not another pucking hockey romance - the deal by elle kennedy

one ice hockey romance to rule them all, one ice hockey romance to find them, one ice hockey romance to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. this episode we're reading a book by the mama of all smutty ice hockey romance authors - the deal by elle kennedy. this episode we chat all about women who hate women, men who hate women and how long it REALLY takes to watch one and a half seasons of breaking bad. can this ten-year-old book, (fresh off the back of an ultra-successful TV adaptation) stand the test of time, or will it age like milk? will garret graham and hannah wells help us overcome our bitter dislike of ice hockey romances once and for all? find out all the juicy details in the episode.

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Transcript

Bridget 0:00

Baleakbe the face.

Laura 0:08

Hello and welcome to Talk Lit Get Hit, a podcast where we read viral books the internet won't shut up about and rate them lit or shit.

Bridget 0:15

We're your hosts Bridget and Laura, lovers of sad girl fiction and tragic endings, fearers of smut, urban fantasy, and the Who Did This To You trope. Join us as we pick apart all the books the internet loves and embark on a journey to figure out why.

Laura 0:31

If there's one thing BookTalk loves, it's a smuddy hockey romance. Is it the on the ice aggression, the locker room banter, or the tough guy with a heart of gold that has fans screaming, please God, yes. This episode we are reading and discussing the deal, book one in the off-campus series by L. Kennedy and attempting to find out what the puck everyone is on about. Bridget, hello, hello. Hello, hello, how the puck are you? I'm so pucking good. Puck you, miss. This has uncovered some great jokes. Yes, it really has. The bar has been set high from the first minute alone. This month, in lieu of our monthly catch-up, we wanted to address a question that we received from a listener. This listener said, Would love to hear your thoughts on why you think hockey romance is having such a moment. What smuddy sports slash subcultures slash professions do you think will have a boom in popularity next? And if you could pick, what would it be?

Bridget 1:38

Well, if I could pick, it would be none. The profession of love and respect. I don't know why hockey romance is having such a moment. I've thought about this long and hard. It's been like at least a month since we got this question. Come up with nothing.

Laura 1:57

How about you? I'm looking at this question with fresh eyes, as though seeing it for the first time. Even though, as it will be revealed, we have put a considerable amount of time and effort into partially responding to this question. I just now realized it gave us the options of subcultures and professions, which I completely ignore.

Bridget 2:18

Not just sports.

Laura 2:19

Look, I think the sports genre gives you like an avenue for a lot of metaphors.

Bridget 2:26

True. A lot of puns.

Laura 2:27

Yeah. I guess there's room for a lot of tropes. You know, we've got like found family, dare I say reverse harem.

Bridget 2:34

I think like you can jump kind of straight into the story as well. Like, you don't need to do that much, you know, world building or like story development because everyone knows like hockey team, the basics of that sport, I guess.

Laura 2:47

I think there's like one or two fun dynamics for authors to have fun playing in, like high school or college setting. Actually, hopefully not high school in the context of smuddy hockey romance. Yeah. Or it's like fame. Yeah, like fame and celebrity. So I guess it's like quite high stakes. And then also, as we have discovered, gives authors the avenue to just churn them out.

Bridget 3:08

Yeah, because there's many players in a team. They're not gonna do something like tennis, which is a solo sport. I mean, you could do doubles, I guess. I don't know. I can't really think of another single player sport. Golf. I mean, we tried to get it started. We tried, no one was interested.

Laura 3:23

I have been yearning for someone to beg me to write NRL romance. Um, no one's done it yet. And to be honest, like I would be deeply mortally embarrassed to do so just because I feel like it it puts a little bit too much of my heart on the line. Yeah, because now that I have a vested interest in like they're too close to home. Yeah, they'd be like, oh no, she is a freak. But that said, is anyone interested? Because I could do it for a buck. Oh, just one or two. This did get us thinking though, and we decided we needed to sort of like test the market. To be honest, it does feel like many of the main team sports already have their own smuddy niche. Like there are NRL romances, there's NFL romances, I'm sure some other sort of rugby ones exist. Soccer, basketball, I don't think they're having the same sort of success hockey is having. I mean, these players aren't out there humping the ice, so I do get it. True. So we told our listeners that we would try our hands at writing steamy, sporty romance, but we needed their help to choose the sport and to choose the trope. The options that we had were NRL, cricket, golf, and mixed gender netball. And the tropes were fake dating, forced proximity, enemies to lovers, and who hurt you. To be honest, like we know we could have picked better sports, and we know we could have picked, you know, Omega Verse or like age gap romance. We got a little bit of feedback that the sports we picked only had weedy guys. But you know, we're trying something new, we're going out on a limb. Yeah. Trying to find a niche, guys. And I think the people are searching for something new because the responses were overwhelming. Overwhelming. Bridget, would you like to share what sport and trope we will be dipping into today?

Bridget 5:11

Today we are entering into the exciting, steamy world of mixed gender netball. Focusing in on false proximity. Yeah.

Laura 5:25

This is absolutely uncharted territory, both for the genre and for us. Yeah. We have taken it upon ourselves.

Bridget 5:32

Once again, no one asks us to do this. To independently write a short scene from our proposed mixed gender netball series. False proximity smuddy romance novel. With full respect to all the tropes, key phrases, and hallmarks we know and love.

Laura 5:53

Straight off the bat, I have to tell you, I haven't done any of that. Sorry. Sue me. We made it up.

Bridget 6:07

We hope it tantalizes you. This is our first time hearing each other's stories. It's actually the first time I've really read mine as well.

Laura 6:13

So likewise. And I just need everybody to forget everything we have so constantly said about like it's not that hard to just dot dot dot insert thing that we think is easy to do in writing. Because spoiler alert, it was really hard. To be fair to us, we did write these in like an hour. Yeah, we wrote them last night.

Bridget 6:37

So if we had more time, would they be better?

Laura 6:41

Maybe. Maybe. Bridget, you have so generously agreed to ensnare our senses first with your work of fiction. I'm really excited to hear what you have.

Bridget 6:53

Take it away. Okay, so my mixed gender netball forced proximity novel, the vignette that you're gonna see in this episode, is right at the start of the novel. So sorry to disappoint. There's not gonna be any smart, but we're gonna meet a really exciting main character. Her name is Evie, she's a netballer. Okay, and I think the rest of it will kind of just speak for itself because I actually followed the brief. Yeah. Sorry about that. And I'm trying to write to the hallmark. So in my mind, this was my checklist of things that I had to hit. Some kind of intense trauma, um, no personality, female main character, just stupid observations about the people around her, and vocab that nobody except like a middle-aged woman from 20 years ago would say. I already know this is gonna be great. Okay. The title of my novel is Here If You Need.

Laura 7:57

That is so good.

Bridget 7:59

Spoiler alert, that's the thing I'm most excited about. So Okay, I'm gonna start. It was yet another Monday night at the local sports and rec centre, and the place was full of players warming up for their weekly game of mixed netball. I shot a quick look over the shoulders of my teammates at the bright red numbers on the wall, counting down the time until the game started, and felt the usual flutters of pregame nervousness. Never mind that I haven't stepped foot on the court in months. Hell, not since the big bad thing happened. Note big bad thing is capitalized. That I was here at all was a testament to the wonders of physiotherapy and modern anti-anxiety medication. The team huddled around me and I felt their tension and excitement fizzing through me. They were ready to go out there and give the next 15 minutes their all, and I knew all I would be able to do was watch. I shook all thoughts of my current predicament out of my head and tried to focus on what my coach Andy was saying. He's the biggest teddy bear I know, although he's not afraid to dish out the tough love every once in a while. But only when it's strictly necessary. It's so good. Oh my god. I've got to put on an accent now. Yes.

unknown 9:10

Okay.

Bridget 9:11

If you guys play like you've played all season, then we will be seeing our name on the trophy in a few weeks' time. Right, the umpire's coming over to check nails and jewelry, but let's do this. The guys and gals of the Toowoomba Torpedoes put their hands in the middle and I half-heartedly joined them just as they threw their hands up in the air. I locked eyes with my best friend from across the circle. Babe, do you think you'll play tonight? I miss tearing up the court with you. I let out a long sigh and looked at Tamika.

Laura 9:37

Perfect name. Holy shit.

Bridget 9:41

I don't know. I'll have to see how my ACL is feeling. Ugh, you are so much more dedicated than me. If I had Sorry.

Laura 9:52

Just put a bit of deep heat on the ACL. She'll be right, babe. I don't know how this works.

Bridget 9:57

I Googled common netball injury. Just wait, there's more details coming. Okay. You are so much more dedicated than me. If I had a legit reason to be at home watching maths, eating ice cream in bed, you'd better believe I wouldn't be here freezing my butt off watching netball. I let out a short laugh and rolled my eyes without really knowing what to say. What Tamika doesn't know is that the doctor gave me the all clear to play months ago. Luckily she gets distracted easily and bounced over to talk to the guy playing wing defense. I settled into my now familiar position on the bench and got ready to watch. After the buzzer rang out to the sounds of cheers from my team, I was busy congratulating everyone when I heard Andy call my name. Hey, Evie, got a sick? Immediately I felt dread flood my stomach. I swallowed hard and tried to act casual. Yeah, what's up? He motioned for me to sit down next to him and I did, putting off meeting his eyes. I'd known this day was coming. I talked to your mum last night, I know you've gotten the all clear to play. I felt my mouth drop open and let the feeling of betrayal wash over me. Before you say anything, hear me out. We haven't announced this to the team yet, but Charlotte has been called up for the Queensland side. We've got finals in a few weeks and we need a goal shooter. You're our star centre, but I know you're worried about running and your fitness. I've seen you shooting and practice and you're good. With a bit of practice and help, you'll be great. This way you can ease back into the game and then next season you're back in centre. What do you think? I don't know, I said, picking at some non existent fluff on my uniform. It just feels a little soon. Well, sweetheart, if we wait any longer, the season will be over. No time like the present. Gotta strike while the iron's hot. Gotta get back on the horse. Yada yada. Yada yada yada. Take your pick of motivational sayings, but in a week you're on. A week I spluttered, but he was already standing up. Yup, and I don't want to hear any more about it. Time's up, Eve. He started to walk away, but then stopped and turned around. Ah, I forgot. I've lined you up with a practice partner. His team didn't have enough players for the season, so he's been hanging around me like a bad smell. I told him to practice with him every night this week. I've booked the courts for you. 7 p.m. sharp. He turned back around and started to walk towards the door. Wait, I called out, too flustered to make my brain work faster. Who is he? Finn O'Connell. And then there's another time jump. Now she's at home. Apparently there's ways you can do this when you're writing a book and you know, new readers know what's going on. I didn't care to find out. Lying in bed later that night, my mind couldn't get past those two words. Finn O'Connell. I didn't even know he played netball. Last I heard, he was moving to Brisbane with his girlfriend Lara. Everyone at our school knew her plan. Get the guy, any guy really. Move to Brisbane, go pro, get the ring. There had been only one thing standing in her way, me. Everyone knows there's only one spot up for grabs from each region. And all throughout school we had been each other's only competition. So what do you do when you'll stop at nothing to win and the state reps are at your game? Yep, I was taken out of the competition by Lara Stevens. We accidentally collided mid-air and I landed wrong, feeling that telltale pop in my knee all the way down. That's from Google. That's what happens when you have an ICL. She got that coveted spot in the Queensland Firebirds, and I'm playing mixed netball at the Sports and Rec Center. And I'm not even playing. With a sigh, I plugged my phone into the charger, turned the lights off, and tried to get comfy. I couldn't say no to Andy, and there's no way I could leave my team at player short. If I was gonna make my great comeback to the sport that had defined me for the past 18 years, I needed to try to get some sleep. And that's it. Thanks.

