Fall Book Preview sneak peek

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: 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 this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

Every week we'll talk all things books and reading, and today we're talking fall books with an excerpt from our live Fall Book Preview unboxing event. I've always been enthusiastic about fall reading, and I know it's not just me.

We first started sharing our Fall Book Preview back in 2019, this is our seventh year. But back then, I'd just returned from a big publishing trade show to promote my forthcoming book, Don't Overthink It, and I thought, "Gosh, our community would love to hear more about what it was like for me to go to this Insider Publishing event."

[00:01:04] So I came back with insights like which titles were publishers excited about, which under-the-radar titles would be harder to discover but would people really want to know existed, which books were booksellers gossiping about over lunch, and which books were highest on my own reading list because of that fall book, my own Fall Book Preview.

Back then, I thought it might be fun to talk about the buzzy fall books because there wasn't that much happening in the literary landscape for fall season. It wasn't anything like summer back then. But those types of insights are even more helpful these days when we're all searching for ways to cut through the noise of what feels like endless reading lists.

I hope you'll find our Fall Book Preview continues to offer the gentle guidance you're looking for in selecting your fall reads.

This preview and its 35 books are all hand-selected by me, from among hundreds I could have considered including, and I tell you about why I chose every title and why it might or might not appeal to you in our preview.

[00:01:59] We recorded our preview live last week, so it's now available for you to download and enjoy immediately on your own time. And when I say "our preview" around here, I'm typically talking about the 1-2 combo package of our 12-page digital PDF booklet and our 90-minute book party in which I describe each of the 35 titles and answer reader questions. You can use each of these resources separately, but they really work well together.

My team and I decided that for this sneak peek into our 2025 preview today, we'd let the tape roll for you so you can listen in live to the first 20 minutes to get a truly authentic taste of what that experience is like.

You'll hear me welcome readers and introduce my team. You'll also hear me react to team member Leigh's surprise cameo where she pops onto my screen for a moment because readers understandably did not know she was here in my house with me. And you'll hear me talk back to the Zoom chat a little bit when I see somebody say something like, "Why am I waving at Zoom? I know nobody can see me." And I laughed and replied.

[00:03:00] You'll also hear me showing our gorgeous fall merch on video. I'm holding up my beautiful Ampersand Embossed Leuchtturm Journal and our literary pencils.

We thought about deleting the brief housekeeping lowdown from your audio today, but I decided to leave it because the point of this sneak peek is to give you a taste of what it's like to attend live or to watch the video yourself. And that felt like the most authentic way.

We often poll our readers at the beginning of live events if we're hosting them for, say, the Patreon community or Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club. So we left that in the audio too. But if you don't want to listen, just flick forward about three minutes. After that, I dig into what many of you consider to be the really good stuff. I describe my process for choosing these 35 books out of the literally thousands of titles I could have chosen to highlight for our fall preview.

Any conversation about how and also why we do what we do around here takes me back to our guiding Modern Mrs Darcy vision and values. It does it every time, even though I don't always talk about that publicly. But tonight, I talk about it publicly.

[00:04:00] You'll hear me talk specifically about our core value of trust and how it influences what we make and how we make it, and our general philosophy of how our work fits into the literary landscape today.

Because this is 2025, that leads to reflections and clear statements on artificial intelligence, something we've gotten an increasing number of questions about lately, about how AI works and how it might be impacting our work, and also the general readerly experience. Little spoiler alert here, we don't use generative AI around here. Period. The end. Despite that, we are feeling the impact of its increasing prevalence, and I say more about that in our event.

If you want to know how I combed through the options to choose the books for our preview, and also, it's the same process I use for the 2025 Summer Reading Guide, I answer that question here as well.

I love answering reader questions, and Fall Book Preview Q&A is one of my very favorite things. We answer reader questions live in this preview video, and then Shannan and I are airing a bonus Patreon episode on Friday in which we answer more questions.

