Happy Saturday, book clubbers! This month, we read ‘Vladimir’ by Julia May Jonas. This novel is told from the perspective of a deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose husband, a charismatic teacher at the same small liberal arts college, is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple has long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less co...
Jun 27, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Happy Saturday, book clubbers! This month, we read ‘Alone With You in the Ether’ by Olivie Blake. The book follows our two main characters, Regan and Aldo, who meet by chance at the Art Institute. Prior to the meeting, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. And then, well, they fall in love. But, like all good romance books, their love story is compl...
Jun 27, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 34
Hello, book club friends! This month, we read ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ by Richard Osman. This number one best-seller takes place in a peaceful retirement village, where four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Ca...
Jun 27, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Happy Saturday, bookworms! This month, we read ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’ by best-selling author Gabrielle Zevin. The novel is, at its core, a love story between two brilliant gamers, but not a love story in the way you’d expect. Sadie and Sam form a friendship as children in a hospital gaming room and re-kindle as 25-year-olds years later at a train station. The natural connection that bonded them as kids instantly resumes, and, strengthened by their shared interest in video games, ...
Jun 27, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Hiya, book clubbers! This month, we read You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi. This is a book that flips the romance genre utterly on its head. It’s been five years since protagonist Feyi lost her husband in a car accident. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major cur...
Jun 27, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Happy Saturday, book club friends! This month, we read Coco Mellors’s best-selling debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein. The book follows 24-year-old British artist Cleo, whose chance meeting with a man called Frank (who is some 20 years older than her), changes the course of both of their lives. In Frank, Cleo finds a future where she can paint, be happy and, well, land a green card. When the darkest parts of each of them meet each other, Frank and Cleo are forced to reckon with their demons...
Jun 27, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Hello, book clubbers! This month, we read Aussie author Diana Reid’s second novel, Seeing Other People. Seeing Other People follows two sisters, Eleanor and Charlie, living two very different lifestyles in Sydney after lockdown. When the novel begins, Eleanor has a corporate job and is in a relationship with Mark, Charlie is an actress living in a sharehouse with friends (namely, her long-time crush Helen). Then, all these characters suddenly collide, and Eleanor and Charlie’s seemingly sturdy b...
Jun 27, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 29
Hey there, book clubbers! This month, we read the debut novel from author Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake. Black Cake is a novel that spans 60 years in the life of one Caribbean-American family. Byron and Benny’s mum, Eleanor Bennett, has died. She has left them a voice recording in which everything Byron and Benny ever knew about their family is upended. Join us in the all the book chat over on our Insta, @theshamelessbookclub , and our TikTok, @theshamelessbookclub . Or, if you’re after some v...
Jun 27, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Happy Saturday, book club fam! This month, we read the incredible memoir from writer Amy Bloom, called In Love . In January 2020, Amy traveled to Switzerland with her husband Brian where he was helped by Dignitas to end his life after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. The book details their love story, Brian’s slow decline, and Amy’s doggedness in ensuring her husband died with dignity. It’s a book about love, agency, and grief and encourages the reader to think a lot about what it means to live, and ...
Jun 27, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Oh haaaaiiiii, book clubbers! This month, we read ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ by award-winning Turkish-British author Elif Shafak. The book follows the love story between two teenagers, Kostas (a Greek Cypriot) and Defne (a Turkish Cypriot), whose forbidden romance means they can only meet at a taverna on the island between their homes. Witnessing their relationship through its ebbs and flows over the many years this story encompasses, is the fig tree that lives inside the taverna - the place ...
Jun 27, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Happy Saturday, book club pals! This month we read ‘The Wedding Party’ by New York Times bestselling novelist Jasmine Guillory. The book follows characters Maddie and Theo, who have two things in common: they share a best friend called Alexa, and they hate each other. Yet, underneath the sharp barbs they toss at one another is a simmering attraction that builds until they can’t resist sneaking off together when Alexa isn’t looking. This book is full of love, lust, and sex, which gives us oh so m...
