well hello all you beautiful people you know what time it is [Music] ladies and gents guys and dolls and everyone in between gather round get you something real nice to sip on and comfy to slip on because it's time for smut club here's your hosts chelsea and hannah [Music] hello hi everybody welcome to smut club i'm hannah i'm chelsea and we're day drinking and talking about books which is really well not just books smut smud it's where we thrive it is where we thrive and this is living
our best lives so yes we're currently drinking what we call weekend coffees which is really just whiskey and creamer with coffee ice cubes in it um but it works it does 10 out of 10 would would recommend it and if you have one of the little electric whisks it really elevates the experience it just needs a little judge to like really put it over the top yes and like it it needs a lot of joj because the book we're reviewing today has i can't i don't know if it really has a lot of
judge it has a lot happening i don't know if any of it's just it's not judge you know when i think of judge i think of like there's a level of smoothness that happens with judge you know and this book lacks all smoothness it is all rough edges and i have read this book twice and still don't know what the [ __ ] happened we should probably say what book it is it is master of salt and bone by carrie lake yep that one uh is a journey i mean it is it's a journey from start to finish and
so i i will begin by by introducing our characters yeah like our two main ones so we have lucian who is the uh town recluse he is known as the devil of bone salt and uh he is apparently horribly scarred and known around this small new england town as like a major douchebag i guess and doesn't really leave his house and then our girl also is very affluent yes yes yes he's he's super duper rich lives in a huge mansion and alone with his scars is kind of the general energy and his mom yeah oh and
his mom his mom and his scars his mom and his scars yeah yeah um and there's all this like like town urban legend around him and this house and all this um and we'll get into more of that as we get into the story um and then we have isadora who goes by izzy i would too yeah right who is our main female interest
she is 19. she is from a very poor family her mom is the town [ __ ] which made her life really difficult growing up understandably and um she has no idea who her father is because her mom is the town [ __ ] there were just too many options yeah okay yeah um i i i get the feeling it was like one of the like a wheel of fortune spin thing where you know it could be any number of options just just flicking the wrist and we'll see like who doesn't land on kind of like on how i met your
mother how barney stinson's brother was played by wayne brady and it's because his mother got around yes okay exactly although izzy is an only child um mainly raised by her aunt because her mom's also on a lot of drugs and again we'll get into that more as we get into the story now as i was thinking about how to review this book i did talk to chelsea about different ways that we could go about telling this story because it is just super chaotic there are a lot
of flashbacks happening it's all very confusing and so initially i was thinking maybe i would do all the flashbacks first um but i the more we talked about it the more i realized i don't want to rob you guys of the experience of this chaos because it that is the book you know like like if i change the order to try to make it more lucid i have just you're doing everyone a disservice because it is not the true experience of master of salt and bone exactly like i am
i am taking away the integrity of the story you know not that there is much i was gonna say integrity is maybe not the word i would have chosen um but also i don't know if there's another word so yeah i mean i kind of get it i mean we've already established authentic we the authenticity of the journey sure i mean we've already established that josh is not the word we'll find it eventually um i'm gonna laugh my ass off if we make it through this entire review
and by the end we're still like we don't have the word for what this book is i'm going to lay odds on that that it's
going to be 60 40. we're gonna have no idea i'm not betting against it fair enough so it opens with a flashback of our dear friend lucian um 15 years ago in some kind of asylum like being strapped down and he is crying and sobbing begging his mother not to leave him and to help him and she says that um he's sick and that these people are trying to help him and he just needs to calm down and she leaves him there so that's how we're opening right as little like 15 16 year old lucian
coming out hot just like full bell jar situation so then we move into isadora so her she's in the car with her aunt they're driving um to the uh manor where lucian lives because isadora has gotten a job at the mansion as the companion slash caretaker for lucian's mother so the aunt is pretty upset by this does not want to leave her there but they don't really have any money izzy just graduated from high school there's also some some allusion to some kind of trauma that she
experienced recently the aunt is like i i just don't like this this is a bad idea and izzy's like tough [ __ ] we need the money so she is trying to save up money so she can leave this this dead end town where everybody just thinks she's a [ __ ] because of her mom so all that's going on they get there she does not meet lucian she sees him in the window which i don't know what it is about that trope that just i don't it's just weird like it's just so weird and it's in a ton of
movies and a ton of books where like the the woman arrives somewhere and there's just like this shadowy creepy person just staring out the window yeah i don't like that i'm not a fan of that to be fair i don't think you're supposed to like it i think it's supposed to leave you feeling a little unsettled so i will say it seems like she may have succeeded with her goal on this one i mean i guess we'll we'll give carrie credit on that then okay carrie gets credit for this trope
just the ones though just the ones never again never please god so um izzy is in like torn clothes they're super old because she's poor and that's what she has so she shows up and she meets the mom she meets the butler person i guess and he's giving her a tour telling her the rules he says you know stay out of of the master's way and she's like cool cool cool cool cool and the mom is really strange she has some kind of dementia happening and isn't very steady on her feet so she
uses a wheelchair i'm not gonna lie i read this book probably like three or four years ago i don't really remember when i read it but i would have bet money it was his grandmother and not his mom and so now i'm really questioning my memory of this book it is his mother oh damn it is his mother this really kind of changes how i was conceptualizing it and not for the better it's not good no okay so it's his mother i'm not gonna get us off track there it's his mother and so this is gonna be
