September 7, 2024 • 53 mins
Join Rosa & Shannon as they welcome a special guest, Katie Vroom, to discuss Rainbow Rowell's latest contemporary adult fiction, Slow Dance. This bonus episode dives deep into the book's themes, characters, and its unique storytelling structure.
They explore the rich, relatable characters of Shiloh and Cary, their slow-burning romance, and the nuances of their relationship. From the steamy and realistic sex scenes to the deeply emotional moments, this episode covers it all.
The hosts also touch on the significance of the book's setting in 2006, the portrayal of blended families, and the complexities of co-parenting. With personal anecdotes and favorite quotes, this episode offers a heartfelt tribute to Rainbow Rowell's storytelling prowess.
Tune in for an engaging conversation that celebrates the beauty of flawed, human characters and the power of love and connection.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
Hi shannon hi hi
shannon we have a really special friend today in the studio in the suit in the
brown girl a party in your party studio live from new york live from new york
it's sacramento instrumental in Portland. Hi, Katie.
(00:30):
Hi. Everybody, this is my dear friend, Katie Vroom, and she has joined us today
for a really special episode. So special.
Are you excited to be here, Katie? I interrupted you while you were saying that you were.
Oh, yeah. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you. This is great.
(00:50):
I mean, cool people, cool book.
It's great. Like, what more do you want in life an hour
to talk about a cool book with cool people and a
cat pete's here too pete pete
has arrived pete did you read the book or what because
you're kind of like did you do the work no he's
(01:10):
a fucking he's a poser yeah but he's such a cute poser though it's true he he
gets away with it because he's so cute yeah i mean i guess we should just talk
about it huh talk about so this is a bonus episode it is not in our regularly
scheduled programming because,
if you have seen us on the internet we have been non-stop talking about rainbow
(01:35):
rowell's book slow dance her first contemporary adult fiction and i love the
cover oh the cover it's so pretty,
we can talk about the cover because it has it ties it ties in directly from the pages of the book.
So i would like to be good
(01:58):
hosts and let katie start maybe we can just say how we overall felt about the
book should we start oh are we going to summarize the book first tell people
what the book is about yes we are going to do that you want to do that yeah
yeah okay so slow dance is a book,
(02:20):
about two high school friends who find themselves together again after a long
absence and And the way that their story continues to unfold in their mid-30s.
That's kind of the plot summary. Want to know more than that? No, that's perfect.
(02:44):
Yeah. This is, I think that it should be said for the sake of transparency and those listening.
That Katie and Rosa are, goddammit, Katie and Rosa are, this is.
This was a highly anticipated book for them.
I, however, have never once read a book by our dear writer, Rainbow,
(03:10):
and I just finished reading the book mere minutes before hitting record.
So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see how this conversation goes.
I think it's good to sort of balance, though, because sometimes when you're
too close to a thing, you can't really see it for what it is.
And I thought about that a lot while reading this book I kept trying to
(03:33):
check in with myself because I obsessed
with it and I was absolutely weeping within
I mean I think within like the first 20 pages and
we can talk maybe
not 20 pages but within for sure within the first hour
that I started reading it I was just like I think
(03:53):
that I was fast-tracked I Katie I don't know if
you relate to this but I was fast Fast track to feeling intimacy with these
characters because I know the people that Rainbow Rowell builds so often that
it felt like this anticipation for me,
(04:14):
like there was an expectation of what I thought it was going to look like.
And, you know, Rainbow Rowell has written many books and really I'm trying to
think of, I mean, at the core of them is a love story at all of them.
I mean, she is a romance writer, right? We could say that, certainly.
And this is certainly a very, very deeply romantic book.
(04:38):
And, but I kept trying to, yeah, like, is this warranted? Or all of these feelings
that I'm feeling warranted?
Is this about my love for this author or for these characters or for past characters that she's written?
And I don't think there's a way to really sparse it out for me because also,
when I got this book, which Humblebrag just signed by the author...
(05:03):
I my husband was just like having the ultimate like I am so obsessed with you
and also your insane moment because I was like literally embracing this book and crying like it was,
really a big deal for me to just receive it so I don't think I can be impartial
I guess is what I'm saying I don't know if you have to be impartial I mean you you are moved by her
(05:29):
writing because you love how she writes that's why you're a super fan
right or that's why you're that's why you read her work yeah
i think that something that
i find really special about her is that i think she writes characters that are
like flawed in a really relatable way in a really organic way and i don't think
(05:53):
i've read a book of hers where i haven't multiple times through the book been like,
oh, I recognize that, that feeling,
that circumstance, people in different times, different ages,
you know, like there's something about how she writes that's just relatable for me as a reader.
And I also think that beyond just the relatability and then your personal enjoyment
(06:19):
of her, I think when you read a lot of an author,
there is a trust that's established like you
trust them to go on the journey with
them you trust that it's going to be satisfying you
trust that you're not
going to be let down by the characters or their experiences and
i think that that does allow you to relax and from the very beginning lose
(06:41):
yourself in the work a little bit more than you might if
you're still trying to like figure out how
you're going to feel yeah right i i feel
like the the book so i started reading it
day before yesterday mostly because
i i needed to have it freshly in my mind for
(07:01):
this conversation but this
having been my first book by rainbow royal i was like immediately invested in
shiloh and that Because I kind of, I see Shiloh as like a central,
(07:22):
like the central character in the story.
And I just, I felt like she's somebody that I know.
I felt like deeply invested in her outcomes. And in like, like the story that
is told about there's that that scene where Shiloh is taking...
(07:48):
Someone lois to to pay
the energy bill and it's
like she had the expectation
was that she's just gonna take the kids and take lois to the to pay the bill
and it was gonna be like you know pretty easy but then carrie is like gonna
(08:12):
go too and all of a sudden she's like like, shit, my car is a mess.
Like I have my two kids, you know, there needs to be like a food situation.
There's, I've got this older adult woman who can't really move well.
And this person that I've had a crush on for my entire life.
And like, I felt like I was
sweating with her and that I could like
(08:34):
actually like see her car
and like the absolute disarray that
is her car as someone who knows
single parents as someone who knows single parents
like trying to do
a kind thing in the middle of their like entirely upside down lives like i just
(08:57):
loved that these characters were so lovable they're very relatable they're very
human and i think katie touched on that like she She just writes,
Rambo writes real people is what it feels like. She writes real people.
And it's kind of refreshing to see that, especially in romantic novels,
(09:19):
because, I mean, and don't get me wrong, I read, you know, Emily Henry. I love Emily Henry.
And I thought a lot about the characters in Emily Henry's books,
specifically Funny Story, which is the last Emily Henry that I read and probably my favorite one.
And it is so sexy, okay? And I can't wait to get into the sex scenes in this
(09:39):
book, because I don't know.
I wasn't ready. I mean, they were so charged.
And but it is not. It's kind of like, if I may say so,
it's kind of like watching like rehearsed red tube porn versus like amateur, like real people.
(10:04):
People, you know, where you're like, and you know, we're so used to red tube porn.
We're so used to Pornhub porn, right? Like that's like what we're used to watching.
And so we're trained sort of to be turned on by that, but that's not what we
look like when we have sex.
And that's not how we behave when we have sex. We're fucking weird,
man. You know, like I'm flippant.
(10:26):
What's that, Katie? I said a little weird, a little gross, a little awkward, you know?
Yeah. And just all, yes, exactly. And truly, like, in that true space of sexual
desire and intimacy is every woman is Shiloh, in my opinion.
Like, every, you know, when she's just like, just ignore me for a little while.
(10:48):
Like, I got to figure it out. I'll catch up to you, you know?
And in this first adult sex scene that Shiloh and Carrie are sharing,
and that this profound thing that happened where Carrie's like,
no, I'm not going to do that. And we don't have to do this.
And Carrie also just being like, I want you, like, you know,
(11:09):
he's looking for a connection with her.
And that was a really profound moment i thought
because she was so used to ryan her ex-husband
giving her this subpar experience
of serving himself and man
wasn't it just like such a a moment a symbol
of like the female experience also that that's
(11:30):
what we think that we want is to ease the
ryan and to just like just ignore me i'm
gonna get through this emotional experience experience on my own you
know and and the men of the world ryan you know the patriarchy being like okay
fuck yeah i'm just gonna do whatever who cares oh and that carrie is the opposite
of that he's like no i'm here for you like your job here is to experience pleasure yeah buddy incredible.
(11:58):
Okay so i feel like we should talk about we should kind of like set the trajectory
of the story So that the listeners can experience the climax of it all.
So the story, as Katie said, is to...
Centered around three high school friends who are very close.
(12:24):
Two of them are deeply crushed on one another.
And it, to me, feels like a story about learning how to communicate and learning
how to express your desires, like your wants and your needs,
and how when you're in high school and for people who go to college on the chronological
(12:51):
timeline that society lays out for us.
And in the early years of college, you're still figuring yourself out, right?
Like you're still figuring out sort of what you want and who you are and who you want to be.
And so because of that, like communication breakdown,
these two people who are meant for each other miss lots Lots of years of life
(13:15):
together and lots of different things happen as a result of that.
