Hey, right side, besties, Hello Sunshine.
Today is a special day on the bright Side. We're with Lee Reese's book club pick for April, Claire Lombardo. There has been a lot of intrigue online about her novel, and we get to go straight to the source. The author herself is here with us. It's Monday, April twenty ninth. I'm Danielle Robe.
And I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine.
Simone. How is the weekend?
The weekend was good. It was really low key, just kind of hanging out. It was a social battery weekend. I just recharged the social battery. I went out to one function, went out to a dinner with my girlfriend, and that was it. How about you.
I actually got out of the house the first time in a while. I went to a group dinner at Boa, which is way too trendy for me usually. I got some good walks in and I kept my promise. On Sunday, I went shopping for some new workout clothes.
Oh amazing. Okay, I can't wait to see you rock these in studio because I'm going to be inspired by that. I need to get more, you know, it's all I wear. Oh same, But the most Monday thing happened to me twenty minutes before we hopped on this recording. I stepped on a lego with my full weight, my full weight into the middle of my foot, and now I swear I have to go to a doctor. I mean that
I think I have a bruise. This is a little known phenomenon, the medical emergency that you don't know about until you become a parent.
But which same name did you scream out when you stepped on the lego?
Nobody? So I'm proud of myself for that. I just did on one of those like tight lipped grunts that I saw my mom do when I was growing up. But now it hurts.
Do you keep order in your house or is it just chaos always, like with the kids toys and everything.
No, we try to. We definitely make an effort, but it's yeah, there are certainly days where it's completely a mess.
Seems hard, it's very hard.
I see these clean influencers on clean talk and clean Stagram, and I'm like, how do you have this much time?
It's hard for me to keep my own one bedroom apartment together. Like as soon as I try on two outfits. The whole place looks like a mess totally.
Okay, should we get into our morning drip? Yeah, let's do it all right. So our girl, Emma Stone, I love her so much. Poor things, she was a revelation in that film. Well, she wants to switch things up. Okay, she wants us to call her Emily, which, if you didn't know, Danielle is actually her given name.
Nah, hard, pass on this.
You're not for it. It's like Emma Stone all the.
Way she won an Oscar is Emma Stone. I know, how are you gonna go back on that? Girlfriend? It's etched in gold on the statue.
That's so true.
Late, it is too late for you. We all know you with Emma Stone. You've been out here for too long. If you were going to do this, you should have done this years ago.
I know. I mean. So that's actually where this all started, is she started calling herself Emma Stone because Emily Stone was taken by another sag After member. But now she's totally eclipsed other Emily Stone. Unfortunately we don't know who that woman is. But this is I feel like the ultimate flex, you know, Like she started out with the stage name, but now she's so big that she feels like she can just revert to her original name.
First of all, this is like when somebody has your Instagram handle that you want when you start a company or something, and it's already taken, but they're not using it. Emily Stone somewhere is probably not even acting anymore. She's not using the name, and now Emma is stuck with Emma because is anyone going to change how they refer to her.
It'll be interesting to see. Maybe she has enough power to actually make this happen. But this got me thinking about all the other stage names that you may or may not know about. Oh yeah, yeah, Allie Portman was actually born Natalie Hirschlog. Yeah, she's Israeli American. Yeah, she took her paternal grandmother's maiden name Portman as her stage name. She said it was for privacy reasons. Okay, this one is so good. Jamie Fox was actually born Eric Marlin Bishop.
Where do you get fox from? Bishop? You know?
All the swag that Jamie Fox has I think is in part because of his name. It's like he is a fox, you know what I mean? I sound like I'm eighty five, but he is like Eric Marlin. Bishop does not have the same ring to it.
It doesn't. I mean, he clearly knew this was a strategic move. He knew that it would be worthwhile, that it would be good for his career. He actually chose Fox in honor of Sanford and SunStar red Fox with two ex'es. So there you go. I think the one that most people know is Lady Gaga. So Gaga came from what she calls this stronger individual part of herself that she discovered when she was coming up in New York City as a young musician. But she was actually
born Stephanie Germanada. I think that name has star power in and of itself.
