Amy Jo Burns [00:00:00] Horse novels are fun. You know, any time there's something about a girl and her horse... I've never ridden a horse, you know. You know, they're pretty but I've never been on one, but I love those kinds of novels.

Anne Bogel [00:00:12] I'm not interested in horse stories, but Amy Jo, I love every single one that I read.

Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on the show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

Friends, I am just back from the beach. My family doesn't usually go early in the summer, so it felt a little different this year. But no matter when we go, I always get to enjoy so many good books. A book a day is what I can often do at the beach. It is one of my favorite times of year for that reason, and I can't wait to tell you about some of those books. I am sure you will hear about them in later episodes later on this summer.

We do kick summer off with a bang around here with our Summer Reading Guide that came out May 18th. And it's not too late to get yours. Order now and you get that immediate gratification in your inbox. But you can trust we are going to bring you great books and related good stuff all summer long. Get your guide by popping over to modernmrsdarcy.com/srg for Summer Reading Guide. You can get it by joining our patron community at patreon.com/whatshouldireadnext. You can hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app right now so you don't miss an episode this season. We are here to help you discover books that are just right for you in every season. Thank you so much for letting us be a part of your reading lives in this way.

And now for today's conversation. Readers, there are lots of ways episodes come into being here at What Should I Read Next? You probably already know how most of our episodes happen. You write in to our submissions page at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest and you tell us three books you love, one book you don't, and what you've been reading lately. And my team and I comb through those submissions looking for books and angles we haven't featured before.

But sometimes our episodes have a very different origin story, and that is the case with today's. My friend Amy Jo Burns is a writer who I hope you know through her work. If not, it is my pleasure to introduce you to her. She is the author of the novel Shiner and the memoir Cinderland, both of which I've discussed here on the show and the forthcoming novel Mercury that I cannot wait to read.

But Amy Jo is also a reader and a reader from whom, as you'll hear, I get many recommendations for titles that happen to be exactly right for me. That's because our tastes overlap quite a bit and we both share a particular love for smartly written stories about complex and complicated family relationships.

It has been a long time now since I first started thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if I could entice Amy Jo to grab a mike and join me on the podcast to talk about her favorite juicy, bighearted family novels." And lucky for all of us, she was game. And that is exactly what we are doing today. Friends, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Amy Jo, and welcome to the show. Let's get to it.

Amy Jo, welcome to the show.

Amy Jo Burns [00:03:30] Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Anne Bogel [00:03:32] Oh, my gosh, the pleasure is mine. I have really been looking forward to this for reasons which I have already told you are not entirely altruistic. Like Amy Jo I love... I think our reading tastes are very much in sync and I'm so excited to get some titles for my summer TBR. And readers, you're in for a treat today.

Amy Jo Burns [00:03:50] I felt the same way. I have my pen and pencil out ready to go to get my list for summer ready.

Anne Bogel [00:03:57] You know how it's done. So, Amy Jo, this is your first time on What Should I Read Next?, though you are no stranger to the Modern Mrs. Darcy larger community. In your own words, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Amy Jo Burns [00:04:09] So I would start by saying I grew up in western Pennsylvania, which is part of northern Appalachia. A lot of my books, I guess all of my books now are set there. So that's where I grew up. I went to college in upstate New York, so I haven't lived in my hometown in a long time. I live now in central New Jersey with my husband and our two kids, but I miss home all the time. And I think as a writer, I'm always writing about home in some way, what it means, how to claim it, what it takes to leave a place, also what it takes to stay. So that's kind of me missing home but also, I love New Jersey, too. It's a great spot.

Anne Bogel [00:04:46] Ooh, what it takes to leave a place and what it takes to stay. I am from Kentucky and now I'm in my 40s. So I wanted to leave when I was in high school. I have come back home. I'm from a state that doesn't get a lot of love nationally. Wow, no wonder I'm drawn to the themes in your works. Not that that's not relatable no matter where you live. Like you want to get out of there and then you feel torn about coming back.

Amy Jo Burns [00:05:10] It's true. And I think everybody wants a chance to choose, right? I choose to stay. I choose to leave. I choose to return. I've always wanted to visit Kentucky. I hope I get there sometime soon. I've heard good things about it. Bourbon, you know.

Anne Bogel [00:05:25] I'm quite fond of it. We're better than the stereotypes. I will say that.

Amy Jo Burns [00:05:28] I believe it.

Anne Bogel [00:05:31] Amy Jo, many of us know you as the author of your best-known work, Shiner, which I have talked about on this podcast more than a time or two. I'm so interested in hearing, since today we're really talking about good books, we're talking about juicy, big-hearted family novels is, I think, what I first emailed you about discussing. But I'm so interested in hearing, has your writing life impacted what kinds of books you find yourself drawn to and perhaps what kind of books you actually tend to enjoy?

Amy Jo Burns [00:05:59] You know what? I would actually say it's the flip. I think that my life as a writer has been deeply impacted by my life as a reader. Meaning whatever I've fallen in love with in a book, it teaches me so much about the ways that I want to write. And I think also if something irritates me or frustrates me in a book, I will often find whatever that thing is in my manuscript and my works in progress.

It could be anything from having a villain that isn't three-dimensional or an antagonist. But you know what it is most of the time? I've noticed when I'm not emotionally present enough on the page with a character or when a writer does that, it just gets me in my chest, when you could feel everything that that character's feeling, you're with them on their journey. And when I feel that, and I don't feel it when I read my own work, and I say, Okay, there's more work to be done here. So I would say my writing life can't exist without my reading life.