That but they are reunited on the
dance floor of one of the three friends
weddings and this mikey's
wedding and and the slow dance is the thing
that sort of catapults us into a story
(13:37):
that takes us backwards tells
us the state the the story from the perspective
of their youth and then than present day
i am a sucker for
a for a before and now storyline i
guess i'm interested is this a common thing that
(13:58):
she does in her in her books does like love story tell something that i mean
i yes the two perspective thing is definitely a thing she likes i don't know
that it's always a time like it's not a traveling back and forth in time but
characters eleanor and park Park, arguably her most,
I mean, probably, yes, her most famous book, I would assume,
(14:20):
is told between Eleanor and Park.
It's like switches POVs back and forth between Eleanor and then Park and then
Eleanor and Park. And it moves through the whole book that way.
But I thought it was a particularly effective storytelling technique in this book.
I mean, she's written a lot of YA, right? She's known to be a YA author. her. And...
(14:47):
I think that including those flashbacks is like, I mean, that could have been,
if you fleshed out the Shiloh Carey high school story, that could have been a YA romance, right?
Like at the end, they would have kissed, they would have gone,
you know, that would have been the story.
And seeing what really happens, this is like what really happens, right?
(15:09):
You have the high school romance, bookends, then you realize,
I don't really know myself.
I don't really know anybody else. and have to
take space to figure that out so
this is like i mean i just thought that was really kind of a a beautiful i don't
know beautiful storytelling technique and almost like a nod to her to her ya
(15:32):
to her love for ya exactly and i think like the that that story teller that
That slow dance scene at the beginning,
that's such a beautiful metaphor for their entire relationship, right?
Like right at the beginning, she's telling you exactly what this book is about.
It's about people who take their time and go slow while everybody else is going
(15:54):
fast around them, rushing to...
And, I don't know, I just love her, which I guess why I'm here.
I, to that point, just exploring the
sort of the beginning of Carrie and
Shiloh and the unfolding of that and how much I related to so many aspects of
(16:19):
understanding the way that an intimate relationship can build between two young
teenagers who don't have the language, who don't have the skill set.
They don't have good adult role models for what love or intimacy looks like.
They're really lost, but they're lost together.
And she wrote it in such a way, again, just returning to what's real.
(16:42):
I have this little list that I made, and it says things that feel real.
The characters, Shiloh's dominance, resonance the
physical push and pull between shiloh and carrie the
translation of the sexual tension between teenagers which
she nails so well like the
translation of like you know a little boy on a playground just like you know
(17:04):
throwing tan barks the thing right except in this circumstance it's shiloh and
she literally cannot stop constantly she's like i just i poke him like Like,
she's pulling his hair. She's touching him all the time.
And I was that girl. I mean, I can relate to that so much. And then Rainbow goes deeper.
(17:25):
And she's like, what it is is that, you know, Shiloh has to be touching Carrie.
She needs to feel that he's real. You know, and you just like really,
oh, it just resonated with me so much.
It felt very sloppy and really real in the best way.
One of the things that about Shiloh that I think for me is quite relatable is
(17:50):
that saying that, like what you said, she had to be touching Carrie to know
that he was real. And I think that that.
Touches on the reality of being
like an adolescent woman with
feelings and that continues that stays throughout even maybe not all the way
(18:16):
up to the end of the book but but this this theme lingers that is the sort of
like uncertainty and self-consciousness and the the feeling of not
always being grounded because of the patriarchy like
as as a woman you're not you're not
encouraged to desire and you're not encouraged to to be a whole person in relationship
(18:41):
with a partner who is male and Shiloh like she carries this thing with her that's like Like,
it seems kind of like she's trying to convince herself if she's worthy of Carrie
or of a life that is dreamlike because she had really crushed on him and didn't really know how to,
(19:06):
you know, like that sex scene that they have at school and college.
Yeah. Where she's like, it's just sex. Like, it's just, it's no big,
I just want to get this done.
Like, she makes it so much less than it actually is to her.
I think it's also really important to point out because we were talking about
how Shiloh has a crush on Carrie and she has forever she has no idea she doesn't
(19:30):
know that she doesn't realize that until he kisses her and then she says like,
Carrie kissing me has made me realize that Carrie could have kissed me anytime
Carrie could have kissed me freshman year that part was like.
I can feel in my throat reading that part.
(19:51):
Oh, yeah. I mean, and I think that, like, you know, she remains sexually confused, right?
She's, like, probably queer and doesn't know how to translate that.
Yeah. I definitely felt like she was probably asexual or on,
like, the ace spectrum when she's, you know, interacting as an adult person
(20:11):
in these sexual experiences.
And, you know, Carrie's like, hey, Shiloh, I really have to ask you, like, are you gay?
Do you like women? I need to know what's going on. And she's like,
she's like, she's like, theoretically, yes.
But Carrie, I don't like anybody. Like, I can't know that.
Right. Like, you know, and then she's kissing this woman for the first time.
She's like, it feels good, but it's also not what I want.
(20:34):
Like, I think that she is. And it's really interesting that Rainbow put these
characters. directors.
I would love to talk about the timing of it all. I thought it was really interesting,
that the present, the future time is still 2006.
I was waiting the whole time for it to circle back to present.
I thought, originally reading the book when I was making my estimations,
(20:58):
I thought they were going to fuck it up in 2006 all over again.
And I thought that if we were finally going to arrive in 2023 or 2024 with these
old ass people who just kept fucking it up, And that's not what happened.
And yeah, I just I don't know if that was an intentional from the perspective
(21:18):
of it limited cell phones.
There was a lot of ways that technology did not exist. And so then that sort
of kept Shiloh and Carrie further apart.
If it was like logistical reasoning like that, or I don't know what your guys's thoughts are.
I mean, I circle back real quick. Yeah, go for it. Just to what Shannon was
(21:40):
saying about the lack of confidence or the lack of awareness between them.
And Rosa had said earlier that they didn't have good role models at home.
But beyond that, both of them were highly parentified, right,
like in their home lives.
And I do think that can lead to people feeling unworthy of love,
(22:06):
like just on a fundamental level, unless you're, it's just harder to see that
sometimes, that you're worthy, that you can want those things. those things.
And I also think that Rainbow, she writes, I think most of her main characters
are queer in some way or other.
She writes people who don't fit in, oddballs.
(22:29):
And I've read people discussing how Kath, the protagonist and fangirl,
people read her as autistic. I think you could easily read Shiloh as autistic.
I think that there is something also really beautiful about that.
You don't get stories about people who are weird in that way and don't know who they are.
(22:57):
Especially in a situation where that's not what the story is about. Right. Exactly.
Exactly. The thing about Fangirl is not that Kath is probably neurologically atypical at all.
It's about her existing in the world like so many of us who are neurologically
atypical and we have no idea what we're doing. Yeah.
(23:19):
Right. So I just wanted to get that little thought in. And then back to about timing.
I don't know, but I loved it. but it definitely had nostalgia for me.
Like they're a little older than me on the timeline,
but I think it enhanced my enjoyment of the book to kind of get their references
and remember what it was like to live like when you just rolled up to somebody's
(23:41):
house and knocked on their door and not having a phone.
There was that scene where Lois fell and she called Carrie and then Carrie called
Shiloh and Shiloh showed up to help.
Shiloh and Shiloh's mom showed up to help, which also part of this story is
(24:02):
about community and how community shows up for each other.
But the part of that where Shiloh is texting Carrie,
I imagined the kind of phone that
I had in 2006 which was a
flip phone with that QWERTY keyboard that you
(24:24):
had to like punch the you know and like trying to
communicate with people then there there is something about I think sometimes
I forget that I'm an adult like a whole ass adult in my 40s and that like when
When somebody is writing a contemporary adult work,
(24:47):
they are writing it for me.
So it felt there's something about it that's like, oh, I am like there's so
much of this is relatable because also my they are still a little bit older than I am, but.
There is something so, like, wildly relatable about the entire, the entire story.
(25:12):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, as I said, and this is, like, not on track at all,
but I now want to read everything she's ever written.
Because I loved this story so much.
I think that I was, it felt very real to me in the same way that Landline felt
(25:32):
real to me, which is another one of her, she's written three contemporary adult
fiction books, I think. Is that right, Katie?
I think it's Attachment, Landline, and this one, yeah.
Yeah. And you can tell her comfortable space, I would say, certainly is in YA.
I mean, you know, I have talked, I'm sure I've talked on this show about this,
(25:55):
but Fangirl is really special to me.
Like, I probably enjoyed Eleanor and Park more, but Fangirl is special to me
because it was the first time that I read a character who definitely has OCD.
You know, like I saw so much of myself in Kath.
Also, to read about a girl whose mother abandoned her, like I hadn't really
read a story like that before.
(26:15):
I hadn't read a story about somebody just so fixated on fantasy that,
you know, she's sort of choosing that over real life sort of over and over again.
So yeah, I mean, I think that Rainbow is so comfortable in the world of YA and
that's what she does best. I will say that.
And so Attachments was hard for me to read. The first time I read it, it was great.