Laura 13:37

Bridget. I'm gonna be I honestly, you need to keep writing. I would read the shit out of that. I need to find more about Neville. Yeah, find out. You know enough. What I heard, I'm honestly, honestly, I'm so deeply ashamed of what I've written now. That is like it's so good. Everyone, pitch in a dollar. It's happening. Let's make it real. I'm Lena Dunham, guys. I need $20,000. Just a small sum.

Bridget 14:06

I'll just tell you that like the scope of the rest of the novel, although I'm sure you can figure it out, they have to practice together every night. The whole time she thinks he's still with Lara, but eventually it like, you know, it comes out that no, he broke up with her after the game. He like couldn't be with someone who did that to somebody. He only played Netball to get her attention, blah, blah, blah. Amazing. And then she goes pro. Great names. Great names too. Okay, Laura, it is time for you now to reveal your smut. Time to smut it up.

Laura 14:32

Okay, well, don't get too excited because as I hinted at before, even the best laid plans go awry. I don't think this is gonna shock anyone. Um, but in the process of attempting to write this, reveal to myself that I am a deeply self-serious person. I had a checklist. First person, irritating dialogue, mostly dialogue, hot guy, small girl. Like was trying to think of all the musts.

Bridget 15:00

Yeah, what points do I need to hit?

Laura 15:02

And then I started to flesh out the story, completely ignored any hallmark of the genre, got absolutely swept away, and then it was way too late to fix anything.

Bridget 15:13

So I got a notification that you made adjustments to one of the show notes at like 12:15.

Laura 15:18

I'd been in bed for hours deleting the section that was like read out chapter, Laura reads that chapter. Well, it was never there.

Bridget 15:27

What do you mean? I didn't post that story.

Laura 15:29

Mine is smut adjacent.

Bridget 15:33

That's my favorite kind of smut, honestly.

Laura 15:35

Netball adjacent. I started writing it and then I was like, oh shit. But there's Netbull, there's a whisper of Netball. So I mean, you you can't have it both ways. You can't have Netbull and Smut. That was the struggle. So my working title was Three Feet Apart. Oh, incredible. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, like how far you have to stand when you're defending someone. Yes. Then unfortunately, I remembered the novel Five Feet Apart about the teenagers with cystic fibrosis who fall in love receiving hospital treatment. And that put a bit of a dampener on that title. Then I was freaking out and I changed it to non-contact sport as if it even matters. Like I spent so much time stressed about every title, isn't it? As if I wouldn't get it to a publisher. Yeah. And they'd be like, awful, change it. No matter what it was. I still love it though. I have a lot of information about the backstory. It's great. So our protagonists are Louisa Lou Edwards. She is the 30-year-old female principal of like some imagined regional Queensland school. And she is hardworking. She puts a lot of pressure on herself because it's a very young age to be a principal. She can't put a foot wrong. She's under a lot of pressure to pick this poor school up out of the dirt and make something of it. I love this already. She's a city girl who moved back home. Her dad used to be the principal of this school. She's sad, uptight, mourning the end of a long-term relationship and the death of her father. God, this I am so into this. Let me cut it. I think the only thing that I really managed to tick off, spoiler alert, was the trauma and like the overblown emotional responses. Yeah. Alex Mitchell is the male PE teacher. He's kind, uncomplicated, with a bleeding heart that's causing problems in her life due to him being too soft. He's constantly overstepping, you know, like driving a kid home when their parents don't go. Okay, which is not right, as we know, but you know, small town, you know, everybody knows everybody. He's never really left his small town. In fact, Lou and Alex went to primary school together. Alex's mother was an alcoholic. Oh. And the reason he cares so much is because he sees so much of himself and the kids. And in fact, Lou's dad used to drop him home when his mum didn't show.

SPEAKER_04 18:00

I'm gonna crack.

Laura 18:01

Lou doesn't know any of this. Oh, okay. So there's some sort of ridiculous imagined state school charity where all of the teachers have to form a mixed gender netball team for their respective schools and then battle it out against the other schools in order to win a new sports center for their schools. Yes. It's in there. I love it. Keep going. And Louisa, eager to prove herself, desperate to hold her head above the water, is running that like a military operation.

unknown 18:34

Yeah.

Laura 18:35

Okay. That's a lot of backstory. Side note, I love the name Louisa. What was it? Louisa Lou Edwards. Yeah, Lou. Oh. It was hard to find like an Australian 90s girl's name and a boy's name that we didn't either A know someone with that name or B have like a negative association with that name. I know someone, that's Alex Mitchell. Well, don't read into it too much, but Alex, if you're listening, shout out. So this scene, I'm picturing that they're on the road for their netball tournament. All the teachers have been like lumped into this minibus. Alex and Lou are often up at the front, like getting to know each other, getting a little deep while they're ragtag bunch of misfit teachers. You know, there's like the geriatric one, the one whose retinas fell off. Yeah, I know them well. There's like an old one with a limp, like the young, optimistic, like grade one teacher.

Bridget 19:29

I love this. Yeah. And they're like on Spotify, like, you have to know this song. No, seriously.

Laura 19:36

So this scene comes after the team have been practicing drills together. They're not performing how Lou wants them to perform. She's been running them through the ringer. She's screamed the house down, accusing everyone of not taking it seriously. And afterwards, Alex has come up to her, called her out, and she's hit him with the you don't get it, everything in your life is a joke. Maybe you'd know if you actually left this town. Like you're a small town, nobody. She's going for the jugular. Yeah. Up until this point, they've really been skirting around each other, coming closer, exploring their feelings. They've been sweating together, they've been running drills, they've been driving home after practice. I thought this would be a great dynamic to explore the she's sick and he looks after her trope. Um, there's you know, maybe an almost kiss one time in the car. So the tension's there. This is the apology. This is her breaking point, their turning point. Everyone's gone to the pub. She's gone off to his cabin for a chance to apologize and maybe something more. Um, there will be no laughs, folks.

unknown 20:35

Oh, okay.

Laura 20:38

No. You could laugh. And again, reduce your expectations to zero. Alex, hello No, you said no laughs. I suddenly felt ridiculous standing there. A binder of highlighted diagrams and suggested plays in one hand, a bottle of wine beaded with sweat in the other. I shuffled from foot to foot in the sticky heat before rapping sharply on the door to cabin twelve again. Bang bang bang, dum dum dum. The afternoon din of cockatoos and the garments was beginning in the distance and the sunset dipped low on the horizon, orange and pink. He wasn't in. He'd gone to the pub with everyone else. So stupid of me to come here, to knock on his door, to act like his friend. How embarrassing to stand on this stoop with an alcoholic peace offering and freshly shaved legs, pretending like I hadn't acted like a total psychopath mere hours earlier. I turned to leave, feeling the hot itch of shame prickling my neck. Lou. This is so good. I feel like you were right. Like we you do need to ham up the accent, hey? Because it sounds ridiculous, I guess. It's it's quite boring. I see why the like Shakespeare in the Park students always do it. Yes. Alex stood in the doorway, his blonde hair messy and wet, a towel wrapped low around his hips, beads of water still clinging to his skin. My heart hammered in my chest at the Side of him and the words dried up in my mouth. I was having a shower. I didn't hear you knock. I began to stammer, barely able to tear my eyes from his torso. I uh I I this is this is so stupid. I should I thought I I should just leave. I felt the heat spreading across my cheeks and a sudden giddiness rising up in my throat. That chest, that towel. This is so good. No, stay, come in. I looked past him into the shadowy room. It's just me, he said, and stood back, pressed against the door, holding it open wider still. There was something in his expression that I couldn't place, caution, perhaps fear that he'd have to endure the cruel insults I'd spat at him again. Surely you're not planning on drinking that bottle of wine by yourself. Propelled by guilt, I walked through the door. From behind me said, I'll just be a minute. I need to just put on some you know clothes. Make yourself at home. The bathroom door clicked shut. I looked around the room, dimly lit in the afternoon sun. I saw his clothes folded neatly on a chair in the corner, a book resting on the bedside table, his netball uniform hanging on a hanger near the open window. My heart twinged to think of him arranging these things, folding his clothes with care, turning pages of the book slowly in bed, putting his little skirt on his chair, ironing the pleats. It was so unfortunate as well, like not to into like cut into my own story, but when I was like trying to picture it, I could not imagine what a man wears playing netball. Like my experience is so limited, I was like, score? Yeah. Hot pants? I don't know either. Suddenly I was incredibly aware of the smallness of this room, the tiny kitchenette, orange brown laminate cabinetry, and in the middle of it all, his bed dominating the space. I could see the impression of a body, a crinkle in the sheets where perhaps he'd lain, thinking about the harsh things I'd said to him. Steam rolled from underneath the bathroom door, and the smell of soap collided with the dry, mannish scent that hung in the air, stuck to his sheets. I felt a lurch in my stomach, thought of him in the towel, his hands on his body, thought of his lips in the car grazing along my jaw, moving closer to mine. So we'll be needing glasses then. I jumped. Alex was out of the shower in football shorts and an oversized, well-loved t-shirt. I could see where it clung to his abdomen, still wet from the shower despite his best efforts. He made his way to the kitchenette where he fished two white cheap porcelain mugs out of the cupboard. Only the best, he said with a grin, reaching for the bottle, which I still gripped limply by my side. I looked at him, his freckled face and tussled hair, his guileless expression, and felt the rage grip me all over again. How can you be so okay right now? His smile slipped, his hand still raised, holding the mugs. What? Why are you being so nice to me? I had come here to apologize, to make amends, but now I could only feel confusion and frustration as he looked at me with those wide, earnest blue eyes. I was horrible to you. I am horrible to you. I'm horrible to everyone. They're probably all down at the pub now, cheersing to a quiet night free of my oppressive reign. I poke and I prod and I push people away. I did it to Ian, I did it to my dad. My voice broke it air, and I felt my chest rising and falling as I took in ragged breaths. Alex just looked at me, his face frozen in a sad grimace, but he didn't speak. And I did it to you. Everyone looks at me and they see a robot, an uptight perfectionist, a cold-hearted bitch. This is so good. I'm like, wow, we need to get Stan on the phone. ASAP. We get like a um who did Zoe Zoe Foster Blake's adaptation. Yes. You were the only person who I felt like saw me for me, and I pushed you away too. That's not how I see things. And then I couldn't write the kiss. I couldn't figure it out. It's a closed-door romance, guys. That was made to black. Incredible. Can you please keep writing that? So good. We'll do a chapter each episode, whether it's related or not. This episode we are reading The Art of War. And chapter seven of Here If You Need by Bridget Bell. And Three Feet Apart by Laura Molly. Yeah, both of them. I think we need to go back to three feet apart. Yeah. Stop them screwing. Stop them kids, definitely.