Anne Bogel [00:06:56] What comes into your mind immediately when I ask, like, what's a book that has been deeply impactful on your writing life?

Amy Jo Burns [00:07:03] Oh, my goodness, so many. I mean, my favorite books... I love The Color Purple. And you know what I love about The Color Purple is that the first time I tried to read it, I didn't understand it. And then when I returned to it a few years later, I just fell in love with it. And it's interesting how you can pick up a book in one moment in your life and it not fit, and then the next time you pick it up, it feels like it's changed the world. So that book is very meaningful to me.

That's also a family novel. I mean, I think, though, I will read anything. I love all different kinds of books. I'm not picky. But when I think about some of the things that are common among all the books that I have fallen in love with, I love beautiful prose as long as it doesn't weigh the story down. I love a good sentence. I love imagery. I love it when you get a sense of how a writer sees the world just through the words that they choose. So that is always something that gets me right away.

I also am a sucker for that, you know, heart in your throat feeling you get at the end of a book when, like I've said, you have just been with these characters, you've seen what they've fought for, how they're trying to be better for themselves. I think what that means for me is I feel a little bit more alive at the end of a book than I felt at the start. That's what makes me fall in love with the book, makes me want to get it for my friends, get a copy for my shelf.

And the other thing, I love it when a book is funny. I feel that it is much harder for a writer to make a reader laugh or smile than it is to make them cry. And if I can find a book that has all three of those things, you know, it's good prose, it gets your heart pumping, and it's funny, they're usually a homerun for me.

This might be a bad thing, I don't know if you're like this, but I usually know if I'm going to like a book within the first page. And I think a big part of that becomes when I really need... A non-negotiable for me, I need a character who is deeply in earnest about something. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's family or love or land or a job, you know, even if they're misguided about it, usually they are at the beginning of a book. But I need somebody who loves something so much that they can't think straight. Right? Because I think it helps you step into their shoes. So most of the time when a book doesn't land for me, it's because I can't find that character.

Anne Bogel [00:09:37] So you need that point of connection?

Amy Jo Burns [00:09:38] Mm-hmm

Anne Bogel [00:09:39] Wow. Okay. I think I'm a much more tentative reader because I go in with a sense of trepidation, like, What am I in for here? Maybe I'm distrustful. I know. Sometimes I like a book from the get-go, but... I mean, I'm thinking of some of the books I've loved the most this spring and summer, and they've taken me a little bit to get into sometimes.

Amy Jo Burns [00:10:00] You know, that's fair. And I often wonder. That's why I say I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not because I might have been cutting myself off at the knees with some books, but I've read so many that by the time I get to the end and I think back to the beginning, I think, Oh, you know... Usually there's something at the beginning that just makes me say like, Okay, I'm here, I'm with it, you know?

Anne Bogel [00:10:20] Mm-hmm. I will say, I do love that sense. Page one, opening paragraph, I meet the narrator, or I get the first page of voice, and I'm like, "Oh, I love this. Yes, please. I'm so glad I'm here." That's a wonderful feeling.

Amy Jo Burns [00:10:34] It does. And it makes you feel like, "If I don't get that feeling, I don't want to read this." It's like falling in love, you know? It's not always love at first sight. Sometimes it grows over to... I'm talking myself out of deciding on page one if I should continue with a book.

Anne Bogel [00:10:51] I love to hear about that. And I want to hear from people who don't read the same way as me and who apparently aren't so cautious and scared and skittish, let's say skittish, not scared when they're beginning a book. Well, I love getting book recommendations for you. And Amy Jo, I'm not sure you even know how much. Because I think so often you talk about books on Twitter back when Twitter was a little bit different place than it was now.

Amy Jo Burns [00:11:14] Oh, yeah.

Anne Bogel [00:11:14] But I've really enjoyed how you pointed me towards titles that are just fun. Like from the opening, like, Oh, this is a character I want to spend some time with, and this is a world that I want to be in. But they are also super smart and snappy. Like The View Was Exhausting comes to mind and Funny You Should Ask. And look, readers, I know this book was all over TikTok, but I'm not on TikTok. I didn't know.

Amy Jo Burns [00:11:38] Me neither.

Anne Bogel [00:11:39] So I'm so curious, how do you find what to read and how do you decide what books are going to occupy your precious and limited reading time?

Amy Jo Burns [00:11:49] So, for a long time, it was actually on Twitter was how I would say, "I'm looking for this kind of book. Can I get some recommendations?" And I used to get so many responses. And it's not quite the same platform anymore, so I've switched. You know, browsing is so much different now. I used to go into a bookstore and browse that way. But now it's kind of, you know, I'll go on to Instagram and there's a few people on there that I really follow and I take their recommendations when they post about it.

Anne Bogel [00:12:18] Can you say more about browsing being different?

Amy Jo Burns [00:12:20] Yes. Oh, my goodness. So when I was growing up, you would go to Barnes Noble, Waldenbooks was the spot for me. And one of the things I loved would I would just wander the shelves and find something that would stand out to me. Because I had no idea what books were buzzworthy or anything like that. All it was was for me looking at the description and then looking at the first page. And maybe that's why that has still stuck with me because that's how as a kid I used to choose books. I had no sense of what was literary or popular or anything like that.

Now, though, I mean, you can still certainly browse in bookstores, but the selection has shrunk a little bit, I think. And it's been curated. You know, bookstores understandably shift certain books to the front of their books to the back, all that sort of thing, which is also helpful for shoppers. But I have two kids, I don't get to go to bookstores maybe as often as I would like.