[00:05:09] Now, typically, it's only our patrons who have access to that bonus episode, but we're making this Q&A episode free for everyone who opted in for the 2025 Fall Book Preview, whether that's as a patron, a book club member, or a la carte purchaser.

A crucial element of our Fall Book Preview is talking about the actual included books, and so this sneak peek concludes with me describing the first three books in our literary and contemporary fiction category.

It's not the first category we talked about, that was memoir and nonfiction, but you are going to hear literary and contemporary. And I'll tell you right now, those three books I discuss are To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage, Mercy by Joan Silber, and The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham.

If you'd like to accompany me as I survey the literary landscape for the season to come, you can get the Fall Book Preview, and also access to all our historic seasonal previews and guides by joining one of our membership communities, our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club, or our Patreon community.

[00:06:12] These memberships start at just $5 a month, or with no commitment, no membership, you can purchase a la carte access. Get those details and choose your best fit option at ModernMrsDarcy.com/FBP. That's for Fall Book Preview. ModernMrsDarcy.com/FBP.

Now, without further ado, let's get to it.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Fall Book Preview. Welcome, Ginger. Hi.

GINGER HORTON: Hello.

ANNE: Thank you all so much for joining us tonight. We are so glad you are here. Thank you for supporting our work in this way. This is one of the favorite things we do all year, like putting this together, this Summer Reading Guide, Team Best Books of the Year coming up around the corner. We're so glad we get to share it with you. Not just share it, but thank you for making it possible for us to do what we do. Me and as a team, we are so appreciative.

[00:07:12] We are so glad you are here for Fall Book Preview for the seventh time. Quick origin story. Maybe you'll be like, "Oh, Anne, a familiar tale. Do tell." And maybe you have no idea. But in 2019, I went to a publishing trade show to promote Don't Overthink It because it was coming out six months later, and I thought, "You know, not everybody gets to do this."

But it's so cool to hear months in advance and also about the season starting right then because this happens in September, what publishers are talking about, what are booksellers actually reading, what do they know they're supposed to promote, but what are they whispering about in the corner that they actually loved? You all want to know all that stuff.

We describe you to like podcast guests and readers who come talk to us in book club as delightfully nerdy. You want all the behind-the-scenes details. And I thought, "Well, can I bring back like a dispatch and tell you what I learned?" And I did in 2019.

And this event has evolved over the years because we've done it every year since then. But the thing that never changes is we are going to have a good time talking books, and you're going to recognize possibilities for your reading life in an hour and a half that you don't know about right now.

[00:08:22] And if I'm wrong, please tell us because we want to know all that. Maybe the thing you recognize is, you know, peace out, I'm going to read that new Jane Austen Folio Society $1,200 set. But still, you're going to discover new possibilities and answers for your reading life. And we're going to have fun doing it.

So, hi, I'm Anne Bogel. Anybody here the first time, so glad you're here. You're, you know, coming into my home. This is MMD HQ Conference Table. Forgot to shut the bathroom door all the way. Books I haven't read yet, that's what you're seeing behind you. Journals that Will Bogel, and... now I'm going to save that for a sec, are shipping out if you order from our shop. And I'm so glad you're here.

And I am joined tonight on screen by Ginger Horton, our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager since 2016. And Ginger's joining me up top after I tell you about the 35 books, most of which are stacked next to me. Shannan Malone, our What Should I Read Next and Patreon community manager, will join me for Q&A. Leigh Kramer, our Modern Mrs. Darcy editor and social media manager, is in my house, and she'll be in chat tonight. Okay, y'all, Leigh's here. She comes to visit sometimes. It makes my heart so happy. She and Will put together... oh my gosh, I saw that. Why am I waving at Zoom?

[00:09:44] You know, when I'm waving, I'm waving at you all. We feel ya. She and Will put together so many shipments that are already enroute to you with your physical Fall Book Previews and your other goodies.