(26:39):
But I would say that typically with Rambo books, the second time I go back to
them, I love them even more.
And Attachments had an opposite effect on me where I was like,
okay, I'm fine to not read that again.
Landline features the insufferable thing I'm obsessed with.
I talk about every single freaking Brown Girl Book Party episode ever, which is time travel.
So, you know, I am just, just give me every contemporary fiction book that features
(27:06):
time travel. I don't want sci-fi.
I want a real world situation where there is a freaking phone in the main character's childhood bedroom.
She's calling her husband and she's having problems with him.
And that's the whole plot of Landline, right? It's like this marriage that's
kind of like Like, not failing, but it's in a terrible place.
(27:27):
And the main character, I can't remember her name. I don't remember either.
But she feels like she's disappointing her husband, and honestly,
she is. And he's, you know, they're just in this weird place.
And she goes home for Christmas, and she picks up her landline to call somebody.
And when she calls, she's talking to her husband, but in the past.
(27:51):
And these characters felt similar to me because all sets of those characters
from both Slow Dance and Landline, and this is the theme we keep returning to,
everybody's fucked up. They're all flawed.
You know, they're all so deeply human.
And to just sort of exist in that and find the connections and love in that
(28:11):
is really gratifying for me as a single parent and not, or well,
as a remarried parent, as a parent with like the most blended family.
Half of my kids are my stepkids from a previous marriage to a husband that I no longer am married to,
who I also made biological children with, who are all now parented by my husband
(28:33):
and that ex-husband's wife. Could not be more blended.
Man, I mean, part of my crying
in this book was how much I
realized I'm going to get emotional now like there are not a
lot of written characters who have
these families in this kind
(28:54):
of dynamic like sure we see modern family for example right that's a very popular
television show with lots of different blended families lots of different family
dynamics but it's so it's all put together and it's all you know nice and they
figured out a way to have something that's cookie cutter and that's not what this is at all.
Carrie has, she, Rainbow writes, Carrie is having absolutely no fucking idea
(29:17):
what he's doing. He's totally awkward. He's uncomfortable.
He has to learn these kids. You can tell sometimes he doesn't like them.
You can tell sometimes they don't like him.
As a person who married a man who had to learn how to be a father and who now
five years in is a goddamn excellent one.
I mean, it just moved me. It moved me to tears.
(29:39):
I just want to thank her for writing those characters and making them exist
in a way where thousands and thousands and thousands of people are seeing the
real way that those blended families get built because that's what it felt like to me.
Yeah. I loved all of the way that she, I mean, I was like highlighting in my
ebook all of the times that she was talking about how she felt about her marriage,
(30:03):
the end of her marriage, her ex-husband, the way that being a parent changed her life.
And then like the tension between that and being, I think she calls it like
serving out a prison sentence because she has to co-parent with this person for the rest of her life.
And, and I just, all of it.
(30:23):
I, I, I mean, I'm not divorced, you know, at this point in my life,
who knows, who knows? Don't tell David, but you know, who knows?
But but i think i don't know as a person who's now a parent i've thought about
that like what would my life look like if if my marriage ended for whatever
(30:44):
reason and and i don't know i thought it was interesting and also i i really
hated ryan like from the moment he walked in oh god God, we all know Ryan.
Fuck Ryan. Yeah.
And it was so like, oh, go ahead. Oh, no, you go. You go.
Well, just that I think the beauty of it, too, is like he's not an obvious monster,
(31:07):
right? Like it's so nuanced.
And the way that he's manipulative and gross is like so subtle,
especially until you find out about the adultery.
Like, what did he do? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and not even just that it's so subtle. It's also that he's also not totally
only a bad person. He's a terrible husband.
(31:28):
But he is legitimately a really good dad. And he really loves his children.
And man, that, I mean, that's real. That's what it looks like so much of the time, right?
Like, we want these, you know, she just, she makes these multicolored characters
who are not just black and white.
And it's relieving to read that, yeah. Yeah. But I think that,
(31:53):
oh, the prison sentence stuff.
I mean, she wrote a lot of stuff in this book that I think is hard to admit
when you are an advocate for divorce that I am.
And she really articulated some of my ugliest thoughts, which is exactly that.
(32:15):
I mean, the amount of times that I've said to my current husband,
like, I have to, there's this idea where you're like, okay, I gotta fuck,
I fucking gotta deal with this person until my kids are 18.
My youngest kid is 18. And look, everybody knows, obviously,
you divorce somebody, it got so bad, it got bad enough that you blew your life up.
So obviously, it's not like a question mark about whether or not,
(32:37):
there's a lack of compatibility, certainly.
But then you realize it's not just until they're 18. It's literally,
it's absolutely until you are dead.
Like, you're going to share grandparents with this person.
You are going to share weddings. The most important weddings that you will go
to, the most important graduations.
(32:58):
And she wasn't afraid to write that. I mean, she did such a good job,
y'all, that I nosily Googled to make sure she was still married.
I couldn't believe that a person was capable who had not directly experienced
the things that I had experienced, you know? Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, that's why that I feel like, OK, I don't want us to have to end this
(33:23):
show before we talk about. Yes.
What happens with Carrie and Shiloh in the bedroom?
And what happens with Carrie and Shiloh overall, which is secondly important
to what happens. We'll get there.
Yeah. Well, what do you guys I want to hear. Katie, what did you think?
(33:45):
I'm putting you on the spot.
Yeah well you know i told you i i started the book right when it was released
and i had to stop for a few days because my kid got sick and she was touching
me all the time and i i got to a sex scene and i was like i cannot it's too
good i can't really uncomfortable.
Sometimes you stop and it's like okay i can but i was like oh this you know
(34:07):
i like i find them oftentimes when i find when i'm reading smut in books i mean
i like a romance too but oftentimes Sometimes I find it embarrassing because the way it's written,
it, like, takes me out of it.
Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm watching myself reading it.
But I think that because, like we were talking about earlier, how…,
(34:30):
honest it was i was i didn't get
pulled out of it and then it was i mean you know
it was definitely in that in that realm
of like i don't want to be around other people while i'm reading these scenes
yeah i love sex as you're like
like having a hot flash and like yeah this
was her first i'm gonna say correct me if i'm wrong i'm pretty sure this was
(34:55):
her first real stab at smut to this level hmm it was very good never seen her
write the word cock before just i was,
so when that happened i was like.
I didn't know that this is the book that i it honestly
(35:16):
like that that scene sort of came out
of nowhere for me you know like they have
like you know they're having sex and that because we've got
their story from from the before times but
then when it's like when they
are having it and he taught at one point when he was like the the line was something
(35:38):
about carrie was ready to see his dog tad in between her tits she didn't say
tits she probably said breasts i was just like oh here Here we go.
Like it's, it's happening.
And, but again, like such a relatable thing where it's like,
there's a, there's one moment where Carrie gets up to take his shirt off.
(36:03):
And he's like, I'm just gonna take my boxers off too. Cause I don't want to have to get up again.
And this sort of like the very real practical parts of sex are written in In this thing that,
you know, I think when you think about smut, you think about,
you don't think about the awkward stuff.
(36:23):
But she made it sexy and awkward, therefore real.
Yeah. She did that. And I just like, that's what I want.
To read if i'm gonna read a romance novel that has smut i want to read something
that is relatable and that i that i do like you know like when someone when
(36:46):
a character is like i want the lights off and i want the lights off all the
time like that kind of very real like relatable story,
about having sex is so sexy well and we keep returning to that theme the relatability
because Because that's true of all aspects.
I love to see, again, I love to see a blended family, but I want to see the
(37:08):
struggle and I want to see it being real because then it feel, you feel normal, right?
You're like, oh, I see this reflected back in these pages.
This is how, this is what the experience was like for me.
This is what it feels like. It's not just like, you know, you're shooting hoops
one day and then the kid looks over at you and he's just like,
dad, and it's been like two weeks. That's not real, you know?
(37:31):
It's not like real like the this i mean even in the emily henry book totally
some of the best men i've ever read not real that's not what it's like it's just not like that.
And that was really cool that she gave us that gift for sure the there's the
scene when so at the wedding they leave together and we sweating the sorry right
(37:54):
yeah the first wedding spoiler Spoiler alert,
Shiloh and Carrie get married.
The first wedding, when Shiloh and Carrie slow dance, and that begins the story
that leads up to their wedding.
And they go back to Shiloh's house, and we think they're going to have sex.
(38:14):
And Shiloh is thinking about what she's wearing.
And she's like, I'm probably wearing, like, she said something about,
like, not really remembering what bra she's wearing.
But it's probably not a cute one and she
says something about wearing like like granny
panties like cotton underwear that have probably already slipped
(38:34):
under my stomach i was like there again
the relatability but it's like i have been there
so many times even as a married person
where it's like this is not gonna look hella
cute it's not gonna look the way that like the the tv and the The movies tell
me it should look and there's just something so like wildly freeing about reading
(39:01):
something that is so beautifully disintegrating status quo. Yeah.
Even the way he carries her body, right? He says, nobody would say she's the
most beautiful person in the world, but she's the only one I want to look at.