important later she also has this collection of very expensive very rare ultra creepy dolls like vintage old school antique dolls that i love a good doll collector i just i like annabelle why i you know what i'm not here to shame people if that is your jam like okay that's okay but i also if you ever ask me if i want to see the collection i'm probably going to politely decline or not so politely i was going to say i probably won't be polite about it you know that's just a boundary i'm
going to keep precisely okay so izzy's getting settled in she has to live in the manor as part of her new job um so she gets settled in the mom is like hate your outfit we're buying you new clothes it's a whole thing um oh i forgot izzy is also a very accomplished piano player of course naturally but like obviously it makes sense that the girl who whose mother was the town [ __ ] who's never had anything or really any access to lessons consistently or anything of
that capacity would just naturally be a piano prodigy right and they do address that because apparently she has um like an eidetic memory where she can replicate anything she hears so when she hears a piece of music once she can play it and i'm like just doubt that you know but okay we'll give you that one it's convenient i mean for the sake of the story i guess we'll give you that one well how else would she learn to play the piano hannah i she she wanted
without that memory she would not be the accomplished pianist that she is and apparently the mom loves uh classical music so this is very exciting for everybody that she is able to do this so then we move to another flashback okay and it is lucian and his best friend they're like 14 well 15 15 16 and they're chilling running around doing what 15 and 16 year old boys do causing havoc they're on a break from their boarding school or whatever and i a new housekeeper shows up and she's
french and busty so obviously like they're super into that and she's like weirdly forward with both of them and lucian's like pass but his buddy is like i'm into that so the the 15 year old dudes are on break from boarding school there's a new hot housekeeper from france who shows up and is like i'm into 14 year olds or 15 year olds i apologize apparently and lucian has the wherewithal to be like nah i'm good and it's okay you know i mean she's hot and he he understands
the fact that she's hot but he's like no right so her mom his mom hates her obviously um but she starts working there they continue on with their summer it's good times to be had by all so then we're back to the present lucian is like so did anything happen in that flashback outside of just like an introduction to the [ __ ] housekeeper i apologize i'm not slut-shaming no i mean i'm pretty sure but yeah okay so we meet the hot busty french housekeeper the french maid
the friend we yes truly we meet the french maid and they're like all right back to back to the present anyway so i am not going to give carrie that trope of the french maid i will not give her that um so then we're back to the present and lucian this is all told from first person by the way so it flashes back and forth between the different points of view so lucian obviously is creeping in the window he's like she looks like a sewer rat but i'm into that like that's basically like he he's very
judgmental of her clothing why does she look like a sewer rat i don't think he's like a normal day and he's like you're like did she fall in a pool and he's like i'm into sewer i don't think he used those words necessarily but she had it's like he's describing she has on a lot of like heavy eye makeup and she's wearing like clothes that don't fit well and are very clearly old and threadbare she's wearing um like galoshes that don't fit properly it's like a whole thing and he's like
yikes but also um like ew but also maybe exactly okay exactly and izzy doesn't have a car or anything so they're you know they go through the whole thing of like you know well you you can use the my driver situation whatever and we expect you to be here pretty much all the time just let us know when you're leaving blah blah blah and lucian is like eavesdropping a lot because he doesn't really want to meet her because he's like my scars oh he still hasn't met her at this point no no no he's just
like sort of there they're just like circling around each other in this house without ever actually yeah okay yes so lucian is obviously super into her but like trying not to be weird about it and then there's also this this like secret society illuminati situation happening and so um these guys show up to meet with lucian and they have these like super secret rings that like have a moth on them i think i don't remember how secret can a ring be you'll wear it on your hand i don't
i don't know i i i'm telling you like i'm sorry you were you are giving your best representation of this book and i'm i'm not [ __ ] on your representation i'm [ __ ] on the book because i'm like the super secret moth rings for their secret society i'm like is it really that [ __ ] secret so when i think of like these rings i think of um and when our powers combine like a captain planet situation and i know that's not what was intended like i'm fully aware of that but i just
that's where my brain goes so he's meeting with these men who are like you're supposed to be more involved with the organization and he's like i don't want to he's like not into it and so apparently he's experiencing a lot of pressure but we still don't know what this organization does or what its purpose is or what the [ __ ] is going on right so there's just some men with moth rings pressuring him to be more involved end of our knowledge got it yes so and then as we continue to move
izzy's getting settled i'm gonna speed up a little bit izzy's getting settled um she meets the mom again still super weird but she spends time with her she reads to her and she's very into like harlequin romance so you know she'd probably like this podcast she would love it uh but she's also super like buttoned up and conservative which is just you know a very interesting dichotomy for character development that was a choice that that carrie made so izzy reads to her she plays her
some songs on the piano she's like trying to figure out what i don't know what her life is supposed to look like now that she's in this role um obviously they have a private chef obviously and so the private chef uh keeps coming on to izzy makes her meals and stuff and so izzy one day was working late because the mom had some kind of issue or something and so she goes down to eat and there's this massive dog that she essentially describes as a hell beast it sounds like some kind of mastiff
like this massive dog is there and she's like i'm gonna die and so she takes off running which by the way um don't do that prank i don't care if it's a dog or a bear or whatever you don't run from a predator you just you just don't do that so the dog got super excited and decided to chase her down just to like lick on her not to do anything bad to her so misunderstood right he's just sitting there wanting all the love so and and just to be totally honest of all of the
characters in this book the dog is my favorite his character arc for me is like the one character arc really the the jaw the dog's personal growth development through this through this novel is jeff's kiss as we peel back the layers for him you know okay so anyway so this is how she meets lucian because lucian shows up and gets the dog and he tells her like you're a [ __ ] idiot don't ever run from him right and she's like okay um also you're super hot but like try not to be weird about it
