The Other Side of Now

Kristy (00:00)
Welcome to Books I Make My Husband Read, a self-described, hilarious, and heartfelt podcast where I, Kristy, the devoted book lover, curate an unexpected reading list for my husband, Jon.

Jon (00:10)
And that's me. Each episode we'll dive into lively discussions, humorous debates, and surprising insights on the books Kristy just has to make me read.

Kristy (00:18)
We're here to explore everything from timeless classics to quirky hidden gems, challenging our perspectives and inviting you to join in on the fun.

Jon (00:26)
Settle in, grab your favorite beverage, and get ready for another literary adventure.

Kristy (00:46)
Hello listeners and welcome to season three, episode five of Books I Make My Husband Read. I'm your host Kristy.

Jon (00:52)
And I'm the husband, the husband Jon, the one that Kristy makes read all of these books.

Kristy (00:58)
Did you have to clarify that you were the husband because you said it twice?

Jon (01:01)
Yeah, I just need to make sure that people understood the husband is me and the husband that you make read books.

Kristy (01:07)
just in case they thought there were two different people.

Jon (01:10)
husband husband husband.

Kristy (01:12)
This week we'll be discussing The Other Side of Now by Paige Harbison, a story about a woman who slips into an alternate version of her life and has to reckon with grief, friendship, and the past not taken.

Jon (01:24)
Yeah, so I don't know if you have like some mystic powers of your own where you're like picking books that are just like really hitting home for me lately, but this one hit hit pretty hard in a couple of spots. So I'll be excited to share those with you later.

Kristy (01:39)
Yeah, I'm excited to hear about that because you were in full on tears when you finished the book and you said something similar and I am not quite sure what those things are. Yes, I have not been able to sleep a wink. So why did I pick this book for Jon?

Jon (01:52)
Have you been restless?

Kristy (02:00)
Well, I read this book, I received an ARC from the publisher and I actually wrote the publisher about a different book that I wanted to receive an advance copy of and they sent me that but then she said, we also have this other book that I have been loving and trying to get in people's hands, would you be interested? I read the, know, synopsis and I said, yeah, sure. So I was unfamiliar with Paige at that time and ended up

freaking loving it. And we'll talk a lot about this. I think the multiverse is really hard to do and we're big fans of like that kind of fantasy, sci-fi, whatever you want to call it. And I just thought you would really enjoy this book for that aspect, but also because I think when you do that, it has to be realistic. And I feel like Paige does this in a way and

Anyway, really ended up loving it. I really thought you would love it too. So that's why I made you read it.

Jon (03:04)
Well, so far so good. He definitely nailed it. I did very much enjoy it. So I'll be excited to share all of my inner deep thoughts and thinkings. But until we get to that point, ⁓ and special note, we're actually gonna have the author on this episode, which I'm really excited about. So that'll be fun to talk to Paige and ask her all these crazy questions on how she even like got to this idea and stuff. So anyway, before we get to all that, we wanted to let y'all know which books Christie's gonna force me to read next.

Kristy (03:34)
your will.

Jon (03:35)
Yep. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood and My Friends by Friedrich Backman. Friedrich, Fredrik. Fredrik Backman. Backman.

Kristy (03:48)
think it's Backman.

I'm not 100 % sure. I'm not either. We can maybe find out before the next episode.

Jon (03:54)
You can find the books on the website though if you're unsure how to spell it.

Kristy (03:58)
I'm sure people know who we're talking about. He wrote several other books that are very popular, Bear Town, A Man Called Uva. But before we read that one, we're gonna read The Love Hypothesis, which I actually read a couple years ago. And we ran a little contest when we were at RomanceCon, and this book was the winner. We had offered the winner of the contest to actually join us on the show. They were not interested in doing that, but we will give them a shout out during the episode.

And I'm excited to revisit that book. think it's right up there with the other romance books that you've read, and I think you'll really enjoy it.

Jon (04:35)
Yeah, right on. I was pretty nervous about that whole like contest on what book we're going to just let random people make me read, but I have mediocre confidence that it'll be great. I'm just kidding. I'm sure it'll be awesome.

Kristy (04:49)
I do really think you're going to enjoy it. But before we get to our book summary, we wanted to remind listeners that you can keep up with all the books that I make Jon read and then make him talk about by following us on Instagram or TikTok. And our social links will be posted in the show notes.

Jon (05:04)
And finally, if you are enjoying the show, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you might be listening. helps other people and other book lovers like yourself discover our show.

Kristy (05:17)
Alright, are you ready for that spoiler-free book summary? With a leading role on a hit TV show and a relationship with Hollywood's latest heartthrob, Meg Bryan appears to have everything she ever wanted. But underneath the layers of makeup and hairspray, her happiness is as fake as her stage name, Lana Lord. Following a small breakdown at her 30th birthday party, she books an impromptu trip to where she knows the grass is greener, Ireland.

Jon (05:21)
Hit it.

Kristy (05:46)
Specifically, the quaint little village where she and her best friend Aimee always dreamed of moving. A dream that fell apart when an accident claimed Aimee's life a decade ago.

Jon (05:55)
And when Meg arrives, the people in town are so nice, treating her not as a stranger, but as a friend, almost as if they know her, except for the naturally extremely hot bartender giving her the cold shoulder. Meg writes this all off as jet lag until she looks into the mirror, literally, not figuratively. Her hair is no longer bleached with an inch of its life. Her skin has a few natural fine lines and her nose is well, the nose she was born with before she had a bunch of work done on.

Kristy (06:26)
Her phone reveals hundreds of pictures of her life in this little town with an adorable dog she doesn't know, with a bar gender who might be her ex-boyfriend, and at a retail job unrelated to acting. Eventually she comes to accept that she somehow made a quantum slide into an alternate version of her life. But the most shocking realization of all, in this life, her best friend Aimee is alive and well, but wants nothing to do with Meg.

Jon (06:52)
And despite her bewilderment, is clear-eyed about one thing. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to reconnect with her friend and repair what was broke. She finagles an opportunity to act in the play Aimee is writing and directing, and as the project unfolds, Meg realizes that events, as she remembers them, may not be the only truth, and that an impossible choice looms before her.

Kristy (07:15)
What will it be?

Jon (07:17)
Oh, we shall find out. In fact, that's a spoiler alert. We are about to step beyond the moment where everything changes, where time remembers what we all too often try to forget.

Kristy (07:33)
All right, let's talk about what we thought of this book. I freaking love this book. I had no expectations going in. I haven't read any of Paige Harbison's other novels. And I also think that the multiverse or what some people call sliding doors, which is a term that came from a movie about this premise where you can step in, like you step into an alternate reality. Anyway.

I freaking loved it. And the reason is because I think if you are going to go down the sci-fi rabbit hole, you either have to make it totally unbelievable. Like you're in a universe that does not exist. There are things about that universe, magic, whatever it is that we don't have here. Or you have to make it seem like this could really happen. And we talked about this actually even on the show. Like I felt Marvel did that and nailed it.

with the 22 movies that ended in Infinity War and Endgame. I thought that was brilliant. Totally believable in my mind that these things could happen, that they could time travel, like all of that. I think Paige does this so well in this book. And I've been in other books where you have like a time loop and someone gets stuck in this time loop and then...

