Fully-Booked: Literary Podcast

It’s our 2025 Fully Booked recap—part “podcast Wrapped,” part honest creative debrief. We break down our top 5 most-listened episodes (and why the internet clearly loves a timely adaptation take), share our personal favorites (from book hangovers and games to big-topic conversations like banning books), and unpack the months that felt too rigid, too narrow, or just creatively exhausting.

We also talk about how the book-to-screen wor...

Our 2025 reading wrap-up is here! We’re talking fantasy burnout, new mom thriller binges, ARCs we loved, and a late-year return to horror, cozy fantasy, and darkly funny mysteries.

If you’re hunting for fantasy, thriller, and horror book recommendations—plus real talk about reading through seasonal slumps and motherhood—this episode is for you.

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Why do some fantasy series absolutely explode while others quietly disappear from your TBR? In this episode of Fully-Booked, Megan and Shirin unpack the rise of romantasy, dark romance, and spicy dragon epics to figure out what really makes a fantasy series go viral.

Is there a magic formula behind today’s breakout fantasy hits? The hosts talk worldbuilding vs romance, character-driven sagas, the role of BookTok and RomantasyTok, an...

Welcome back to Fully-Booked, and happy Wicked Week!

In this spoiler-packed episode, Meghan and Shereen sit down the day after seeing Wicked: Part Two to ask a big question: was this sequel actually good, or just really, really pretty?

Drawing on Meaghan’s experience with Gregory Maguire’s novel and the Broadway musical, and Shirin's fresh movie-focused perspective, they unpack how the film handles Elphaba’s story, why Glinda weirdly...

Hey there, fictional friends!

On this episode of Fully Booked, Meghan and Shirin take a break from “serious” adaptations and dive into a mixed bag of comfort reads, ranging from horror to romance.

💘 Main Chat: Forever My Girl – Book vs Movie
We unpack the Heidi McLaughlin novel and its 2018 film adaptation: runaway groom country-music star, furious florist ex, secret kid, small-town Louisiana vibes, and why the movie softens some of ...

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein is finally on Netflix—here’s why this Creature-first, practical-effects gothic works (and where it stumbles).
We break down Oscar Isaac’s Victor, Jacob Elordi’s heartbreaking Creature, Mia Goth’s dual role, and the film’s lush, tactile world.

We caught an early festival screening and a limited theatrical run before release, so this episode digs into the performances, the production design (including ...

On Halloween Day, Meaghan and Shirin celebrate the end of October with a love letter to the Universal Monsters—and the filmmaking moves that made them immortal.

We trace the real beginnings of Universal horror (hint: Jekyll & Hyde was on screen long before Bela Lugosi’s Dracula), peek at the bootleg chaos of Nosferatu, and geek out over Lon Chaney’s groundbreaking makeup that hard-coded the “look” of classic monsters—Phantom’s skull...

If you’ve ever wondered why It (2017/2019) still crawls under our skin, this episode is your sewer-level deep dive. We revisit Chapters 1 & 2 and talk about how Stephen King’s coming-of-age terror works on two timelines—childhood and adulthood—to explore memory, guilt, friendship, and the way a town learns to look away. We break down:

• Pennywise as a mirror for human cruelty—and why Bill Skarsgård’s performance vaulted into horro...

What makes folk horror so unsettling? This episode maps the weird woods: isolated settings, old customs that refuse to die, and the outsider who realizes too late they can’t leave. Shereen arrives a skeptic; Meaghan leads the tour—through forests, farmlands, and edge-of-the-map towns where tradition presses against modern life.

We unpack how setting becomes a character, why slow dread beats jump scares, and how folk horror pits the ...

YA horror isn’t just training-wheels terror — it’s where coming-of-age meets fear, identity, and community. In this episode, Megan and Shirin dig into why teen horror stays perpetually popular: it’s plot-forward, nostalgia-charged, and perfectly tuned to the search for self. We trace subgenres (slashers, hauntings, dark academia), talk inclusive casts and queer themes that live on the page without fanfare, and call out the steady s...

Horror fans, assemble. In this episode, we dive into the last decade’s most effective page-to-screen chills and why adaptations are thriving right now. We talk TV’s “Flanaverse” and how The Haunting of Hill House set a new bar for character-first terror; the surprising heart (and heartbreak) in Doctor Sleep as King’s universe expands; how AMC’s Interview with the Vampire modernizes Rice without losing the bite; why The Invisible Ma...

We’re three weeks into Dark Academia month and pivoting from the lack of new adaptations to the ones we want. From Ninth House and The Atlas Six to The Maidens, Bunny (plus its sequel), These Violent Delights, and The Honeys, we map the smartest book-to-screen plays—plus some spicy reader confessions (DNFs, trophy shelves, and the dusty corner).

We dig into:

• Leigh Bardugo’s Alex Stern/Ninth House: Yale, secret societies, class te...

Dark academia reads gorgeously on the page—but stumbles on screen. In this episode, we unpack the big reasons: the aesthetic-over-story trap, elite settings that limit relatability and diversity, and the reality that streamers cancel fast and world-build slow. We use “Wednesday,” “The Order,” and our beloved Poe-soaked, gothic campus imagery to ask: is the genre “unfilmable”… or just misunderstood? We also float a fix—adult animati...

It’s September (aka back-to-school season), so we’re launching a month of dark-academia conversations. In this opener, we map the genre’s core—elite or boarding-school settings, gothic vibes, and a lean toward mystery, fantasy, and even horror—and dig into why secret societies and clandestine clubs keep showing up in these stories.

We compare “real” vs. fictional societies, talk initiations and rituals, and why the forbidden—anythin...

In this episode of Fully Booked: Literary Podcast, Meaghan and Shirin jump into Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty — both the show and the original book trilogy by Jenny Han. They share brutally honest thoughts about how the story has progressed, especially how much they’ve soured on the central romance between Belly and Jeremiah.

The hosts discuss their evolving opinions since Season 1, when the story had a certain charm, to no...

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

• Heat complaints, Halloween dreams, and why romance fits the summer mood
• How a 13-year screenplay turned into a book, then a Netflix adaptation
• American girl, British professor, tragic twist — and a lot of eye-rolling
• Good chemistry, bad writing, weird side characters
• Our 4/10 verdict and why we won’t be rewatching anytime soon

If you like romantic adaptations with a side of chaos, stick arou...

Summer may be flying by, but we’re hitting pause to ask a big question: what even is romance anymore? In this episode, Meaghan and Shirin unpack the emotional rollercoaster that is Colleen Hoover’s catalog.

From domestic abuse to infidelity and infertility, her books are packed with heavy themes that leave us wondering: are we still reading romance, or just trauma fiction with a love story on the side?

We talk about the rise of Hoove...

In this episode of the Fully-Booked: Literary podcast, Meaghan and Shirin close out July’s theme of book adaptations. They’ve spent the month chatting about what makes a successful adaptation, what flops, and where things fall in between. This episode is a genre-focused deep dive where they talk about how different categories of books fare when turned into TV or film.

They kick things off by acknowledging that life has been chaotic ...

This episode of the Fully-Booked: Literary Podcast kicked off, as always, with what’s on our nightstands. Shirin had her hands on Phantasma, a book that had been hyped all over, but halfway through, she was feeling let down. The Southern Gothic mood is solid, but the story lacks that punch. The tasks and trials within it are underwhelming, and she doesn’t really care much about the characters. It’s supposed to have demons, ghouls, ...