Look, this is my own personal journal, so I won't manhandle one somebody's going to buy. And I got these cute little pencils. So they're mailing all this stuff to you.

If it comes and you're like, "Oh, there's a little bit of extra love, it's because Will and Leigh were doing them together while I was signing cards." So much love in there. Let me see, Leigh is actually here to, I mean, you know, she's here to hang and talk books, but she's also here tonight to answer questions, share relevant links. Like I've got a New Yorker piece and a playlist and good stuff like that. She'll share those links in chat. And she's going to basically make sure everyone has what they need.

Okay, I know Brigid's here. Who else is here? Team, would you say hi? And readers, please say hi to our fabulous team members. And, you know, like give her a round of applause. Wave at your screen. Hi, Holly! Holly's here.

GINGER: So fun.

[00:10:56] ANNE: I'm just looking for team names.

GINGER: It's a big book party.

ANNE: It's a big book party. Will's running carpool, but he'll be here in 10 minutes. They make everything happen. Oh, hi, Donna! Y'all, these are the people who make everything happen around here. And team, we're so glad you're here.

And book lovers, thank you for that. Thank you. Okay, your Fall Book Preview PDF is in your inbox as of noon Eastern today. ConvertKit gave some book lovers a little bit of confusion for a few minutes. We figured it out. Thanks for your help with that. Here's my booklet. Some of you have already poured over every page. If you haven't looked at it, I'm not going to show you, but like, is the back not gorgeous?

The covers this year with the pinks and oranges and the way Brenna laid them out, gorgeous. So some of you have already read every page three times and some of you have only like snuck a peek. And you're waiting to hear from me. And like, you're the boss. Whatever you want to do totally works for the rest of us.

[00:12:00] I'm excited. I'm excited to hear. I'm not going to be reading the chat live, but I will read every word when we are wrapped tonight. But our team members are reading, answering all your questions, getting you what you needed.

If you ordered a printed, delivered by snail mail booklet, like I'm holding in my hand... Okay, Will said, everyone who ordered before this week definitely shipped. Most of the other ones shipped. The rest are going in the mail first thing tomorrow.

We are sold out of the ones we pre-ordered in the extras, but we're placing one more order tomorrow. I thought I was going to have to tell you you're out of luck. But if you want a copy, order it like now would be really good. Order it later tonight or first thing in the morning, and we'll make sure you get yours. Those are going to be in stock I think the very beginning of October, I think Will said, but he's the boss of this. And then we will ship them out with you. But look, Leigh is not actually going to physically touch those. I am so sorry.

[00:12:58] Okay, what else? Ginger, would you tell us our housekeeping low down? So we're all ready for the best experience.

GINGER: That's right. We want you to have the best experience. And that means a few little housekeeping things. Leigh is reminding you in chat. So one of the best tips that I've got is to make sure you take a minute right now to change your chat to everyone because we want to see your comments. We want everybody to respond with bookish enthusiasm. And we want to see all the fun stuff you say.

Similarly, if you have a question, put that in Q&A. You can do that throughout the event. You don't have to wait till the end. And we do have the helpful, but imperfect, but really useful closed captioning turned on. So if you'd like to use that feature, you absolutely can.

Also, we do know that the Zoom experience works a little bit better if you can join from a laptop or computer. If you're on your mobile device, that's just fine, but you might not see all the polls and things like that that we've got coming at you. But we will read those for you. So exactly. Pages rustling, Stephanie.

[00:13:58] Speaking of polls, can I start us one, Anne? I am so curious. I want to know what categories you guys are looking forward to the most. Okay, so for those of you that are joining us for mobile-

ANNE: We didn't place our bets yet.

GINGER: We didn't. Okay, I had a theory. I'm not going to say which I betted on. But I had a theory that the way these are ordered this year might impact how people are thinking about them. Let me read them really quickly. Memoir and nonfiction, literary fiction, and contemporary fiction, science fiction and fantasy, love stories, historical fiction, or mystery, thriller, and crime.