Bridget 26:26

Wow. That was so good. That's a real weight off my chest.

Laura 26:29

It is. I figured out I'm not good in isolation. The amount of times I was like, I need to text Bridget. I need, I need help. And I was like trying to ask my husband, who's normally really, really good at riffing and like knows all the tropes and has a lot of ideas, but I don't think he understands them in like quote unquote literary terms. And so I was trying to be like forced proximity. Spoiler alert, this is like mildly forced proximity. Like they're in a cabin. They're they're in this, like, they're in the bus, they're on this trip. I sort of thought like they should be in a sports closet or something, like running the locked in or something. Yeah. But he was like, if they're both working at the school, that's forced proximity. I was like, no, okay. So we don't get it. I said to Brian, like, oh, I've got to write this.

Bridget 27:12

Oh, what are you doing for the podcast today, darling? Oh, I have to write a mixed gender netball um forced proximity romance novel. And he was like, Oh, so is that like they run into each other when they play netball? Abstraction! I was like, oh, not quite.

Laura 27:35

Okay, it really is time to crack on. We've got to hit the ice, we gotta get into it. I forgot we were talking about this before. Yeah, me too. I honestly feel lost in the source. I'm on another planet right now. Bridget, if you could give me your initial thoughts, expectations, hopes, and dreams heading into the deal by L. Kennedy, I would be so overjoyed.

Bridget 27:54

Okay. Obviously, my expectations for this were on the floor, they were underground, they were pretty much non-existent. Subterranean. Subterranean expectations. What's deeper than subterranean? What's colder than ice cold? Subterranean. I am growing wearier by the day of hockey romances that are being marketed to me slash shoved in my face. I didn't enjoy icebreaker, which I think is the only one I've read.

Laura 28:26

Um favourites, sort of.

Bridget 28:28

Yeah, I guess the favourites. And look, whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own home is fine. Let a thousand blossoms bloom, etc. etc. But do you have to do it in front of me? Book I thought was gonna be bad. Show, I thought it was gonna be bad. Will there be a million more after this? Heated rivalry as well. Yes. And look, look what I see in the news. Icebreakers being made into a show as well. Yeah, that I thought could be your breaking point. But yeah, this might be my breaking point. So they were my thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams. What were yours?

Laura 28:57

Look, I had watched some of Heated Rivalry when it came out. I watched the first three episodes. And while I really enjoyed some aspects of the show, like the actors, like, you know, these two fresh faces, two fresh, very handsome faces that like have not been seen before. I thought they acted their little hearts out. Unfortunately, because of my bitter hatred and prior knowledge of this kind of like formulaic book talk book, I could see right through it. I could see it for what it was. It was just like club, club, another club, like just scenes of now kiss, do something cute, and then they meet again. And then they text. Yes. And then they kiss again. They're always texting. I'd heard similar praise for the off-campus show, so I really didn't believe. And if I didn't believe that the show was going to be good, I don't see why I think the book would be any better. I wasn't holding out hope.

Bridget 29:47

Hockey Smart comes and Hockey Smart goes, but spoilers are forever. If you don't want to hear spoilers for the deal by L Kennedy or the Off-Campus TV show, press pause, subscribe to the show, and come back when you're ready to listen.

Laura 30:00

Content warnings for this episode include discussions of rape and sexual assault, sexual content, domestic abuse, and child abuse.

Bridget 30:09

Hannah Wells has finally found someone who turns her on. But while she might be confident in every other area of her life, she's carting around a full set of baggage when it comes to sex and seduction.

Laura 30:20

If she wants to get her crush's attention, she'll have to step out of her comfort zone and make him take notice. Even if it means tutoring the annoying, childish, cocky captain of the hockey team in exchange for a pretend date.

Bridget 30:33

All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation. But his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it.

Laura 30:49

But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both of their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretending isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him. Bridget, I can tell you're fired up, I can tell you're ready to go. Could you please give me your post-reading feelings?

Bridget 31:09

Oh, I mean, just what a load of shit. I closed the book, I didn't even read the bonus content. I closed it, I rolled my eyes, I chucked it across the room, and then I was like, that is some bullshit. Why? Why? Why is this why is this the book that like breaks through?

Laura 31:30

I don't understand. Why is it that break the books through why why is this the book that broke the camel's back? It broke me. It is unfair. It's really like truly deeply not fair.

Bridget 31:44

Insane. How did you feel about it?

Laura 31:45

I don't think this is the worst book we've read. Me neither. I had an interesting experience. Like, so for the first maybe quarter of the book, I was reading this alongside our previous month's podcast book, The Fault and Our Stars. I was doing chapter on, chapter off, alternating between the two. That's wild. It was incredibly wild. Not that they're in any way trying to be the same book. And I don't know if my sort of like enjoyment of the teenage protagonists in The Fault and Our Stars being real, whole, complicated people kind of like bled into my reading experience of this and made me like a little bit more lenient for the sort of ridiculous choices they were making. But at least for the first part of the book, I was like, eh, like I've read worse.

Bridget 32:35

I think I've read worse, and also I've read this before.

Laura 32:38

Yes.

Bridget 32:39

Like it's just the same as all the other books I've read. So it's nothing like sticking out at me.

Laura 32:44

I actually like I could tell you some things that I liked about this book. And I guess when I say like, I don't mean that I enjoyed them, but I think they're an improvement from what we usually see. And so overall, I would say I actually enjoyed the sex scenes like probably more than anything else in this book. Because not that you need a reason, like a why behind why you're having sex, but I thought they actually like serve quite a deep purpose. I really liked the sort of unflinching way that Hannah discussed her rape. And I know I'm like jumping right into it, but the same with Garrett's abuse as well. And I thought that they had a few more mature conversations about like, yes, I like you, or like, you know, this is a line I'm drawing than I expected them to have. So I guess I was a little bit surprised there.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Yeah.

Laura 33:37

But unfortunately, it wasn't enough.

Bridget 33:45

I think we should put the brakes on for a second and talk about our author L. Kennedy. I was finding differing reports on how many books she has actually published. I was looking in her website, and on her website, she has 11 series, two standalone books that I think are also somehow connected to the Briar University universe. And I think I counted 46 books.

Laura 34:09

Holy shit.

Bridget 34:10

But then I googled something. The AI summary was telling me that she had more than 60 books published. Some were co-authored. And then I was reading a spotlight on a WordPress from 2025, which claimed that she had over 80 titles. That's crazy. And so before she started writing these hockey romance books, I think she was writing kind of like Mills and Boone kind of vibes. Okay. Alongside some like romantic suspense and thriller books. However, many books she's written, 45, more than 60, over 80, that's too many books in my opinion.

Laura 34:45

That's actually like 45 or 46 or whatever you said. It's like a crazy amount to begin with.

Bridget 34:50

Yeah. She was 24 when she sold her first book. I watched an interview with her, and she said that she knew that she wanted to be a writer from a very young age, and that was all she ever really tried to do. Before selling her first book, she was very close to giving up because she had got no interest from any publishers. When she thought about what she might like to do instead, the only thing she could think of was maybe she could be a dog walker. Ah yes, the two professions. Yeah. Or the dog walker. So then she was like optioning two books at once. She received offers of purchase or whatever it's called in the biz. I'm sure we'll find out soon. But um for the two books. So she had two different publishers wanting two different books. She said that she used to take a month off between writing books, just a single month. She said used to, so I don't know if that's still the case. But something new that she has started to do is that she has started to dictate her books instead of typing. And she has a transcription program that figures out her punctuation, which to me sounds a bit like AI. Yeah. But she is dictating her books when she is walking the dog or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Okay.

Laura 36:01

I mean, I was like, I was picturing her like in some sort of like crypt hooked up to a machine that was like registering her brain activity in her sleep so that it could like suck the thoughts out in the morning. So that's not too far from the truth.

Bridget 36:16

I couldn't actually find out too much else about Elle Kennedy. Her website is pretty sparse. I think she seems to be quite a shy, um, reserved kind of person. Did you find out anything interesting about her?

Laura 36:26

No, I think the only thing that I was like completely shook by was just sort of how long she's been around. Because I thought this was a new release.