and so um that's how they meet he's a total [ __ ] she's like [ __ ] you like they're they're only meeting now oh my god yeah she's been there for like two or three days and like living in the same house oh and i forgot she also feels like someone is watching her sleep which is really fun for everybody um but she cannot prove that and there's a nurse who also works there um taking care of the mom and she's like yeah you're gonna wanna avoid the devil of bone salt that's bad news
bears and it's like giving her all this information and izzy is like jesus christ like i'm just trying to get a paycheck so i can get out of this [ __ ] town right now like please leave me alone so anyway um all that happens she finally meets lucian it is not a very auspicious meeting great vocab word thank you very much i feel really good about my sat scores and that makes one of us i don't remember my s.a.t scores i stayed out with friends the night before
and forgot i had to take them so then i retook them because it was not the score anyone in my family was hoping for i oh god i had to take them twice also because i had juvenile epilepsy and so they didn't realize that i needed like like special accommodations and so i show up like kind of high on my medication and like take the test and i i didn't have time to finish because that was a little high and they were like that's really tough for you so you actually had to get like medical
accommodations right the second time well at least you had an excuse i did you did and apparently i grew out of it so i got what i needed the extra time on the sats and now i'm done so that was the cure that was all i was waiting for billy i got special accommodations on the sats and voila cured i no longer had juvenile epilepsy yeah just no more seizures for me it was really great um so anyway so so par parting ways with juvenile epilepsy let's get back to lucian and
his scars i really love our tangents they're just really perfect for everybody to be you know experiencing so we have another flashback uh is the is the [ __ ] french maid in the flashback yes yes so um lucian so there are sea caves so lucian and his friend um decide they're gonna meet up at the sea caves and like smoke a little weed and drink a little so the mansion isn't a coastal city yes thank you sorry it's in it's in a new england like cape situation okay yes so there are sea caves so so
lucian is uh supposed to be meeting his friend at the sea caves uh again to like smoke a little weed drink a little do teenage boy [ __ ] and um apparently his friend decides to bring the french maid with him and you know as any grown woman wants to do hang out in some sea caves with some 15 year old boys yeah yeah so then um his friend is not shy right so he is like saying things that frankly no one should say like much less a teenage boy like you know making a lot of demands on this french
woman so lucian and she's like inviting lucian to participate and he's like no i'm not i'm not [ __ ] you with my best friend thank you though like i'm not doing that so the best friend is putting the moves on the french maid and the french maid is in turn putting the moves on lucian yes man i wonder how the best friend feels about that i mean he was pretty into it from what i gathered you right so lucian just sits there in the sea cave smoking weed watching his best
friend [ __ ] this french maid and then she comes over and is like your turn and he's like no like i don't i don't live for sloppy seconds thank you does he say that to her basically yeah hang on let me let me find the exact quote because he definitely that's brutal so first of all she said come young master [ __ ] me and he's like i don't [ __ ] seconds and her response is i should have let you have me first then i'll just have to pretend and then she masturbates in
front of him while calling his name so that and that's the flashback and that's the flashback i'm like okay but here's the other thing so their children their their they're children and i'm just like ew gross yeah nothing about that scene feels like arousing no it feels like this isn't a good vibe that's happening [Music] now mind you is that because both of us are mandated reporters for abuse like may that might be like we both had to call cps on more than one occasion
in our jobs is that why like it's is that what it is because there's definitely a disconnect with this where i'm like nope this feels this doesn't feel sexy this feels like a grown ass woman is masturbating to a 15 year old in front of him right very predatory and i i mean i would like to think that it's not just being a mandated reporter that like morally as a person i would object to that also that yes we do have morals and if i think about it like if this book if the gender roles were flipped
and a man was doing this with a girl it would be like you wouldn't write that down you know what i mean like it would or it would very clearly be like a trauma arc and not sort of like slated to be sexy i also like here's the thing i don't think i've ever seen a 15 year old boy even if he lifts even if he like works out on a regular basis and been like i'm into that like right there's always at that age like i've never seen a 15 year old boy been like what i thought they were at least
legal like there's something i'm like no you still look like a 15 year old like a even if you're a little kid 15 year old for other 15 year olds they're 15 year olds yes important clarifying real weird we're just gonna bow out while we're behind anyway [Laughter] so she closes by saying next time i'll have you first so she i guess she felt the need to to reiterate that and that is the end of the flashback and we are back to present day with izzy so she is again she's settling in
she really really likes lucian um and well so i shouldn't say she likes him she is into him she thinks he's super hot um she's very curious about her scars and how he got them um and so he's got this like air of mystery he's an older man so she's like into that i think he's 12 years older than her um so 31 something like that yeah i don't remember his exact age but i'm pretty sure it's around then um and then we have another flashback that chapter is just izzy like getting
used to getting settled yeah so we have another flashback we learned that lucian's father is extremely abusive towards him um and uh the french maid is continuing to shoot her shot um and she tells him how just disappointed she was that he didn't like [ __ ] her like oh my god um she she seems really hung up um this child she is okay she's into a lot of things and we'll get more into that because i learn a lot about this french maid whose name is solange that i wish i didn't know so uh yeah
he's just yeah she's continuing to come on to him and she is like wanting to teach him things tells him to come back to the sea cave and he's like no no no she's like you you totally you totally should so he does obviously because he's a 16 year old boy and this woman with huge tits is like um let me [ __ ] you right like in the seat cave in the sea cave so she won't be second this time and you won't be sad so he i think she she just gives him a hand job at this point but she