And the way he describes her body, which is odd by, I mean, people called her
(39:29):
Sasquatch in high school, right?
And she talks a lot in the book about being uncomfortable in her body,
how she feels othered in her body.
And for him to just have this monologue about she goes on for a million miles
and heavy breasts and how they're falling on her body and it's so sensual and
sexy and you don't see bodies that look like that talked about like that very
(39:54):
often in that with that adoration.
And like most of us look like that, right? Yeah. That's what most.
Yeah. I think that she has been doing that, Rainbow's been doing that in books
since before there really was like fat-focused, fat-positive books.
I mean, Eleanor and Park is part of the reason it'll stick with me forever
is when Park sees Eleanor in her gym uniform the first time when she's like
(40:18):
walking down the high school hallway and she's in her gym uniform and it's like
basically a unitard and she's so worried that Park is going to see her and then
he sees her and he is like,
in a she has him in a chokehold he's just
like oh like teen boner in the middle of my high school right now basically
(40:39):
and you know it's it's so i just she's just been a queen at that forever just
really serving for every big girl like being able to see ourselves in these pages you know is
so moving to end to be i mean i i
need you to know that every levi freaking carrie i i have been in love with
(41:04):
every male character that rainbow roald has ever written feels like they're
all my boyfriends they're all written for me to fall in love with them enormously right right yeah,
service rainbow so do we want to talk about i feel like we can we can wrap this in one of two ways.
(41:24):
We can talk about the end, what happens with Shiloh and Carrie.
And or we can talk about, like, what is your, what is the thing for you?
What's your elevator pitch?
What's your book talk on this book?
Like, how are you going to carry this out? I think carry.
(41:44):
Nice. How are you going to carry this out? Didn't even, didn't even know I was
doing it. You're so funny.
Okay. What I think is that each of us takes just, like, a couple minutes to
say how we felt about the ending.
And elevator pitch and or like favorite
quote and we can end okay i don't
(42:05):
want to go yeah it sounds great but i don't want to go first i'm down to go
first katie unless you got you got fire okay so i'm gonna say this this big
book did something different i think the structure of this book in terms of
its storytelling was very different.
I was waiting for the disaster toward the end of the book, because I thought
(42:32):
certainly the climax of every book, right?
We climax, things are going really well, and then you hit a climax and everything
falls apart only for things to come back together again. That is like the romantic climax.
That did not exist in this book, which totally shook me because I felt like
she was being really brave by saying, fuck that.
I'm not doing that shit. You're going to see Shiloh and Carrie figuring it out.
(42:56):
He's going to propose to her. It's going to be so awkward. No one's expecting it.
No one's expecting it. There's still a hundred pages left. So you're like, oh, what?
Okay, so something's going to fall apart, certainly, because then Shiloh accepts.
But no, it's not like that. The whole end of the book is the slow burn.
(43:18):
It is the slow roll to not happily ever after, because that's their whole thing.
They recognize they're both going to annoy each other forever.
Ever. They recognize that she is never going to stop pinching him and driving him crazy.
And they're never going to agree about stuff.
And their best friend, Mikey, has said, you guys really both kind of need to be leaders.
(43:38):
Like you're both like doms. Like what's that going to look like for you?
And they talk about that and they talk about all these real things.
Did it give me the on the edge of my seat experience, like running toward each
other in the rain at the airport, stopping the airplane?
No, it didn't give that to me. But God, it will sit with me forever,
(43:58):
for life, the way that these two people love each other and chose each other
in this way that was so beautiful.
And so that is what I will say about that. I loved the wedding.
I loved the moment that Lois decides to sell her house because Shiloh tells
(44:20):
her that she's He's marrying Carrie and I'm going to cry talking about it right
now because it's so beautiful.
And then the last thing that I loved that I just loved so much was that Rainbow
ended it on a before a two page little before chapter of the wide brimmed hat
and Carrie just being her guy. I mean, it's just it's perfect.
(44:44):
This story is so fucking good. It's so good. I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Go ahead. You can, you're okay. Yeah. I don't know. I, I think, Ooh, okay.
Um, I think I don't, I don't know if I have much to add in terms of like how
the story ended, because I agree that it, I think that it, it ended up on kind
(45:06):
of like this hopeful note, but it's not, it's not a promise.
It's, it's like, you know, it, it kind of, you just get the story just lets
go and you, you get to, I don't know, go with it.
That's not very articulate. I do have a favorite quote because in addition to
Rainbow being just a fantastic storyteller and fantastic creator of human characters,
(45:31):
she's also really brilliant at prose.
Like, she writes things in the context of these really human,
real situations that are also – I mean, it's kind of remarkable,
that power. So, okay, this is...
Carrie kissed her through it. Long, sad kisses with his hand cupped around the back of her head.
(45:55):
These were kisses without hopes or ambitions. They were apologies.
Eulogies. Shiloh's tears slid into the corner of her mouth.
Carrie licked them. When she realized that he wasn't stopping,
Shiloh sat up a little, making her mouth more available.
Carrie hummed and squeezed her neck. she gripped
one hand in the front of his shirt he kissed her and
(46:18):
kissed her if she emptied her head in
his lap all that would fall out was his name dude
it's so good ruin me all that would fall out is her name dude although it's
so good yeah one of i think there's a lot Not so interestingly,
(46:43):
yesterday when we were going back and forth about this episode,
I was like, I don't know that I have 25 minutes of content to share.
I hadn't gotten deeply, super deeply into it yet.
And as I'm like reflecting on it now, I think I probably have 25 hours to share on on the book.
(47:05):
One of the moments that really stood out for me was when Rainbow wrote that
Shiloh corralled her nervous system because of this moment with Carrie.
And I think the thing about this book, if I think about my elevator pitch,
(47:28):
it does go back to relatability. And it specifically goes back to relatability
for me as a person, as like an adult child of...
There's of addicts of of someone
who has struggled with
worthiness so much and who never imagined to be in the kind of relationship
(47:50):
and marriage that i am in today and it is there was something about this where
i just like i saw myself so clearly in shiloh.
And the i mean there's
so many quotes that stand out but she's talking
(48:12):
about kissing carrie and says what made a kiss good shiloh decided
wasn't technique it was wanting it
and she wanted this she wanted him she'd
never wanted anyone else as much or as well and And the way that that resonates
as someone who didn't know what she wanted until she had it,
(48:37):
because I couldn't imagine it,
and the amount of work that has had to go into corralling a nervous system that
is always overloaded but can find my feet on the ground in my marriage and in
my relationship with my husband is,
Because I think this is a story for people who haven't quite found a way to fit in and find love,
(49:07):
but want to want hope for that.
It's just such a beautiful, real, awkward story about love.
And it's got a really perfect sex scene that is also worth it. Well, yeah.
(49:33):
It sounds like we all kind of liked this book a little bit, I guess.
Fire, hot pie. bye i really have
said that might just start it all over from the
beginning as soon as we end this episode i just
like cook dinner so i i co-sign that how was the audio narrator i love it it's
(49:54):
rebecca loman is loves rebecca loman i love her yeah yeah she reads a lot of
her books i really i really i really enjoy it i fall asleep listening to her.
Her what that's good oh i fall asleep to
her listening to fangirl reading fangirl all the time oh i
love that yeah i read it and listened because
(50:16):
i wasn't gonna finish it if i didn't listen to the
last like hour i want
to i'm at a place where i want i don't own a hard copy of it i want to get a
hard copy of it so that i can mark it up because i did you know my my kindle
so well yeah excellent book and listen if you like this you can come to our in-person book club yes,
(50:42):
it's true it's happening on October 3rd.
Right? Dude, we are terrible. It is happening.
October 3rd, Thursday on October 3rd at Urban Roots Brewery here in Sacramento.
It is 20 bucks, but we're going to feed and beer you.
And it's our first time doing anything like this. And we would love so much
(51:06):
for you to come talk to us and with us about Home Bodies by Tembe Denton Hurst,
a book that this podcast loves and that shannon and
i both love katie have you read bodies already yet
but i put it on my list because of you it's so good very
good talk about smut yeah it probably is
the best and it's also just really it's i mean it's a coming it's a it's a story
(51:29):
about coming home it's a coming of age story but like coming of age in your
adulthood and we really would love for people to come out katie we wish you
didn't live so far away so you could come oh no i can't come because i'm in
Portland, but everybody else should come.
And I can live vicariously all of your social media posts afterwards.
Yes, that sounds good. Yeah, you would like to join, please email us at brown
(51:52):
girl book party at gmail.com.
We've already gotten several signups. We're excited about that.
And Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah.
And yeah, I feel like we should have done this at the beginning of the episode.
But I just wanted to say like, Like, Katie's presence here is really because
Katie and I bonded at the beginning of our friendship, which was almost a decade ago, right? Dang.
(52:19):
I think we met in 2016.
Yeah, that sounds right. 2016 or 2016. And we bonded over books.
That was, like, one of the first things that we bonded over.