Bridget 36:34

Same. I'd never really heard of it before. And when I saw it was released in 2015, I was shocked. I did the usual thing that we always do. I Googled Elle Kennedy controversy. L Kennedy cancelled. And there was one thing that kept coming up time and time again, and it was in regards to the lesbian fetishization and misogyny that can be found in her books. There were a lot of articles and like think pieces on TikTok, Reddit and stuff, about an incident that happened in 2019 where on Twitter a fan asked Al Kennedy if she was planning on writing a lesbian romance. Since she'd already written straight and gay romance novels. She responded on Twitter by saying, Unfortunately, female-female romance really isn't something I'm interested in writing. Sorry. Which is interesting because I see you've come with receipts. I have come with receipts. They are courtesy of somebody called Emily Rose who has a website, expertbooksmuggler.com. And she has compiled a list of all of the times Elle Kennedy has been more than happy to write about lesbian relationships or female on female sexual activity, I guess, in her books when they are there for the entertainment of the male characters. In The Mistake, which was released in 2015, the main male character, Logan, watches his fraternity brother film Two Girls Making Out and thinks that the video will end up on a free porn site. There were multiple instances of this in The Score, which was released in 2016. Characters were watching women make out. There were people having threesomes with bisexual women. A foursome is suggested. And Dean has a conversation with Ally where he tells a story about making out with one of his guy friends because they wanted to see the girls making out. There were also more instances of this in The Goal, which was also released in 2016. Tucker thinks about two girls from his town who were friends that kissed and felt each other up in the hallway, which drove him and the other boys to fantasize about what the girls did in private. And his mother attempted to set him up with a girl, only for Tucker to tell her that she is gay. And the mother says, Are you sure? Maybe she's bi. I know they say kids experiment in college. Previous editions of the book, however, showed that the mother's original response was that the girl is far too beautiful to be a lesbian.

Laura 39:01

Jesus.

Bridget 39:03

And so Emily Rose sum this all up nicely by saying, It's clear that Kennedy is interested in writing female-female relationships, but only if they can be used as a means to sexually satisfy men. This is unsurprising considering the heavy amounts of misogyny contained within her books.

Laura 39:21

Well, well, well.

Bridget 39:23

Yeah. For me, I would say that one of the main criticisms I had with this book was the amount of misogyny that was evident within the pages.

Laura 39:33

Yes. And as always, misogyny from characters that claim to not be misogynists. Yes.

Bridget 39:39

And are also like heralded or like put on this pedestal as being the ideal man or the ideal partner.

Laura 39:45

I mentioned earlier about thinking that this was a new release and that it was just, you know, like another icebreaker. But actually, Elle Kennedy is considered to be one of the pioneers of the hockey romance genre. She first released Body Check in 2009, which actually that's a great name. Yes. Coming off trying to think of like Netbull terms. It's hard. Yeah. Bodycheck is awesome. Um, around that time, there weren't a lot of hockey romances, she said. There was maybe one other series I knew of. So this book, The Deal, was originally self-published and was a bit of a side project for Elle Kennedy, and it was her friend who encouraged her to self-publish this book. Maybe we will have the same happen to us.

Bridget 40:24

You should publish this book.

Laura 40:26

No, you should publish this book. Um, at the time she was writing romance suspense, like you mentioned, and so this was a little bit off-brand for her. She is Canadian and she wanted to write something team-centric, so hockey fit the bill. I think in a podcast you listened to, she said that she wasn't planning on writing a series. I see in your notes, bullshit.

Bridget 40:47

Bullshit as if you can pick every single character that is gonna get another book.

Laura 40:52

Yeah.

Bridget 40:53

Why would they be introduced if that wasn't the plan?

Laura 40:56

Yeah. We seriously, please don't introduce them. Please don't.

Bridget 40:59

If they're not needed.

Laura 41:01

I don't want them. This novel was first published in 2015 and has gone through a series of frankly awful covers. There is the black and white shirtless man with blue riding, a pastel girl in thigh-high socks and a t-shirt, a TV adaptation cover, which is actually the best of a bad bunch. And then we have the ever-present cartoon cover, which by the way is inaccurate because not once in this book does she lace up, get in skates, go on the ice.

Bridget 41:29

No, and you'd think that would be like a cute thing for them to do.

Laura 41:32

They do recreate it in the show, though. They do, which I did like actually.

Bridget 41:35

Me too. So, as we have mentioned, this is a series. The first one is obviously the deal. It is then followed by the mistake, the score, the goal. So without actually knowing, I'm just gonna say one of them is about Logan, one of them is about Tuck, and one of them is about Dean. Yep. And their various partners and exploits.

Laura 41:59

Exactly right. Yeah. But then you can't forget the Peace de Resistance, the legacy, uh, which is the much anticipated answer to the question, where are they now? Four stories, four couples, three years of real life after graduation, a wedding, a proposal, an elotement. Those are three extremely similar things, by the way. Yeah. Not much variety going on here. And then what's next? A surprise pregnancy. Which probably isn't that exciting if you have read the bonus content, some of which does contain pregnancy.

Bridget 42:34

Yeah. And is it really like that shocking when you're, I don't know, 25 and in a long-term relationship? Like different matter if they were 17. This is true.

Laura 42:44

I'm not gonna read the rest of this blurb, but I did think it really had a tone of like coming this summer. It says at the end, come for the drama, stay for the laughs, catch up with your favorite off-campus characters as they navigate the changes that come with growing and discovered that big decisions can have big consequences and big rewards.

Bridget 43:06

I have also I mean, sorry guys, sorry if you like this series. By the way, like there's a lot of vitriol coming out of my mouth. You do you. I have seen there are other series though that are connected to this series. So we have uh books written about the children of these characters. That's something I'm not ever interested in. I don't want to hear about babies growing up and then having sex with people. No me either. Who does? Sorry. I'm I'm assuming that's what happens, but I don't want to know about it. It's all grown up, ready to get railed.

Laura 43:37

Yeah, she's hot now, guys. We had a lot of requests to talk about the TV adaptation as well. And now that I've seen it, I feel like it's gonna be impossible for me to talk about the problems I had with this book without mentioning how I think they were mostly rectified in the show. Have you seen the show?

Bridget 43:55

Yes. I watched the show in one night, and I do have to say my. My ability to watch shit TV for a long time and for a late time is dwindling as I get older because I feel like I'm still in recovery from that, and that was like two days ago.

Laura 44:10

So shit TV, you didn't you didn't like it? Yep. Well, I mean it's akin to Emily in Paris.

Bridget 44:16

Enjoyable. I will watch season two. Was I complaining the whole time? Yes. Was it better than the book? Yes.

Laura 44:23

I enjoyed it. I don't think it's like a work of art. There were definitely times where I was like kicking my feet and giggling. Yeah.

Bridget 44:30

I think I cried.

Laura 44:31

I cried. Yes. I had a mostly great time. I think maybe due to there being so many characters in this series and like really sort of meaningful storylines, like with Hannah's rape and Garrett's abuse, and like all these different people trying to become who they are. I found it was a little bit richer than heated rivalry was for me. Like that said, there was plenty of skippable fluff.

Bridget 44:54

I think I had a lot of problems with the script. I felt like it was pretty weak in places and it was relying on readers' knowledge of the series to kind of put pieces together, which is rich coming for me because I'm always like, show don't tell. But there were times where I was like genuinely confused. The script just really wasn't giving it to me. I do think the actors were great. They were really great. I really good. I think the locations were great. The clothes were stunning. I think every single character was exactly who they were meant to be. And like such an improvement from whatever I had in my mind. Yes, definitely. They really like modernized the book. I think it's crazy that a book that was published 11 years ago was in dire need of modernization, but it really was. It just felt so, I don't know, backward. It felt very, very of the time in not a good way.

Laura 45:44

It's my whole social media feed now. I saw a video the other day that said, Dean, consent is key, de laurentius, John, closed cans are safer, Logan, Garrett, stay here with me, Graham, the ultimate holy trinity of book boyfriends. And I was like, uh-uh. Uh-uh. The ultimate trinity of TV boyfriends. Because those ferals in that book, yes, they would not even scratch, they would not even get a sniff.

Bridget 46:12

Ferals of respectability like that. Nothing, as if Logan in the book would be like, you know what I think this girl needs? A clothes can of beer.

Laura 46:22

He had to Google it. Yeah. He couldn't go to his friends for advice. No. I thought, and that is so misleading. I know I have been seeing a lot of conversations about people being like, whoa, I'm reading the book. I don't like him. I'm scared.

Bridget 46:37

I'm scared. I do have to say, I think Garrett in the book was okay. I think he was kind of funny. He kind of had a personality transplant. In the show, he wasn't as funny as I thought he was in the book. I haven't yet decided if that was for good or for bad. But I think they had to mellow them out a bit and like rein them in. Like down dogs. Stop stop being rabid.

Laura 47:03

Let's talk about Hannah Wellsy Wells. I don't even really know what to say about Hannah in the book because most of the time I just kind of felt like Hannah Who. Well, yeah. It was like a constant series of ups and downs, I think. I'll give it to Elle Kennedy. I don't think the sort of tone of this writing quite reached the giddy, silly, shrill tone of some of these other books we've read. And I was trying so hard to be measured in my response to Hannah. As I mentioned earlier, I think one of the most interesting and sort of like redeeming doesn't feel like the right word, but like redeeming things about her character was the way that she addressed her rape, like head-on, and I think pretty eloquently. She doesn't pull any punches. On the first page in chapter one, she says, In the five years since the rape, my heart has pounded for only two guys. And I was like, oh, same. That said, on the first few pages, there were still plenty of things that just sort of like got my heckles up a little bit. She's talking about surprise, surprise, 70% of the class got a C or lower on the midterm. Me? I aced it. She says, luckily, and yep, that's total sarcasm. Pamela Tolbert stepped in to take over Lane's class.

Bridget 48:21

Straight off the bat, I think Hannah was basically transported straight from the pages of Fifty Shades of Grey. She is Anastasia Steele. And also she's just a transplant from any other romance book that we've read in the genre. Like, this is a description of her from Garrett's point of view on page seven. He cannot remember her name, and he's like trying to figure out what it is. And he says, She's cute though, a hell of a lot cuter than I realized. Pretty face, dark hair, smoking body. Shit, how have I never noticed that body before? But I'm noticing now. Skinny jeans cling to a round, perky ass that just screams, squeeze me, and her v-neck sweater hugs a seriously impressive rack. The next page, he suddenly realizes how freaking tiny she is. I just think, yeah, we've been here before.