So now I browse online and I do that by identifying just a few people. It's usually on Instagram now. But over time I kind of see, "Oh, I like their recommendations." They're often booksellers from all across the country. Someone you've had on your program before, who I love, Elizabeth Barnhill from Fabled in Waco, Texas. I think she's got great taste. She puts the books on my radar all the time. So that's somebody I enjoy. Just, you know, people who kind of have wide ranges.

And not every book lands for me. But like I said, I'll go and read the description and I'll look at the first page and say, Okay, I'll give it a try. So that's a bit how browsing has shifted for me. Especially during the pandemic, when you couldn't browse anywhere. I had to find a new way. Right?

Anne Bogel [00:14:02] Mm-hmm. We all did. So what jumps out at you? How do you decide what to read?

Amy Jo Burns [00:14:07] I would say I love it when at the beginning you get that sense of, Oh my goodness, something went down here and I want to know what it is. You're stepping into a situation and you're like, "There's some beef here between people and it's legit and I just want to watch it play out." I really love it when there are characters who are committed to working it out and what that looks like and all the ups and the downs and how you reach your hand towards somebody and they're not quite ready to take it. And then it switches and they're ready to reach toward you and you're not ready to reach back. And then at the end, sort of finding that moment of meeting whatever that might look like. I find that very powerful because I think it inspires me. It gives me courage to try to do that in my own life. That really is what reading comes down to for me, is it gives me strength and new perspective in my own life.

Anne Bogel [00:14:59] Amy Jo, that makes so much sense to me because I have discovered that we have a mutual love of juicy, big-hearted family novels.

Amy Jo Burns [00:15:06] Yes.

Anne Bogel [00:15:06] And it's not like I'm a genius for putting this together. I think I realized this. When you said as much on Twitter and actually you referenced how you love to get recommendations or you did back in the day by saying, This is what I love you. Tell me about more of them. I think that one day when you ask for recommendations, the title you said, "This is what I love, give me more, please," was We Are the Brennans. So you nudged me to read that book that had been on my shelf for, I think, over a year at the point. It's not like I didn't know about it, I just didn't realize how much it was going to be for me. And I absolutely loved it.

So I would love to hear more. So when you're looking for—and I think these were your words—juicy, big-hearted family novels, what do you mean? Like what kind of descriptors do you think of? What kind of feeling? How would you describe such a book generally speaking?

Amy Jo Burns [00:15:57] When I think of juicy, I think of that thing that makes you turn the page, whether it is some sort of beef between characters that goes way back or it's this idea of the family may be presenting itself in one way to the public and being a completely different way behind the scenes, and you find that there's a hidden story behind the story. I find that very satisfying, very juicy.

I love it when, you know, you can't determine easily who's right and who's wrong. I think that's really exciting in a book. Those are the sorts of things that make me turn a page. When every character in the novel is going to learn things the hard way, I think that's really fun to read. Because, you know what ends up happening is that you start to identify so clearly with the characters that you're not an eavesdropper anymore. You kind of become a member of the family, of the inner circle as you read. And that, I think, is what makes this book stay with you.

And in terms of what bighearted means to me, I think what I love and what makes my heart grow three sizes is that moment of choosing in a book. You know, we as people we don't get to choose who our family members are, but we do get to choose how we're showing up in the family, how we're going to love somebody even if it's rebuffed or it's taken the wrong way. We get to choose what we're claiming, what we're fighting for. And when that happens in a family novel, it's usually just so satisfying for me. And that's what makes me want to read it again, to recommend it, to say, I want more of this. And that's exactly what We Are the Brennans did for me.

Anne Bogel [00:17:40] I'm also thinking about how you said earlier that you love it when a character is just really earnest. Like they wholeheartedly love what they love, maybe no chill is an apt descriptor. Like, they're in there. They're out there. They're all in. And I wonder if those things don't go together.

Amy Jo Burns [00:17:55] They do.

Anne Bogel [00:17:56] There's a lot of feelings.

Amy Jo Burns [00:17:58] There is. And you know it is funny I feel like you're describing me as a person. I have no chill about things that I love. So I guess what I'm doing is I'm trying to find that in characters, too, because that's me to a tee.

Anne Bogel [00:18:09] I love that. Ginger on our team is always saying she has no chill. Like it's something fundamental you have to know about her. I can be a little more reserved unless I'm talking about a book I love.

Amy Jo Burns [00:18:19] Yes, you know what? We need both.

Anne Bogel [00:18:20] But even then, I might say like, "It might not be for you. Listen close." But I do admire and appreciate that wholehearted, earnest, no-chill perspective. I mean, I can be definitely earnest. And I think that's something that I really relate to when a character.

So, Amy Jo, as a writer, you are no stranger to these family novels and you have a new one coming out that I am just dying to hear more about. Tell us about Mercury.

Amy Jo Burns [00:18:46] So Mercury is coming out January 30th, 2024. And I have to tell you, I loved writing this book. I am so excited for you to read it. I'm so excited for your readership, for readers everywhere. It is, I hope, a juicy family novel. It's set in western Pennsylvania, where I grew up in the 1990s, and it is about a family of roofers whose lives get upended when a young woman named Marley moves to town and the town is Mercury, and that is where the book gets its name.

But over the course of nine years, Marley becomes wife to one of the sons in the Joseph family. She becomes the one who got away to another and she becomes a surrogate mother to everyone in the family. And when an emergency roofing job reveals a dead body in the attic of the local church, all these old family wounds start to resurface and suddenly, you know, the survival of the Joseph family, as we come to know it, hangs in the balance.