I don't know it has german it, sure, I agree, But she has so much star power that I'm not sure it would have mattered for her exactly.
She was born for stardom. One of our producers told us this as we were working on this story. Apparently all of her classmates at NYU put together a Facebook group saying, Stephanie Germanada, you will never be famous. She proved them all wrong. I mean, she proved them all wrong. That's so crazy that they did that.
That's a huge part of her backstory. She had a lot of resilience and she was like, I am going to be famous. She went to every club in New York City to perform and said it.
I love seeing those videos of her performing at Lollapalooza back in the day. Hearing those stories of how she was lugging around her keyboard herself making her own costumes. Is that kind of grits and ingenuity that I really admire.
I got to spend a little time with her backstage at a few concerts and events, and she is such an artiste. Like some people are pop stars and some people are artists, she is truly an artist. I do have to admit something to you. Tell me it's a big secret. I have a stage name. I am not truly Danielle Robe.
What is the real name? I mean, I already knew this, but.
I feel like I have to be honest with everybody.
Honest.
So Robe is my middle name. So it was one of my given names. It's on my birth certificate. But my mom is a huge feminist, she always has been, and so she said, I wanted to name you after two really powerful women, and it's my two grandmothers. So Rody ro and Barbara BA and she made up the name and I started going by it my junior year, senior year of high school because oh, this is embarrassing.
But I was singing and I had some like a very small amount of success, but enough that I didn't want any colleges to find, like any music videos or anything I was doing because Facebook was so new, and so I started going by my middle name, and then it caught on. And now it feels weird because all of my best friends call me Robe, like it's become who I am. They forgot my real last name.
I do call you Robe sometimes, no first name.
I know last name only, but like all my friends from fifth grade, sixth grade, they don't have my real last name. They have Robe. It's so interesting.
Is today the day, Danielle? Are you going to reveal your true name today?
Sure? I think it's on the interweb. My real last name is Willerman, Danielle Robe, Willerman. Oh, oh my gosh, Willerman.
Breaking news. I didn't think you were going to go there.
Wow, neither did I Actually it just sort of flew out of my mouth. But I feel like this podcast is one of truth.
We are truth tellers here on the bright side.
Did you ever go buy a stage name or you've always been Simone? Boys?
There were parts of my career where I went by Simone Danielle. I think because Danielle is my middle name. I have two middle names. My other middle name is Bonnie, and that's my grandmother's name, so my mom also named me after my grandmother. But I guess I sort of have a stage name in that my name that I go by professionally is my maiden name. I don't go by my married name. So yeah, that's the closest that I'll get to that. But I'm kind of jealous that you have a stage name, like I feel like I
want one. But I'm thinking maybe I just need an alter ego name. Maybe that'll scratch that itch for me.
How about See Money.
No, See, that's too close. I think I need something that feels too real. It feels too real to who I really am. I needed a departure, perhaps something a little more sinister, you know, like Sasha Fierce. I need a I like Angelica or like Giselle. I feel like that conveys like I don't know Franngelica Frienjelica Where are we getting the friend from? I? No, no, I have been trying to find an alter ego name generator for like the past ten minutes. Okay, I did actually ask
chat ept for alter ego names. Are you ready for these?
What did you type in first?
I just said my name is simone voice watched my alter ego name be, which is not the best problem. Okay, here we go. These are really good. Phoenix Noir interesting. I kind of like that one, Luna mystique, Nova Eclipse.
Oh, that's really on brand for you.
Oriyan Enigma, Nebula, Veil, Ember, frost Ember.
Why are these all like moon and sun and cosmic? This feels very you.
It really is interesting. Our producer Tim says these sounds drag queen names, which I mean, I can't.
I can't deny the similarities here.
It's epic.
Oh my god.
After the break, we're talking with Claire Lombardo, author of this month's Reese's book Club pick, The Most Fun We Ever Had.