Laura 49:11

Yes, and we've already lost her. That's like really the first major impression of her we have because that comes like just three or four pages into the book. Yeah. After learning basically nothing about her except that she has like no friends and is really smart and was raped. She's been raped. And then he comes in thinking these things. Reducing her to her appearance. Yeah. I mean, I it's no secret, I tend to hate dual POV.

Bridget 49:33

Like when I flipped to the chapter I saw Garrett, I was like And it's not even dual POV, like chapter by chapter. Within individual chapters, it changes POVs.

Laura 49:43

It is a drain. Yeah. And I know it's creative writing, and I know we have to add a little bit of spice sometimes, but don't insist on writing a male POV if you can't write a male POV. Like, I'm so sick of these books just thinking that writing from a male perspective is just adding the word fuck or like heck or tits in there, like every few sentences.

Bridget 50:04

Elle Kennedy says it's the easiest for her to write. She loves writing male characters, it flows out of her.

Laura 50:09

No man, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, men, if any men are listening to this podcast. But I just think like I'm not in denial that a man or a woman or like anybody is looking at someone else and being like, nice tits. Like, yeah, that happens. But I don't think it's being like the shock. We watched the show. We were watching the show before we recorded every scene. Yes. She's so hot. Yes. He's so hot. Her boobs look great. He's so hot. Great abs. Wow. Stunning. Like it it's okay. Yes. But we're not sitting here, and I don't imagine many men are sitting here, sort of like, God, that v-neck accentuates the subtle curve of her collarbone as her slender neck slides down to meet her full breasts. Like it's just, it's just nice tits.

Bridget 50:54

Yeah, and also I think it's reductive to think that's how men think. Are we not past this caveman bullshit of like, wow, me man, nice boobies, me want grab ass.

Laura 51:06

Yes. Is that all you have to offer the world, Garrett? Yes. It's always so disheartening as well because this type of writing in the act of trying to write a sexually liberated woman or like some version of sex and sexuality that appeals to women, only offer up such a narrow, misogynistic male perspective of what that means. Like, females are always exclusively seen as desirable through the lens of what a man likes. And I don't want to be perceived that way. I want to just be hot.

Bridget 51:39

Yeah. In the book and in the TV show, she's studying music, although there are different avenues, I guess you would say, for both book and TV show. Something I thought was so funny about the TV show was that she played the clarinet. For some reason, that really tickled me. I just thought, you are a dog. You are a clarinet. You are a clarinet player. Loved it though. That is that is no shade to clarinet players. I was pleased. But her like arc in the story is that she is participating in the Winter Showcase, which is a competition between all of the students in her major or whatever. They have to perform a song. In the book, it's an original song from one of the composition majors. In the show, it's a little bit different. In order to win a prize, I think in the book it's $5,000. And in the show it's like a scholarship or you know, some kind of sort of way more worth it. Yeah. I do have to say I was quite surprised by the turnout of that story in the book. I felt like we heard so much about it in the first maybe like five chapters. And then by the time the actual winter showcase came around, I didn't even realize she had won the thing until I read a line, like a single line, maybe 20 pages after the showcase had finished. Because it was just like such a nothing event to her, even though that is the culmination of like her, I don't know, semester's work, her life's work, whatever. Crazy.

Laura 53:05

Yeah. I felt exactly the same. Like I thought, firstly, that the show's choice to make her like the clarinet major, where her like classical music program wasn't going to be like funded or eligible for the scholarship or whatever, was good because it provided her that challenge where she had to be brave and she had to write the song and she had to bear her soul, which was something that she was apparently like already good at in the book. And then in the book, you're right, like it lingers with her first section. And then as soon as more time with Justin is on the agenda, and as soon as Garrett is occupying her days, her previous goals and ambitions are absolutely wiped clean. They've flown out the window, they're gone. Yeah. And we get so much airtime for Garrett's hockey. Like we get play-by-play at times. Too much, in my opinion. Way too much. And so, really, all we have in the winter recital is this single paragraph where she says, When I open my mouth and start to sing, I'm singing it for Garrett. Okay, so she's not singing it for herself. I'm transported to that peaceful place, my happy little bubble, where nothing bad ever happens, where girls don't get raped and sex isn't hard and people don't break up because abusive assholes force them to. My fingers tremble on the ivory keys and my heart squeezes with every breath I take, every word I sing. When I'm done, silence crashes over the auditorium, and then I get a standing ovation. And while I sort of I guess don't completely mind the sentiment of like her going to this place where these bad things don't happen, again, where is she in that story? Like we watched the clip of her at the winter recital before we recorded, and it is a little bit cringy, but it's all about her.

Bridget 54:46

And at least she's present in the moment.

Laura 54:48

Yeah. She knows that this is her shot and she takes it. Instead, what we get in the book is So Hannah, Suzanne pipes up. Your mother was telling me that you won a prestigious scholarship recently. She says, I feel myself blushing. I don't know about prestigious. I mean they give them out every year for the winter and spring showcases, but yeah, I did win. So it didn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 55:08

Yeah.

Bridget 55:08

And what you got five grand and suddenly all your expenses are paid.

Laura 55:11

She's not that much money then, babe. It was pretty good because my parents could like save some money.

Bridget 55:16

Yeah. So why did we have to hear about it then? Why did we have to hear about all of those rehearsals and the cello and the piano and the choir and all of this? It's just like I don't care about this if you don't care about this. Yeah. And she really didn't care about it.

Laura 55:28

No. While we're on the topic, I think we should talk about Hannah's sad iPhone game family. Because the portrait she painted was grim.

Bridget 55:38

It's crazy that I know exactly what you mean by that without even looking at the page that you're that you're referring to.

Laura 55:46

I mean, it is sad after the big bad thing happened to Hannah in her hometown. The citizens rise up against her because it was like what? The mayor's son, the principal's son, maybe both. I think the something. And he's like a star hockey player as well. His friends testified against her. Her parents burned through all of their savings fighting her legal battles. And then they have to pay for his legal battles as well.

Bridget 56:13

Yes. And then the dad gets in a punch up at the store, and then they have to pay for that legal battle as well.

Laura 56:21

Every time they were brought up, I could hear only sad harmonica music playing. Hannah's words on the subject did little to assuage my feelings. She's on the phone to her mum. How's Dad? He's good. She pauses. He picked up extra shifts at the meal, but my body tenses. But what? But it doesn't look like we'll be able to get to Aunt Nicole's for Thanksgiving, sweetie. The pain and regret in her voice cuts me like a knife. Tears prick my eyes and I blink them away. You know, we just had to fix the leak in the roof, and our savings took a hit from that, Mum says. We don't have money for airfare. Why don't you drive? I ask weakly. It's not that long, uh-huh. Just a 15-hour drive, not long at all. If we do that, your father would need to book more time off, and he can't afford to give up the hours. Hey Laura, I've got a question for you.

Bridget 57:21

Are you gonna use the coins you just earned in the game to fix the leak in the roof first? Or are you gonna pay the legal fees or are you gonna put a blanket on the mother and the shivering papa? What are you gonna do? Which one?

Laura 57:34

What do you think is the most important? There's also a fireplace you need to fix. Yeah, I was thinking maybe like replace the window so the snow stops coming in.

Bridget 57:42

Yeah, because that's a good idea because then if you do the fire, the the wind won't blow out. Yeah, that's a great idea. And then also like the the walls need a lick of paint and we need a new, like we need new furniture.

Laura 57:56

Did it conjure up the same imagery for you?

Bridget 57:59

Yes, and you know what is absolutely wild? I was playing an iPhone game at some point during the week, and I took a screenshot of a sad iPhone game of a girl who looks like Hannah Wells. I'm gonna show it to you now. It's quite good. It's an ad from Travel Town. She has just found out her boyfriend is cheating on her and the girlfriend is like taunting her and she is crying. She has the iconic Hannah Wells Bob. Amazing. Same brain, you and I.

Laura 58:31

Always, always mate. Although we don't know that much about Hannah Wells, one of the main things I feel like we uncovered is that she is not like other girls.

Bridget 58:41

Yeah, that is 100% the truth. I would like to add in another item to the evidence, and I would say that she also hates most women. So, not like other girls, hates most women. Yes. That's the two things we know for sure about Hannah Wells.

Laura 58:56

And again, it's not the worst examples of this that we've seen, but no, it could be improved. Look, it's not the worst thing in the world, but one of the examples I picked up was when Garrett is ordering pizza when they're hanging out watching TV together. It says, I cover the mouthpiece and glance at her. Diet Coke. What? Do I look like a pansy? Regular Coke. Thank you very much. Later when they're eating the pizza, he's chastising her for eating her boring pizza with mushrooms and green peppers and onions, which by the way, delicious. That's actually some of my favorite toppings. Maybe some olives.

Bridget 59:32

Yes, yum and pineapple.

Laura 59:33

Yeah. Delicious. It's basically supreme. Yeah. Veggie supreme. Yum. Um, I'm right there with you, Hannah. That's like a place where we see eye to eye. Uh, but Garrett says to her, It's not my fault you eat like a bird, Wellesie. I can't let food go to waste. I had four slices, I have to concede. Yeah, that actually makes you a total pig compared to the girls I know. The most they ever eat is half a starter salad. Hannah says, That's because they need to stay rail thin so guys like you will find them attractive. There's nothing attractive about a woman who's all skin and bones. Uh-huh. I'm sure you're so turned off by skinny women. I roll my eyes. No, I just prefer I'm curvy. I swallow my last bite before reaching for another slice. A man likes having something to grab onto when he's you know, I arch my eyebrows at her. It goes both ways though. I mean, wouldn't you rather sleep with a guy who's built over one who's a twig? It's so pervasive the ways that diet culture and like the the moral superiority of thinness is subtly reinforced in these novels. I'll get off my high horse eventually, but it won't be before. I got across the bridge first. The rapids are raging beneath me. It's not safe.

