Episode 29: Marriage
Summary: Happy Valentine’s Day, friends! While neither Holly nor Devin are superfans of this holiday, they wanted to take some time to highlight marriage with two books this week. Oddly enough, Holly’s thriller wheelhouse is chockablock full of married couples on the rocks, but Devin’s romance genre almost never centers on a couple that have already found their happily ever after. All told, though, they find the relationship dynamics of a marriage as great drivers of plot and character across genres.
Topics Discussed:
The Heart (3:09): Devin discussed The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams, a novel that turns most romance novels on its head by centering on a man working to save his marriage via an unusual book club. Gavin Scott is Nashville Legends second baseman who thinks he has it all - a loving wife, twin daughters, and a career he loves. When Thea admits that their intimate relationship has never satisfied her, he’s left desperate and on the path to divorce. To save it, he ends up in a circle of men who read romance novels to give them advice on how to navigate their relationships with their wives. Devin’s key takeaways were:
This is the first novel focused on men reading romance stories that Devin has been able to find, and the new perspective on the genre was refreshing and invigorating. She’d rather men not have to read romance novels to act as “manuals” for their own love lives, but hey, she’ll take it.
Gavin’s wife Thea carries trauma that adds feasibility to the storyline. Her sister, however, was so anti-Gavin and pro-divorce that at times it was off-putting and unnatural.
Adams had a feminist focus throughout the book and clearly strove to drive messages home about intimacy, vulnerability, and relationships. It was preachy at times but ultimately the execution on the rest of the novel was a success.
The Dagger (17:44): Holly discussed The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey, a sci-fi novel following Evelyn Caldwell, a scientist who has discovered how to clone human adults. Her recent awards and professional success is marred when she discovers that her soon-to-be ex-husband has been cheating on her… with a clone of herself named Martine. As Evelyn works to process these recent life changes and come to terms with everything, she gets a call one day from a panicked Martine; it turns out Nathan is dead and the two women must come together to clean up the mess and hide the crime. Holly’s key takeaways were:
With a fairly unusual premise, this novel dives deeply into key themes and commentary of our society, principally gender norms for women and women in marriage. Gailey explores what it means to be a woman through Evelyn and her clone, a woman re-programmed to be more docile and subservient than Evelyn is naturally.
Through the science of cloning, the reader also confronts ideas and challenges around identity - what makes you, you? What role does biology vs. experience play in making us who we are, and how much of a choice do we have?
Be mindful if you are sensitive to gore, and make sure you listen through the very end of our episode for a spoiler-filled tidbit from Holly that blew Devin’s mind!
Hot On the Shelf (35:52):
What’s Making Our Hearts Race (38:05):
Devin: Glass Onion on Netflix
Holly: Fleischman is in Trouble on Hulu
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