Anne, do you want to give your prediction? Or is that unfair to ask you?

ANNE: I will just say I'm not surprised by what I see coming in because I can see it live. But okay, let's see if this puts a wrinkle in things. I went in behind Ginger, and I changed it to multiple choice. Does that change anything? You can answer more than one.

GINGER: I love a superlative. I love to make people pick on one. And you love to... Yeah, we contain multitudes.

[00:15:02] ANNE: Historical just went up.

GINGER: Oh my goodness.

ANNE: Okay, this is fun. Thanks. We're really enjoying this. Thank you, everybody.

GINGER: Like real time. I really think that in the fall, that mystery, thriller, and crime comes through a little bit stronger because it's the season. So that's my prediction before I look too closely at them.

ANNE: You know what's so funny though is some years there just aren't any in a genre in a certain season.

GINGER: Sure.

ANNE: Now look, there's never not going to be literary fiction, and there's never not going to be historical in like the spring and early summer. And there's never not going to be mystery, thriller, and crime in October, November. But some years there just aren't a lot of whatever in a certain... And some years my favorite books are from a category I wouldn't have expected, which the one I always expect is like the family sagas. That's what I love. But I think that lets me get surprised and blown away by a great memoir or a great science fiction fantasy book.

[00:15:58] GINGER: I was going to say, I'm going to tell you something really surprising right now, Anne, that you probably have not heard me say but all I can read right now is fantasy and kid lit. Because I am doing school work for my other reading, all I want to read is like Vanderbeekers and Susanna Clarke. And so I'm kind of looking forward to that science fiction and fantasy. I want to leave the world as Shannan says.

ANNE: I got some for you.

GINGER: Okay. Awesome.

ANNE: Yeah, I love to hear new stuff about your reading life. And y'all, Ginger's referencing her return to grad school at night. And there's going to be a class on that in book club coming up soon.

GINGER: There is.

ANNE: Okay.

GINGER: All right, let's end this and let's share these results. Three, two, one. All right. So I'm going to share these with you all and you will not be surprised to see that literary fiction and contemporary fiction is always perennially popular around here. It is one of my favorite genres. So you are in good company. But sizable proportions for all of these.

[00:16:51] That mystery thriller and crime comes in at 38%. Historical fiction did see a little bump, 31%. And memoir and fiction, love stories, science fiction, fantasy, all super respectable. 21, 19, 15. Yeah, there's a lot of us who want to read all the books apparently.

ANNE: Okay, speaking of all the books, tonight in your preview, we are talking 35 books that I've read and loved that I can't wait to read. This is not like the summer reading guide. I have read 26 of the 35 in full. I've read a healthy to almost the whole thing, healthy chunk to almost the whole thing of all of them. But I haven't read every word of every one. Not the same as the Summer Reading Guide.

These are books publishers are hyping hard this fall, books that I think will be perfect for some of you that are more under the radar that you're not going to see everywhere and know, oh, that one sounds like it's for me. It's always interesting to see what happens to be published and what the themes are that emerge.

[00:17:52] This fall, continuing what we've seen the past year or two, we've got genre benders galore, books about books, books about and by writers, nonfiction for days, campus novels, redemption stories, lots of organized crime, and two Thanksgiving stories.

My parameters for choosing these books, because you gotta know, there's so many that seem so interesting. So how do you get down to 35? I always say Fall Book Preview covers the beginning of September through the end of the year, but it just happened to shake out that the last release date of this bunch is November 25th. I read some December books. We're not talking about them tonight.

There are no series installments in our 35 books, though there are some that are connected to previous works from their authors, like shared characters. We'll talk about that.

I'm always remembering key principle that I took away from Don't Overthink It. This is not my only opportunity to tell you about fall books. We share great titles day in and day out across our constellation of related stars.