It's like, well, are they gonna stay in this loop? Are they going back? And if they go back, that's one thing, but when people stay in one of the time loops, it really bothers me because I'm like, do you spend the rest of your life thinking that I just at any time can go back to like my original timeline? Like that's terrifying to me. So I think the way, and we'll talk about this, the way PageReps wraps things up at the end of the novel, just the depth that comes from the friendship with Aimee, from the new found friends that she has in this alternate life.

from the way she's able to reconcile like her grief in this alternate timeline that ends up like, you know, going back to her own life. It's just really beautiful and heartfelt. And I think everyone should read this book. That's why I made you read it.

Jon (09:39)
⁓ Yes to all of those things. So many things about the characters. Okay, for one, I love the writing. I love the characters. I thought the dialogue again was great. It was hilarious. And for me personally, like for whatever reason, you know, sometimes books are just, they hit you at the right time or you're in a moment in your life where books just resonate differently and this one just hit differently in.

Kristy (09:51)
Hilarious.

Jon (10:07)
a lot of things that Meg is going through, I feel like I'm going through also like these, the sense of just like constantly chasing something, constantly chasing like what's, what might be greater? What might I be missing out on? What might be next on the other side? You know, even to the point where it's like we've had conversations where we've talked about friends or family members. I like, remember years ago thinking like when my parents decided to build that, that their house in

in Kiel and where we grew up and like, why would you do that? Like they loved grafting and loved all this stuff. And like this book just made me realize like, they're so happy. They're so happy with that house and that choice and their life that they have. And like, who am I to just like say that that's not right for them? I don't know. There's all kinds of things about this book just really resonated with me. And I thought the journey was wonderful. I loved the play on how the time switch happened.

over the flight and how like she went one way and then supposedly like the other version of her went the other way to LAX. And like that was just such a believable way to sort of cross paths and change realities. And I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and you know, finally did in the end when all of a sudden everything vanished. But really through that whole story, I was like, how is this gonna happen? How is this gonna tie up? And even the epilogue.

But what would you all get to? I'm getting too far ahead of myself. I I loved everything about this book. I'm just going to yes, we'll just do the whole episode in our summary. Forget the question. But anyways, let's get into the questions and then we can cover some of the other details about stuff.

Kristy (11:35)
I'm gonna cover the whole thing.

All right, did the what if premise feel grounded or more fantastical to you and did that work?

Jon (11:51)
Yes.

I thought it totally worked. I kind of like what you're alluding to in your summary about you either kind of have to go on one side of the spectrum or the other, you either have to make it super surreal or very believable. And I felt like everything about her journey through that was very believable. was, I felt like the characters were reacting in a very real way. Like you're bonkers, you've got, you know, go see a doctor.

Kristy (12:22)
I mean, that's only partially true. Kira very much is like, I don't believe you, but I believe you believe you. Which I thought was really great. And then Aimee full on believes her.

Jon (12:30)
Yeah, right.

Because Aimee had that one shared moment with her at the fair with the palm reader.

Kristy (12:41)
Right, but still that's in their own reality, but that is something I think that happens that they both left an impression on them as kids.

Jon (12:51)
Yeah, I thought the way that whole world was created was really like, I think what made the book. I don't know if it would have worked as well if it was on the other side of the spectrum, like more surreal or anything like that.

Kristy (13:04)
I liked that it was believable. ⁓ I just loved it. I crave that more. Like I'm all in on a complete sci-fi fantasy, but don't get me wrong. But I like the idea better if I can be in this world and can have fantastical things that happen in this world.

Jon (13:06)
Yeah, me too.

Yeah, yeah.

Kristy (13:28)
No, the more magical realism piece of that versus like full on fantasy or sci-fi.

Jon (13:34)
I agree. I'm realizing that I do like those kinds of stories.

Kristy (13:37)
I think for me, it's also like the details of things that happened that she has, like she doesn't have her phone, you know what mean? She doesn't have her phone. She doesn't have like the money that she put in her pocket when she was leaving for the air. Like those like little detailed things that I felt like, of course they would have to be different, but that Paige adds into the text that was like, yeah, like that would be different. You wouldn't have that or whatever else. And then...

I like the little scene where she first gets to the cottage and she knows where the liquor is. She's like, I need a drink. And she knows where the liquor is. Then she's like, ⁓

Jon (14:16)
and she registers that like, how do I know?

Kristy (14:18)
How do I know this? That's so creepy. So I didn't plan to talk about this, but there's a part in the book where Paige describes like deja vu or Meg describes deja vu. And I feel like that's like that's what deja vu is. It's like this crossing of alternate realities where you have this like, OK, I have like had this conversation before or I have lived this moment before.

And this is so surreal to me that like this is happening and I've already like had this.

Jon (14:51)
Yeah, even though I have like, know for a fact that I have not

Kristy (14:55)
Right. This has not happened before, but like, yes. Yep. Do you think that's what Deja Vu is?

Jon (15:02)
Yeah, yes, I totally do. Like somewhere.

Kristy (15:05)
For

those of you listening who are like, do these people really believe in the multiverse? The answer is yes. And we actually in our own crazy minds have proof, a couple of like proof, but one of them is there is a metro stop here that is Fort Totten, T-O-T-T-E-N. And for the first six months that Jon and I lived here, we thought it was Trotten.

with R in it, T-R-O-T-T-N. To the point, I know it was, to the point where we had made comments to each other and then we noticed, cause he was gonna call it Fort Rotten, and then it was Fort Totten, and we're like, what the fuck, where'd the R go? Both of us. I'm not kidding, I'm so crazy. I fucking investigated to see at one point if there was an R, I don't know.

Jon (16:00)
And then we asked our friends too and they kind of had a reaction the same as like here and like, no, it's always been that way. I'm like, no, it hasn't.

Kristy (16:07)
Right.

Yes. So this also like overlaps with the Mandela effect. And if you don't know what that is, Google it because it's for real. Okay. Next question. In the alternate timeline, Aimee Meg's best friend is alive. How that sounded so weird. So Aimee's alive, Meg's best friend. I don't know why I wrote it that way. How does that single change reshape Meg's choices, values and relationships?

Jon (16:32)
I think it's the root of all of her entire journey.

Kristy (16:36)
You

gotta talk about it though. That's the point of the question.

Jon (16:42)
I guess in a few different ways that come to mind, she said a couple of times in the book where she's like after Aimee's accident, after she died, she just kept telling herself, why didn't I spend every moment with her? Why didn't I like hug her more? Why didn't I like keep her, hang out with her more often or have her over every Friday or something like that? And I feel like this new reality was her like second chance at doing that.

Kristy (17:08)
Did she really say that in the book?

Jon (17:10)
She said that a couple different times, yeah. Okay. I didn't just make it up.

Kristy (17:14)
I didn't think you did, but I just don't remember that.

Jon (17:19)
Obviously there's like reconciliation. They were having a fight at the time of the accident. There is a ton of guilt that she has and I don't know. I don't know if I'm answering this question accurately.