Bridget 1:00:56

Anyway, I also think it's pretty rich of her to be like, I'm not a pansy when he dares to suggest that she might want to drink a Diet Coke. Uh because later in the book, when they are dating, Garrett and the boys head to the diner, and Allie, Dex, Logan, and Garrett all ask for sodas. Allie and Dex get them. Logan and Garrett do not. Where's my Dr. Pepper Wellesie? Logan whines. She levels him with a stern look. Do you know how much sugar is in a soft drink? A perfectly acceptable amount, and therefore I should drink it, supplies Logan. Wrong. The answer is too damn much. You're playing Michigan in an hour. You can't get all hopped up on sugar before a game. You'll get a five-minute energy boost and then crash halfway through the first period. Logan sighs. Gee, why is your girl our nutritionist now? I pick up my water glass and take a sip of defeat. Do you want to argue with her?

Laura 1:02:00

Okay. Oh, soda police in the house. Who's a pansy now, Hannah? Little bitch. She's keeping an eye out for those boys in more ways than one. One of the ways is by acting suspiciously and with a little degree of hatred towards pretty much any woman she encounters.

Bridget 1:02:21

She made some very unhinged comments about women. The reason why she likes her crushed Justin is because she thinks he doesn't bang anything in a skirt. She says that the female hockey team wouldn't be ditzy enough, not like the cheerleaders and the sorority girls that Garrett and his friends usually have sex with. She calls people hookers, says that she's gonna be a stripper as a last resort if none of her other career options are gonna work out. One of the most cringe-worthy parts of this book is when she is tutoring Garrett and some girl is sexting Garrett, and she grabs his phone and starts typing a message out to the girl, and she says, This is Garrett's tutor. You're annoying me. We're done in 30 minutes. I'm confident you can keep your pants sipped until then. So unnecessary.

Laura 1:03:07

So unnecessary. There's another point where she's walked in on Garrett having sex with someone else before they're dating, and she says, Yep, Miss Thang is buck naked and she whirls around in a cloud of blonde hair at the sound of my voice. Perky breasts assault my vision, but I don't have time to judge them one way or another because her ear piercing screech cuts through the air. Later she says to Garrett of this poor girl, go back to your floosy Garrett. And when he's like, Her name's Tiffany, she says, I snort, Tiffany. Of course her name is Tiffany.

Bridget 1:03:42

I just don't know why we're in like 1980.

Laura 1:03:45

Yeah, she was saying some real old fashioned stuff.

Bridget 1:03:49

That's what I mean by Anastasia Steele. Something I found quite amusing on El Kennedy's Goodreads profile was a question that she answered about six years ago. A reader called Ava said, Hey, do you have any books that don't have slut shaming? I hate it when slut shaming is portrayed as something positive. I really hate it when the woman is shamed simply because she wears short dresses andor prefers casual sex. Elle Kennedy, she's with us on the High Horse Ranch. Celebrate. She says, Through all of my books I try to portray sex positivity, meaning that all the characters have full right to their sexual beliefs and practices as well as autonomy over their own bodies. Though sometimes the storyline of my books might show a character having a slut-shaming experience, it is done simply because it's an experience many of us women go through and something we can overcome. At no point do I ever suggest that sexual shaming is okay. Only implicitly. Yeah, and that's fine, L, but your c your main character, Hannah, is constantly slut shaming these women. She doesn't even know them. And she's talking about Miss Thang, calling people hookers, judging them by how perky their breasts are. Like, where is the disconnect?

Laura 1:05:06

I don't understand. It's like that meme of like me, the point like sailing over your head. You know, the more that I look at my notes, the more convinced I am of your theory that it's Anastasia Steele repackaged, because I did have a category of my notes called Why Would She Say That? And some of them were so bizarre. There was one where she's at the party and she says, Everywhere I look, I see people dancing and laughing and shooting the shit. On the same page, I don't want to interrupt the flirt fest. Same page again. My dress isn't indecent by any means, just a knee-high green shift with a modest neckline. But it hugs my curves more tightly than I'm comfortable with. And the black heels I've paired it with make my legs look a lot longer than they actually are. On the same page again, page 40. It's a big page. She says, and he's a jerk. To boot. She's always talking about peeing and doing her business, which I feel like is maybe a sort of cheap way of making her like one of the boys.

Bridget 1:06:18

Yeah. Yeah. I I think so too. The first time when I was like, wait, I'm getting shades of shades. I'm getting shades of Anastasia Steele here is on page 22 when she says something was cuckoo bananas. And then about 10 pages later, she said, Jesus Harold Christ. Actually, and this bit was the one that really like solidified it for me. I remember in Fifty Shades of Grey when she's on the phone to her like stepfather and whatever, and she's like, Wow, I really love talking to, I don't know what his name is, Hank or something. Yeah. I love talking to Hank. His quiet solitude fills me with a sense of purpose and serenity and peace or something stupid shit like that. And Hannah says in this book on page 87, I miss him so freaking much. My mother's voice slides into my ear like a warm embrace.

Laura 1:07:13

Yes. Oh, that's actually almost note for note, word for word.

Bridget 1:07:20

And she says stupid shit like for the love of Pete, holy hell, all the time, skedaddle. At one point she said she's gonna eat her hat. If something didn't happen, I think if the hockey team didn't win, she'd eat her hat. Something that made me feel quite physically ill was the first time they were gonna have sex. And she saw Garrett naked for the first time and she freaked out. And she was like, Oh my god, how is that huge man monster gonna fit inside me?

Laura 1:07:51

And this was the stronger moment for him because he was like, Excuse me? That's a crazy thing you just said, How And of course we got that scene. Like we haven't even really ticked off on all of the you know, things that we expected to hear and the things that we that were fulfilled, but the giant penis that would not fit tick. We got it. Something I was so confused about. I know exactly what you're gonna say.

Bridget 1:08:19

Meow. What does it mean? Why why did her phone meow like multiple times? I don't understand. She did explain it on page 28. Don't tell me that. I don't know if you missed it, but it was crazy anyway. Like, regardless of if she explained it, it's still a wild choice by Elle. She said, I've barely taken two steps of the door when a cat meows in my purse. The high-pitched wail is the ringtone I chose for text messages because it's the only one annoying enough to get my attention.

Laura 1:08:53

I blocked that out. I prefer the mystery.

Bridget 1:08:57

Same.

Laura 1:08:58

Imagine my confusion. On page 160. Sorry, reading the line. My phone. I really thought I could pull it together. It's too ridiculous. On page 160, reading the line. My phone meows. And I grin the second I pull it out of my purse. I have it underlined it in the march that I've written. Meow. And then later, like it was never addressed in my mind. So then later on page 284, the start of the chapter is my phone meows just after midnight, but I'm not asleep. I was so confused.

Bridget 1:09:50

I have a bone to pick with Elle Kennedy if we're on the topic of phones and ringtones. So on page 165, Hannah is talking to her crush Justin, and this is before she realizes that, you know, actually the man she wants is setting right in front of her, blah blah blah. So she's talking to Justin, and Justin is like, Oh, maybe we should, you know, grab coffee or get dinner at some point. And she's about to reply and be like, Yeah, like shit, yeah, let's go. Maybe she wouldn't say that. Maybe she wouldn't say that. Holly Harold. Yeah. She's about she's about to reply and say, like, yes, definitely. But then her phone busts out its rendition of sexy back. Obviously, the seminal track by Justin Timberlake. What we are led to believe is that Garrett, or as she calls him, a very obnoxious hockey player, programmed sexy back to play every time he rings her phone. And she's been too lazy to change it. And that is something that didn't sit right with me because I've had an iPhone since I think about 2012. And before I had an iPhone, I had an assortment of flip phones where you were able to set songs as ringtones. It was very easy to do that. You had Bluetooth, you could, you know, easily steal music from people, share them between friends, and set things as your ringtone. To my knowledge, you have never been easily able to do that on an iPhone. So what you're telling me is either Garrett, when she was in the toilet or whatever, doing her business, wherever she was, got on her phone, logged into the iTunes Tones store, and purchased sexy back. So like would have had either like Hannah would have had to have her credit card in the system, or he would have had to get his card out and like enter the details, log into her iCloud account, purchase this ringtone for some reason. So that's one option. The only other option that I could find, and this is from an article from about 2010. This is what she would have had to do. First of all, he would have had to add the song Sexy Back to her iTunes library on her computer. Then he would have had to convert it to the AAC version, rename that file from.m4A to dot M4R. Then he would have had to drag and drop the M4R file into the ringtones folder on iTunes. And then he would have had to sync the iPhone to iTunes. Before he pressed sync, he would have had to press select ringtones. But all of this won't work if you bought the song off iTunes because it is a protected AAC file. So he would have had to illegally download the file. Or some people also suggested you could use Amazon MP3 to get the phone.

Laura 1:12:49

And I just don't think this is true. Bridget, Bridget, Bridget, take a breath. I think I know why this happened. And I'm so sorry if I should have interjected earlier. It didn't, I didn't know if the time was right, and I'm I I can see how stressed how distressed you are. So this is related to a conspiracy that I uncovered. Great. You've already alluded to quite a few sort of 2015 isms within this book. We just had a mention of Sexy Back. Throughout it, we have mentions to things that are deeply 2015, like Jennifer Lawrence, Lady Gaga, Adele, One Direction, Beyoncé, a Ryan Gosling movie marathon, Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber. But someone was described as hot like Justin Bieber before he went off the rails. Now I'm not well-versed. Oh. But I was like, I mean, I know he was like a little bit naughty, but I think he was still hot.

Bridget 1:13:48

You've uncovered something huge here. That is this is like peak, like, is it too late now to sorry?