[00:18:58] You'll hear about more in Book Club, in the podcast, Patreon bonus episodes is a prime place. And also I'm certain there are great books coming out this fall that are not on my radar yet as of tonight, but it's all good. We're going to keep talking books.

Like our Summer Reading Guide, we're going to take these category by category. And within each category, I'm going in publication date order. We'll talk about books that were already published, like September 2nd, and then we'll move forward to November.

You'll hear me drop in publishing tidbits along the way, like, Hey, keep an eye on this publisher if you love this kind of book. Or like I have the print runs, like how many copies did they print at the first go for some titles? If that's especially interesting, I'll tell you. Okay, now about why these 35 books. I'm gesturing because they're right... look, these are my stacks right here.

Once again, I picked them by hand and it's so hard to choose. And I know I'm always going to labor over this list with my brain and pick the books that I most want to talk about. And I think you'd be most interested in hearing about according to my fallible, but hopefully well-informed and thoughtful judgment.

[00:20:05] Actually, this is a good time to talk about artificial intelligence. Not something I thought I'd do this time last year, but we've gotten a lot of questions recently. I've always resisted, do all the personality type hashtags right here, talking about the more... like just like unpleasant realities of our work over the years. But my team has pushed me to talk about the realities of things like plagiarism and AI and how they impact us. Team, I love you. I'm grateful. You're right.

I'm not sure if you know this, but AI has been an increasing topic of conversation amongst authors and writers and all kinds of people who make stuff. And the same is true for me and my team. And one result from those conversations is we just recently published an AI statement that we can reference and refer to. Leigh's going to share that in chat.

You've heard me say before, or maybe you haven't, we have a set of core team, well, business values that govern everything we do. And we're not sure about how to answer a question. We've run it through the values.

[00:21:04] One of those is trust. And one of the things that means is we want to be really transparent about how we work. Meaning to make things like podcast episodes and blog posts and this Fall Book Preview. And we also want to be transparent about our place in the literary landscape and how AI is impacting us. And specifically, how, when our work is fed into large language models like ChatGPT and Cloud, how that devalues our work.

So I want you to know our team doesn't use that stuff. We do not use generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. Period. The end.

Leigh put our statement in chat so you can check it out for yourself. But every word we write and every book we recommend comes out of our brains, the old-fashioned way, not from generative AI tools or algorithms. This also means that we do not knowingly publicize work that's AI-generated. I don't believe this has happened yet. But if we find out that we have, we will yank it and apologize and let you know.

[00:22:03] I curated the books in our Fall Book Preview by hand. And I did so using the exact same process I used for our Summer Reading Guide because it worked really well for me and I think for you. That process was really simple. I like complicated systems, but my process was simple and it looks like reading thoroughly the fall publishing catalogs, or for summer, it was spring and summer catalogs from a wide variety of publishers.

Like where they say, this is what's coming out. This is how we're going to describe it. This is what the author says. This is the page count. Do you maybe want to check it out? Or do I want to like beg? Can I check that out? That sounds fascinating.

Sometimes I learn of a book because I already follow the author or I heard about it from another reader. But for the vast majority of these books, I'm going to say like 32 of the 35, the first place I encountered it was in the publisher's catalog. And when it caught my eye there, I was like, "I gotta find out more about this one. Maybe it'll be good for a fall."

[00:22:59] This Fall Book Preview is very much from me because it's my eyes on those catalogs. It's like my own readerly sensibility that I'm vetting those titles with. I want you to know that my team and I we work hard to create good stuff that you enjoy reading and listening to.

And we ask that you respect the work that went into it. It takes our time, our energy, our effort, our financial investment. And we hope you can understand why we get a little salty when our work is copied or misused, whether that's by obvious plagiarism, I talked about that more in depth a couple of years ago than I ever have, or being fed for free to large learning models like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. We would be grateful if you would please refrain from any action that results in our work being used for AI training.