Kristy (17:35)
So, remember that for the entirety of the novel, Meg does not talk about Aimee's death. She said she has never told anyone the story of how Aimee actually died, which is in a car accident. And Meg has a lot of guilt because she thinks that she distracted Aimee, she turned up the radio, she did all these things to actually cause the accident.

So she has been carrying around a tremendous amount of guilt. So she ultimately ends up having a conversation with Aimee about what really happened and Aimee in this alternate life. And Aimee is the one who was a terrible driver, we found out, to the fact where Meg's mother, or sorry, Aimee's mother actually suggested that you let Meg drive.

Jon (18:29)
Yeah.

Kristy (18:30)
Aimee's the one who turned up the radio. Aimee's the one who was like speeding. And so it turns out that like all this guilt that Meg was carrying around regarding the accident isn't really what happened at all. And although tragic, Aimee is really the one that's, you I'll say in air quotes again, it's an accident, but it's at fault for the accident where Meg has thought this entire, like her entire life, since it happened in the last 12 years or whatever it is, that she is to blame.

Jon (18:59)
Right, sure, I remember all that, but how does that reshape her choices in values and relationships? Like your question was...

Kristy (19:07)
Because she's been carrying this around. She hasn't let people get close to her. She has completely cut off that part of her life, which then no one really knows. Like her boyfriend doesn't, I mean, and again, that was like a weird relationship to begin with. He doesn't know anything about her past. And it's like just this way for her to not let people in and get to know the real her and who she is, what has shaped her. I mean, we all have things that...

shape us into the people we become. And this was a big one for Meg. And then getting to see Aimee and kind of like letting this guilt go, maybe saying the things that she didn't have the opportunity to say, I think that then helps her in the relationship she has moving forward at the end of the book when she gets really close with that other one who's part of the same group that she's in. And that person even knows about her like alternate reality experience.

Jon (19:41)
Yeah.

Kristy (20:05)
Like that would have never, she would have never said those type of things before, like Meg Brian 1.0, you know?

Jon (20:14)
Yeah, yeah, that's true. That was another point in the like another character trait of Meg's that I feel like hit home quite a bit. sense of like keeping her shields up and you know, not really allowing people all the way in.

Kristy (20:30)
Yeah, life is heavy and no one should have to carry it on town. Do you want to talk about that more?

Jon (20:40)
This could become a therapeutic session. I mean, to put a fine point on it, as I was reading the book, feel like I related to Meg in a lot of those ways. And in one of the moments for me, was like Cillian's love of Meg and the way that it's described of how he loves her and how he just, he wants her to be happy and he was gonna move to LA with her, whatever that looked like. I feel like that's how you.

love me and for me like I'm make and I'm still like scared to let that all in.

Kristy (21:20)
That's very true. I do just want you to be happy, whatever that means. If you wanna move to LA, I actually love that, but if you wanna move to wherever or you wanna take whatever job or do whatever, I just want you to be happy.

Jon (21:37)
Yeah. And I think like Meg, like I don't know really what that really means. think that's, mean, when we get too far off question or whatever too, but like her journey through that sort of self discovery of like constantly needing or chasing the next thing or the next best thing or, you know, running towards whatever instead of just like remaining present and remaining with like,

What's wonderful about this right now? Why does it always have to be something bigger? Why does it always have to be something else? Why can't just be here? You know, that whole side of the book.

Kristy (22:18)
Well, I think that's a reason why a lot of people have discontentment. mean, getting the next promotion or moving to a place or being with a person or whatever that thing is, graduating from your next degree, those are things and those things might bring you happiness for a moment and you might be glad with your accomplishments, but those are going to come and go.

you have to find a way to be happy where you are. And the life that you're living now and the people you're surrounded by and the thing that you're doing, that's, you know, for Cillian, like, that's what he's like, I'm just happy now. And I want you to be happy in the here and now. you move someplace, that's only, you know, that's not gonna last forever. You're gonna find another reason to be unhappy there too.

Alright, what does this story suggest about fame and identity? Is Lana Lord a mask, Meg Nees, or a persona she must shed? ⁓

Jon (23:25)
⁓

Probably a mixture of both. think she felt she needed it in order to protect herself from the grief and the trauma of Aimee dying. think she had, ran away from Florida. She ran away from processing that. She went to hide and become someone else who didn't have to, who tried to pretend that part of her life was separate from her reality. Meaning that like,

it was a mask that she put up to protect herself and she needed to shed it in order to move on and actually allow people to love her and care for her, give her the opportunity to have non-superficial feelings in general about life and about other people. which I can, it was like another thing I could relate to in this book of like you put up different masks to try to fit in, you put up facades and...

And so I think that it was a facade that she needed to shed. And she did when she returned to her reality, she realized like, no, actually my name is Meg. It's not Lana. This is who I am. This is not, this was a character she's really been playing since she got to Hollywood.

Kristy (24:40)
I think that Lana Lord and this persona she created for herself was to kind of hide from her past and the grief that she was playing. And like you said, like she really just like slipped into this character. And I think in some ways it probably penetrated into other parts of her life, even though like this was a TV character, which was like there's Lana Lord, the actress, and then she's...

playing other characters, Lana Lord also is in itself a character that she is playing. So she's allowing that to actually be this persona that she takes on versus, this is just a stage name. I think it becomes so much more to her because she is trying to keep up with the demands of Hollywood and she is trying to lose all this weight, even though she really has no way to lose.

and she's on all these crazy diets and then she's getting all this like work done and it's just very, like the Botox, I've never had Botox. I'm not against work and adrenaline, like, hey, that's what's really, really you are loving and it's making you happy. Fine. So how do you feel about the big reveal and learning about the car accident that killed Aimee and how it actually happened? What surprised you?

Jon (26:03)
I loved how this whole thing unfolded, baked into a play and an act. I think it allowed Meg to speak the feelings as if they were from another character, even though they were coming from, you know, a place of truth. And like, I just loved how that was written in and baked into that form of play. I almost thought she would, not just how like the accident happened, I guess, but that like, Aimee actually got into the same.

school and she never told Meg that. I actually thought like that would might make Meg spiral a little bit more out of that anger. Like why didn't she tell me why like we could have, we could have had this life if you had just told me that kind of thing. So as far as like, did anything surprise me and the after afterwards and they were going to go out and celebrate with everyone and like they're holding hands and Meg was just like, I just need a minute by myself to just.

processing, you know, finished processing everything and she like squeezed her hand for the last time like that's it.

Kristy (27:02)
I know. was saying I was like, no, I started crying. was like, you're never going to see her again.

Jon (27:08)
Yep. This is you letting go.

Kristy (27:11)
Yeah, they had their like their moment. They kind of put all their like cards on the tables, you know, so to speak and said what they needed to say. And I felt like Meg at that point then while still like, you know, still has grief because like her best friend died. Now she understands all the circumstances and everything, but she can process that on her own. also leading into the play,

Jon (27:37)
Yeah, no, go ahead.

Kristy (27:41)
where Aimee tells her she had the car accident dream, which this Aimee would know nothing about because she never experienced that, because she never would have gotten the car accident if she went to the school in the first place. So I thought that was really special and very clever.