Jun 27, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Oh haaaiiii, book clubbers! This month, we read the debut novel from Aussie author Allee Richards called Small Joys of Real Life. The book follows Eva, a pretty successful local actor, who accidentally falls pregnant to a guy called Pat who she had met just a handful of times, but really, really liked. It’s just that by the time she realises she is pregnant, Pat has died, and she is forced to reckon with a world where she raises a baby to a father she misses but also never really knew. Flanked b...
Jun 27, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Happy Saturday, book club besties! This month, we read An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. The book follows newlyweds, Celestial and Roy. She’s an artist on the rise, he’s a young executive. They’re as happy as ever, until Roy is wrongfully imprisoned for a reprehensible crime. Celestial knows he is innocent, and their families and wider community trust that he is too, but Roy is still sentenced to twelve years in prison. After serving five years behind bars, Roy is unexpectedly set free, but ...
Jun 27, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Good morning, lovely book clubbers! This month, we read Violeta by New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende. This novel tells the epic story of Violeta del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century - the dissolution of a family fortune, a tempestuous marriage interspersed with love affairs, the machinations of family and friends over a century, all set against political upheaval in her homeland, an unnamed Latin...
Jun 27, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Happy Saturday, book club fam! This month, we read If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha. The novel is set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, and follows four young women making their way in a world defined by impossibly high standards of beauty, secret room salons catering to wealthy men, strict social hierarchies, and K-pop fan mania. Today on the show, we chat about the world of plastic surgery in South Korea, standout characters, and the book’s strengths and weaknesses. Join us in the all the book ch...
Jun 27, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Hellooooo, book clubbers! This month, we read the non-fiction book from bestselling Aussie author Trent Dalton called Love Stories. For about two months, Trent sat on a busy Brisbane street corner, asking more than 150 strangers for their best love stories. What sparked this idea? After the passing of his best mate’s mother and, well, a global pandemic, Trent felt like we all needed to hear some love stories. Today on the show, we chat about our favourite stories and main takeaways from the book...
Jun 27, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Hiya, book club besties! This month, we read the New York Times Number One Best Seller: The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller. The story’s protagonist is Elle Bishop, a 50-something woman in love with two men - her husband, and her childhood best friend. As the blurb tells us, “so begins a story that unfolds over twenty-four hours and across fifty years.” What is Elle’s big secret - the one that has kept her tethered to, but arm's distance from, her best friend Jonas? And which man will she ...
Jun 27, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Happy Saturday, bookworms! This month, we took on our first non-fiction book, a memoir from the now 28-year-old North Korean defector and activist, Yeonmi Park. Published in 2015, Yeonmi tells the story of the first 22 years of her life - from her first 13 years growing up in North Korea as it was consumed by famine, to fleeing over the border to China where she and her mother fell into the hands of human traffickers, and finally, to escaping to South Korea by traversing through the Gobi desert ...
Jun 27, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Hey, book club besties! This month, we read the incredible debut novel by Alka Joshi titled, The Henna Artist. Following protagonist Lakshmi - one of Jaipur’s most in-demand Henna Artists - the novel tells the story of a woman running away from her past in 1950s India in order to forge her own path. But of course, there’s only so far she can run before her ex-husband and a sister she didn’t know existed turn up on her doorstep. So, does their arrival mark the beginning of the end for Lakshmi’s n...
Jun 27, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Why hello there, book clubbers! This month, we read ‘You and Me on Vacation’ by Emily Henry, and boy oh boy did it deliver on its promise to be a sugary, frothy read. Protagonists Alex and Poppy have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car-share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City...
Jun 27, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Yaaaayyyyy! It’s book club day! This month, we read the debut novel from Emily Itami called Fault Lines. Fault Lines follows the story of Mizuki, a Japanese housewife with two adorable children and an extremely hardworking husband. She has everything anyone could ever want, so why does the book open with her wanting to throw herself off a high-rise balcony rather than spend another evening folding laundry or being ignored by her husband? Then, Mizuki meets Kiyoshi, a successful restaurateur. He ...