Copyright training, nope, copyright law should make this request redundant. But that means we are please asking you to not copy paste our stuff or type our book lists or how I described it. The original photos I took that they not be put into any kind of Claude or ChatGPT situation. This preview that we're sharing tonight does not live on the open web, and ChatGPT can only get ahold of it if somebody puts it in there.

[00:24:13] I've already been made a part of the class action lawsuit against Anthropic for misusing my books. I don't want to give them my words for free. I really don't. I really hate talking about this stuff. Thank you for listening.

I know you have a lot of questions. I hope this answers some of them. And I also want you to know we respect the heck out of you and your time. And we would not presume to tell you about books you could find out about from any old algorithm.

Like we really see a huge part of our work is equipping you to thoughtfully approach your reading life and select books that feel good for you right now from people who love books to you, people who love books. That is deeply human work. It can only be done by you. But thank you for letting my team and I and our human, fallible, thoughtful, readerly brains be your collaborators in this endeavor of the reading life.

[00:25:08] I know I could not possibly have answered all your questions about my process or AI or anything else. Y'all, I love questions. It's my favorite part, which you might not believe because I keep talking about, you know, the categories that are going to be here. But ask your questions in the Q&A feature, not in chat. We'll answer as many as we can as we go along.

And then our pressure release valve is Shannan and I are going to record a bonus episode where we answer lots of questions. And we're going to put it in Patreon next Friday. And we know not all of you are patrons. A lot of you came because you're book club members or you're an a la carte ticket holder. Thank you. We're so glad you're here. We're going to make that episode available to everybody. We'll email it to you. You can listen for free. You don't need to pay anything extra. You don't need to join anything. You'll just be able to hit play. So I hope that helps.

Okay. Finally, pages riffling. That's our bookish drum roll. Bye, Ginger. We'll see you in chat. I mean, you all will see you in chat. I can't chat. I can't chat and talk, folks.

[00:26:07] Follow along in your PDF if you'd like. We are talking about these categories in this order: memoir and nonfiction, literary fiction and contemporary fiction, science fiction and fantasy, love stories, historical fiction, and mystery, thriller, and crime.

Y'all, we tried to have some f... I. I tried to have some fun with the categories this year and make them not genre, and it got a little messy. But you'll see that course catalog in your preview. And that's where I had fun with our loose back-to-school theme. So I hope you enjoyed that. Yes, that's my actual handwriting in the preview. It's not that great, y'all. But I do have better handwriting days than some.

Okay, without further ado, are we ready? Next, we're doing literary and contemporary fiction that so many of you said was your top category, or at least it was going in. Starting with To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage out from Avid Reader on September 2nd.

[00:27:07] This is an exciting debut with a fantastic premise. It's about a young Cherokee woman determined to join NASA and be an astronaut, which would make her the first Cherokee astronaut. Ramage has said that she had enough material for three whole books in here, but it's all packed into this one. And those threads are largely relational. So my catnip.

Steph is the wannabe astronaut. She wants to go to the moon, but she's also a young woman navigating these tricky relationships, especially with her college girlfriend who's dealing with family of origin struggles, her sister who's a social media influencer, and her mother who's keeping big secrets about her past.

This story has a lot of sweep and heft to it. And at 448 pages, I appreciated how it has that room to flesh them all out. You get to know these characters really well.

Next is a book that's going to be on my best of the year list. Some of these other ones might as well, but I'm positive two will be there. Top 10. Mercy by Joan Silber out from Counterpoint on September 2nd. I hadn't read Silber before this year, and now she might be one of my favorite authors.

[00:28:14] To me, this new release is the best of the ones I've read so far. And if early critics are right, maybe her career best to date. This book begins with a conversation between a father and his teenage daughter. She's like, "Dad, it's late. We're chatting. What's the worst thing you've ever done? Do you know?" And he like laughs it off and giggles with her, but he knows the worst thing he ever did. And he says, "I'm going to carry that to my grave. That like sickly, deadly, horrible thing will destroy us all."