Jon (28:01)
Very clever, yep. I just couldn't imagine the mind fuck that it would have had to be, like twice. You're landing there, having this whole experience, and then all of sudden just vanishing, and now having to process that in another loss to a certain degree, but in a different way.

Kristy (28:19)
I don't think it's a loss though. I think it's a reconciliation. I that she never grappled with the loss. And what a beautiful way to have, know, if I could just have five more minutes with this person, like she gets a week or whatever it is and she's able to say all the things, you know, she needed to say, she's able to let go of the grief that she had. And yeah, incredibly sad.

Jon (28:23)
That's a better, yeah, yeah.

Kristy (28:46)
She has this moment, but I think she probably goes home going, I can now live my life. Take control over it, right.

Jon (28:54)
Yeah. And she, right.

She gets back to the house with Grant, I think his name was, and she's like, I think we're going to break up. he's like,

Kristy (29:06)
think

we should break up. Yeah, he's like, ⁓ babe.

Jon (29:09)
Bummer

And yeah, and then that's when she's like, actually, my name is not Lana, it's Meg. And like she's reclaiming her, her like self identity and like taking the dog and the keys. Also, dogs are the fucking best. Like through this whole book, you've got Dino and Dito and they're just like, do do do do do wherever you go, I'm with you. ⁓

Kristy (29:26)
Nervous sign.

So what if I woke up or came home one day and told you I wasn't the Kristy you knew and I was in an alternate reality? Would you believe me?

Jon (29:42)
and

check.

Kristy (29:45)
Would you believe me?

Jon (29:47)
⁓ man. I would probably react very similar to how the characters in this alternate reality reacted, like Kira and Cillian, like these people that knew her. And they're like, okay, I don't know that I can believe you, but I believe that you believe you. And then try to understand and figure it out. I don't know.

It would be interesting. I would want to experiment.

What other version of you is out there that would like show up all of a sudden I guess it's not less than experiments and more just

Kristy (30:28)
bit like in the story.

Jon (30:30)
Yeah, I mean, I would probably go into discovery and try to like inquire. I don't know. It would be weird.

Kristy (30:39)
It's not that it wouldn't be weird or it would be weird, of course it would be weird. The question is, would you believe me? Do you think this is possible?

Jon (30:49)
Yes, I believe I would. I don't know, like out of the gate, obviously, but I think I would remain open to the possibility of it being a reality. I assume you would also, you would probably come into like problem solving mode.

Kristy (31:06)
I'd be like Aimee. I would absolutely be like Aimee, like yeah, I believe you. Like weird, but I believe you. Also, you're like a terrible actor, so there's no way you could like fool me. And I don't think in any universe you're an actor. So if you were like trying to like punk me for a little bit, it would be like five minutes and I'd be like, okay.

Jon (31:20)
No.

Five minutes, I would call that a win for myself if I was able to communicate for five minutes, that would be a win.

Kristy (31:39)
But I think there would be signs. mean, how can you not know this? Or how do you suddenly have this new skill? Aimee- Yeah, Meg is like a terrible server bartender and then she has to help Cillian out one night and she like crushes it. Like that is not, if you've ever been a server or bartender, like that is not something you just like nail the first time you do it. So the fact that she did that and he was like, okay, that's really weird when you've been a-

Jon (31:47)
attending.

Kristy (32:08)
train wreck every other time, like one night forgot to charge everybody.

So there would have to be, like there would absolutely be things like that. And that's what I mean the acting comes in. Like you wouldn't just be able to fake that.

Jon (32:24)
Yeah, I agree. I think that was the moment Cillian, I think that's when it registered really for him too, that he was still.

Kristy (32:30)
I'm not sure I believe this, but I'm acknowledging that this is very weird and could be a possibility. So if you did land in an alternate version of your life, what is the first thing you checked to see if it changed?

Jon (32:44)
Uhhhh

Kristy (32:45)
Your bank account? Am I rich in this life?

Jon (32:49)
Yeah.

I would probably turn to the things that were stable. Like, are you in my life yet? Are we married? Is that still familiar? Probably my parents, the way Meg calls her parents and asks her like, hey, where do I live? And they were really annoyed. They're like, why are you asking this such a dumb question? You live in Avalon. But I think I would try to ground myself in some of those constants or familiarities.

Kristy (33:16)
I think the first thing I would do is probably like check my phone for like social because I feel like that would be okay, who's in my photos? I don't know who have I like been DMing sending like memes lately. then that could help me okay, that this is a person that I am like a friend with or whatever else.

Jon (33:41)
What

would you want your alternate reality to be?

Kristy (33:45)
I don't know. I'm not going to say. ⁓

Jon (33:49)
I don't have an answer either. was just like, I was trying to spin a question back at you.

Kristy (33:53)
I would want my alternate reality to be that I took some of the opportunities that I had going out of high school and went away to school, went to school at a traditional age, had that experience, did not take some of the poor advice that was given to me when I was 18 years old. And from there, I don't know. But I wish I would have done that. I think my life would have gone in completely different trajectory had I done that.

Jon (34:22)
I could see that. Good answer. ⁓ I already said I don't really have a.

Kristy (34:24)
Yes, what about you?

Now you have to answer.

Jon (34:32)
I don't know, I guess maybe along the same lines, making choices because I really wanted to and not because I was running away from something.

Kristy (34:45)
Do you wish you would have like made a different choice or just confronted what you were running away from?

Jon (34:53)
probably confronted more of what I was like running away from or what I was afraid of, you know, acknowledging or discovering or because I think acknowledging that not dissimilar from the way Meg is in this book, acknowledging like the reality and facing it allows her a sort of different kind of freedom to of the choices that, you know, it directs her certain ways. I think it would have done the same for me. I don't know that I would have done.

all the things differently, but I think there's definitely some choices that would have made differently.

Kristy (35:24)
Yeah. All right. Well, I think we have Paige now in the waiting room. Do you want to bring her onto the show so we can have a little chatteroo?

Jon (35:34)
I'm so excited about this.

Kristy (35:36)
I'm really excited too. This is something we've never, like we had Jessica on a couple episodes ago, but we have never talked to Paige, but I'm really excited to talk to her because I freaking love this book.

Jon (35:48)
Me too. I hope this little sound effect doesn't like put us in an alternate reality.

Kristy (35:53)
I hope it does.

So listeners, we want to welcome the author of this novel to the show, Paige Harbison. And we're so excited to have you, Paige. It's such a pleasure to meet you, to have you join us, to talk about this book. I told you about this through email, but I received an arc of your book. Sorry, I had no idea who you were, had no idea about this book. I emailed... I feel that. I emailed the publisher about another novel and she said...

Paige (36:16)
I don't know who I am either.

Kristy (36:25)
Yes, here, but also like you need to read this one too. And I was like, sure, send it my way. So I read it, had no expectations, fell in love with it. And for a lot of reasons, what I call the multiverse in your book, I don't know if you're like more sliding doors or what, you know, vernacular you prefer, but I think it's really hard to do because you either got to go all in or you have to make it believable. And I like the more this is believable, this could happen to me. And you just, I think you absolutely nailed it. So loved it.

Obviously made husband Jon read it and here we are.