So this book for me has all the things that I like in a juicy family novel. It's got that vibe of "what happened here?" It goes back and forth between past and present. It has multiple voices. Each one of the characters have their own story to tell. And ultimately, I think it's a story about what it means to belong somewhere, whether it's to a family or a place. It's about the lengths we go to for those we love. And it asks the question of whether it's possible to save a family from itself.

And as I said, I grew up in western Pennsylvania. This story is very personal to me. I come from a family of roofers, my grandfather, my dad, my uncles, my brother. So it's something that has meant a lot to me. Even though the characters and the events in the novel come mostly from my imagination, Mercury is very much a real place, and it's based on my hometown, so it was really fun to write.

Anne Bogel [00:20:44] I haven't read this yet, which is a real shame, Amy Jo. But I can hear myself talking about it now. Like I did not know that I was desperate to read a story about a family of roofers in western Pennsylvania but let me tell you. Also, you mentioned you loved writing it. And-

Amy Jo Burns [00:21:00] Yes, I did.

Anne Bogel [00:21:01] Listeners might think that that's something that authors always say about the books they write. But would you speak to that for a moment?

Amy Jo Burns [00:21:07] I think every day felt like a joy because it would just bring a smile to my face to create characters that reflect the men that I grew up with and love. Roofers can be some of the most funny, maddening, brave, complex people that I've ever met, and I've never read a book about roofers. I looked for one and then I thought, "You know, I should just write one."

One of the things that I think I found so exciting about it was my dad has always said he got to experience Pittsburgh where he grew up, and that's where part of the book is set, from the roof. So if you've ever traveled through the Rust Belt, through western Pennsylvania, parts of Ohio, you've probably seen or stood beneath one of the roofs that my father or my grandfather or my uncles, or my brother have built. And it's such a beautiful way to experience a city is from, you know, going up the service elevator, seeing the bowels of a building, but then also seeing it from the top. And it's a kind of artistry that I don't think gets enough love in literature or there's room for it to get some more love.

So creating the characters felt like being with family. It felt like a family reunion. I just felt the love on the page and I felt like I understood them right away. Sometimes writing a book can feel like really hard work, like you're pushing that stone up a hill. But this one, it just felt like momentum from day one, which is, you know, it's rare. I've never had that experience writing a book before like I did with this one. So it was a real joy.

Anne Bogel [00:22:49] That's a real difference from what so many writers say, which is they love having written, but like present tense writing not so much.

Amy Jo Burns [00:22:58] That is often the experience for me is it feels like you're staggering around in the dark. And I think it wasn't that. I wasn't staggering around in the dark, but it's like I had my people with me, you know?

Anne Bogel [00:23:09] Aw.

Amy Jo Burns [00:23:09] It gave home back to me in a new way that I don't think I've felt in quite some time. And that's why it was hard for me, a little bit, to finish it, because I knew, I could tell that it was a special experience writing it that would end, you know.

Anne Bogel [00:23:25] Well, that sounds amazing. I can't wait to read it. Is it available for preorder now?

Amy Jo Burns [00:23:29] I think so, yes.

Anne Bogel [00:23:31] Okay. Awesome. So, Amy Jo, knowing that we have this mutual love of these kinds of books and I just love the way you put words to the things that draw you in the attributes of this kind of novel, I thought it would be fun to share some of our favorites. I'll let you go first. So what we have each done is brought some titles that we really love from this category of reading. I would love it if you could start with We Are the Brennans, that book that I left because of you that we already touched on briefly.

Amy Jo Burns [00:24:01] I mean, when I think of a quintessential juicy family novel, that's at the top of the list. We Are the Brennans is by Tracey Lange. I would also like to say she has a new book coming out August 1st. It's called The Connellys of County Down and it is just as good. I loved it.

But We Are the Brennans opens with this character named Sunday. She is 30 years old and she has just gotten a DUI. She's been in a car accident. She's okay, but she's injured. And she has to return home to recover to the family that she left very abruptly years ago. And as the story unfolds, we start to get a sense of what happened, why she left her first love, I am a sucker for first love, hometown boy, and we start to understand why her family is so desperate for her to stay.

One of my favorite parts, when I say I love when a book makes me smile, is how she switched between viewpoints and characters in chapters. What she will do is she'll take one line of dialogue in one chapter and she'll put it in the mouth of the next narrator. And that first time when the chapter switched over, it just brought such a smile to my face. This is a novel that addresses serious things, but it doesn't take itself too seriously. And I really enjoyed that.

But what I think is really special about this novel is that there's no strife. These characters don't carry strife. They are hurt. They have regrets. They have longings. Their situation in particular is complex. They are in need of money. They have a family business. They know something's wrong with Sunday, who's always been the rock in the family, they don't know what it is. So all of that is complicated, but what they want is not... All they want is for Sunday to come home. And I find that so moving.

And she has this family of brothers. She's got three brothers, her father, they all want the same thing and they all love her in very specific ways. She has this one brother named Denny who loves her in these very loud ways. And then she has another brother named Jackie who loves her in these very quiet and very moving ways. There's no better example of what it means to be a member of a family than that. I love that book so much. I recommend it all the time.

Anne Bogel [00:26:20] I'm so glad to hear it. I really enjoyed it as I did The Connellys of County Down.

Amy Jo Burns [00:26:25] Yes! I'm so excited for readers to find that one too. It's kind of in the same universe, but with a new family.