So the next chapter, we hear about the worst thing he ever did in 1974, New York. It is sad, sad, gritty, just gruesome opening. I thought, "Joan Silber, I've read you before, Can I do this?" Some of the details about drug use in Ivan's story and more of the medical details just made me like, mm, where Will's like, "What are you reading? Are you okay?" Because I just mm. But I could do it.

[00:29:06] Then as Joan Silber does, she gives you first-person rotating points of view, like interconnected short stories, where you pop in time and space to, usually it's half a dozen to 10 different characters, all of whom were affected in ways, both big and pretty peripheral by the first thing that happened. Here it was by Ivan's terrible decision that night in 1974, New York City. And then her books make a loop and come back and you get a kind of sort of resolution.

Silber is introspective, thoughtful, and in my opinion, these may be a little quiet-ish, but never boring. Because she's asking big questions, like how much should our lives be defined by the worst thing we ever did? And how might we all be connected in ways that are mysterious and invisible to us? Though these are our lives and our decisions.

[00:29:59] There's a chapter in Mercy that first appeared a few years ago in The New Yorker. And if you wanted to read a snippet, and you can access the New Yorker subscription or through your library, Leigh's going to drop it in chat.

Okay, next I don't have it to show you, but The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand. When I read this, I had no idea how big the publisher was expecting this book to be. They printed all, actually maybe they've already printed more, but the first print was 750,000 copies, which is an outrageous number of books. I read this because I was strictly curious. And it was so fun. I'm telling you about this because I want to not because you're not going to know about it otherwise.

This is a boarding school novel co-written with Elin Hildebrand's daughter Shelby who just graduated from boarding school not that long ago. Did I say little Brown September 16th? The students here in high school it unfolds over the course of one academic year. And there are many boarding school novels name checked in the text which I thought was a lot of fun.

[00:30:58] So, why a boarding school novel from Hilderbrand? She said her daughter attended this boarding school in Newport Road Island. She went as a sophomore the year after COVID. And when she got there, she started calling home like four or five times a day, having a wonderful time. But also, Ellen said the stories were so mind-blowing that at a certain point she was like, "Daughter, we have to write a novel." And they did.

This reads very much like her Nantucket novels. There's gossip, scandal, relationships going terribly that are both platonic and romantic. There tons of name checks locations that I couldn't help but Google like I always do reading Elin Hildebrand, restaurants and bars and clubs and fashion designers and other luxury brands and elaborately described meals. So fun. There are occasional first-person plural sections voiced by the school community.

The actual story here is basically fish out of water over and over and over. This is not remotely YA. Don't think because it's boarding school. You hear a lot from the teachers as well as the kids. Some of the behavior that is so scandalous is parents. Some is... oh gosh, it's so juicy.

[00:32:06] And I was a little disappointed, but mostly like, gimme, when I got to the end and was like, what happened with that plot? Oh my gosh, you're going to make me wait for what is clearly going to be book two. That has to be coming soon. I really want to tell you one of the big things happening in the book, but I also like want you Hilder babes identifying yourself to discover it for yourself.

Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed listening to the sneak peek of our Fall Book Preview unboxing experience. If you'd like to unlock the entire experience and get your very own 12-page Fall Book Preview downloadable booklet and access to the entire unboxing, head to our website at WhatShouldIReadNextPodcast.com to get the lowdown.

Did you tune into the Fall Book Preview? We would love to see. Share your setup, your choice of drinks, shots of your favorite reading journal, whatever you got, over on Instagram and tag us in your story. We are @WhatShouldIReadNext.

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Thanks to the people who made this special episode happen. What Should I Read Next? is created by executive producer Will Bogel, community manager Shannan Malone, Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager Ginger Horton, media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and MMD HQ. Plus, the Audio wizzes at Studio D podcast production

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.