Stay with us, Danielle.
Today is a very special day because we're talking about the April pick from Reese's Book Club. New York Times best selling author Claire Lombardo is joining us all the way from Iowa City. She's the author of the Most Fun We Ever Had, And we.
Had so much fun reading the book as a Chicago and it really made me feel like I was back at home. It's a family drama set mostly in Illinois and follows a married couple's forty year love story. It includes the messy lives of their four very different daughters and a grandchild who was given up for adoption. It's a deep dive into complicated relationship dynamics, the perils of comparison, and what it means to love a partner, to love
your family, and to love yourself. Claire, welcome to the bright Side.
Thank you so much for having me. It is a delight to be here.
Well, I imagine it must be pretty fun to be Claire Lombardo right now, because The Most Fun We Ever Had was published back in twenty nineteen, but it just became a Reese's Book Club pick this month, and we talked to Reese on our show. She just lights up when she talks about being able to amplify the work of female authors like you. So, how has the RBC
selection impacted you? It's been incredible. It's I mean, like you said, this book is it's a five year old paperback at this point, and to see the new life that has been breathed into it overnight has just been so incredible, Claire.
When I talked to authors, they tell me that it's the hardest thing they've ever done. And most of these women are also mothers and entrepreneurs, and they still say just getting this book birthed was the hardest thing they have done. Why did you have to get this story onto the page? This is your first book. Why did you choose this one?
You know, I didn't know that I was writing a novel when I started writing this novel. I didn't set out to write a novel. Writing was always sort of on the side past time for me. It was something I did after my you know, nine to five job that it always just brought me pleasure. But I started social work school, a graduate school in my mid twenties, and about the same time I started writing this novel, and very quickly these characters kind of took over the
rest of my life. And so I guess the bigger and bigger the story got in, the deeper and deeper I got into it, the harder it was to ignore it, so it did kind of just become this thing that I to pay attention to and then ultimately finish.
You worked closely with unhoused individuals in Chicago as a social worker. How did that inform your writing?
Yeah, I mean, I gosh so much. Most of the people that I was working with had never been given a chance to tell their own stories. They had never really you know, they had sort of been on the fringes and not been paid attention to by a lot of people. I was working primarily with parents and kids in the Chicago public school system, and their lives were incredibly complicated in many, many, many different ways, and I think sometimes just being able to validate that for someone
is an incredibly powerful thing. And so in my kind of helping people to you know, it's a matter of asking the right questions, or asking one hundred more questions than you might need to to kind of get the context, get the backstory, and to understand where people are coming from. That's very much a part of my writing process.
Now.
It's something that I do, you know, terrogate my characters, so to speak, in a similar way, so I can get to know them, you know, as well as I can and empathy.
That's clearly something that you lead with.
I hopes.
Thank you, I hope so it's it's important to me. Yeah, I think it's one of the most critical things that we can bring, you know, as writers and as readers. I write a lot of difficult and not always particularly likable characters. The big thing for me as a writer was learning how to love them even when I didn't like them particularly, and I do think that all is you know, kind of stems from from having empathy for them.
Claire, you talk about making this pivot from social worker to author, and you make it look so easy. Was it?
No?
I mean, I'm thank you. I'm glad to hear that. No, it was very messy. It's I think people are always a little nervous about me talking to their teenage children because I'm like, I dropped out of school twice and everything turned out fine, but it didn't feel fine or easy at the time, and certainly wasn't an easy or advisable decision to drop out of school twice as I did. I mean, ultimately, I'm obviously very grateful that I did.
But I think and I explore some of this with the Grace character in particular and the most fun we ever had. It strikes me as really bizarre now at thirty five, that we expect seventeen or eighteen year olds to know who they are or what they want from the world, or even twenty five. You know, I recall at the time feeling like a failure or feeling like I was doing things wrong, because you know, I couldn't make it work and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. And now I'm very grateful that I
was able to figure it out that way. And I don't think I would have written the books that I've written or be the person that I am had I not gone through those sort of messy or ill advised decisions that I made.