Anne Bogel [00:26:32] Oh my gosh, I was so delighted to see the mention of the Brennans' bar. That made me so happy.

Amy Jo Burns [00:26:37] I know. Me too. I got so excited. She is one of those writers when you want to step into a world that is full of love and trouble, she knocks it out of the park.

Anne Bogel [00:26:49] Ooh, love and travel.

Amy Jo Burns [00:26:50] Love and travel.

Anne Bogel [00:26:51] That new one is coming in August, friends. You have something to look forward to.

Amy Jo Burns [00:26:54] Yes, you do. Another huge favorite of mine is Malibu Rising. That's by Taylor Jenkins. Reid. This is the perfect example of that feeling that I love that, you know, what happened here? At the beginning of the book we already have a ticking clock. There's a huge house party that's happening in Malibu. We know the house is going to burn down by the end of it. So we already have that thing that keeps us turning the pages.

But for me, where the heartbeat of the novel really comes is that it is a story of four siblings who are each reckoning with what it means to have a father who's been absent. And it just so happens that this father is a very famous rock star. And each of the characters have had that truth shape their life in different ways. It's affected the bond that they have with each other, how they see themselves. Nobody captures emotional vulnerability in a moment in any character like Taylor Jenkins Reid does. And this book is full of those moments. It will kind of make your heart burst by the end. And I highly recommend it.

Anne Bogel [00:28:03] And I love that you chose a Taylor Jenkins Reid because as popular as she is, many people wouldn't automatically think, Oh, Malibu Rising, when we're talking about family novels. And yet four siblings dealing with the family junk, like...

Amy Jo Burns [00:28:17] Absolutely. Honestly, I think it's one of her best books. I've loved so many of her books, but to me, she really shines. She understands those tenuous family bonds and how they can build you up and get torn down in a minute. I loved it.

Anne Bogel [00:28:32] Oh, I'm so glad. Thanks for reminding me of a book I really love from, I think, two summers ago. I'm going to start by sharing, I think, the book I said, "Oh, Amy Jo, big hearted, juicy family novels. Like I'm listening. Thank you." And I think I jumped in with Hala Alyan, The Arsonists' City. I also really love her first book, Salt Houses, but The Arsonists' City... there's more beef that is being dealt with in both confrontational and actively avoidant manners. And I just found it so interesting. Like my hands are just like making mixing it up emotions right now.

But this is another sibling story, although the patriarch and matriarch of the family definitely also factor in. But this is about the Nasr family. They have a Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three adult children who are 30 to 40 years old. The story kicks into gear when the patriarch says it's time to sell the family home and the mother says, come back to Beirut, which is the arsonist city of the title, so we can do this and deal with all our stuff.

But even before that happens, almost like in Malibu Rising, you said the house burns down like on page one and then you find out how we got to that point. On page one of The Arsonists' City, someone dies a tragic death and you're not told who it is and you don't know why it happened. You know what happened, but you don't understand the circumstances that led to that moment. But that aura of fear and sorrow just hangs over the whole book. When you turn the page and there's a couple in the middle of a marital and intimate moment followed by a spat.

So this book is almost 500 pages so it gives Alyan room to explore each family member in all their complexities. Like everybody has a big secret that they are hiding from the other. The parents to their long-held hurts and resentments that are always simmering just below the surface and tend to come to a boil whenever they start talking about them. And they have these long-lasting, exasperating familial dynamics that they can't quite seem to break out of.

Alyan is a psychotherapist as well as a poet so I trust her to know what she's talking about. Like these family dynamics feel so real. Like, I feel frustrated on behalf of the characters because I've been in arguments like that. I feel like I know what that is like, even though their circumstances... I mean, the story bounces between Lebanon and Syria and Palestine and the U.S. in Brooklyn and California. Like completely different from mine.

Something else that's really interesting about this book is that Hala Alyan says that even though she didn't write it that long ago, the place she portrayed in the story because of war no longer exists.

Amy Jo Burns [00:31:13] Oh my goodness.

Anne Bogel [00:31:13] It's like she really got this time capsule on the page. So, readers, if you're picking up now, that's a really cool thing to know going in. And even though I said the book begins with a death and there's that aura of instability and sorrow that hangs over the book, it ends with an exuberant like, we're going to figure it all out ending. And I love that kind of vibe.

Amy Jo Burns [00:31:34] Me too. Me too. I love, also, books that are kind of about family houses too. Those are so great.

Anne Bogel [00:31:41] Oh, oh my gosh. And the descriptions of this family house with I think it's almond trees in the front, just the poetic language about the orangery. Not boring, friends. Beautiful does not mean boring here. It's just really evocative. And you're like, "Oh, yes, I can picture that perfectly in my mind."

But for a totally different kind of story, I want to talk about one that was in the 2023—oh, gosh, what year is it?—Summer Reading Guide. It's brand new. It's a debut. It came out in April. And it's called If We're Being Honest by Cat Shook. This story unfolds over the course of a week, is set in a very hot fictional Georgia town. Well, it's summer in Georgia. Of course, it's hot. It's in the fictional town of Eulalia. And this big family clan has come back home for a funeral.

And in the opening pages of this book, which starts with a real bang. I mean, Amy Jo, you said something went down here and I want to know what it is. Well, I guess you get to witness the big fireworks moment.

Amy Jo Burns [00:32:40] Yes.