And then specifically Rainbow. rainbow so i mean you know i don't know if you
ever get sick of hearing this rainbow if you're out there but you've certainly
been bringing people together and keep producing beautiful art and even if you
(52:44):
never write another book again you've graced us with so many perfect stories,
and the brown girls at this book party adore you so thanks everybody for tuning
in thank you that's the show bye-bye,
(53:06):
Okay, that was sick. Good job, guys.
Music.
(00:06):
Hi shannon hi hi
shannon we have a really special friend today in the studio in the suit in the
brown girl a party in your party studio live from new york live from new york
it's sacramento instrumental in Portland. Hi, Katie.
(00:30):
Hi. Everybody, this is my dear friend, Katie Vroom, and she has joined us today
for a really special episode. So special.
Are you excited to be here, Katie? I interrupted you while you were saying that you were.
Oh, yeah. I'm very excited to be here. Thank you. This is great.
(00:50):
I mean, cool people, cool book.
It's great. Like, what more do you want in life an hour
to talk about a cool book with cool people and a
cat pete's here too pete pete
has arrived pete did you read the book or what because
you're kind of like did you do the work no he's
(01:10):
a fucking he's a poser yeah but he's such a cute poser though it's true he he
gets away with it because he's so cute yeah i mean i guess we should just talk
about it huh talk about so this is a bonus episode it is not in our regularly
scheduled programming because,
if you have seen us on the internet we have been non-stop talking about rainbow
(01:35):
rowell's book slow dance her first contemporary adult fiction and i love the
cover oh the cover it's so pretty,
we can talk about the cover because it has it ties it ties in directly from the pages of the book.
So i would like to be good
(01:58):
hosts and let katie start maybe we can just say how we overall felt about the
book should we start oh are we going to summarize the book first tell people
what the book is about yes we are going to do that you want to do that yeah
yeah okay so slow dance is a book,
(02:20):
about two high school friends who find themselves together again after a long
absence and And the way that their story continues to unfold in their mid-30s.
That's kind of the plot summary. Want to know more than that? No, that's perfect.
(02:44):
Yeah. This is, I think that it should be said for the sake of transparency and those listening.
That Katie and Rosa are, goddammit, Katie and Rosa are, this is.
This was a highly anticipated book for them.
I, however, have never once read a book by our dear writer, Rainbow,
(03:10):
and I just finished reading the book mere minutes before hitting record.
So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see how this conversation goes.
I think it's good to sort of balance, though, because sometimes when you're
too close to a thing, you can't really see it for what it is.
And I thought about that a lot while reading this book I kept trying to
(03:33):
check in with myself because I obsessed
with it and I was absolutely weeping within
I mean I think within like the first 20 pages and
we can talk maybe
not 20 pages but within for sure within the first hour
that I started reading it I was just like I think
(03:53):
that I was fast-tracked I Katie I don't know if
you relate to this but I was fast Fast track to feeling intimacy with these
characters because I know the people that Rainbow Rowell builds so often that
it felt like this anticipation for me,
(04:14):
like there was an expectation of what I thought it was going to look like.
And, you know, Rainbow Rowell has written many books and really I'm trying to
think of, I mean, at the core of them is a love story at all of them.
I mean, she is a romance writer, right? We could say that, certainly.
And this is certainly a very, very deeply romantic book.
(04:38):
And, but I kept trying to, yeah, like, is this warranted? Or all of these feelings
that I'm feeling warranted?
Is this about my love for this author or for these characters or for past characters that she's written?
And I don't think there's a way to really sparse it out for me because also,
when I got this book, which Humblebrag just signed by the author...
(05:03):
I my husband was just like having the ultimate like I am so obsessed with you
and also your insane moment because I was like literally embracing this book and crying like it was,
really a big deal for me to just receive it so I don't think I can be impartial
I guess is what I'm saying I don't know if you have to be impartial I mean you you are moved by her
(05:29):
writing because you love how she writes that's why you're a super fan
right or that's why you're that's why you read her work yeah
i think that something that
i find really special about her is that i think she writes characters that are
like flawed in a really relatable way in a really organic way and i don't think
(05:53):
i've read a book of hers where i haven't multiple times through the book been like,
oh, I recognize that, that feeling,
that circumstance, people in different times, different ages,
you know, like there's something about how she writes that's just relatable for me as a reader.
And I also think that beyond just the relatability and then your personal enjoyment
(06:19):
of her, I think when you read a lot of an author,
there is a trust that's established like you
trust them to go on the journey with
them you trust that it's going to be satisfying you
trust that you're not
going to be let down by the characters or their experiences and
i think that that does allow you to relax and from the very beginning lose
(06:41):
yourself in the work a little bit more than you might if
you're still trying to like figure out how
you're going to feel yeah right i i feel
like the the book so i started reading it
day before yesterday mostly because
i i needed to have it freshly in my mind for
(07:01):
this conversation but this
having been my first book by rainbow royal i was like immediately invested in
shiloh and that Because I kind of, I see Shiloh as like a central,
(07:22):
like the central character in the story.
And I just, I felt like she's somebody that I know.
I felt like deeply invested in her outcomes. And in like, like the story that
is told about there's that that scene where Shiloh is taking...
(07:48):
Someone lois to to pay
the energy bill and it's
like she had the expectation
was that she's just gonna take the kids and take lois to the to pay the bill
and it was gonna be like you know pretty easy but then carrie is like gonna
(08:12):
go too and all of a sudden she's like like, shit, my car is a mess.
Like I have my two kids, you know, there needs to be like a food situation.
There's, I've got this older adult woman who can't really move well.
And this person that I've had a crush on for my entire life.
And like, I felt like I was
sweating with her and that I could like
(08:34):
actually like see her car
and like the absolute disarray that
is her car as someone who knows
single parents as someone who knows single parents
like trying to do
a kind thing in the middle of their like entirely upside down lives like i just
(08:57):
loved that these characters were so lovable they're very relatable they're very
human and i think katie touched on that like she She just writes,
Rambo writes real people is what it feels like. She writes real people.
And it's kind of refreshing to see that, especially in romantic novels,
(09:19):
because, I mean, and don't get me wrong, I read, you know, Emily Henry. I love Emily Henry.
And I thought a lot about the characters in Emily Henry's books,
specifically Funny Story, which is the last Emily Henry that I read and probably my favorite one.
And it is so sexy, okay? And I can't wait to get into the sex scenes in this
(09:39):
book, because I don't know.
I wasn't ready. I mean, they were so charged.
And but it is not. It's kind of like, if I may say so,
it's kind of like watching like rehearsed red tube porn versus like amateur, like real people.
(10:04):
People, you know, where you're like, and you know, we're so used to red tube porn.
We're so used to Pornhub porn, right? Like that's like what we're used to watching.
And so we're trained sort of to be turned on by that, but that's not what we
look like when we have sex.
And that's not how we behave when we have sex. We're fucking weird,
man. You know, like I'm flippant.
(10:26):
What's that, Katie? I said a little weird, a little gross, a little awkward, you know?
Yeah. And just all, yes, exactly. And truly, like, in that true space of sexual
desire and intimacy is every woman is Shiloh, in my opinion.
Like, every, you know, when she's just like, just ignore me for a little while.
(10:48):
Like, I got to figure it out. I'll catch up to you, you know?
And in this first adult sex scene that Shiloh and Carrie are sharing,
and that this profound thing that happened where Carrie's like,
no, I'm not going to do that. And we don't have to do this.
And Carrie also just being like, I want you, like, you know,
(11:09):
he's looking for a connection with her.
And that was a really profound moment i thought
because she was so used to ryan her ex-husband
giving her this subpar experience
of serving himself and man
wasn't it just like such a a moment a symbol
of like the female experience also that that's
(11:30):
what we think that we want is to ease the
ryan and to just like just ignore me i'm
gonna get through this emotional experience experience on my own you
know and and the men of the world ryan you know the patriarchy being like okay
fuck yeah i'm just gonna do whatever who cares oh and that carrie is the opposite
of that he's like no i'm here for you like your job here is to experience pleasure yeah buddy incredible.
(11:58):
Okay so i feel like we should talk about we should kind of like set the trajectory
of the story So that the listeners can experience the climax of it all.
So the story, as Katie said, is to...
Centered around three high school friends who are very close.
(12:24):
Two of them are deeply crushed on one another.
And it, to me, feels like a story about learning how to communicate and learning
how to express your desires, like your wants and your needs,
and how when you're in high school and for people who go to college on the chronological
(12:51):
timeline that society lays out for us.
And in the early years of college, you're still figuring yourself out, right?
Like you're still figuring out sort of what you want and who you are and who you want to be.
And so because of that, like communication breakdown,
these two people who are meant for each other miss lots Lots of years of life
(13:15):
together and lots of different things happen as a result of that.
That but they are reunited on the
dance floor of one of the three friends
weddings and this mikey's
wedding and and the slow dance is the thing
that sort of catapults us into a story
(13:37):
that takes us backwards tells
us the state the the story from the perspective
of their youth and then than present day
i am a sucker for
a for a before and now storyline i
guess i'm interested is this a common thing that
(13:58):
she does in her in her books does like love story tell something that i mean
i yes the two perspective thing is definitely a thing she likes i don't know
that it's always a time like it's not a traveling back and forth in time but
characters eleanor and park Park, arguably her most,
I mean, probably, yes, her most famous book, I would assume,
(14:20):
is told between Eleanor and Park.