So, yeah, we want to dig into the book with you, Claire. It's not all It's not often that we get the actual author here with us such a treat A huge element in this story is the relationship between sisters, specifically how we compare our lives and our successes to our siblings. Why did you want to dig into that dynamic?
Well, I am a sister. I also have a brother, but I come from a big family and I'm the youngest of my big family, and so I've always been very much an observer of family dynamics and very interested in family dynamics.
I think as.
Women we are able to we have a capacity for empathy like a you know, an unusual capacity for empathy, but we also have the ability to be cruel in ways that are sometimes rather inventive. And so having these these four sorens and daughters in the same space was just really fun to explore. And there's kind of the old you know, you don't choose your family adage. These four women don't always want to be around each other or acknowledge that they are related to each other, but
they have to. And so that's a fun position to be as a writer too, is to kind of lock yourself into a room like that full of people who are kind of explosive and just sort of see what happens. And plenty did, and you know, plot is born from bad behavior, and all these women are doing pretty much is misbehaving. So it was really pretty fun to write about them. You mentioned that you're a sister.
How did your family and your relationships with your parents and your sisters inform your writing quite a bit?
I had a professor once who said that writers are either drawn to messy families or tidy families in fiction, and I'm clearly very drawn to messy families. And I think when you're immersed in that kind of messy, intimate environment from the get go, you can't help but I don't know, be interested in that. And I also, I'm the youngest of kids by quite a bit, so I was also kind of an only child. Most of my siblings had gone off to college by the time I was I don't know, nine or ten, so I grew
up with my parents in a very different way. So I feel like I kind of had the privilege of being both the youngest child and an only child, and I think that enhanced my perception of my parents too, and their you know, the fact that they were people instead of just.
Being my parents.
I think I maybe was more aware of that earlier on than some people might have been, just by virtue of my place in the family.
Claire. At its core, this is a novel about a happy and loving marriage, and we don't always see happily married people in fiction or TV dramas for that matter, So were Marilyn and David Sorenson inspired by people you know.
I will say my parents were incredibly in love, so that was something that I It was just part of my life. It wasn't something I was particularly aware of as being unusual until I became an adult. When I was a graduate student, the joke about me was that my stories were all very long, none of them had plots, and they were all about people who really really liked each other, which is not like the fodder for great fiction.
But I kind of took that as a challenge to say, we have these people who really really love each other at the center, and how can I actually turn that into a sometimes negative plot device. It was a fun challenge.
Why did you want to write characters who liked each other?
That's a good question.
That's some deep psychological mining that I have to do eventually. I'm conflict avoidant, so that might have something to do with it.
But I don't know.
I think I like to feel good when I'm reading, and I like seeing love rendered on the page, and I do think it is you know, I don't know.
Life is hard.
It's a hard time to be a person right now, and so I think it can be nice to have a book where there are people who are enjoying each other.
Say so, yeah.
That's how we created this show too, is like it's okay to be happy and joyful.
So we are absolutely aligned on that. I want to hear more about that. When did you first fall in love with storytelling and writing? How did that come to be for you? Yeah, so I feel very lucky.
I grew up in a house where books were just around, and it was just kind of a part of all of our lives. As I said, I have four older siblings, much older siblings, so I was exposed to books, sometimes perhaps earlier than I should have been, but I was, you know, constantly constantly reading. It was like the only way that my parents could think to punish I was a fairly well behaved kid, but the only way they could punish me was to not let me read before bed when I was little.
So cool. I know it was brutal.
It only happened a few timess, but yeah, it's always been a huge part of my life story and I feel very very grateful for that.
So so funny my parents punished me with t t that you couldn't watch it, or that you had to know that I couldn't watch it. I always loved watching inappropriate things like I was watching Sex in the City and the Sopranos way before it was okay. I was never allowed to watch that stuff. Yeah, what did your parents punish you with?