like ties him up and lets the water rise enough so that his head is under water and he can't breathe and so then he has this like super powerful orgasm because breath play and he's like what the [ __ ] and she said something about like you've just experienced the petite more right like the small death of orgasm and he's like that's amazing teach me everything you know and that's the end of that flashback [ __ ] book man okay so so she's teaching him about breath play
by letting the tide rise in the sea cave while she gives him a hand job but because he couldn't breathe it really when he could finally breathe his orgasm was incredible yes this yeah this makes sense go on so she just gives him a proper nantucket handshake i have we'll get into that later we'll get into that later um anyway so yeah i have to speed this up because there's just so much happening you really so much [ __ ] chaos and so she so it we're back to izzy she's having
nightmares of this trauma that we still don't know what happened she's doing all this stuff trying to get to know what's going on she's interacting with lucian a little bit more he's hearing her play the piano and he's like oh my stars and she's like you know that's just what i do like don't worry about it um then we have more flashbacks again of knowing like learning more about how abusive his dad is it's just a [ __ ] mess you guys like i just don't i just don't know i just don't know so
we're continuing on this journey of izzy settling in and pretty much every other every other chapter is a flashback so lucian is banging the french maid more regularly and learning more about breath play apparently he's also a little bit into knife play um he doesn't like using the knife he likes to use it on himself but he hasn't done it with her so that's a whole thing his father is very disappointed by all of this well actually his father is very proud because he thinks that lucian is
sadistic and lucian is not but his dad thinks that he is because he finds the knife and he finds like some porn that that suggests that and so his dad is like finally you're my real son which is that's a weird father-son bonding experience it's just a really strange bar to set you know so i've been waiting to find out you're into knife play so dad is like basically disclosing his sexual proclivities which is a lot to digest so lucian is continuing to fight his
attraction to izzy because he feels like she's too young he winds up fingering her on the piano bench i guess and after she plays and then he's like i made you like a needy little [ __ ] didn't i too bad you're too young love you bye and like that's it you know and she's like what the [ __ ] and yeah that's just that's just how it happens so interspersed with all of this we also meet the mayor of this town the mayor really really really really really wants
to be a part of this secret organization lest we forget the moth rings that lucian is a part of and so he is coming to lucian petitioning to join this group he is also lucian's father-in-law because lucian was married he also had a son so this is part of where all of the like urban legend about this family comes in because lucian's son disappeared and then his wife killed herself so there's a lot of speculation about what happened to the son and if he actually killed the wife right so the
wife is the mayor's daughter so he comes to lucian as his father-in-law and is like do this for me we're family and lucian's like jesus christ i [ __ ] hate you like basically right um and his father-in-law is like let me on the secret society and lucian's like you remind me of all of my trauma leave me the [ __ ] alone yes precisely precisely so um more flashbacks my favorite flashback well favorite i don't know that that's the word because again we don't have a word for this book
we don't have a word so the flashback that stands out the most to me we'll say it that way is lucian is at a dinner party the french maid is serving at the dinner party she is like stroking him and [ __ ] in front of people on the sly hoping no one will notice and he's super into it so then she tells him she's gonna come to him later that's great he gets up because she disappears and he wants to go find her and he hears her getting [ __ ] by his father while he uses because his mother was
apparently a rhythmic gymnast apparently she twirled baton so i don't know what you call that a baton twirler so i had a friend she was and like internationally ranked baton twirler but i gotta say true like the i was like i kind of laughed and then the first time i saw her like actually like do her like baton routine i was like this is the most impressive thing i feel like i've seen in person in a really long time and then i felt like an [ __ ] and i'm like you know what who am i to judge
your art and who am i to judge carrie's art with master of salt and bone i was going to say i am judging carrie's art i am not judging i am not judging i'm not no uh it is beautiful and majestic follow your bliss so the reason that's important is because his dad is using his mother's like award-winning baton to [ __ ] the maid in the ass while he rails her and she's like i love it so dirty i'm so into that solange seems to have very few moral hang-ups in her life again i
okay so i would say i'm not here to judge but she's [ __ ] children so i'm here to judge that and their parents and their parents i'm here to judge the pedophilia you know right i think that's a fair judgment right i'm not here to kink shame in other ways so all that's happening lucian feels betrayed solange comes to him and is like i only ever wanted you you know i have to because he's gonna fire me whatever whatever and lucian's like that was [ __ ] disgusting
like holy [ __ ] well he didn't like sharing her with his best friend i can't imagine sharing her with his father felt better yeah no no sorry i needed a whiskey break after that so then uh again we flash back to present the izzy's getting more and more information about lucian's wife and that whole situation she finds out that she did kill herself she like jumped off a balcony um she continues to kind of like want to be close to lucian and he is continuing to like fight his desire for her
whatever um mom continues to be super creepy and weird and then at some point izzy gets a phone call from her aunt and her aunt is like i just had the [ __ ] beat out of me by your mom's drug dealer she owes him a ton of money she took off um they said they're gonna kill me if we don't get this money and it's a lot of money like like what how did she get that whatever like how did she obtain that that many drugs like i guess she was like acting as a courier or something whatever the point is
izzy steals an antique doll oh from lucian's mother and her creepy doll collection precisely okay precisely so that she can pay off these drug dealers and um as she is trying to leave the house she drops the doll and it breaks in front of the butler and he's like what the [ __ ] dude like for real come on now so then izzy goes to lucian and he oh and she has been bought a whole new wardrobe at this point so she's like looking super cute all the time and lucian's like god damn it so um