It's like switches POVs back and forth between Eleanor and then Park and then
Eleanor and Park. And it moves through the whole book that way.
But I thought it was a particularly effective storytelling technique in this book.
I mean, she's written a lot of YA, right? She's known to be a YA author. her. And...
(14:47):
I think that including those flashbacks is like, I mean, that could have been,
if you fleshed out the Shiloh Carey high school story, that could have been a YA romance, right?
Like at the end, they would have kissed, they would have gone,
you know, that would have been the story.
And seeing what really happens, this is like what really happens, right?
(15:09):
You have the high school romance, bookends, then you realize,
I don't really know myself.
I don't really know anybody else. and have to
take space to figure that out so
this is like i mean i just thought that was really kind of a a beautiful i don't
know beautiful storytelling technique and almost like a nod to her to her ya
(15:32):
to her love for ya exactly and i think like the that that story teller that
That slow dance scene at the beginning,
that's such a beautiful metaphor for their entire relationship, right?
Like right at the beginning, she's telling you exactly what this book is about.
It's about people who take their time and go slow while everybody else is going
(15:54):
fast around them, rushing to...
And, I don't know, I just love her, which I guess why I'm here.
I, to that point, just exploring the
sort of the beginning of Carrie and
Shiloh and the unfolding of that and how much I related to so many aspects of
(16:19):
understanding the way that an intimate relationship can build between two young
teenagers who don't have the language, who don't have the skill set.
They don't have good adult role models for what love or intimacy looks like.
They're really lost, but they're lost together.
And she wrote it in such a way, again, just returning to what's real.
(16:42):
I have this little list that I made, and it says things that feel real.
The characters, Shiloh's dominance, resonance the
physical push and pull between shiloh and carrie the
translation of the sexual tension between teenagers which
she nails so well like the
translation of like you know a little boy on a playground just like you know
(17:04):
throwing tan barks the thing right except in this circumstance it's shiloh and
she literally cannot stop constantly she's like i just i poke him like Like,
she's pulling his hair. She's touching him all the time.
And I was that girl. I mean, I can relate to that so much. And then Rainbow goes deeper.
(17:25):
And she's like, what it is is that, you know, Shiloh has to be touching Carrie.
She needs to feel that he's real. You know, and you just like really,
oh, it just resonated with me so much.
It felt very sloppy and really real in the best way.
One of the things that about Shiloh that I think for me is quite relatable is
(17:50):
that saying that, like what you said, she had to be touching Carrie to know
that he was real. And I think that that.
Touches on the reality of being
like an adolescent woman with
feelings and that continues that stays throughout even maybe not all the way
(18:16):
up to the end of the book but but this this theme lingers that is the sort of
like uncertainty and self-consciousness and the the feeling of not
always being grounded because of the patriarchy like
as as a woman you're not you're not
encouraged to desire and you're not encouraged to to be a whole person in relationship
(18:41):
with a partner who is male and Shiloh like she carries this thing with her that's like Like,
it seems kind of like she's trying to convince herself if she's worthy of Carrie
or of a life that is dreamlike because she had really crushed on him and didn't really know how to,
(19:06):
you know, like that sex scene that they have at school and college.
Yeah. Where she's like, it's just sex. Like, it's just, it's no big,
I just want to get this done.
Like, she makes it so much less than it actually is to her.
I think it's also really important to point out because we were talking about
how Shiloh has a crush on Carrie and she has forever she has no idea she doesn't
(19:30):
know that she doesn't realize that until he kisses her and then she says like,
Carrie kissing me has made me realize that Carrie could have kissed me anytime
Carrie could have kissed me freshman year that part was like.
I can feel in my throat reading that part.
(19:51):
Oh, yeah. I mean, and I think that, like, you know, she remains sexually confused, right?
She's, like, probably queer and doesn't know how to translate that.
Yeah. I definitely felt like she was probably asexual or on,
like, the ace spectrum when she's, you know, interacting as an adult person
(20:11):
in these sexual experiences.
And, you know, Carrie's like, hey, Shiloh, I really have to ask you, like, are you gay?
Do you like women? I need to know what's going on. And she's like,
she's like, she's like, theoretically, yes.
But Carrie, I don't like anybody. Like, I can't know that.
Right. Like, you know, and then she's kissing this woman for the first time.
She's like, it feels good, but it's also not what I want.
(20:34):
Like, I think that she is. And it's really interesting that Rainbow put these
characters. directors.
I would love to talk about the timing of it all. I thought it was really interesting,
that the present, the future time is still 2006.
I was waiting the whole time for it to circle back to present.
I thought, originally reading the book when I was making my estimations,
(20:58):
I thought they were going to fuck it up in 2006 all over again.
And I thought that if we were finally going to arrive in 2023 or 2024 with these
old ass people who just kept fucking it up, And that's not what happened.
And yeah, I just I don't know if that was an intentional from the perspective
(21:18):
of it limited cell phones.
There was a lot of ways that technology did not exist. And so then that sort
of kept Shiloh and Carrie further apart.
If it was like logistical reasoning like that, or I don't know what your guys's thoughts are.
I mean, I circle back real quick. Yeah, go for it. Just to what Shannon was
(21:40):
saying about the lack of confidence or the lack of awareness between them.
And Rosa had said earlier that they didn't have good role models at home.
But beyond that, both of them were highly parentified, right,
like in their home lives.
And I do think that can lead to people feeling unworthy of love,
(22:06):
like just on a fundamental level, unless you're, it's just harder to see that
sometimes, that you're worthy, that you can want those things. those things.
And I also think that Rainbow, she writes, I think most of her main characters
are queer in some way or other.
She writes people who don't fit in, oddballs.
(22:29):
And I've read people discussing how Kath, the protagonist and fangirl,
people read her as autistic. I think you could easily read Shiloh as autistic.
I think that there is something also really beautiful about that.
You don't get stories about people who are weird in that way and don't know who they are.
(22:57):
Especially in a situation where that's not what the story is about. Right. Exactly.
Exactly. The thing about Fangirl is not that Kath is probably neurologically atypical at all.
It's about her existing in the world like so many of us who are neurologically
atypical and we have no idea what we're doing. Yeah.
(23:19):
Right. So I just wanted to get that little thought in. And then back to about timing.
I don't know, but I loved it. but it definitely had nostalgia for me.
Like they're a little older than me on the timeline,
but I think it enhanced my enjoyment of the book to kind of get their references
and remember what it was like to live like when you just rolled up to somebody's
(23:41):
house and knocked on their door and not having a phone.
There was that scene where Lois fell and she called Carrie and then Carrie called
Shiloh and Shiloh showed up to help.
Shiloh and Shiloh's mom showed up to help, which also part of this story is
(24:02):
about community and how community shows up for each other.
But the part of that where Shiloh is texting Carrie,
I imagined the kind of phone that
I had in 2006 which was a
flip phone with that QWERTY keyboard that you
(24:24):
had to like punch the you know and like trying to
communicate with people then there there is something about I think sometimes
I forget that I'm an adult like a whole ass adult in my 40s and that like when
When somebody is writing a contemporary adult work,
(24:47):
they are writing it for me.
So it felt there's something about it that's like, oh, I am like there's so
much of this is relatable because also my they are still a little bit older than I am, but.
There is something so, like, wildly relatable about the entire, the entire story.
(25:12):
Yeah. Yeah. It's, as I said, and this is, like, not on track at all,
but I now want to read everything she's ever written.
Because I loved this story so much.
I think that I was, it felt very real to me in the same way that Landline felt
(25:32):
real to me, which is another one of her, she's written three contemporary adult
fiction books, I think. Is that right, Katie?
I think it's Attachment, Landline, and this one, yeah.
Yeah. And you can tell her comfortable space, I would say, certainly is in YA.
I mean, you know, I have talked, I'm sure I've talked on this show about this,
(25:55):
but Fangirl is really special to me.
Like, I probably enjoyed Eleanor and Park more, but Fangirl is special to me
because it was the first time that I read a character who definitely has OCD.
You know, like I saw so much of myself in Kath.
Also, to read about a girl whose mother abandoned her, like I hadn't really
read a story like that before.
(26:15):
I hadn't read a story about somebody just so fixated on fantasy that,
you know, she's sort of choosing that over real life sort of over and over again.
So yeah, I mean, I think that Rainbow is so comfortable in the world of YA and
that's what she does best. I will say that.
And so Attachments was hard for me to read. The first time I read it, it was great.
(26:39):
But I would say that typically with Rambo books, the second time I go back to
them, I love them even more.
And Attachments had an opposite effect on me where I was like,
okay, I'm fine to not read that again.
Landline features the insufferable thing I'm obsessed with.
I talk about every single freaking Brown Girl Book Party episode ever, which is time travel.
