Welcome to another #BuddyReads. What's a Buddy Read? Me and a fellow book nerd co-host Classy (friend, book lover, audiobook listener, and Shelf Addiction reviewer) select a stand alone title that we'll either read, listen to, or a combination of both. Afterwards we come together to chat about it on the podcast! This is a candid and spoiler-filled convo.
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This episode, we're discussing No Exit by Taylor Adams. Both Classy and I listened to the audiobook version. Be sure to listen to the end because we also share our own fantasy casting choices!

Publisher: Brilliance Audio
Release Date: February 20, 2018 
Format: MP3 Download
Audio Length: 9 hrs 44 mins
Narrator: Sarah Naughton
Source: Scribd
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Rating: 4 bookmarks - Tamara | 4 bookmarks - Classy
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Synopsis: On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside, are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.

Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.

Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?

There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?

Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.

But who can she trust? 

Welcome to another #BuddyReads. What's a Buddy Read? Me and fellow book nerd Classy select a stand alone title that we'll either read, listen to, or a combination of both, then we chat about it on the podcast! This is a candid and spoiler-filled convo.

Classy Green, friend, fellow book lover, audiobook listener, and Shelf Addiction reviewer joins me on the podcast to discuss Miracle Creek, Angie Kim. Both Classy and I listened to the audiobook version.
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During this episode, we also share our movie adaptation fantasy casting.

Publisher: Macmillan Audio​
Release Date: April 16, 2019 
Format: MP3 Download
Audio Length: 14 hrs 5 mins
Narrator: Jennifer Lim
Source: Audible
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Courtroom Drama
Rating: 3 bookmarks - Tamara | 3 bookmarks - Classy
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Synopsis: In the small town of Miracle Creek, Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine—a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic “dives” with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.

Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night—trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges—as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Welcome to another #BuddyReads. What's a Buddy Read? Me and a fellow book nerd select a stand alone title that we'll either read, listen to, or a combination of both, then we chat about it on the podcast! This is a candid and spoiler-filled convo.

Classy Green, friend, fellow book lover, audiobook listener, and Shelf Addiction reviewer joined me on the podcast to discuss The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. Both Classy and I listened to the audiobook version.
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During this episode, we also played "two truths and a lie", a game featured in this book. Could could you guess the lie before we told you?

Publisher: Penguin Audio 
Release Date: July 3, 2018 
Format: MP3 Download
Audio Length: 13 hrs 13 mins
Narrator: Nicol Zanzarella
Source: Audible
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Rating: 4 bookmarks - Tamara | 3 bookmarks - Classy
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Synopsis: ​Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and first-time camper Emma Davis, the youngest of the group. The games ended when Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out of the cabin in the dead of night. The last she--or anyone--saw of them was Vivian closing the cabin door behind her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips.

Now a rising star in the New York art scene, Emma turns her past into paintings--massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches that cover ghostly shapes in white dresses. The paintings catch the attention of Francesca Harris-White, the socialite and wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale. When Francesca implores her to return to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor, Emma sees an opportunity to try to find out what really happened to her friends.

Yet it's immediately clear that all is not right at Camp Nightingale. Already haunted by memories from fifteen years ago, Emma discovers a security camera pointed directly at her cabin, mounting mistrust from Francesca and, most disturbing of all, cryptic clues Vivian left behind about the camp's twisted origins. As she digs deeper, Emma finds herself sorting through lies from the past while facing threats from both man and nature in the present.

And the closer she gets to the truth about Camp Nightingale, the more she realizes it may come at a deadly price.

Welcome to another #BuddyReads. What's a Buddy Read? Me and a fellow book nerd select a stand alone title that we'll either read, listen to, or a combination of both, then we chat about it on the podcast! This is a candid and spoiler-filled convo covering women's issues and adult topics, so you've been warned!

Classy Green, friend, fellow book lover, audiobook listener, and Shelf Addiction reviewer joined me on the podcast to discuss The Idea of You, by Robinne Lee. We both listened to the audiobook.

​If you've already read The Idea of You, leave a comment and let us know what you thought about it.