Laura 1:13:55

Oh my god. And so then I thought, hang on a second, uh-uh-uh. I went back and I was looking at something I'd highlighted, a case that didn't sit right with me, and it was when Allie and Hannah were watching Ted Lasso. And I thought, that can't be right. That wasn't even released. True. So I got diggin'. I searched high and I searched low. I searched Reddit. And yes, actually, like I thought you were on my case because just before we started recording, you were reading the copyright information. You read this updated version published in the US in 2021 by Bloom Books. So it has been updated, and there are a few things in this book that have been changed that make absolutely no sense. Like, just like limited sense. Like, why bother changing anything at all? If so much of the rest of the book is like a time capsule of that period, why do it? So Ted Lasso, that used to be Mad Men, which is so crazy because I think like that show is still really well known. Yeah. And Breaking Bad, I think, was in the original book. So Breaking Bad has stayed. So why was Breaking Bad deemed okay to keep? Yeah. Which, by the way, I have another thing to add about that because they probably should have done a little assessment there. But Mad Men was not okay. Someone else said that when she went into the bathroom and came back, and Garrett had deleted all of the One Direction from her phone, that used to be an iPod. Obviously, much easier to just access. No passcode. Yeah. Like just delete. It's still in your library.

Bridget 1:15:24

And I think, like, I guess it depends on what iPod you had, because the iPod that I had, you couldn't delete songs unless you were connected to the computer. But I feel like if you might have had an iPod Touch or like a nano or a non-brand MP3, yes, I think it might have been a little bit easier to do that. But like I had an iPod classic because I tried it the other day.

Laura 1:15:44

Yes.

Bridget 1:15:45

And I couldn't delete it.

Laura 1:15:46

But and then that's so confusing because throughout this book, this revised edition, they make a point a couple of times of calling them iPhones, which just seems like such an arbitrary thing to do.

Bridget 1:15:57

Especially because like in America it's normally cell phone. Yeah. Or cell.

Laura 1:16:02

And so I think like had they just left it as cell phone, that would have been way less confusing.

Bridget 1:16:07

Yeah.

Laura 1:16:08

Even knowing that this book well, it's not really established when this book is set either, is it? Like there's context clues for those who are aware. Yes. Those were away. And I hate that that this book has so little faith in like the backbone of this setting that it's happy to change it on a whim. Someone named Knitting the Dream on Reddit said it really makes certain things feel off, especially when they're as a series. I read the Graham effect before this one, which stars Garrett Graham's daughter set in 2023. So it really messes with the timeline to have these references. Yeah, it does. Someone else on Reddit said there were also minor changes that they noticed that made Dean less creepy. I that I honestly like I shudder to think like what he was like before. But yeah, that's my possible answer to your conundrum. Yeah.

Bridget 1:16:59

It is a conundrum.

Laura 1:17:02

We have veered drastically off track. We haven't even spoken about Garrett in detail. I imagine you have a lot to say.

Bridget 1:17:10

This might be kind of crazy of me to say, but I feel like Garrett was nowhere near the most offensive character in this book. And for the most part, he was fine. I do have a lot of problems with I guess his personality. Him as a person. Him as a person, his like core beliefs and uh, I don't know, activities that he chooses to partake in. But also like a lot of the problems I have with him also involve the friendship group and like the culture that he's found himself in. How did you feel about Garrett?

Laura 1:17:43

Not the best, not the worst. I think I felt a little shortchanged because at some point in the book it was almost like he had a bit of a personality transplant and started to show quite a degree of like self-reflection and rationality. And I think I felt like so much more care and attention was shown to developing his emotional growth and storyline than it was with Hannah's. Granted, I think he needed it. That said, like unfortunately, he was the narrator of his own story, so that was a downside. Do you have any like sort of key Garrett Graham phrases that you think people need to hear?

Bridget 1:18:20

There were two things that really piss me off about Garrett. Now I'm getting into it. I remember. The first thing that really pissed me off about Garrett is just the whole idea that he needs someone to tutor him to start with. He is a history major and it is established that he is smart. He fails the test. He needs to get his grade point average to at least a C to be able to continue playing hockey. He realizes that Hannah got an A on the test, and so they have their like, you know, stereotypical bump into each other, drop the books on the ground. He picks up her tests and he says, Fucking hell, you aced it. Can I read your answers? And she goes, That's rather forward of you, don't you think? We don't even know each other. And then he says, I'm not asking you to take your clothes off, baby. I just want to peek at your midterm.

Laura 1:19:13

Okay.

Bridget 1:19:13

And then blah blah blah, like more, you know, banter in uh quotation marks, bullshit. And then on the next page, he's looking through her answers and he says, My spirits plummet even lower. Because if this is the kind of analysis Tolbert is looking for, I'm screwed. There's a reason I'm a history major for Christ's sake. Ideal in facts, black and white. This happened at this time to this person, and here's the result. Call me crazy, sue me if you want, but I think history majors would still be expected to do a simple analysis. I think that would be a core component of the course. I would hope so. You would hope so. Also, why does he need a tutor anyway? He's at college, he has a brain, he has access to the internet, see the professor, talk to the teacher's assistant, whatever they call them in college in America. Like, spend less time hooking up, spend less time at parties, actually try. So it can't be his best option. Like, it just can't be like, what does Hannah Wells know about what this professor is going to put on the test? Nothing. She just wrote some shit and she passed. Some people are just good at writing assessments and like essays and shit. That doesn't mean they're qualified to be a tutor. Hannah actually says this. He goes up to her and offers to do this harebrained scheme of like, if you date me, everybody would think you're so popular and so hot. She says, you know, if you take all the effort you're using to harass me and channel it into your studies, you'd get an A on that midterm. And that's exactly right. He would.

Laura 1:20:42

And then I do like that she has that outburst later after he's been like hooking up or whatever, where she's like, You're wasting my time. Like, this is a waste of my time. You're not even taking it seriously.

Bridget 1:20:53

So that was like the first problem I had with Garrett. And I just think like the whole book is built on that, and it's such a flimsy excuse of a plot. The second problem I had with Garrett is he has a pattern of pretending to not know the names of female items when he clearly does.

Laura 1:21:10

Okay, hit me.

Bridget 1:21:12

So on page 14, he arrives home to his bedroom and he walks into his room and there's a girl on the bed who looks like she stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalogue. He says, Now I'm a guy. I don't know the names of half the shit she's wearing. I see white lace and pink bows and lots of skin, and I'm happy. Down the page, he says she's got a bra on. And then the very next page he says panties. Like honestly, what much else could there be on her body?

Laura 1:21:42

Firstly, yuck.

Bridget 1:21:44

Secondly, you did know. Yes. And also on page 372, he's talking about Hannah, and he says she's wearing a sports bra and teeny bikini panties. So he knows bikini. He knows teeny. And he knows sports bra. Yeah. So what else is there to know? Stockings, I'm sure he knows what tights are. Heels, maybe, he knows all of these things. He knows words. He's been in the world, he's aware. On page 35, I think he like must have spent his childhood reading babysitter's club books or something because he's describing Hannah's outfit. She's come straight from work. And he says, powder blue dress with a white collar, big buttons down the front, and a short white apron around her waist. Looks like an outfit right out of Greece, which I guess makes sense considering Della's is a 50s theme dine up, blah blah blah. I can easily picture Hannah Wells fitting in during that era. Her dark shoulder length hair has a slight wave to it, and her bangs are pinned to the side with a blue beret, giving the hairstyle an old-fashioned vibe.

Laura 1:22:37

Barret. Also, like contextualizing the look as 1950s referential.

Bridget 1:22:43

He's got out of the colour.

Laura 1:22:44

Love the grease vibe, darling. You could totally pull that off. It's just like icebreaker as well. Like she's wearing powder blue. Yeah. And like as a lilac lilac. We had the same thing as well with her, like, oh, it's cherries. No, strawberries that she smells like.

Bridget 1:23:01

Honey, strawberries, whatever. It's not honey, and it's not quite strawberry. Is it honey strawberry? Something stupid shit like that. So he knows what a berette is, but then on page 354, he's once again describing Hannah and she's got her hair pulled back in a pink hair thingy. Do you mean a hairband? The simplest of all hair tools. You know berette, but you don't know hairband. Okay.

Laura 1:23:22

I think the realization that he has later in the book that like he has no life and he has to kind of like wake up and choose to do something differently later in the day. Like it can't just be hockey school, hockey school, is a good one because I would say he is such a boring, simple man. Um, on page 54, he says she's got one of the most interesting faces I've ever seen. And then proceeds to describe like one of the most incredibly conventionally attractive faces that you could possibly imagine. He says, Her cheeks are a little too round, her mouth a little too pouty, but combined with her smooth olive skin, vivid green eyes, and the tiny beauty mark over her top lip, she looks gorgeous. And that body, man. Now I've noticed it, I can't unnotice it. Sort of giving the vibe of like, have you ever seen a woman? And I think later in the book he says he has no female friend. She's the only female friend that he has, which sort of made me think, wow, like the standard that we hold men to between 2015 and 2026 is crazy because I don't think I know any men that don't have at least one female friend that isn't their partner.

Bridget 1:24:29

Yes.

Laura 1:24:29

And they don't have to be best friends, but they have to be, you know, liked. I think that's a red flag. I agree. But I guess that's not really a surprising thing when you think about the sentiment that's like pushed out and perpetuated in this book that like women are something to be possessed, like men love a challenge, they love to have what they can't have. Like they're not your friends, they're your things. Garrett also needs to like talk to some people, maybe like open up. And I mean, this is a lesson he learns, but there was a pretty funny line, which I think was probably meant to be emotional, but he's sort of reflecting on his status in the school and the street cred he has. Though honestly, sometimes I don't feel half as cool as people think I am. And I'm pretty sure that if any of them took the time to actually get to know me, they'd probably change their opinion. I mean, that's sad.

Bridget 1:25:18

That's also not true because he has three very close friends who all like him a lot. That's true.

Laura 1:25:28

It's like that pond I skated on when I was a kid. From a distance, the ice looks so shiny and smooth until you got close enough to it, and suddenly all the uneven edges and crisscross skate marks became visible. That's me, I guess. Covered with skate marks that nobody ever seems to notice. And geez, clearly I'm feeling way too philosophical tonight. They were also flashes of that sort of like intense incel-esque possessiveness. At one point when he still barely knows Hannah, he's thinking about the possibility of Hannah and Justin Cole getting together, and he says, Hannah's intelligence and razor-sharp tongue is wasted on a guy like that. You don't know her.