So, you know, I am just, just give me every contemporary fiction book that features
(27:06):
time travel. I don't want sci-fi.
I want a real world situation where there is a freaking phone in the main character's childhood bedroom.
She's calling her husband and she's having problems with him.
And that's the whole plot of Landline, right? It's like this marriage that's
kind of like Like, not failing, but it's in a terrible place.
(27:27):
And the main character, I can't remember her name. I don't remember either.
But she feels like she's disappointing her husband, and honestly,
she is. And he's, you know, they're just in this weird place.
And she goes home for Christmas, and she picks up her landline to call somebody.
And when she calls, she's talking to her husband, but in the past.
(27:51):
And these characters felt similar to me because all sets of those characters
from both Slow Dance and Landline, and this is the theme we keep returning to,
everybody's fucked up. They're all flawed.
You know, they're all so deeply human.
And to just sort of exist in that and find the connections and love in that
(28:11):
is really gratifying for me as a single parent and not, or well,
as a remarried parent, as a parent with like the most blended family.
Half of my kids are my stepkids from a previous marriage to a husband that I no longer am married to,
who I also made biological children with, who are all now parented by my husband
(28:33):
and that ex-husband's wife. Could not be more blended.
Man, I mean, part of my crying
in this book was how much I
realized I'm going to get emotional now like there are not a
lot of written characters who have
these families in this kind
(28:54):
of dynamic like sure we see modern family for example right that's a very popular
television show with lots of different blended families lots of different family
dynamics but it's so it's all put together and it's all you know nice and they
figured out a way to have something that's cookie cutter and that's not what this is at all.
Carrie has, she, Rainbow writes, Carrie is having absolutely no fucking idea
(29:17):
what he's doing. He's totally awkward. He's uncomfortable.
He has to learn these kids. You can tell sometimes he doesn't like them.
You can tell sometimes they don't like him.
As a person who married a man who had to learn how to be a father and who now
five years in is a goddamn excellent one.
I mean, it just moved me. It moved me to tears.
(29:39):
I just want to thank her for writing those characters and making them exist
in a way where thousands and thousands and thousands of people are seeing the
real way that those blended families get built because that's what it felt like to me.
Yeah. I loved all of the way that she, I mean, I was like highlighting in my
ebook all of the times that she was talking about how she felt about her marriage,
(30:03):
the end of her marriage, her ex-husband, the way that being a parent changed her life.
And then like the tension between that and being, I think she calls it like
serving out a prison sentence because she has to co-parent with this person for the rest of her life.
And, and I just, all of it.
(30:23):
I, I, I mean, I'm not divorced, you know, at this point in my life,
who knows, who knows? Don't tell David, but you know, who knows?
But but i think i don't know as a person who's now a parent i've thought about
that like what would my life look like if if my marriage ended for whatever
(30:44):
reason and and i don't know i thought it was interesting and also i i really
hated ryan like from the moment he walked in oh god God, we all know Ryan.
Fuck Ryan. Yeah.
And it was so like, oh, go ahead. Oh, no, you go. You go.
Well, just that I think the beauty of it, too, is like he's not an obvious monster,
(31:07):
right? Like it's so nuanced.
And the way that he's manipulative and gross is like so subtle,
especially until you find out about the adultery.
Like, what did he do? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and not even just that it's so subtle. It's also that he's also not totally
only a bad person. He's a terrible husband.
(31:28):
But he is legitimately a really good dad. And he really loves his children.
And man, that, I mean, that's real. That's what it looks like so much of the time, right?
Like, we want these, you know, she just, she makes these multicolored characters
who are not just black and white.
And it's relieving to read that, yeah. Yeah. But I think that,
(31:53):
oh, the prison sentence stuff.
I mean, she wrote a lot of stuff in this book that I think is hard to admit
when you are an advocate for divorce that I am.
And she really articulated some of my ugliest thoughts, which is exactly that.
(32:15):
I mean, the amount of times that I've said to my current husband,
like, I have to, there's this idea where you're like, okay, I gotta fuck,
I fucking gotta deal with this person until my kids are 18.
My youngest kid is 18. And look, everybody knows, obviously,
you divorce somebody, it got so bad, it got bad enough that you blew your life up.
So obviously, it's not like a question mark about whether or not,
(32:37):
there's a lack of compatibility, certainly.
But then you realize it's not just until they're 18. It's literally,
it's absolutely until you are dead.
Like, you're going to share grandparents with this person.
You are going to share weddings. The most important weddings that you will go
to, the most important graduations.
(32:58):
And she wasn't afraid to write that. I mean, she did such a good job,
y'all, that I nosily Googled to make sure she was still married.
I couldn't believe that a person was capable who had not directly experienced
the things that I had experienced, you know? Mm-hmm.
So, yeah, that's why that I feel like, OK, I don't want us to have to end this
(33:23):
show before we talk about. Yes.
What happens with Carrie and Shiloh in the bedroom?
And what happens with Carrie and Shiloh overall, which is secondly important
to what happens. We'll get there.
Yeah. Well, what do you guys I want to hear. Katie, what did you think?
(33:45):
I'm putting you on the spot.
Yeah well you know i told you i i started the book right when it was released
and i had to stop for a few days because my kid got sick and she was touching
me all the time and i i got to a sex scene and i was like i cannot it's too
good i can't really uncomfortable.
Sometimes you stop and it's like okay i can but i was like oh this you know
(34:07):
i like i find them oftentimes when i find when i'm reading smut in books i mean
i like a romance too but oftentimes Sometimes I find it embarrassing because the way it's written,
it, like, takes me out of it.
Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm watching myself reading it.
But I think that because, like we were talking about earlier, how…,
(34:30):
honest it was i was i didn't get
pulled out of it and then it was i mean you know
it was definitely in that in that realm
of like i don't want to be around other people while i'm reading these scenes
yeah i love sex as you're like
like having a hot flash and like yeah this
was her first i'm gonna say correct me if i'm wrong i'm pretty sure this was
(34:55):
her first real stab at smut to this level hmm it was very good never seen her
write the word cock before just i was,
so when that happened i was like.
I didn't know that this is the book that i it honestly
(35:16):
like that that scene sort of came out
of nowhere for me you know like they have
like you know they're having sex and that because we've got
their story from from the before times but
then when it's like when they
are having it and he taught at one point when he was like the the line was something
(35:38):
about carrie was ready to see his dog tad in between her tits she didn't say
tits she probably said breasts i was just like oh here Here we go.
Like it's, it's happening.
And, but again, like such a relatable thing where it's like,
there's a, there's one moment where Carrie gets up to take his shirt off.
(36:03):
And he's like, I'm just gonna take my boxers off too. Cause I don't want to have to get up again.
And this sort of like the very real practical parts of sex are written in In this thing that,
you know, I think when you think about smut, you think about,
you don't think about the awkward stuff.
(36:23):
But she made it sexy and awkward, therefore real.
Yeah. She did that. And I just like, that's what I want.
To read if i'm gonna read a romance novel that has smut i want to read something
that is relatable and that i that i do like you know like when someone when
(36:46):
a character is like i want the lights off and i want the lights off all the
time like that kind of very real like relatable story,
about having sex is so sexy well and we keep returning to that theme the relatability
because Because that's true of all aspects.
I love to see, again, I love to see a blended family, but I want to see the
(37:08):
struggle and I want to see it being real because then it feel, you feel normal, right?
You're like, oh, I see this reflected back in these pages.
This is how, this is what the experience was like for me.
This is what it feels like. It's not just like, you know, you're shooting hoops
one day and then the kid looks over at you and he's just like,
dad, and it's been like two weeks. That's not real, you know?
(37:31):
It's not like real like the this i mean even in the emily henry book totally
some of the best men i've ever read not real that's not what it's like it's just not like that.
And that was really cool that she gave us that gift for sure the there's the
scene when so at the wedding they leave together and we sweating the sorry right
(37:54):
yeah the first wedding spoiler Spoiler alert,
Shiloh and Carrie get married.
The first wedding, when Shiloh and Carrie slow dance, and that begins the story
that leads up to their wedding.
And they go back to Shiloh's house, and we think they're going to have sex.
(38:14):
And Shiloh is thinking about what she's wearing.
And she's like, I'm probably wearing, like, she said something about,
like, not really remembering what bra she's wearing.
But it's probably not a cute one and she
says something about wearing like like granny
panties like cotton underwear that have probably already slipped
(38:34):
under my stomach i was like there again
the relatability but it's like i have been there
so many times even as a married person
where it's like this is not gonna look hella
cute it's not gonna look the way that like the the tv and the The movies tell
me it should look and there's just something so like wildly freeing about reading
(39:01):
something that is so beautifully disintegrating status quo. Yeah.
Even the way he carries her body, right? He says, nobody would say she's the
most beautiful person in the world, but she's the only one I want to look at.
And the way he describes her body, which is odd by, I mean, people called her
(39:29):
Sasquatch in high school, right?
And she talks a lot in the book about being uncomfortable in her body,
how she feels othered in her body.