Paige (36:58)
⁓ Yeah, okay, so not to call myself Orson Welles, but I think that there's to a certain extent, there's definitely a value in right, like not knowing what you don't know. I'm not a science fiction writer. I'm not a science fiction head. I don't know the multiverse. I loved everything everywhere all at once. You know what mean? Like everybody in the world, but like I'm not coming, I did not come at this book from a, wanna write about the multiverse. I wanna write some sort of, it wasn't that. The idea came to me,

literally just, was brainstorming with my mom. My mom's an author, New York Times bestseller. wrote Shoe Addicts Anonymous and a bunch of other ⁓ women's fiction and like the 2000s. And we were just brainstorming ideas and I was like, what if you went to an Airbnb and it was all your stuff? Like that is literally just the idea. And I hadn't seen sliding doors. I'd been using the expression confidently for years, but not seen it. ⁓

Kristy (37:53)
either.

Paige (37:54)
Like it's Peter Capaldi, I think. Maybe I'm remembering that totally wrong, but it's like, the people in it are great. You know, it's Gwyneth Paltrow, but it's also told both timelines at the same time, which I find confusing. And I don't love that. I know a lot of these kinds of books do that. I'm not like, I haven't read a ton of these kinds of books. I'm not, and I think that sometimes there's a benefit in not having read that many, you know, cause you're not comparing yourself to them. But you know, so I don't know that I did not come at it wanting to be like, let's do sci-fi.

Let's do a multiverse. It wasn't like that at all.

Kristy (38:25)
Alright, alright, I think that's fair. I you're like, I don't want too much information to just, I think maybe probably prohibit your creativity too. Like I have to be limited to how I tell the story.

Paige (38:37)
Well, I'm writing about people and feelings and I think that that's the only part people are gonna latch on to anyway. And some people are able to write some fantastic, like some alien movie, but it feels really grounded in humanity. And they're able to like balance that while having to do a lot of research into whatever it would have to be. But that's not what this is. It's like, this is about a girl who misses her friend and she died. And then she gets a chance to see her again and get a...

Kristy (39:00)
Yeah.

Paige (39:07)
you know, be in a place she always wanted to be and see what life would been like.

Kristy (39:11)
Yeah.

Jon (39:12)
Okay, so kind of like building off of this concept you're just talking about, this wasn't really meant to be a book about the multiverse or sliding doors, but also I feel like maybe a lot of readers wouldn't necessarily know what that means either. How would you just sort of describe that dynamic of the multiverse? How would you describe how you approached it in this book of this other world, this other timeline that this character is living on?

Paige (39:36)
Well, think sliding doors, it's made its way into the vernacular. whether people have seen the movie, like we hadn't seen it, right? Like, but, well, what it meant in the movie was it was about a subway train. And it's just like, so it was literally about the doors. Like if she had not missed, if she had missed the train, her life would have gone in a totally different direction. So I connect more with the sliding doors terminology, I guess. It's just like, if I had gone left instead of right. So in this book, it's just, and it was a little bit based on the fact that

when I was applying to colleges, I was obsessed with like what my life would be like at all these different schools. I spent like every night when I was in high school on collegeboard.net or whatever it was, like looking at all these different schools and imagining my life there. And I got obsessed with this acting school in Bristol in England. And I recently looked it up. like, it is not like a war. It doesn't look great. I don't know what drew me in. I guess it was just different, but it's like,

I was just obsessed with the idea of being in England, having a totally different life, pursuing acting, which I was a theater major at the time I was acting. And when I started writing, I was speaking of trains, did not, was stayed a theater major. went to school in Florida. I was on a train back to DC where I'm from. And I started writing a book and that became my first book that I then got, you know, then I signed a contract three months later. It was finished. I signed a contract when I was 19.

And so that was my, then I became a writer and I dropped acting and I just did that. And that's the direction my life took. So what would it have been if I'd gone to a completely different place? I wouldn't have had that same impetus to write. So, you know, so to answer your question the long way, as I am always going to do, it's basically just like, if I had done this thing and instead of this thing, what's that moment where your life really would have been way different? Because there's always the butterfly effect, the sliding doors, the like, you know, if you saw everything everywhere all at once, like,

she had like millions of different lives where she could have been an actress, she could have been a this, that. And it's because we all make all of these little micro decisions every day, but sometimes there's a bigger decision that we can pinpoint the moment where our life forked. And I kind of had this concept in there that wasn't a main concept of the book, but it was an idea, which was the idea of deja vu.

Because some of the things felt familiar. Like she was reaching for the glass, like she knew where the glass was, or she knew the bottle, whatever. And we have those feelings sometimes, and what is deja vu when we don't know? And sometimes things just remind us of something, driving past a landscape and you're like, is it another life? Am I having a memory of like an ancestor's life? Or is, you know, is it reincarnation? Or is it parallel?

So there's kind of, I kind of floated the idea also of just like, maybe there are lots of parallel lives and when we have deja vu, it's a crossover of some kind.

Kristy (42:31)
We actually talked about that earlier on our discussion and Jon and I both believe in this like idea of parallel universes and that like the whole Mandela effect and these things cross over. We talked about a specific instance. So we live in Columbia Heights. So you're gonna know this reference. So you know the Fort Totten on the red line? ⁓ So for the first like six months we lived here, we thought it was Fort Trotten to the point where like.

made both thought that and both had this point where we said to each other like, wait, almost get the same time. Like I thought this whole time that was Fort Trotton with an R and he's like, so did I.

Jon (43:10)
They

call it Fort Rotten. ⁓

Paige (43:13)
You had a joke riffing on something you're so certain of.

Kristy (43:19)
We don't think this, Fred. I'm not kidding. I went down the rabbit hole like has this ever been known as Trot?

Paige (43:27)
I hope I remember by the end of the podcast because I had something like that the other day where I was like, no, I'm telling you. And I was like, yeah, there are so many moments like that. It's weird.

Kristy (43:39)
So I totally like that whole scene where she reaches for, know, the whiskey or bourbon or whatever it was. I'm like, yeah, that's deja vu. Like that's your mind just like being in another place. So.

Jon (43:53)
Before you jump to your question, I kind of wanted to piggyback off of what you were starting to talk about. I would imagine, I'm not an author, so I'm going to totally project here, that most authors write what they know or what's familiar to them or maybe certain specific experiences that actually have happened to them. So is there any parts of or any parts, like you were just talking about how you would try to picture yourself at different schools similar to how it sounded like Meg and Aimee did? Were there any other parts of the book where you pulled from your own life experience to pour into?

Meg or one of the other characters.

Paige (44:25)
Yeah, I mean, I think that every character is always some sort of weird, shattered, kaleidoscopic version of the author. Like, there's always some version, and then they're always also really different, you know? And so it's so funny. And I guess it depends on who you are, too. Like, I'm a really open person. Like, I meet somebody and I'm just like, here's my life story. And when I went to Ireland, like, I have a lot of Irish blood. I was like, these are my people, because, like, I would sit there and, like, the taxi driver and I would just, get along so well. He's like,

So my sister died of an opioid addiction and then, yeah, so that was what that was. Anyway, so that's the pulp you're wanna go to and I'm like, that is fine with me. I'm like completely fine, like dump it all on me. I am not, you can do that until a joke the next second and I'm not like trippin'. And then some people get that and they're just like, I'm stuck on the opioid problem and I'm like, I'm not. So when I write, I'm like really open and I put myself into my characters and I'm not guarded.