Jun 27, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Happy Saturday, friends! This month we read ‘Malibu Rising’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid - the same author of our most popular book club pick yet, Daisy Jones and The Six. Malibu Rising follows four famous siblings as they throw an epic party to celebrate the end of summer in 1983. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever. Today on the show, Mich, Zara, and Annabelle talk all things characters, that chaotic Riva party, and the recurring generational patterns of family ...
Jun 27, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Hello, book clubbers! This month, we read the debut novel ‘New Animal’ by Australian author Ella Baxter. This book, set initially in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, then later in suburban Tasmania, follows the life of Amelia Aurelia; an embalmer who spends her days in funeral homes, painting the faces of the dead, and nights sleeping with strangers via the dating apps on her phone. More than anything, though, this is a novel of grief - by chapter four Amelia’s beloved mother dies by fall...
Jun 27, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Happy Saturday, book clubbers! This month, we tucked into Swing Time by Zadie Smith, a novel that tells the story of two girls growing up on the wrong side of London. They meet at a community dance class and dream of being dancers, but only one of them has the talent. The blurb told us it was a tale of “friendships that anchor us, define us and change us forever”, but do we feel that line adequately explained what the book was about? As with any Zadie Smith novel, this one came with hype: her cl...
Jun 27, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Hiya! Happy Saturday! This month, we tucked into the heart-shattering 2016 novel, It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. It Ends With Us tells the story of an unusual love triangle between protagonist Lily, her first high school romance Atlas, and neurosurgeon Ryle. It’s a page-turning bestseller that explores the dynamics of physically abusive relationships, and how the cycle of violence needs to be broken despite the crushing heartbreak that inevitably flows. Today on the show, Mich, Zara, and Ann...
Jun 27, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Halloooooo, fellow book clubbers! This month, we are looking at best-selling author Luanne Rice’s pacey thriller, The Shadow Box. This book jumps before and after the day artist Claire Chase was brutally attacked, to explain just what happened to her. Claire survives before going into hiding and has her suspicions on who her attacker likely was - her admired husband and state attorney, Griffin Chase, who is also running for governor. On the day of Claire’s attack, she was about to launch a shado...
Jun 27, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 10
G’day, book club friends! This month, we read best-selling author Nick Hornby’s eighth novel, Just Like You. The book follows two protagonists, 22-year-old Joseph and 42-year-old Lucy, who fall in love despite coming from two different worlds. Joseph is a young Black DJ trying to find his place in the world, while Lucy is a white English teacher and mum of two, who has recently separated from her addict ex-husband. This isn’t just the story of a juicy love affair though: after all, the book is s...
Jun 27, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Happy Saturday, book club pals! This month, we tore through Daisy Jones & The Six - the sixth novel from bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid that looks at the whirlwind rise of a fictional, iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup. Today on the show, Mich, Zara, and Annabelle talk about the love-hate relationship between Daisy and Billy, the book's interview format, and what the story said about love, monogamy, drugs, lon...
Jun 27, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 8
It's the last book club for 2020, friends! This month, we read Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi - a novel that centres around Gifty, a neuroscientist at Stanford who studies addiction and depression neural circuits through experimenting with mice. This, we come to learn, is no coincidence. Transcendent Kingdom deals with grief, mental illness, and religion, and also takes us back through Gifty’s life: From her brother’s opioid addiction to a disappearing father to being sent to Ghana to live wi...
Jun 27, 2023•46 min•Season 1Ep. 7
A very happy Saturday to you, book club friends! This month, we’re delving into bestselling author Dolly Alderton’s fiction debut: the warm, funny, tender novel, Ghosts. Ghosts tells the story of food writer Nina Dean who enters her thirties with a successful career under her belt and strong friendships around her. And then, well... then she meets Max - a tall, clever, evasive man who told her on their first date that he will marry her. She loves him, he loves her. For five months, they’re entwi...
Jun 27, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 6