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin/Tantor Audio
Release Date: June 13, 2017
Format: Paperback/MP3 Download
Pages: Paperback: 372 | Audio Length: 11 hrs 55 mins
Narrator: Robinne Lee
Source: Scribd/Audible
Genre: Romance, Contemporary Fiction
Bookmark Rating: 2 - Tamara | 3 - Classy
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Synopsis:​ When Solène Marchand, the thirty-nine-year-old owner of a prestigious art gallery in Los Angeles, takes her daughter, Isabelle, to meet her favorite boy band, she does so reluctantly and at her ex-husband’s request. The last thing she expects is to make a connection with one of the members of the world-famous August Moon. But Hayes Campbell is clever, winning, confident, and posh, and the attraction is immediate. That he is all of twenty years old further complicates things.

What begins as a series of clandestine trysts quickly evolves into a passionate relationship. It is a journey that spans continents as Solène and Hayes navigate each other’s disparate worlds: from stadium tours to international art fairs to secluded hideaways. And for Solène, it is as much a reclaiming of self, as it is a rediscovery of happiness and love. When their romance becomes a viral sensation, and both she and her daughter become the target of rabid fans and an insatiable media, Solène must face how her new status has impacted not only her life, but the lives of those closest to her.

Welcome to another #BuddyReads. What's a Buddy Read? Me and a fellow book nerd select a stand alone title that we'll either read, listen to, or a combination of both, then we chat about it on the podcast! This is a candid and spoiler-filled convo covering women's issues and topics, so you've been warned!

Classy Green, friend, fellow book lover, audiobook listener, and Shelf Addiction reviewer joined me on the podcast to discuss The Poet X written by Elizabeth Acevedo. I listened to the audiobook, and Classy did a read/listen combo with the book and audiobook.

​If you've already read The Poet X, leave a comment and let us know what you thought about it.

Publisher: HarperTeen/HarperAudio 
Release Date: March 6, 2018
Format: Hardcover/MP3 Download
Pages: Hardcover: 368 | Audio Length: 3 hrs 30 mins
Narrator: Elizabeth Acevedo
Source: Audible
Genre: YA Contemporary Fiction/Poetry
Rating: 4 bookmarks - Tamara | 5 bookmarks - Classy

​Synopsis: A young girl in Harlem discovers slam poetry as a way to understand her mother’s religion and her own relationship to the world. Debut novel of renowned slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers—especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about. With Mami’s determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself.

So when she is invited to join her school’s slam poetry club, she doesn’t know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out, much less speak her words out loud. But still, she can’t stop thinking about performing her poems.

Because in the face of a world that may not want to hear her, Xiomara refuses to be silent.​

​Today is the first episode of my new podcast feature called #BuddyReads. This is where me and a fellow book nerd either read or listen to or a combination of the both, discuss a stand-alone title.  As this is a book discussion, of course, there is a spoiler alert in effect.

Classy Green, friend, fellow book lover, audiobook listener, and Shelf Addiction reviewer joined me on the podcast to discuss Broken Things written by Lauren Oliver! I read the paperback ARC and Classy listened to the audiobook.

​If you've already read Broken Things, leave a comment and let us know what you thought about it.

Publisher: HarperCollins/HarperAudio 
Release Date: October 2, 2018
Format: Hardcover/MP3 Download
Pages: Hardcover: 408 | Audio Length: 9 hrs 50 mins
Narrators:​ Sarah Drew, Erin Spencer, Saskia Maarleveld
Source: Book Expo/Audible
Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller
Rating: 2 bookmarks (from both Classy and Tamara)

Synopsis: It’s been five years since Summer Marks was brutally murdered in the woods. 

Everyone thinks Mia and Brynn killed their best friend. That driven by their obsession with a novel called The Way into Lovelorn the three girls had imagined themselves into the magical world where their fantasies became twisted, even deadly.

The only thing is: they didn’t do it. 

On the anniversary of Summer’s death, a seemingly insignificant discovery resurrects the mystery and pulls Mia and Brynn back together once again. But as the lines begin to blur between past and present and fiction and reality, the girls must confront what really happened in the woods all those years ago—no matter how monstrous.​