Oh, my gosh, anything, I mean grounding? Uh, you know, lose allowance. I was a bit of a troublemaker as a kid, so I got I ran the gamut.
Kind.
I've learned that you use post it notes quite liberally throughout your creative process, as many authors do. So what would we see? I want you to just take us into your creative brain for a minute and tell us what would we see if we caught you midbook development.
Oh gosh, you would be frightened of me, I think, without without question. I in my office at home, I have a huge, almost full wall sized post it board.
It almost looks like you're cracking crime case. I have to tell me.
I know.
Yes, it's very.
Yes, Yes, I'm like that person who has the hotel room with the red string between the pictures of bodies. Yes, it's a slightly tamor version of that. Yeah, I mean it's it's a portrait of real disordered thinking. And I think because I'm kind of a disordered writer. I'm a fairly organized person in my regular life, but in my writing life, I don't write an order. I kind of operate on you know, I'm writing today what I feel like writing today, and it might not be the scene
that comes after the scene I wrote yesterday. So with most fun I ended up with just, you know, hundreds of pages of non consecutive scenes about this family, and there was no through line and there was no real sense of order. And at the time, I was like, this is fine. It's an artistic novel. And I remember telling my agent that and she was like, that's like, no, you can't.
You can't do that is not a genre.
No nobody wants to read that self included. So yeah, I kind of had to get mathematical at the end, and it's I mean, it's become kind of a fun part of my process. I have, I guess, a creative brain in some capacity. I have a visual brain, which novels are are not. Particularly You don't really get to tap into that part of your brain when you're writing a book, and so I think doing things with post it notes or storyboarding or you know, a variety of
different writing exercises. I guess is a way to concretize and make visual something that is inherently not. So I try to find ways to do that where I can.
How many stacks of post It notes do you think you go through during that process?
Oh gosh, I should have like bought stock and post its.
Buy it now because she's writing a new novel and it's gonna go up.
I'm gonna, yeah, go buy some before I yeah, sell out Staples or whatever. It's hard to tell because I'm also a very impulsive shopper for post it. So I'm like, oh, there's a new because they have different collections of post its. There's like the Marrakesh collection and the Belief. I mean, it's very weird. This is a niche bit of information that nobody wanted to hear about.
But thinking there's a collab in your future, right, Oh yes, I am available the Lombardo post It collab. Yeah, very jo Yeah, Claire. There's a passage in your book when David and Marilyn are expecting their fourth child and it's Mother's Day and Marilyn is in the bed with her girls having a moment. It's page two forty one. Will you read a little bit for uses. Yeah, I would be happy too.
I love when authors read to me.
Oh thanks, such a special thing, right, so special?
Oh, I'm glad you. I do that with my students. My students who are you know, in their twenties. I'm always like, do you want me to read to you? And they're always like, yeah, Like it's a very comforting thing. Not my own books. I don't teach my own books, okay, umm.
E.
Liza draped herself over Marilyn's belly, dropping the tulips and they're accompanying dirt onto David's spot on the bed. Oh my gosh, she squealed. He kicked me, and suddenly she had three pairs of hands on her stomach, even reluctant Wendy's prodding. Reacting to the movement from within, laughing murmuring to one another, she allowed herself to rest back against her pillows, again, contented in an entirely different way. Your family could do that to you, sometimes catch you off
guard with their charm and their normalcy. Those rare moments like this one were the reason that she was pregnant again, that she and David would soon be celebrating their seventeenth wedding anniversary that these three girls, wearying as they often were, were currently making her happier than she'd possibly ever been. This was the point of having a family. These fleeting moments of absolute pleasure, Stockholm syndrome. They kept her coming back for more. She shifted beneath the weight of the
baby and the six small hands. She reached a stroke Wendy's hair, and her heart swelled when Wendy let her. This was the point God, David said when he returned, I leave for ninety seconds, and look what happens.
Thank you, Claire, You're welcome. Thank you.