And for him to just have this monologue about she goes on for a million miles
and heavy breasts and how they're falling on her body and it's so sensual and
sexy and you don't see bodies that look like that talked about like that very
(39:54):
often in that with that adoration.
And like most of us look like that, right? Yeah. That's what most.
Yeah. I think that she has been doing that, Rainbow's been doing that in books
since before there really was like fat-focused, fat-positive books.
I mean, Eleanor and Park is part of the reason it'll stick with me forever
is when Park sees Eleanor in her gym uniform the first time when she's like
(40:18):
walking down the high school hallway and she's in her gym uniform and it's like
basically a unitard and she's so worried that Park is going to see her and then
he sees her and he is like,
in a she has him in a chokehold he's just
like oh like teen boner in the middle of my high school right now basically
(40:39):
and you know it's it's so i just she's just been a queen at that forever just
really serving for every big girl like being able to see ourselves in these pages you know is
so moving to end to be i mean i i
need you to know that every levi freaking carrie i i have been in love with
(41:04):
every male character that rainbow roald has ever written feels like they're
all my boyfriends they're all written for me to fall in love with them enormously right right yeah,
service rainbow so do we want to talk about i feel like we can we can wrap this in one of two ways.
(41:24):
We can talk about the end, what happens with Shiloh and Carrie.
And or we can talk about, like, what is your, what is the thing for you?
What's your elevator pitch?
What's your book talk on this book?
Like, how are you going to carry this out? I think carry.
(41:44):
Nice. How are you going to carry this out? Didn't even, didn't even know I was
doing it. You're so funny.
Okay. What I think is that each of us takes just, like, a couple minutes to
say how we felt about the ending.
And elevator pitch and or like favorite
quote and we can end okay i don't
(42:05):
want to go yeah it sounds great but i don't want to go first i'm down to go
first katie unless you got you got fire okay so i'm gonna say this this big
book did something different i think the structure of this book in terms of
its storytelling was very different.
I was waiting for the disaster toward the end of the book, because I thought
(42:32):
certainly the climax of every book, right?
We climax, things are going really well, and then you hit a climax and everything
falls apart only for things to come back together again. That is like the romantic climax.
That did not exist in this book, which totally shook me because I felt like
she was being really brave by saying, fuck that.
I'm not doing that shit. You're going to see Shiloh and Carrie figuring it out.
(42:56):
He's going to propose to her. It's going to be so awkward. No one's expecting it.
No one's expecting it. There's still a hundred pages left. So you're like, oh, what?
Okay, so something's going to fall apart, certainly, because then Shiloh accepts.
But no, it's not like that. The whole end of the book is the slow burn.
(43:18):
It is the slow roll to not happily ever after, because that's their whole thing.
They recognize they're both going to annoy each other forever.
Ever. They recognize that she is never going to stop pinching him and driving him crazy.
And they're never going to agree about stuff.
And their best friend, Mikey, has said, you guys really both kind of need to be leaders.
(43:38):
Like you're both like doms. Like what's that going to look like for you?
And they talk about that and they talk about all these real things.
Did it give me the on the edge of my seat experience, like running toward each
other in the rain at the airport, stopping the airplane?
No, it didn't give that to me. But God, it will sit with me forever,
(43:58):
for life, the way that these two people love each other and chose each other
in this way that was so beautiful.
And so that is what I will say about that. I loved the wedding.
I loved the moment that Lois decides to sell her house because Shiloh tells
(44:20):
her that she's He's marrying Carrie and I'm going to cry talking about it right
now because it's so beautiful.
And then the last thing that I loved that I just loved so much was that Rainbow
ended it on a before a two page little before chapter of the wide brimmed hat
and Carrie just being her guy. I mean, it's just it's perfect.
(44:44):
This story is so fucking good. It's so good. I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Go ahead. You can, you're okay. Yeah. I don't know. I, I think, Ooh, okay.
Um, I think I don't, I don't know if I have much to add in terms of like how
the story ended, because I agree that it, I think that it, it ended up on kind
(45:06):
of like this hopeful note, but it's not, it's not a promise.
It's, it's like, you know, it, it kind of, you just get the story just lets
go and you, you get to, I don't know, go with it.
That's not very articulate. I do have a favorite quote because in addition to
Rainbow being just a fantastic storyteller and fantastic creator of human characters,
(45:31):
she's also really brilliant at prose.
Like, she writes things in the context of these really human,
real situations that are also – I mean, it's kind of remarkable,
that power. So, okay, this is...
Carrie kissed her through it. Long, sad kisses with his hand cupped around the back of her head.
(45:55):
These were kisses without hopes or ambitions. They were apologies.
Eulogies. Shiloh's tears slid into the corner of her mouth.
Carrie licked them. When she realized that he wasn't stopping,
Shiloh sat up a little, making her mouth more available.
Carrie hummed and squeezed her neck. she gripped
one hand in the front of his shirt he kissed her and
(46:18):
kissed her if she emptied her head in
his lap all that would fall out was his name dude
it's so good ruin me all that would fall out is her name dude although it's
so good yeah one of i think there's a lot Not so interestingly,
(46:43):
yesterday when we were going back and forth about this episode,
I was like, I don't know that I have 25 minutes of content to share.
I hadn't gotten deeply, super deeply into it yet.
And as I'm like reflecting on it now, I think I probably have 25 hours to share on on the book.
(47:05):
One of the moments that really stood out for me was when Rainbow wrote that
Shiloh corralled her nervous system because of this moment with Carrie.
And I think the thing about this book, if I think about my elevator pitch,
(47:28):
it does go back to relatability. And it specifically goes back to relatability
for me as a person, as like an adult child of...
There's of addicts of of someone
who has struggled with
worthiness so much and who never imagined to be in the kind of relationship
(47:50):
and marriage that i am in today and it is there was something about this where
i just like i saw myself so clearly in shiloh.
And the i mean there's
so many quotes that stand out but she's talking
(48:12):
about kissing carrie and says what made a kiss good shiloh decided
wasn't technique it was wanting it
and she wanted this she wanted him she'd
never wanted anyone else as much or as well and And the way that that resonates
as someone who didn't know what she wanted until she had it,
(48:37):
because I couldn't imagine it,
and the amount of work that has had to go into corralling a nervous system that
is always overloaded but can find my feet on the ground in my marriage and in
my relationship with my husband is,
Because I think this is a story for people who haven't quite found a way to fit in and find love,
(49:07):
but want to want hope for that.
It's just such a beautiful, real, awkward story about love.
And it's got a really perfect sex scene that is also worth it. Well, yeah.
(49:33):
It sounds like we all kind of liked this book a little bit, I guess.
Fire, hot pie. bye i really have
said that might just start it all over from the
beginning as soon as we end this episode i just
like cook dinner so i i co-sign that how was the audio narrator i love it it's
(49:54):
rebecca loman is loves rebecca loman i love her yeah yeah she reads a lot of
her books i really i really i really enjoy it i fall asleep listening to her.
Her what that's good oh i fall asleep to
her listening to fangirl reading fangirl all the time oh i
love that yeah i read it and listened because
(50:16):
i wasn't gonna finish it if i didn't listen to the
last like hour i want
to i'm at a place where i want i don't own a hard copy of it i want to get a
hard copy of it so that i can mark it up because i did you know my my kindle
so well yeah excellent book and listen if you like this you can come to our in-person book club yes,
(50:42):
it's true it's happening on October 3rd.
Right? Dude, we are terrible. It is happening.
October 3rd, Thursday on October 3rd at Urban Roots Brewery here in Sacramento.
It is 20 bucks, but we're going to feed and beer you.
And it's our first time doing anything like this. And we would love so much
(51:06):
for you to come talk to us and with us about Home Bodies by Tembe Denton Hurst,
a book that this podcast loves and that shannon and
i both love katie have you read bodies already yet
but i put it on my list because of you it's so good very
good talk about smut yeah it probably is
the best and it's also just really it's i mean it's a coming it's a it's a story
(51:29):
about coming home it's a coming of age story but like coming of age in your
adulthood and we really would love for people to come out katie we wish you
didn't live so far away so you could come oh no i can't come because i'm in
Portland, but everybody else should come.
And I can live vicariously all of your social media posts afterwards.
Yes, that sounds good. Yeah, you would like to join, please email us at brown
(51:52):
girl book party at gmail.com.
We've already gotten several signups. We're excited about that.
And Katie, thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah.
And yeah, I feel like we should have done this at the beginning of the episode.
But I just wanted to say like, Like, Katie's presence here is really because
Katie and I bonded at the beginning of our friendship, which was almost a decade ago, right? Dang.
(52:19):
I think we met in 2016.
Yeah, that sounds right. 2016 or 2016. And we bonded over books.
That was, like, one of the first things that we bonded over.
And then specifically Rainbow. rainbow so i mean you know i don't know if you
ever get sick of hearing this rainbow if you're out there but you've certainly
been bringing people together and keep producing beautiful art and even if you
(52:44):
never write another book again you've graced us with so many perfect stories,
and the brown girls at this book party adore you so thanks everybody for tuning
in thank you that's the show bye-bye,
(53:06):
Okay, that was sick. Good job, guys.
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