Kristy (45:16)
Yeah

Paige (45:24)
I don't know, like I'm bits of all of them. I'm definitely Kira. Like I think to a lot of people and I love when people are just like, I love Kira, I wanna Kira. And I'm like, then we should be friends. mean, it's like, I'm very, it's like, you know, cause like, cause I think to my friends, like I'm like very much your cheerleader, but I'm also, and I'm gonna just be a fun, great time, but I'm also gonna like, you know, call you on your shit and be like, okay, well you're being insane. And like, that's why.

Kristy (45:35)
That's

Paige (45:53)
Like she's a fun character for that. like, so those things trickle in there, but I actually just did a tech talk on this. Like you have to write, like there is the, ⁓ the specificity, the universality and specificity. And the more closely you write from your own specific story, the more it will actually hit people in their souls. So if you say the most weirdly specific thing about yourself, it will actually hit people and be like, my God, I had no idea somebody else ever. That's why I stand up comics are so successful. That's such a thing.

This is such a weird thing, but there's this trend on TikTok right now about group seven. It's just completely made up. It's completely made up. It's a girl who just wanted, she just said, if you're getting this TikTok, you're in group seven. And she just said it because her song is under it. And she just said it. And then all these people are like, I'm in group seven. And they're just like, I identify as group seven now. And like everybody's saying that. I made a video and said like seven facts about myself that were literally about me, like ultra personal and said,

these are things that are true about you if you're group seven. And then they were just facts about like, you're an eldest daughter and your dad is dead. And it's like, all these things are just true about me. And then people are like, how did she know? And then I just did a video about the universality of specificity. It's like, if you talk about yourself, people will connect with that. And like some people won't and that's okay. But the people who you do hit are gonna feel way more effective than if you'd said something broad like, has time been stressful lately? Like a fortune teller, you know? I mean, there's a fortune telling who's.

legit I guess, you know. That's the thing. So everybody would agree.

Kristy (47:21)
I mean, time has been stressful.

Right.

Jon (47:29)
Yeah, that's a great point. mean, I told Kristy in our discussion too, like there were many points throughout this book, in Meg's character in particular, that were like, my God, that's me. my God, that's me too. Holy God. So all kinds of points like that. was, yeah, it was a great read.

Paige (47:44)
I'm so glad. And I'm sorry.

Kristy (47:47)
I'm sorry.

So you did speak a lot about putting yourself into these characters, like a little bit to all of them. So I'm just curious, was there a scene that was like really difficult to write and then maybe because you're bringing in your own, you know, like feelings or personality to it, or was there one that was just really fun for you to write?

Paige (48:12)
really have trouble writing any scenes. That sounds so- You love this book, I knew you.

Kristy (48:17)
I nailed it. ⁓

Paige (48:24)
I, well, I don't, it's like that I don't, ⁓ there's always this, I'm not guarded, but there is a distance. So I don't really ever struggle. Like I'm not emotional. I'm not a super, I'm not very emotional about things. I cry when I write things that are, that they're like, like the epilogue made me cry when I was writing it. Like that stuff makes me like, ⁓ it's so nice. But like, don't, I'm not like, I don't have difficulty with that. And I didn't really have anything in this. My next book.

it went through some incredibly different versions. Like I will share a screenshot eventually when that book is coming out of the number of different drafts of that freaking book because that book underwent a lot. But this book didn't really have like a particular part that was like troublesome from an emotional perspective and it didn't have something that I just couldn't untangle. But what was fun to write was ⁓ I loved any scene with Kira in it. She was just so fun. She's played by Aisling Bee in my head. She's just like, she's just that.

And I mean, my favorite, my favorite thing to write was the epilogue, which almost wasn't in the book, which I wanted in the book, you know, and I mean, would have been.

Kristy (49:28)
No.

Jon (49:31)
gotta be story.

Kristy (49:31)
I would have not been happy if that blog would not have been there. Well, that's story for another time.

Paige (49:34)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

off mic story. So

I love writing atmosphere. I love writing dialogue. So I loved writing that. ⁓ And yeah, I didn't it was it was all pretty fun to write. This one was genuinely pretty fun to write. And it came pretty easily, which I again, I actually I would not say that about all of them. And it came after a long time of like trying really hard to figure out what the next book was going to be because I had my three YA books come out a million years ago.

Did a lot of ghost writing in between. Did a lot of like, I spent my entire 20s being like, I have to write the next great American novel and what am I gonna write? And I wrote like two horror novels that are in my drawer right now. Like I wrote a lot of different stuff. So this one luckily came easily, but yeah. Not always.

Kristy (50:23)
Ha!

One of our favorite scenes that we discussed earlier was the scene where they're on stage and they're like riffing it when they actually find out like what happens in the car accident, like all those things. And I don't know how you don't cry over that.

Paige (50:42)
Yeah, mean that scene, I guess that one was a little bit trickier because it was hard to be like, why would this be happening? Like kind of the, there was like this Commedia dell'arte, know, kind of like they're just doing a whole play on a whim, you know, but like, it's, it was hard to make that like, viable, I guess. Like that was the trying to make that like feasible and make sense and like seem at all.

possible was like that there was like a trickery to that like I kind of had to get that right and then getting the details of what happened at the accident and then still have it balance into being something that people could see as a play and then having it double as the the plot that they were Representing it to be so I guess that one was a little bit of a weave But ⁓ yeah, it wasn't that troublesome. It just was like I it was a kind of a tightrope. Yeah

Jon (51:36)
I always know how you were gonna end her. Okay. Can see the whole time, like how is this question? She's clearly not gonna stay in this reality even though she says she wants to stay in this reality. But I just kept waiting for the shoe to drop. Like it really wasn't until the play ended and they're having their moment backstage and they're about to walk out to the party and she like squeezes her hand for the last time and she walks to the door. I'm like, that's it. That's it. Meanwhile, there's like multiple tears dropping down my face.

Paige (51:38)
Nope!

out of a dream.

Jon (52:07)
So how did you like, how did you get to that point? like, how, I don't know, what's my, how do want to phrase this question? How did you decide to end it?

Kristy (52:17)
Thank you!

Paige (52:18)
⁓

It was almost as hard as you finishing that sentence

Kristy (52:23)
That was painful.

Jon (52:24)
was...

Paige (52:27)
⁓ well, okay. So I remember when I was, I don't remember at one point during the writing process, I landed on the ending. I'm a very like fly by the seat of my pants writer. I'm like, I, this one I had to outline because specifically I was like, I am not writing another book only to have my agent say, I don't know how to sell this. But I remember being on the phone with my brother and being like, did he? Yes, he read it. ⁓

Kristy (52:51)
you read your book yet?

Jon (52:54)
You're being publicly shamed.

Kristy (52:56)
Yeah, my brothers don't listen to the podcast.