I'm still stuck on this one line that you just read. This was the point of having a family, these fleeting moments of absolute pleasure. I think I just got pregnant again after you read that passage, Claire. I think I'm gonna have a baby now. Congratulations. It makes when you write that, it makes me want to expand my family and have another baby. That was beautiful. Is there a character that you really have a soft spot for?
Wendy?
I think she was the character that people the most either hate or love, and I did both when I was writing her.
But she was so much fun.
To write because she's not diametrically opposite to me, but she is not like I am outwardly. Wendy has a fairly traumatic experience, many many traumatic experiences that kind of characterize her adulthood. And so I really the deeper I went into her past, and the deeper I my understanding of her became, the more I grew to love her.
Which is my hope for readers too. Like I said earlier, like you're probably not going to like or be particularly happy with a lot of these characters, but it's my hope that by the end of the book you'll at least see where they're coming from and maybe find them charming and the way that we do with our own families.
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get Claire's answers to your questions, including whether or not there's an adaptation in the works.
We're back with Claire Lombardo. We have some listener questions for you now. We asked all of our listeners or should I say readers, to send us a voicemail with their questions about the most fun we ever had. This is kind of like an extension of the book Club So first up, we have Ashley.
Hey, my name is Ashley, and I'm a nurse in Nashville, Tennessee. When I was in nursing school, I worked a lot, so I didn't really have enough time to read for fun.
So when I graduated and found.
Reese's Book Club, it really helped me to find my love and passion for reading again. I just finished reading The Most Fun We Ever Had, and oh my gosh, the drama was insane, and I love drama when I'm not directly involved in it. The Most Fun We Ever Had was a phrase used a couple of times in the book. My question for you, Claire Lombardo, is what does that mean to you? And why did you choose that to be the title.
Oh that's a great question. That was not the original title of this book, actually, and I so the line. So it comes from a line early on in the book when Marilyn has two children, so basically too, you know, she has a one year old and like an infant, and she's quite young, and she's at a faculty party with her husband, and she's underslept and very underwhelmed by motherhood or overwhelmed and underwhelmed at once and she says,
I love being a mom. That's the most fun I ever had, And it pops up a few more times. It kind of becomes this call and response between David and Marilyn and what I love about it. If I can say that I love my own title, is that thank you?
Is that it is? I mean, it's tongue in cheek.
It's not, you know, Marilyn is not having the most fun she ever had when she says that. But that's kind of the tenor of this book. There's often a lot of happiness alongside a lot of sorrow. There's often a lot of gravitas alongside a lot of you know, hopefully humor, And that's life to me life. I'm often the person who you know, will make a joke at inappropriate times. Not unlike Wendy, I guess, but I think that is very true to family life, at least my
experience of it. And and that's, you know, that's kind of how the soren Sins operate. There's a lot of things happen that they wish hadn't happened, but they sort of get through it by bucking up and trying to find humor where it's often pretty well hidden, all right.
Next up is Elisa.
Hi.
This is Elisa from Pennsylvania. I am an English teacher and I am an avid reader. I spend a lot of time on book talk. So I have a two part question for Claire. The first question that I have is about Wendy. I was really drawn to Wendy as a character because she is so real and flawed, and I'd like to know if you had the idea that Wendy would be a morally gray character as you were writing her, and if you agree that she falls into
that category. And then my other question for you is do you think that that the story is ever going to be made into maybe a mini series or a series or a movie.
She did?
She was ready? Yes.
I'll answer them in order, because I often forget everything. But Wendy is very much a morally great character. I think that's a very it's very English teachery way to phrase that too, which I appreciate.
I think I did.
Always know that because Wendy's actions people take issue with, Readers take issue with, and they're not the choices that I necessarily would have made, or maybe they are. I think it's hard to put herself in other people's shoes. I absolutely would say that she is a morally great character, and she is hopefully a character again that by the end of the book I hope that readers will will like instead of seeing as a villain. I don't believe in villains in fiction, and I don't believe in heroes
in fiction because they don't exist in real life. Nobody is all bad or all good, and I think Wendy is an example of my sort of commitment to that that people can make, you know, questionable choices but still be okay people, or still be coming from a good place.