Anne Bogel [00:32:41] The family gathers for the funeral. Like all the children and some of their children have come back to gather to see their siblings. Of course, they've got stuff from their history because they're a family. And it's a novel. So they've got some pretty juicy stuff. But during the eulogy, the patriarchs, the grandfathers, very drunk best friend, stands up to honor his deceased cherished, you know, person in his life and says, "By the way, everybody, we've been lovers for decades," and no one knows what to think.

So he drops that bomb into the middle of the funeral and meanwhile, everybody's trying to figure out like how to support their grandmother, who would have preferred to find out in a different way. And also everybody has their own stuff that they gotta work through. And they have to work through and take quarters with these people who know them better than anyone else and also don't understand them at all. And I just loved it so much. And you said that you like books told from multiple perspectives. And this one... I mean, have you read this one?

Amy Jo Burns [00:33:43] I just started it and it has got one of the best openings to a novel that I've read in a while. It's just is really exciting. Because it's exactly that feeling: what happened?

Anne Bogel [00:33:55] Well, I think you're really going to love it for the narrative voice, because Cat Shook is... she's just in everybody's head all the time. Like she doesn't rotate with the chapters. Just all the time she's constantly bouncing into the brains of the people who are in the moment. So you can get ten different perspectives on one page is what it feels like. That's probably a slight exaggeration. And I would expect such an approach to make me dizzy. But I mean, it worked. I loved it. I just felt very oriented and like I always understood what somebody was feeling and thinking. Oh, it was... I just really loved to watch the secrets come spilling out and the characters forced to reckon with the fallout.

Amy Jo Burns [00:34:33] Agreed.

Anne Bogel [00:34:34] This has a lot of all that.

Amy Jo Burns [00:34:36] I'm so excited to finish it.

Anne Bogel [00:34:38] Oh, me too. I'm excited to hear what you think. Okay. Tell me more. What's on your favorites list?

Amy Jo Burns [00:34:43] The next book I wanted to mention is one of my top five of all-time books in any genre. It is called The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle. It came out in 2007 so it's been a while. But the book opens with a character named Alice. She's maybe 13 or 14. She lives on a crumbling, rundown family horse ranch that's in Montana, I believe. And we learn at the beginning of the book that her sister, who is sort of the family's star has run away to marry a cowboy. So that's sort of the setting.

Alice is there. She ends up trying to step up to be somebody who helps save the family horse ranch, but who is also trying to help her parents. Her mother is very ineffectual, sort of depressed. Her father's trying to hold everything together. This is one of those books that really lands for me because of what it's like to read it. The way that she writes sentences is out of this world. Every single sentence is its own universe, its own story. The story changes a little bit with every single sentence you can just feel. Everything that went into what the author put through to the words she chooses, the way she advances the plot.

But basically what ends up happening in the story is that the family horse ranch ends up boarding some wealthy people's horses. And for the first time in Alice's life, she is starting to reckon with what wealth and class look like and what that means for her. She sort of seen what someone has versus what she doesn't. She kind of gets spun up in the lives of these very wealthy people and she witnesses the truth that sometimes adults lie and they're mean. And she also realizes sometimes they can do really selfless things. And it kind of all gets tangled up into this huge climactic moment of violence that the family has to figure out how they're going to reckon with it.

It is just one of those books that I think the process of reading it is just as revelatory as where you land at the end. I can still remember the opening lines and lines from the middle of the book. So for me, that is just a book that I think, as a writer, taught me a lot. But as a reader, I just felt like it broke my heart almost on every page and then it mended me the page after. So it's a really, really wonderful read that I recommend all the time.

Anne Bogel [00:37:10] Well, I'm excited to read that. I haven't yet, but that recommendation is enough for me.

Amy Jo Burns [00:37:15] You know, I think horse novels are fun. You know, any time there's something about a girl and her horse, there's just so much there about what it means to be a young woman who might be experiencing power for the first time or something wild when she gets in the back of a horse. So there's all those things, too. And she's kind of reckoning with her own power and her lack of power at the same time that I just felt is very relatable, pretty much. I've never ridden a horse, you know. You know, they're pretty but I've never been on one. But I love those kinds of novels.

Anne Bogel [00:37:47] That's so funny. I think because there's a horse novel in the Summer Reading Guide, I talked about Seabiscuit in Patreon. I would tell you, I'm not interested in horse stories, but Amy Jo, I love every single one that I read. Maybe that's because I'm choosy or maybe I just don't understand my own impulses there.

Amy Jo Burns [00:38:04] There's something about it. Maybe I need to unpack it a little bit for myself. But everyone I read, I really enjoy. Like The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, I think it's called.

Anne Bogel [00:38:14] Yes. Okay. Very true.

Amy Jo Burns [00:38:16] That's another one. That's kind of a family novel, too, now that I think about it. That was another one that, you know, just really hit home. They're just... It's interesting.

Anne Bogel [00:38:23] I think I'm very resistant to accepting this truth about my reading life. I need to come around.

Amy Jo Burns [00:38:29] Oh, yeah. Another one that's got really beautiful prose that I love came out this year. It's called They're Going To Love You and It's by Meg Howrey. Again, she has these sentences that I felt when I was reading that she had taken some life experience that she had had and she had distilled it into a sentence and kind of gave all the aching, all the yearning, all the wisdom just sentence by sentence in that book. I mean, it just took my breath away on the sentence level.

But really I loved two things about this book and the characters. The first of which in this particular family, ballet is a really beloved member of this family. So often when I read about ballet in literature, they kind of are always focusing on the seedy underbelly, everything that's wrong with it as an art form, you know, kind of how crooked it can be. And this novel really showcases and celebrates everything that ballet as an art form can give a life, what it gives to a family, how it creates a bond. And I thought that was so special.