lucian is like what the [ __ ] are you doing like what are you doing and so she explains the situation to him he's like i'll fix it whatever and she's like okay and she's like like fix the broken doll or fix the the family debt okay both i guess so um yeah so izzy's like i mean i know i'm fired and he's like you're not fired you can never leave here like oh good so some weird beauty and the beast vibes like you're here forever now um and so yeah so then izzy gets another phone
call that her mom is dead she has apparently overdosed so she's very upset she tells lucian she needs to take some time off and all that good stuff and um izzy is really struggling with this whole thing nobody really shows up to her mom's funeral lucian sends a lot of flowers it's just her and her aunt there at the funeral and then as she's leaving the funeral home the mayor shows up and he's like i i used to be your mom's high school teacher she was such an amazing young woman you know
i'm so sad that her life turned out the way that it did i just wanted to pay my respects and just to make sure i'm remembering correctly the mayor is lucian's deceased wife's father correct and he shows up to izzy's mother's funeral and it's like i was her high school teacher correct and i came to pay my respects correct okay small town yeah yeah yeah um small coastal town so sea caves with sea caves is it a coastal town if it doesn't have sea caves i mean technically yes i guess to be fair
oh [ __ ] so anyway this book y'all oh my god so i feel like there's still a lot of there's so much we might have to like like speed i'm just gonna speed it up so there's another flashback at some point lucian meets a girl at a party her like their parents really want them to get to know each other it turns out that it is the mayor's daughter and he does wind up marrying her however the reason he winds up marrying her is because she was coming on to him pretty strong during
this party they [ __ ] in a closet like a supply closet um but he could not orgasm i guess because she wasn't choking him or hurting him and he was like it's all it's all good like this has been great all of his sexual experiences with solange and breath play really did not set him up for success they did with other sexual experiences because to be fair if someone else is an into breath play it is a interesting conversation to try and bring up especially in the moment yeah
that's not like you i don't feel like you can do spontaneous breath play with a new partner you know not your first time no no no no no there it is you got to build that trust yeah and there needs to be some conversation around that so then turns out she shows like she's staying with them for some reason i don't really remember why she's staying at the manor and she's like continuing to try to like cozy up to lucian and he's like for real babe like that was terrible not really into any of this
and so then turns out she is pregnant and she's like it's your baby and he's like um isn't that i mean and he's like she's like no like you're the only person that i've slept with in like the last six months or whatever like it has to be you he's like well cool uh what and the mayor and his dad are like cool story you're getting married how old are they at this point in like early 20s okay yeah like i think like that they just finished college okay yeah or he did he's no longer a child
he's no longer a child thank god so we don't have a child bride situation in conjunction with the general pedophilia yeah so um izzy um is continuing to play the piano she and lucian are continuing to have running run-ins that are like increasing in spiciness um she's continuing to have nightmares and all this stuff from whatever trauma she experienced um she [Music] lucian winds up seeing a bunch of scars on her arms from apparently where she was cutting herself and he's like joke's
on you i'm into that and she's like what [Music] oh my god like being into knife play and self-harming are not they're very different things so and we won't get into like the dsm-5 situation of it all but this this is like a a bdsm five situation and it's not good oh my god oh my god i've never been more proud of you for a joke in my entire life honestly i'm pretty [ __ ] proud of myself bdsm five no one who if you don't work in mental health that is not gonna be nearly as funny to you
but i'm losing my [ __ ] over here i feel pretty good about it and for our target audience i hope you appreciated it so so yeah so it turns out obviously she's been doing a lot of self-harming all this other crazy shit's going on they're continuing to get closer and closer the organization is continuing to show up and pressure lucian we're continuing to have flashbacks of him i don't even know what he's doing in these flashbacks anymore none of it makes sense
and so oh in one of them his dad takes him down to the like catacombs the like basement under the house area under the coastal mansion with the sea caves under the coastal mansion that is near the sea caves and um which by the way if you know anything about living on the coast there would not be catacombs or a basement because flooding that [ __ ] happens all the time we don't live like that on the coast thank you well you have two podcast hosts from florida
so we have a lot of opinions on flooding so among other things among other things buckle in flooding and alligators we really know our strengths and smut so sometimes all three so quintessential florida obviously so his dad takes him down to this basement and there's this man strapped in down there and his dad is like you need to torture this guy and lucian's like what the [ __ ] dude like no and he's like yeah you're gonna do it and you're gonna like it so obviously lucian has been subject to
his father's torture for years and now he is being forced to torture other people once again different than being into knife play very much so so lucian apparently part of this organization they they're doing research and experience on sociopathy and so they pay people who are like desperate for money to volunteer essentially to be tortured and so his dad is like he's not gonna get paid if you don't torture him his family's gonna starve is that what you want like
[ __ ] torture him great super really good for a young person's psyche so that's my professional opinion so all this is happening izzy he decides he wants izzy to play piano at this big party and he it's like a masquerade situation and he tells her not to talk to any of the men there and to like stick close to him because apparently these are like organization people and so he's very nervous about her being around them so she plays so it's an illuminati party
that she's playing the piano for yes and the mayor shows up um and talks to her and makes her super uncomfortable and she's like big yikes all around to all of this and straight up y'all i have no idea if i'm telling you this story in chronological order at this point i don't think it matters it just doesn't matter i'm truly reading it didn't feel like there was a chronological it didn't it didn't so mayor shows up she's uncomfortable lucian gets really upset that the mayor