So that's that.
And then, so I'm not sworn to secrecy, I will say yes, I do think that adaptation is a possibility, and I will be as excited as the rest of you when I find out.
Also, Claire, you're making us Chicago girls very proud. I could talk to about Chicago for a while, but I think Renee, who is our next reader, would be upset if I didn't ask her questions. So this is Renee. Hi.
I'm Renee from Ohio and I am a wife and mom of three kiddos. I adore the most fun we ever had. I came across it when it was first released, and I wanted to shout from the rooftops to everyone I knew to read this book. I just connected to it on a really deep level. The Sorenson's reminded me a lot of my own family, and being the oldest of four siblings, there were a lot of things that really I could relate to. Fast forward to this month, I've been rereading it and I just love it even more.
I've found myself underlining so many passages that I glossed over, and I'm just connecting to it in a different way.
So my question for Claire.
Is how has been chosen as Reese's book Club pick for April made you reflect on this story as a whole. Knowing that we've all changed since the first time it was released, has it made you think about the story or the characters and would you want to do anything differently?
Wow?
I love that question.
I do too.
It was it's been really interesting to return to this book. So, yeah, the world has changed a lot since twenty nineteen, you know, to put it lightly, and we've all changed in small and large ways.
I feel almost.
Like sisterly about this book in a way that I don't think I did five years ago.
It's funny.
When I was writing this book, it's the most intimate thing in the world, and you think you'll never be distant from the material. It just feels so almost claustrophobically close. So that's been really interesting for me. And I think it's good as a writer to be able to distance yourself from your material. And I think it's that'll be a good lesson to me with future books, my current you know, my new book that's coming out next month, month after next.
Speaking of that novel, can you tell us a little bit more about it. It's called Same As It Ever Was? It is.
I have a copy of it here.
Coincidentally, I love the cover.
Thank you Me too.
It comes out on yeah, June eighteenth, And I would say, if you are, if you liked The Most Fun We Ever Had, I think these books are very much in conversation with each other. I was writing Same as It Ever Was when I was editing The Most Fun We Ever Had, So a lot of my occupations are similar. So Same As It Ever Was is about a woman named Julia who lives in the Chicago suburbs, and she's in her fifties and she lives an ostensibly very lovely life.
She has a husband, she likes a lot, into almost grown children, and then she goes to the grocery store one day and runs into an old friend who she not only was not expecting to see again, but was actively hoping to never see again. And it kind of
throws everything into relief for her. So, if The Most Fun We Ever Had is a story about a you know, the life of a family same as it ever was, is also a family story, but it's kind of one woman's life told from beginning to end, though out of order in my characteristic disorganized fashion.
Claire, thank you so much for being here. This is a really special moment for us because you're our first Reese's book Club author to come on the bright side, So thank you for christening it in such an unforgettable way.
Oh it's an honor. Thank you both so much. This has been so much fun.
Thank you, Claire. Claire Lombardo is the author of the Most Fun We Ever Had, which was the Reese's book Club pick for April. We're announcing the Maypick from Reese's book Club next week, so don't miss that, and remember you can always send us your book and author questions to Hello at the bright Side podcast dot com.
I feel like we're getting to watch Claire define who she is as an author, which is really exciting. And I love that she's unafraid to explore the Morley Gray area.
Mm hmmm.
No one's a full villain or a full hero. I was struck by her fortitude. She's so chill and like you can tell, she's easy going. But to have a nine to five and then come home and write a novel from I don't know five to nine and do what be a daughter, sister, friend, whatever else you are just is so impressive to me. That's it for today's show. Tomorrow, Joanne Lee Mullinaro aka the Korean Vegan is coming by to top food, family, and culture.
Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Simone Boye. You can find me at Simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's ro o b A Y See.
You tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.