And the other thing that I thought was so unique is that this family, the way it's set up, the narrator, her name is Carlisle, and we see her as a young woman, and we also see her as she's in her 40s. You know, her parents are divorced and her father remarried a man in New York City. So she grows up kind of in the Midwest and she's lived in California later in her life. But over the summer, she's always going to this house on Bank Street in New York City with her father and his husband.

What really got me in my chest was the special relationship that she has with her stepfather. His name is James. He's the first person we see on the opening pages of the book. She never calls him her stepfather. He's just James and she's just Carlisle. But you can tell there is such a mutual connection and love there between them. And pretty early on in the novel, you realize that they have not spoken in a very long time.

So you have two things. You're like, Oh, my goodness, I need to know what happened. And your heart is aching for both characters because you get that sense that they just love each other immediately kind of against all odds. And you know, over the course of 20 years or so, you can see Carlisle reaching out a hand and James isn't ready to take it. And then later James is reaching out a hand and she's not quite ready. And it sort of is about this process of eventually meeting back together in a powerful way when they're ready. I just loved it. Really powerful book.

Anne Bogel [00:41:06] Oh, I love books like that. I mean, that really put you through it, like you just ache for the characters. But, I mean, I love it to hurt like that in a good story.

Amy Jo Burns [00:41:17] Yeah, I do, too. Me too.

Anne Bogel [00:41:22] All right. Let me tell you about a couple more. I'm going to go historical with one of my favorite books from the past few years, and that is The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. Amy Jo, I really have a thing for a multigenerational family saga where you can see how decisions and actions, and beliefs just ripple through the decades.

This is a story of twins, two twin sisters. Their names are Desiree and Estelle and they were born and raised. And this really interesting fictional town of Mallard, Louisiana, where the town members in this black town pride themselves on being very light-skinned. Although despite their light skin, that did not prevent their father from being lynched. And of course, that had a deep, deep impact on the family members.

The twins grow up, they make lives for themselves. One decides she's going to marry a White man who doesn't know she's Black and enter that world living behind her family. The other chooses to marry the darkest man she can. So they've chosen different paths that mean, practically speaking, they're no longer family. They cannot be part of each other's lives. But these twins have daughters and you see, in rotating perspectives, the decisions everyone makes, the places it takes them to, and how the past isn't really past—it will still come back to make you deal with it.

I've only talked about the twins, but the supporting characters in this story are so, so good. And it's so rich in the way that Bennett spins this out over five decades and shows the family members circling each other and showing the ripple effects I referred to and showing how she's going to bring them back into each other's orbit. I just love that for all those reasons.

And then I also want to share a book that came to mind when you were talking about the characteristics of family novels that you really wanted to build into your story, the lengths we go to for those we love, and the question, is it possible to save a family from itself? And this is Lily King's Father of the Rain. I was not familiar with this work, but we spoke with her in Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club for Writers & Lovers. And I was researching her history, her background, how she approached her work before we spoke to her and I came across an interview that was just so intriguing about this book. It came out in 2010 and it was highly praised when it first came out, but I needed to stumble upon that interview for it to be on my radar.

It is the story of a deeply dysfunctional Boston area family, and it centers on a daughter. When we first meet her, she's 11 years old and she is in the thrall of her charming, narcissistic, alcoholic father. The story is set up with such an interesting structure. We meet daily at three different times and we go deep each time: when she's 11 in 1972, then years later, when she's 29, and finally in her 40s. So we see how she deals with her father's behavior and her question of like, what can I do for him? Like, the best thing I can do is to be a dutiful daughter. But of course that comes at her own expense, and the cost is very great for making that decision.

And something I love in a novel, in general, is when a novelist can force a character to make a really difficult choice, often a choice that we can recognize, as the reader, as self-destructive. But set up the world in the story, set up the circumstances in such a way that you absolutely understand why the character did that, that you would even have a hard time not doing yourself. Just completely sympathetic. And Lily King does that so well in this book. I just loved it.

Amy Jo Burns [00:45:00] I haven't read that and I think I'm going to have to add it to the top of my list. That's also good. I liked Writers & Lovers a lot.

Anne Bogel [00:45:07] Yeah, I'm not sad about that. Okay, tell me a couple more.

Amy Jo Burns [00:45:11] If you like historical novels, I have to recommend another book I loved, Diamond Head by Cecily Wang. I think it came out around 2014. But it has that sweeping, epic feel to it. It begins in China during the time of The Boxer Rebellion, we travel to Hawaii to the island of O'ahu. And the thing that brings everything in this novel together throughout generations is this fable of the red string of fate. And it's this idea that mistakes in love are passed down through family members. And in this case, it ends with an 18-year-old young woman who is pregnant and she's kind of the heir apparent not only to these all these mistakes in love, but to this very wealthy shipping empire or lack thereof.

I love novels that talk about family businesses, whatever they may be. I mean, obviously, I wrote about a family who has a roofing business, but in this case, they have a sort of shipping empire. This book has one of those great slow burns that is so worth it in the end. And I'm also such a sucker for quiet heroes. And this book has one of the best. His name is Bo High. I fell in love with him because we can all relate to that idea of what it means to be a disappointment in the family. And he kind of starts out as a disappointment and ends up kind of pulling everything together and just being that rock. I love that. I found that to be very meaningful. I read it so long ago and I still think about it all the time.