Paige (52:59)
Yeah, I didn't tell him that he was that that was in the epilogue, by the way. I made him get to that. I love it. When he whenever he wasn't physically reading it, he was listening to it because he wanted he was like, I want to see I want to like your acting performance is so good. He's sending me all this praise. I'm just like, right. Oh, thank you. But he was like sitting there and I'm just like, oh, my God, I'm an asshole because you're an asshole and you're going to get to the end and you're going to see I'm shamed you.

And then he got to the end and he's just like, very funny. Very, funny. I remember calling him and this is true though, in the beginning, like he is really good at plotting out. So I was like, I wanted him to fucking read it along the way. So can she, but she can't, can she go, well, cause she can't like, she has to go back to the other life because she has the dog and he's like, her best friend is alive in the other one.

Kristy (53:31)
So

Jon (53:31)
You

Kristy (53:42)
was like, okay, but I was like.

Paige (53:56)
you can't have it be because of the dog. And I was like, can't I though? And like, it's like it's a dog. Obviously I'm always gonna have a dog in the book, frankly, but like one good thing that that dog Dido served was it was just enough reason that you were okay with her going home, to be honest. Like you knew that she needs to go home. Every, these books, these characters or these plots always, they can't stay in the other reality because people would feel gypped even though it's what they,

quote unquote want, they don't want them to go home. So it's really hard to make them want, to make them feel like they get something satisfying out of the ending. So having her go home and having her dump her Marvel boyfriend and having her then change her life, but not give up the money, not like suddenly donate it all and just like give it all up and start bartending, know? She instead takes it and takes what she accomplished and turns it into something she.

can be more proud of and find more happiness with is to me the most satisfying ending because that is what we should all do. And if you've got a grass is always greener problem going on in your life. And if you've got like, I wish I'd done this and you're fantasizing about it. Well, you can't go have the other life. And you might well in that life have wondered about the life you have now. What you need to do is think about what you actually just want and go have it. And so that to me like just became the only satisfying way to end it and having it be

just the wish fulfillment of Christmas time in London and then having those characters be there. It just ended up making perfect sense that in any world he would have a crush on her even if she was just a character on TV.

Kristy (55:37)
Love the ending and I'm so glad you wrote it that way because if she would have stayed I would have not been... We probably would not be having this conversation.

Paige (55:46)
No,

it would have been infuriating. It would never have happened. It wouldn't have gotten that far.

Jon (55:51)
Any like reader reactions that were really surprising to you or like any reader theories that maybe you hadn't thought of or maybe missed or any that jump out to you that any feedback that you may be gotten on the book of the story.

Paige (56:04)
Well, as you might imagine, I had a couple people who have lost best friends who wrote to me and, you know, and again, the specificity thing where they're just like, this is so spooky. Like, this is so similar. And I think that there was some peace maybe in like feeling like maybe this is what's happened to their friend that they're just out there having a different life. And also with the like being sort of a little space and removed from things like

The grief that I used in this book, my dad died when I was 23. So like, and there've been a bunch of other people who died. So I've got a lot of grief in there, but my best friend's other best friend died in a car accident when we were 18. You know, and so it's kind of, I guess I expected that like, yeah, anybody who reads this kind of needs the trigger warning of that. You know, like the book is dedicated in part to Emily who lost her friend, Hartner, who was our friend too. Like I knew her and,

Yeah, I mean, I'm probably not thinking of a lot of like other small reader reactions. I guess the negative reader reaction that I was surprised by was people hate Los Angeles. They can't stand even remembering it exists. They hate actors. They hate LA. the one of the few, like there are, I'm so flattered by how many high reviews of this book there are, but even in some of the high reviews, the one thing

that is complained about pretty consistently is that they don't like that she's an actress. They don't like the LA part. They're like, the Hollywood part. Or I almost gave up after the first chapter or whatever. And I'm just like, man, glad you didn't because books barely about LA. But I don't know. just, don't, I don't.

Kristy (57:46)
Blame. It occurred

to me to comment on that.

Jon (57:52)
same.

Paige (57:53)
but there's one joke in the beginning where she's just like, I've been drinking lemon water soup for the last two, you know, whatever. Like I can't lose another 10 pounds. And then she makes some joke like, if I gain the weight, they can just toss me on some ozempic. And it's like, it's a joke. And somebody was like, that's so toxic. And it's like, just cause I didn't write LOL at the end, doesn't mean it's not a joke. You know what I mean?

Kristy (58:19)
all the things going on right now. For real, check yourself.

Paige (58:23)
Yeah, it's Hollywood. It's like, I don't know, there's kind of this like, we're in a time of like extreme like moralizing, like just like very moralizing from the peanut gallery. And it's just like, we can still write characters who are not good people. And it doesn't mean or like, you know, not that this person, but for example, you know, we don't just because a character is that doesn't mean the author is that doesn't mean that whatever. And it's just like,

We have to be able to write about different kinds of people. Not everybody needs to be perfect. And it's interesting. It's not interesting. It's not real. I mean, it's just so.

Kristy (58:58)
what it

glad you say that because I didn't dislike her at all through any part of it. feel like she gets this redemption in a way, but not because I felt like she was a horrible character. I feel like she was a product of the environment that she is in and chose to be there. Don't get me wrong. But you have to act, perform even amongst your friends in a certain way, no matter where you are, there's expectations of you if you want to do that. So I'm just like, that's the life she's chosen.

be this way in some regard.

Paige (59:34)
caught up. You get caught up in whatever your environment is. And it's just like, and she's clearly resentful of it. Like in her bitterness in the beginning is like she's very irritated. Yeah, I think that that to me that made her more likable because I'm just like, yeah, she's so frustrated. Yeah.

Kristy (59:49)
It's like she got everything she wanted and then she's like, this sucks actually.

Paige (59:53)
Yeah,

I don't know. She's so like me that maybe I can't see why she sucks because I don't think I suck either, but.

Kristy (1:00:00)
Right.

Jon (1:00:02)
we, talked about that character was really a more of like a facade, like a way to escape the grief that she wasn't dealing with from Aimee's death. So the whole LA piece and actress piece, like, yeah, I never would have considered that as a negative thing. Like that just felt like the thing she had to do that in order to bury herself away from her feelings and being able to talk about them and, know, actually process them.

Paige (1:00:27)
Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. It's just that also I feel like people who just surface, it's funny because it's actually a very shallow thing to do to just be like, she's an actress, she's vain and shitty. And it's like, that's actually, that's actually shallow. ⁓ Because actually like from a storytelling perspective, ⁓ yeah, she's in denial and she's an actress. know, she's somebody who,

Kristy (1:00:44)
Yeah, exactly.

Paige (1:00:55)
will do anything and pretend to be anybody but a girl who lost her best friend.

Kristy (1:01:00)
Yeah, she's chosen to play characters, like, so she can not, you know, deal with, like, reconcile with what happened.

Paige (1:01:08)
Exactly.

Kristy (1:01:09)
All right, well, I'm do this lightning round though. So just like, let's go through these quick questions.

Paige (1:01:16)
You're like, ⁓ we'll see how quick.

Kristy (1:01:18)
safe.