is talking to her at all like drags her outside and then like eats her out in the garden like in i was gonna say broad daylight it's not broad daylight because it's at night but like just out in the open but in the open of the garden under the starlight precisely yes where they could be seen yes yes and she's like holy [ __ ] i'm super into that so they're continuing to like have this burgeoning sexual relationship with knife play and breath play and all this other fun and interesting stuff
and um so and the mayor continues to come around and be weird and we don't understand why and the mom continues to be weird have like weird dementia outbursts that's like what the [ __ ] lucian's mother lucious izzy's mother is dead yes dead because the mayor went to the funeral yes yes okay yes um and then holy [ __ ] [Laughter] like i y'all i'm like disturbed and perplexed and befuddled by this book i am befuddled truly befuddled not to be confused with besieged so [Laughter] so i'm so sorry
i'm gonna get it together i just i from start to finish you guys what the [ __ ] hannah this book didn't get it together so i don't think you should put that same pressure on yourself thank you anytime let me give you that freedom if you won't give it to yourself i appreciate your validation and affirmation of my effort right now therapy hashtag therapy so um then izzy's trying to figure out like what is going on with the mayor um she's getting more and more information
about lucian's past she learns that his son has was is dead like he didn't disappear he died and they essentially covered up his death because he died via overdose after getting into his mother's pills solution's wife's pills right um and lucian blamed his wife for the death of their son um because she didn't like lock up her pills and um that's why she killed herself was because of all the guilt and shame of her son dying um and uh she was also apparently pregnant when she killed herself
um and lucian's like that's really interesting because i had not [ __ ] her in a really long time so yeah so like they their parents told them that they had to get married and then like they didn't really have a marriage so much as like a legally binding contract right and a son that they both really loved and cared about you know that's a great reframe thank you but then the sun dies and now there's like no reason for them to be together and the wife is super depressed understandably
so all this is going on izzy's uncovering all this stuff and then lucian starts uncovering izzy's past because again there's like a lot of trauma that apparently happened to her in high school so lucian gave her a bracelet that had a tracking device in it bob's and so izzy was did she know there was a tracking device in it negative okay so she just thinks lucian gives her a bracelet yes okay and she is visiting her best friend in town and walking back to her aunt's house one night and she
gets jumped by these guys who like pull her into a public bathroom and try to assault her and stuff and she fights really hard but very clearly like they have the upper hand there's more of them they're stronger and then one of lucian's security guy shows up and just beats the snot out of these kids and um rescues her and she's like how did you find me they're like oh it's a tracker [Music] so um and also like they continue to refer to this bodyguard person i i take it back the dog is not my
favorite it's the bodyguard person they continue to like randomly refer to him he's some sort of like he's hawaiian or samoan or something like they never really tell you we just know that he's massive and really nice so it's dwayne the rock johnson yes that is literally how i picture him in my mind yes that's you know that's that's a fair assessment yeah they're just like he's a large samoan man who can bust some heads if needed okay we can work with that we can
so um izzy gets rescued she finds out that there's a tracker in the bracelet and lucian is like tell me what happened tell me why they were after you so she tells him that her friend was sexually assaulted at a party and izzy lost her [ __ ] when she realized what had happened to her and so she um stabbed some people who hurt her friend what the [ __ ] honestly like i'm embarrassed how much of this book i've forgotten but as you're going through it i'm like you know what
there's no chance i could have remembered all of this because it's so chaotic it is and i'm gonna be totally honest i did not remember most of it like i completely forgot the mayor existed until i started like going back through for this podcast to get ready for it and then i was like oh [ __ ] i forgot about the mayor because he actually is really important you guys so so all of this stuff is going on um and the um the organization is really on to lucian ex and the explanation is that um
lucian's family has been a part of this study of sociopathy for generations and so they need him to have children to continue the study and he is like please [ __ ] off right like you know good for him setting that boundary yeah um but he was involved in the experiments and the research and stuff which is why he's so messed up um emotionally so then at some point in some flashback he finds solange the french maid dead in a sea cave and he goes and runs and tells somebody
that she's dead they go to investigate and they're like kiddo there's no body like what are you talking about and he's like no like solange is dead and they're like there was no solange who are you talking about and he's like no no no like me and jude and they're like jude is dead he's been dead for years and okay okay okay okay okay hold on just to make sure the sea caves the [ __ ] sea caves the goddamn sea lucian goes out and sees solange's dead body and the sea caves and then is
obviously we're in a flash back here and then he goes and it's like salon just dead and everyone's like no she she was always dead she was she never existed she never existed okay solange isn't real and your best friend is dead and has been apparently for like a year okay oh no that is that is not great when you think about that breath placing did he drop did he drown himself like oh no so okay so that's a plot twist it's something so then we're like okay so how much of
this is solution hallucinating like i don't i don't even know anymore oh because the book opened with lotion like being in a psych ward or something and they're like you're sick and you need to be here oh no i really forgot so much of this book oh no is correct so um yeah so izzy shares this with him and he's like i don't know about all that so the closer they get the more that she reveals the more nightmares she starts to have and she eventually tells him that she in fact was the one who was
sexually assaulted and she is the one that after the act stabbed a guy basically tried to cut off his dick which you know while i generally don't condone violence i'm like good for her you know like good for her way to take back your power izzy exactly so then she had accused him of sexual assault this this guy and he was very prominent in the community his mom was like head of the pta stand-up kind of lady and she's the the daughter of the town [ __ ] so everybody thought that she
