hosea, a minor prophet’s story of a fallen woman and the man who loved her, and also Israel. Francine Rivers has transformed it into the story of a g...

Kait, Renata, and their guest Margaret (of Two Bossy Dames and Appointment Television ) read The Perfect Letter by Chris Harrison . It’s a somewhat competently written romance novel by the host of The Bachelor (and/or an uncredited, under-appreciated ghostwriter). Sadly for us, it has nothing to do with the seedy world of reality television and is instead set in the wholesome world of publis...

  Kait, Renata, and their returning guest Nicole (of OWL Reviews ) read Gerald’s Game by Stephen King and concluded: there’s a good reason this isn’t one of King’s better-known works. What should have been a compelling psychological horror short story is a gross, bloated novel about the importance of sex paperwork. (Of course, regular listeners of Worst Bestsellers are...

For this special episode, Kait, Renata, and their guests Amy (of Join the Girl Gang and Panels ), Caroline (of Fantastic Fangirls and Panels ), and Samuel (a dazzling youth) all read Twilight Life and Death, the 10th anniversary, gender-swapped edition of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. We broke down what we liked about the gender swapped version (Julie of the Werewolves) and what we didn’t (Je...

Tune in to our Bests & Worsts of 2015 episodes to hear us discuss these titles and read excerpts from our favorites and least favorites! Please note: We counted things that we read in 2015, regardless of publication year. We didn’t count anything that we read specifically for this podcast, so our worst books are aside from those. For that reason, we picked top 5 favorites and only 1 least favo...

As you might have noticed, Kait, Renata, and their special guest,  Bossy Dame Sophie , read  Alexander Hamilton  by Ron Chernow  and have been listening to the Broadway cast recording of  Hamilton  the musical  non-stop. We want you, too, to be in the room where it happens, so we recorded this special  Best  Bestseller bonus episode to discuss our love of  Hamilton  and do some readers advisory fo...

Tune in to our Bests & Worsts of 2015 episodes to hear us discuss these titles and read excerpts from our favorites and least favorites! Please note: We counted things that we read in 2015, regardless of publication year. We didn’t count anything that we read specifically for this podcast, so our worst books are aside from those. For that reason, we picked top 5 favorites and only 1 least favo...

Kait, Renata, and their returning guest Caitlin read The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans and unanimously agreed: it’s not nearly as bad as The Christmas Sweater was! In fact we actually… kinda liked The Mistletoe Promise ? We liked it almost as much as the heroine of this book likes sweet pork salads, which is a lot. Listen now to hear us learn what exactly a sweet pork salad i...

Kait, Renata, and their guest Sophie (of Two Bossy Dames ) read Purity by Jonathan Franzen , a length tome on technology, privacy, and mostly, how women are the worst. They are just the worst! Luckily, these women often have older men around, on whom to fixate their attention. If they’re lucky, they might even get to bone a writer! Also: Jonathan Franzen never got around to adopting that orp...

Kait, Renata, and their guests Abby ( The Librarian ) and Molly ( author of The Princesses of Iowa ) read Whisper of Death by Christopher Pike . It’s arguably even more bonkers than the last Christopher Pike book they read , even though it doesn’t even have any lizard people in it (as far as we can tell). Listen now to hear us attempt to unpack this convoluted, anti-bullying, anti-choi...

Kait, Renata, and their guests Becca and Kristi read The President Did Me From Behind And I Liked It , I Got Freaky With Santa Claus And I Liked It , and Bigfoot Did Me From Behind And I Liked It by Raven Blackbird. These self-published erotic comedies proved to be neither very erotic nor very comedic, but they are available for 99 cents on Amazon. Listen to this NSFW (unless you happen to work at...

Kait, Renata, and their guests Ashley and Sam dipped their toes into the confusing and unsanitary waters of creature erotica with Dino Park After Dark by Christie Sims & Alara Branwen . We’re still not convinced it adds up physiologically, but sometimes love is strange. A bonus (for us): it’s the shortest book we’ve read for the podcast, which gives us more time to devote to...

It’s been one year since our very first episode , when Caroline of Fantastic Fangirls read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer with us! To celebrate, we decided to return to the scene of the crime and read New Moon , the next book in the Twilight saga. Also, we decided to drink heavily while we talked about it. We crowdsourced a Worst Bestsellers drinking game and played it as we recorded. It turns...

  Kait, Renata, and their pre-clear guest Sigrid ( @SigridEllis ) read Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, a man who is on record as not believing in second drafts. It’s definitely the worst thing we’ve ever read, and also now we’re afraid we’re going to get sued. Why didn’t we just keep reading Nora Roberts books? Because then, dear listeners, we wouldn’t be able...

By popular demand, Kait, Renata, and returning guest Anna of Bellwether Friends read Grey by E. L. James. It’s Fifty Shades of Grey from the point of view of Christian Grey and his talkative cock. We went on record as… well, not quite fans of the original book, but we didn’t hate it. Unfortunately, Christian’s POV made us long for Ana’s inner goddess. If you take a dr...

Welcome to Cougartown! Kait, Renata, and their guest Kathryn read Black Hills by Nora Roberts . Nora Roberts has written over 200 books, and this one is about a murder mystery on a big cat sanctuary. It’s a sexy page-turner with something for everyone, including Duarte. We hope you have enjoyed Worst Bestsellers, because we loved this book so much that from this point forward we’re cha...

Kait, Renata, and their guest, actual scientist Sarah ( @allthatihavemet , @sarahnbay ) read Inferno by Dan Brown . It’s the fourth book about Robert Langdon, and probably the only one where he faces a problem that cannot be solved with symbology alone and must ally with the World Health Organization. We struggle to comprehend all of the book’s double, triple, and even quadruple crosse...

Kait, Renata, and their guest Kelly read The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. It’s the story of a teenage girl bravely fleeing her oppressive, zombie-infested village to start a new life where she can freely express herself. Or… to be with her true love? Actually maybe she just wants to look at the ocean for awhile. Whatever. Readers advisory : Here. Candy pairing:  Kait says...

Kait, Renata, and the ghost who lives in Kait’s apartment read True Believer by Nicholas Sparks , the inventor of the “love tragedy” genre. It’s a ghost story without ghosts and a love story without any real romantic chemistry.  Listen now to hear our fan theory of how True Believer is a crossover with Outlander ! Readers advisory : Here. Footnotes: Nicholas Sparks Confirme...