Another book that I really enjoyed that I read this year, I think it came out maybe in 2021, but it is called Ghost Forest and it is by Pik-Shuen Fung. This is the perfect book to read in an afternoon. It's very spare and very slim. There's lots of white space and there's kind of a gentleness to this story that's very powerful.

It's about a Chinese family. And the main character, the narrator, is a daughter who is, for a lot of the books, seated at her father's bedside in a hospital. He's very unwell and all she wants is for him to say, "I love you." And for so many reasons, it's so difficult for him to get those words out of his mouth. Throughout the book, we jump back and forth to different points in time, and we see how they got separated. Their father remained in Hong Kong while the narrator and her sister and her mother had to move to America.

We get a sense of all the tenderness and frustration that exists in these family bonds. So this is a book that is dealing with something serious, but it's funny and it's so real and it's such a pleasure to read. Anne, I would say if you can get a physical copy of the book, I highly recommend that because what she does, what the author does with white space is so powerful.

I began the novel thinking, Okay, this white space is representing some kind of silence. That means these characters are very distant from each other. By the end of the book, I realized that that silence and that whiteness on this page was really representing a kind of intimacy that didn't need words to hold it. And it just was such a powerful book.

Anne Bogel [00:48:20] That sounds amazing. And I am always intrigued when a reader recommends that a book be read in a particular format. So now I'm just itching to see this one as soon as possible. I could really use a book I could read in an afternoon right now, Amy Jo. So thank you for that.

Amy Jo Burns [00:48:36] Sometimes that is exactly what you need is to get a really particular experience from a book that you had in just a couple of hours. And that's what this one will give you.

Anne Bogel [00:48:45] Oh, that sounds great. Okay, I'm going to share one more and... You know, I have so many of these stories. We're going to go with Balli Kaur Jaswal, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters. And I chose this one specifically from my metaphorical library of many because even though this novel deals in serious issues, we're talking about love and sisterhood and broken relationships and grief and marriage and immigration, it's got this zany factor to the narrative that keeps the mood light, even though the subject matter is not.

It's also compact in relation to a lot of the books that we've talked about today. It is very much about family relationships and histories, but it's less sprawling and more tightly defined than some of this genre. And it's also a road trip novel, which sounds kind of fun for the summertime.

So the setup is when their mother dies, three British-born Punjabi sisters are asked to fulfill her dying wish that she couldn't fulfill herself because of the chemo she was undergoing. She wants them to return to Punjab to make the pilgrimage that she was unable to do herself. And the sisters were never terribly close, and now they're older, and if ever they got along, like those days are long gone. There's a lot of animosity here but you can't say no to that request.

So of course they have to go back to scatter her ashes in her homeland and they're all dreading the trip. But then they come together and realize like, "Okay, it's not as bad as I feared it was. Maybe you're not the worst." But they do kind of poke each other. So even when they're feeling like, "Oh, sisterly love, that could really happen," you know, somebody gets under each other's skin.

But even as they begin to have some empathy for each other, to understand each other once again, they're still very slow to reveal the big secret that each of them is keeping. Each of them has one thing in their life that is imminent and looming and a really big deal. And it's not clear to the reader or the sisters that if they share this thing with their siblings, will it cements their relationship or will it obliterate it? Remember, serious issues, really lighthearted tone. As much as I love the big, angsty, earnest books, I love one like this too.

Amy Jo Burns [00:51:01] Me too. I love it when writers are able to pull that off because it gives you a real sense of what life is. It's those heavy things and those light moments, for sure.

Anne Bogel [00:51:09] And they're just nestled up right alongside each other. Amy Jo, thank you so much for doing the deep dive on juicy, big-hearted family novels with me today. This conversation has really added to my reading list. And I'm wondering what has this conversation inspired you to read?

Amy Jo Burns [00:51:25] This was such a joy for me. I could talk to you for hours about books that you've loved. I think I'm going to go with the road trip novel. And you're right, it's perfect for summer. The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters, that sounds right up my alley, so I think I'm going to start with that.

Anne Bogel [00:51:38] Oh, I'm so glad. I just added, I think, four titles to my priority TBR. But I think The God of Animals is where I need to start. I mean, it sounded perfect. It's a horse book and apparently I like those. I'm coming to terms with this reality. You said it was in your top five ever. And knowing how much our tastes are in sync, I find that difficult to resist. Impossible. Impossible to resist. But also I need to get myself a copy of Ghost Forest in print because I want to see that whitespace on the page and figure out what it means and just have myself a really lovely afternoon with a good book.

Amy Jo Burns [00:52:12] That's it. It's a guaranteed good time.

Anne Bogel [00:52:14] There are few guarantees in the reading life, but I feel pretty optimistic about this one.

Amy Jo Burns [00:52:18] Good point. Fair enough.

Anne Bogel [00:52:21] Amy Jo, this has been a joy. Thank you so much for coming on and talking with me and our listeners.

Amy Jo Burns [00:52:27] Thank you so much for having me.

Anne Bogel [00:52:33] Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Amy Jo, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Amy on Instagram where she shares some of those book recs occasionally @burnsamyjo and at her website, amyjoburns.com. Check out the full list of titles we talked about today @whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com. I added quite a few to my TBR. I'd be interested in hearing if you did the same.

Make sure you are following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And you can find us on Instagram. Our show is @whatshouldireadnext and I'm there @annebogel. We have loved seeing so many of you tag us in your Summer Reading Guide-related posts and stories, so keep the book love coming. We are eager to see what you are reading next.

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Thanks to the people who make the show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Productions. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.