basically just went crazy and stabbed the golden child of the town because she is a [Music] [ __ ] who's also a nut case when really the golden shot of the town was like kyle rittenhouse yes he was a brett kavanaugh jr so so she reveals this lucian is like holy [ __ ] okay like all this makes sense now they're doing more knife play and more breath play they're getting to know each other more and more the mom is continuing to be just super [ __ ] weird man like
she has these weird dementia episodes where she talks about her grandson as if he's still alive like asking where he is and if he'll come visit her and stuff and it's all very sad and um and then when she's not having those flashbacks she's just reading her harlequin romances and staring at her her creepy doll collection yes and listening to izzy play the piano i forgot the obvious yes obviously yes so um yeah all this is continuing to go on the organization people are still up
lucian's ass and then eventually um izzy decides she really needs to figure out who her dad is i don't really remember what prompted that at all um but she decides she wants to find out so she starts going through her mother's old things actually maybe that's where it started she's going through her mother's old things she finds an old yearbook she finds different things and then she's like [Music] the mayor is pretty suspicious right now he's pretty [ __ ] sus so
she's like i don't feel great about this so she's walking down the street the mayor drives up next to her and is like hey i really need to talk to you let me give you a ride and she's like hard pass because you're weird you're a strange man that i've met a couple times and made me feel uncomfortable all of the time so i'm not gonna get in your car with you you weirdo yep okay and he's like joke's on you you are getting in the car so this was not an invitation so much as
explaining what was going to happen yeah this was not optional and so a struggle ensues and he gets her into the car she is still wearing her bracelet with a little tracker on it so um he takes her to a cabin in the woods tells her that he is in fact her father and he needs her because in order to join the organization he needs a an offspring to offer up for the experiments and the research that they're doing and so he needs his daughter to volunteer his daughter to be tortured by lucian's
illuminati society yes got it and his his legitimate daughter is dead so all he has is the uh daughter of the high school girl that he had sex with while he was a high school teacher you shouldn't be doing that no none of it really so much of the activity in this book is is frowned upon not just like societally frowned upon but like legally legally like there's a lot of concerns in this book that i feel like we're all just like okay with i mean i'm not no i mean like in their in their world
they're okay with it right right right yes hannah i would hope you're not okay with with the pedophilia that is rampant in this book um but yeah it feels like everyone in this book is like you know that's that's just what happens in a small town with money and you're like what is it it it doesn't have to this was a choice this was a choice that you made and then doubled down on so um the the the mayor has her in this cabin he calls the organization's people to come get her i guess
and lucian realizes that she's missing they had had some kind of fight honestly y'all i don't [ __ ] know like if you want the details of this book just read it i'm not telling you you're gonna enjoy it i'm telling you like if you if you want to try to read this book and make sense of it and explain it to me like we would love honestly if you read this book and you're like all of this is a very linear thought pattern i don't understand why it's escaping y'all we
would love to have you on the show we would love to have you explain this book to us because both of us have read this and just thought what chaos yeah and like it's not even that i am drunk at this point it's just like i genuine like you've only had one weekend coffee only one weekend coffee and i still don't know what the [ __ ] and i can't i can't articulate it so she's being held hostage it's a whole thing giant samoan guy shows up and it like starts shooting up the cabin joining the
rock johnson wayne the rock johnson shows up um and uh lucian shows up and obviously he sacrifices his body and like throws himself over top of her to protect her during the gun fight and the mayor's shooting and the samoan guy is shooting and then some guys from the the the illuminati show up and they're shooting and everybody's [ __ ] shooting and so then and so there's a shootout is what i hear us saying the mayor takes izzy we find out izzy is his daughter he needs her to join the
illuminati so they can conduct their sociopathy experiments and there's a shootout yes okay so then lucian is like he's been shot he's like we have to get izzy out of here so he gives izzy to the big samoan guy he takes her away and lucian sticks around and then the illuminati guys show up and lucian's like nothing to see here y'all because he buried the mayor in in a pile of dirt i guess because he's dead now sorry i skated right over that so the mayor is dead mayor is dead
lucian buried him and then the illuminati showed back up okay and lucian's like don't worry about it thanks good chat and so then y'all we're not even close so then we have to be close we're not we're not you would think that's like the climax of the book you would be incorrect so then pollution finally i need more whiskey for this oh my god i need something stronger than whiskey like a valium maybe somehow doll maybe it would make more sense if i just be 52 me man yes precisely so then
lucian gets izzy back to the house he like cleans her up she cleans him up and like his wound is whatever like sutured they're having a nice time doing whatever it is they do and then lucian's mom shows up like leering over the bed after lucian gets up for some reason and she's like you're a little [ __ ] just like all the others i thought you were going to be different like how dare you try to corrupt my son blah blah blah blah she then reveals that the death of lucian's son was not
an accident she intentionally killed his child using his mother's pills and set it up to look like an accident um his father died of a heart attack at some point i think like right after the son died i don't really remember his dad died but honestly i couldn't remember how or why nor did i care no no but regardless the mom killed the son and then like set it up to look like it was the mom's fault um so she's revealing all of this and izzy is like what the [ __ ] is happening so then
she reveals that um she reveals that lucian was not the father of the kid which no one would should actually be surprised by because lucian couldn't ejaculate because there wasn't a knife involved correct got it so turns out that his dad essentially sexually assaulted the mayor's daughter that same night with the intention of getting her pregnant because he needed the bloodline to continue and he needed it to look like it was lucian's child so that they could continue with the research and the