I mean, I love the ear through. mean, you ever see the graphic that it's like, here's how people tell a story and it's linear. And then like, here's how I tell a story. That's like, Jon will say that is 100 % me. I'm like, you need to know the back, this backstory. If you don't, you're not gonna get the whole thing. Yeah.

Paige (1:01:38)
Well, the joke in my family is that I will be like, so I went to the store. Okay, well, let me start from the beginning. First, I was born. it's like, always, I need so much context. Yes. Lightning round, you were saying? Yeah.

Kristy (1:01:51)
Yes, yes. All right, one line that's the book's thesis.

Paige (1:01:56)
There was one line that was like, ⁓ wait, hold on, let me think of it. Okay, give me one sec. It was in the prologue, so I can find it. Yes, okay, it was the last line of the prologue, which is, or maybe that's just how I remember it.

Kristy (1:02:00)
What?

Mmm. That was worth waiting for. Yes. All right, a song for Meg.

Jon (1:02:17)
That totally was. Good ending.

Paige (1:02:22)
So originally the book was called The Great Pretender. Well, it was called a couple of things, but it was called Here There and Everywhere. It was also called The Great Pretender. And the lyrics of that song really resonate with you. If you read those lyrics, that and the Where Are When, both of them, it's a toss up between either, but I like them both.

Kristy (1:02:42)
I you've already said both of these or maybe just Meg, but your dream casting for Meg and Aimee.

Paige (1:02:47)
I'll do you one better, I'll tell you everybody. Megan Fahey. Megan Fahey I think would be a great main character. ⁓ I think that she'd be a great Meg. I also love ⁓ Florence Pugh, would be really cool. Also it's the classic Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, everybody wants the likeable whatever, but Megan Fahey is just really cool to me. I think she's like a really fun main character right now. Molly Gordon, who was in theater camp and who was on The Bear. She plays

She would be a great Aimee because she's got funny, but she's also a little bit untouchable and she plays both really well. And I think you have to be both. And then Kira is Aisling B in my head and Cillian is Paul Mescal or Jack O'Connell who was cook on skins and is the hottest person alive today. Just look up cook thirst edit on TikTok.

Kristy (1:03:44)
Explain to Jon what a thirst trap was.

Jon (1:03:47)
⁓

She did.

Paige (1:03:49)
I love it because it's the fastest way. you're ever just like, want to explain why this person's hot. You can't just send a picture. You send a thirst edit. You're like, okay, I get it now. So that's just a little tip from me to you.

Kristy (1:04:00)
All right, a book rec for readers who loved the other side of now.

Paige (1:04:05)
Okay, it's hard because I don't like a lot of sliding doors books and that's like, I think that they can be a little confusing. So I don't think that that necessarily is like a direct line. I would say One Italian Summer by Rebecca Searle is kind of like the closest like going on a beautiful vacation and winding up with a loved one that you don't expect kind of that. And then another one that was just a lot of fun.

It's not really like linear. It's not, again, it's not like just because a plot. It's just something I really liked that was a magical realism thing was love of my afterlife. I just loved that book. I just devoured it on like my front porch in fall. And it was so fun. I read that last year. I just loved it.

Kristy (1:04:45)
Do you have anything you wanted to jump in first, Jon? No. No? Okay.

Jon (1:04:52)
I'm gonna words over here.

Paige (1:04:54)
I love this podcast by the way. I love this premise because in real life what I make my boyfriend do is just wait while I like just laboriously explain a book completely out of order while we like grocery shop. Like that's like instead of making him read the book, I'm just like, well, okay, but wait, she's like, okay, no, you need to know that. And then like that's how I'm telling him. And he's just like, that's so, that sounds great. I just. ⁓

Kristy (1:05:20)
Yeah,

Jon (1:05:21)
Oddly familiar.

Kristy (1:05:22)
was like, what's funny is I do that too with books. I don't make him read. Well, Paige, thank you so much for joining us. We had such a wonderful time. I love the book. I cannot wait to read what you have next. And it was just a pleasure to you.

Paige (1:05:29)
I'm to have made the cut.

I had the most fun. This was just a blast and you guys can come on my podcast anytime if you want to. And yes. Love to. Thank you so much. Yes. ⁓ I'm honored to have been included and yeah, I'm so glad you liked it and I hope you like Destination Funeral.

Kristy (1:05:47)
Yeah!

All right.

Jon (1:05:58)
I hope she makes me read it too, because I really enjoyed this one. love it. Yes. you'll make her read it.

Paige (1:06:01)
I'll make you read it. I'm making you read it,

Kristy (1:06:07)
⁓

All I can see is like, this is an episode of like, books that make my husband read.

Paige (1:06:16)
We can do the crossover podcast because my podcast is called Nameless Best Friends. we'll do books my nameless best friends made me read.

Kristy (1:06:22)
⁓

Jon (1:06:22)
⁓

Not a tongue twister at all.

Okay, that was as fun as I thought it was gonna be she is awesome. I really enjoyed meeting her I'm so appreciative that she came on to our little podcast and chatted with us. It was super

Kristy (1:06:38)
I

know, amazing. Yes. It's always an honor to have the author on because you just get so... I just really enjoy that. Like, I know there are people out there who end a book and then they're like, that's it. But I actually read the author's notes because I love hearing the inspiration. I love hearing about what it took for them to write the book. And I love when I hear things like...

Jon (1:06:43)
Yes.

Kristy (1:07:03)
I had this book in my head for years and just felt like I couldn't do it justice or like this and that. then it all just came. I love hearing that kind of thing. being able to peel back the layers and speak with an author is just such an honor.

Jon (1:07:12)
See you

Yep. I actually listened to the acknowledgments in this one too. It was quite delightful. I laughed at her a little note about her brother reading any of her books and now she publicly shamed him.

Kristy (1:07:24)
Brother not reading the book

Yeah, my brothers don't listen to the podcast either, so I feel that. Well, with that, we wanted to remind everyone that the next two books in our lineup are The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood and My Friends by Fredrik Backman. And as always, don't forget that a free way to support our show is by leaving us a review or rating us on Apple Podcasts. If you don't want to rate us, but you have a question or feedback on the show, you can email us at booksamakemyhusbandread at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Jon (1:07:56)
And don't forget, be sure to tell another book lover about the show, your book club or any other friends, family you might have that you think it's

Kristy (1:08:04)
strangers on the street, you see reading books.

Jon (1:08:07)
Yep. We did that in Starbucks a couple of weeks back actually. We were just kind of chilling. I was thinking I was editing an episode actually and there was a couple just sitting there reading and I was like, I'm going to go give them a business card, which is very out of character for me.

Kristy (1:08:21)
Or you can be a total weirdo like me and strike up conversation with a couple of lovely ladies at a Kansas City / Detroit Lions game a couple of weeks ago and then say, ⁓ do you read? I have a podcast.

Jon (1:08:33)
Do you read?

Kristy (1:08:36)
Not kidding, I did that. I know, all right. Because I'm a weirdo.

Well, I guess that's it.

Jon (1:08:45)
that's your line, sorry, yep. That's another one in the books.

Kristy (1:08:48)
Who knows, maybe this will be the one your husband reads. He really should, it's amazing.

Jon (1:08:51)
He really should.

Kristy (1:08:56)
Bye bye.

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