secret organization whatever so mom reveals all of that lucian's like i don't really care what the [ __ ] you say that was my son like that was my son and so he obviously he shows back up and he's super upset after mom has revealed all this to izzy and he overheard his mother revealing all of this okay so then he's freaking out is he's freaking out mom tries to stab izzy i think he she tries to kill her in some way lucian steps in and then we have some nice symmetry that happens
um where because as we all remember no the book opened with lucian being strapped down into an insane asylum the book very nearly closes with his mother being strapped down in the same insane asylum begging lucian not to leave her there and he's like joke's on you like you killed my son and just tried to kill izzy right right it's like a like an inigo montoya thing from from princess bride like except instead of my father it's my son you killed my son prepare today exactly so he leaves her there
um and then you know he and izzy just connect and they he buys her a bookstore at some point oh i forgot that he bought her a bookstore he did he bought her the town bookstore and they bang in there and that's the end of the book so all right i don't even know the way to summarize this book i'm gonna try and summarize it so even though i don't know how um izzy the daughter of the town horror is hard up for money and goes to work for lucian the town recluse who is covered in scars
i forgot so he got his scars because the night his son he found his son's dead body and had done cpr and stuff on him to try to revive him before the paramedics got there and then he figured like his son's dead he got onto his motorcycle without any of his protective gear and went on like a little rampage and crashed his motorcycle and that's how he got all his scars i forgot about that well that makes me kind of feel sad for him that like his son passed away so
he went out i mean the whole thing is you know a lot of this book is sad for a lot of reasons oh and i forgot another thing the mom also revealed that apparently solange was real the the french maid was real she was referring she said that woman was a predator she was talking about apparently lucian had a nanny when he was like five or six that sexually abused him wait hold on was solange the nanny when he was five or six no no so he was sexually abused when he was five or six and
solange was real yes i think i don't know no here's the thing i remember reading well i don't really remember reading this book but i remember being like oh okay was he hallucinating solange was he not oh he wasn't but like his mom was like it was so embarrassing to watch her like walk through the house fawning all over you when i'm also like was it more embarrassing to know that or that she was [ __ ] your husband with your batons from your baton twirling and also like
is embarrassment the emotion because i feel like it would be more like anger and like a protective instinct for your child hannah really not anger is a secondary emotion of jesus christ so what's under what's under this anger a desire to protect my [ __ ] kid you know under this anger i'm just like what the [ __ ] is still happening in this book i still okay so essentially izzy goes and works for lucian um they fall in love over a period of time he's involved in a secret society he
wants out of and then he finds out his mother killed his son and has she been faking the dementia yeah it seems that way okay so she's been faking the dementia and then she tried to kill izzy yep and then she ended up in an asylum um which like let's also just be honest about the state of psychiatric hospitalization in america um that's not really a thing i just want to be clear about that like you're you're doing great if you get a 72 hour stay in this psych hospital so so but in
in the book the asylum is run by the secret society so i would imagine that's different than you know yeah than a normal asylum asylum that doesn't exist a psychiatric hospital in which you get a 72-hour stay unless you're on a long-term site like forensic psychiatric unit um i i have stories about that as well but those are not appropriate for a podcast because hipaa is real sure is so um okay hannah how would you ultimately
rate this book i i i agree 60 40. we did not uh we did not find a new word was not it um moth might be it moth could be it um although i have a moth tattoo and it makes me unhappy to use the word mobs i mean moths are pretty cool like all right how many moths would you rate this book oh jesus christ so i want to say like two out of five like i want to say like two months out of five because i still do not know what happened well i feel like this entire book is just like
it's building the suspense and so you're like going through you're like what's gonna happen like oh my gosh like i don't really know and like you're like trying to solve it and then it's like [ __ ] we have 20 pages left of this book i guess we should wrap it up now and then you know what they needed more than 20 pages to wrap this up yes like did you just like dedicate too many pages to other things in this book i'm confused like i'm confused on how you felt like this was like
cohesively completing your narrative we dedicated too many pages to the sea caves is what happened solange and those [ __ ] sea caves and the breath play got too many pages i did not need to know that much about solange's sea cave so but i know it anyway you know and well she and she was real she was not a hallucination i'm pretty sure and jude was alive he had actually died but i don't know when or i don't know i don't know there's still there's still a lot of questions in this
book so i think two out of five moths is appropriate because the the bones of the story is really interesting like the speaker of salt and bones the bones of the story the foundation of the story is really interesting right with like a secret society and this whole thing with izzy like like the the the idea of it is really interesting then you get into it and it's like what the f what's happening i almost feel like it needed to be a duet yeah like it needed it needed more
pages than what we had so i'm either like you needed to cut out a few things to get it into like one book or you either needed to expand upon a few things to like actually just make it a duet that we're like oh this makes more sense now um because yeah i mean you've read it twice i read it once years ago and going through our retelling today i don't feel like i'm any closer to answers than i was years ago yeah you know what i'm comfortable not having them at this point
like i'm okay with not having the answers that's good because you'll probably never get them i'm practicing a lot of radical acceptance carrie if you're listening like maybe just dm me and let me know what the [ __ ] that'd be great so i think i think that's all they're really i don't know if we have anything left to say on this one [ __ ] don't that was a journey i need another weekend coffee i rate it one out of five weekend coffees two out of five mods so yeah carrie respond let us know um
we'll uh i mean we we might be able to up this to three mods with some answers sure two weekend coffees so on that note thank you guys for joining us this is always so fun and have a good night have a good day whatever time you're listening to this i'm never great with the time thanks for listening thanks bye