Bridget 1:26:08

And you don't know him. No, either. There's a paragraph on page 282 that I have dubbed the paragraph where caveman discovers human connection and I don't know what I was thinking, taking that whole anti-girlfriend position. Because having a girlfriend fucking rocks. Seriously. I get to have sex whenever I want without having to work for it. I have someone to vent to after a shitty day or a devastating loss on the ice. I can make the worst jokes on the planet, and chances are Hannah will laugh at them. And like, yeah, duh. Like that's just that's just talking to people and having a relationship and like interacting in in society.

Laura 1:26:54

It was sort of a frustrating back and forth at times reading this book because overall I think the character Garrett's response to finding out about Hannah's rape and responding to her request for him to give her an orgasm was really like sensitive and so much more thoughtfully done overall than I could have expected. There were still points where I was like, okay, that's like kind of a crazy thing to be doing or saying right now. I like the consideration he gives her. I like that he wants her to feel safe. I like that they take it slow. But I just think like all of the effort into making those scenes so positive was wasted. When you also have lines like this, this comes late at night when Hannah is thinking about heading home. Garrett's like, no way, it's way too late. If you won't let me drive you, just crash here. She says, I'm gonna go crash on the couch downstairs. And he says, I live with three hockey players, Wellsy, who, by the way, still aren't home from a night of partying. I'm not saying it'll happen, but there's a chance one of them might stumble into the living room, drunk off their asses, and grope you or something if they find you on the couch. I, on the other hand, have no interest in groping you. And I just thought, what a grim assessment of your dear friends and what a low standard we hold these men to. You're a good guy, but that's what you expect from your friends. Yeah. And then like in the next breath, he's like, gesturing to the bed, you can sleep here. She says, a gentleman would offer to sleep on the floor, and he says, Do I look like a gentleman to you? She laughs and says, Nope. I get the gag. They share a bed, but you know, a gentleman would and again, that does happen in the show, and it's really nice.

Bridget 1:28:31

Yeah. There was a line, I don't know if it was at this exact point, but it was another time where Hannah is staying the night and she's asleep or like maybe drunk and asleep, and he says something like I look at her and I think even if I wanted to, I'm so tired I wouldn't be able to take advantage of her right now. Yes, yeah. That's a pretty insane thing to have in a book.

Laura 1:28:54

Yeah, I personally don't look at tired people thinking that. No. It is a weird feeling as well because, like, as always, like I am feeling a little bit shrill talking about this. And it's weird to have read this with so little care and still find so much to pull apart. Like, I really don't care what these characters are doing. No. I really don't care if you enjoy it. Good for you. But if I had to look at it under a microscopic lens, this is what I would say. We've spent so much time talking about Hannah and Garrett, and like, as is a hallmark of these books, we have a million and one other characters that we have not even basically so much as spared a thought for throughout this whole episode. The good news is there's really nothing to say about them. So let's rattle them off one by one so that you know that we at least know they exist. From the top, we have Cass. Cassidy Darnovan. Who cares? We have Mary Jane MJ slash not Michael Jackson. I was super confused. Yeah. Allie slash A. We have Allie's boyfriend Sean. There's actually like a random bunch of her friends who came in like over halfway through the novel that I'd never heard of up until that point. Did not care for that.

Bridget 1:30:03

When they came, I said out loud, who the hell are these people?

Laura 1:30:06

Why? I mean, again, that is like another hallmark of this genre. Too many characters. There was that random guy who she talks to whose sister is like the number one singer. Bo. Bo, I think. And then, of course, the thousands of hockey players. I think it was particularly brought up in our icebreaker episode, our irritation with the nicknames on nicknames on nicknames. Yeah. In this instance, we had Garrett Graham, sometimes known as Graham, sometimes known as G. I would like to pause here and say this does not translate well for Australian and New Zealand audiences. There were so many lines that would be like, Gee, you've got to pull it together and win the game. Like, oh, gee, you've got to pull it together and win the game. It's up, G. Does not have the same vibe that you think it has. It's not reading Gossip Girl. It's reading like upbeat security guard at an Auckland nightclub. Yeah. We have John Logan, aka Logan. We have John Tucker, aka Tucker, aka Tuck. We have Dean. I mean, I don't really know what nicknames he had, maybe none.

Bridget 1:31:12

Well, I know that Dean fans call themselves Deany babies. Oh. But I would also like to point out, and spoiler for future books, future seasons, so if you are skipping those, skip ahead. I think it is a feature of lazy writing to have a character, Allie, who is currently dating somebody called Sean, spelt S-E-A-N, who will then go on to date a character called Dean spelt D-E-A-N. To mean shouldn't happen. And I know you pronounce them differently. We're not saying Dean scene Dawn Sean. But if it's a book, we shouldn't have boyfriends that have the same name except for one letter.

Laura 1:31:56

It should be a rule. That's the hill you'll die on. Yeah. I mean, Sean really could have been anyone. He's around for a hot minute and he's like a wear loser. I like how much more shit he was in the show. Yeah, and he also looked like Josh Groben. Sorry, did that man permission to circle back to the boots on the ground journalism I sort of like hinted at earlier.

Bridget 1:32:16

Granted, immediately go.

Laura 1:32:17

Thank you. Thank you, officer. So this is related to a case that didn't sit right with me, the case of Hannah and Garrett watching Breaking Bad. In the book, he says, my streaming service just added breaking bad, but apparently, according to those Reddit as mentioned before, they did used to watch them on DVDs. Now, the timeline doesn't add up. Let me break it down for you. Hannah arrives at Garrett's house at 5 p.m. They begin studying and it's noted that the next hour is brutal. And this is assuming they're on a really punctual timeline. Bang, it's 6 p.m. They then faff around ordering pizza for like an undisclosed amount of time and setting up the streaming service. They've got to argue about the topping.

Bridget 1:33:00

So you know, 25 to 30 minutes.

Laura 1:33:02

And she's got to berate him about like being a frigid bitch that wants to eat Coke. So I mean, what, 10 minutes maybe at the most doing that? We're at 6'10. They then proceed to watch the entire first season of Breaking Bad, which is seven episodes long. Now, again, like I'm thinking in between these episodes, they're having at least like a couple of sentences of like what did you think of that one? Next one. Yeah, like, are we going to the next? Yes. Okay.

Bridget 1:33:35

Well, we see that in the book. They're like, well, I definitely think the the wife is gonna dump him and blah blah blah.

Laura 1:33:42

True. Very base level analysis. Yes. When he's like, he's actually the anti-hero. Like, oh thanks, Garrett. Thanks for explaining it to me.

Bridget 1:33:53

I've not even seen it, and I know that.

Laura 1:33:58

Okay, so we're not meant to like the drug dealer. Isn't that interesting? Episode one of this season is 58 minutes long. All of the other six are 48, which brings us to roughly six hours. That's insane. When you say it out loud like that. And like, I don't have you ever watched any any sections of Breaking Bad whatsoever. No. If you were stressed by Dexter, Breaking Bad would give you like you would have hives immediately. It is such a stressful show. I watched it with my friend Jacob when we were in uni, and like, if not for the both of us watching it in tandem, like it was kind of like Dumbledore drinking the potion.

Bridget 1:34:40

You need someone to force it down your throat. You have to keep it.

Laura 1:34:44

Okay, that's great. I'm never watching it. It was so stressful. I was so I was on edge the whole time. So you really need that motivation. Yeah, okay. They both must be emotionally fraught at the end of this. Hannah realizes OMJ, it's almost 10 p.m. Wrong, wrong, Hannah. If you got to work right on the dot of six, it would be almost midnight, okay? You stupid fucking bitches. Learn how to read time. Yes. So then they have this dumb conversation, and this was another thing like my dad ate the popcorn. My sister had a baby. I personally, like having recently dipped my toe, I have a little bit more empathy. Like it, I honestly don't know how you show that feeling of like warmth and familiarity and like a budding friendship between people. When you dipped your toe, like the hour of work we did both did.

Bridget 1:35:40

Yeah, I completely understand where she's going from.

Laura 1:35:43

My salad days. But no, I agree. It's hard to write dialogue, as I found out. It's hard to write dialogue, it's hard to establish connection, but this just can't be the best option. No, it just can't be. And so they have their dumb conversation, and then they're like, wouldn't it be so naughty if we watched half of season two? And I actually just had to quickly crunch the numbers because I realize I never actually checked how many episodes are in season two of Breaking Bad. And there are 13. Oh. So up from seven. Up from seven. Wow. So if we're using that same average, like 48-minute runtime, they watched another five hours of television.

Bridget 1:36:25

So at this point, it's what 5 a.m. But they had to have that boring conversation. So maybe even 6 a.m.

Laura 1:36:32

It's the next day. It's the next day. Wow. This really bent me out of shape. Because I was like, why are we going back and changing it to say Ted Lasso? But we're not fact-checking stuff like this. And given that this is like apparently that's been in there the whole time, like it's always been breaking bad. Like it just doesn't make sense. It's actually mind-boggling. Fix your shit.

Bridget 1:36:54

This is 11 years old at this point. Before we finished the episode, we thought it was only right and only appropriate to celebrate August being the month of Smut at Talklet get hit by reading out some of the worst phrases that were in the book. Spoiler alert, they were all sex related. I will have to say there wasn't as much smut in this book as I was expecting. Hearing reports from the TV show, I thought it would be like scene after scene after scene. It wasn't the case, and I also found the TV show wasn't as smart heavy as I expected it to be either. Never fear. There were still some phrases we never want to hear again. We're just gonna go through them one by one so you can join in our shared trauma. Laura, would you like to kick us off?

Laura 1:37:41

Yeah, and it's a goodie. My sex contracts milking his hard shaft.

Bridget 1:37:46

I think anything shaft related is always a bad idea, but then you add the word milking into the mix, and it's just it's not a good time for anybody. I mean, maybe a good time for, but on page 109, they've woken up next to each other, and wow, wouldn't you know it? They're in each other's arms. And Hannah's like, what is that? Do you have a boner? And Garrett says, relax, Wellsy. It's just a morning chub.

Laura 1:38:17

Oh. Actually revolting. Just even that word, like you, it's just like I have a visceral re uh, it's the uh sound. Chub. Yuck. Chubba chubba. Awful. Ew. Yuck. Our next one, I think, is some of Hannah's 50-year-old ism on display. She says on page 139, and then his lips find mine, and he thrusts that talented tongue into my mouth again. Okay, Anastasia Steele. Tantalizing, talented tongue to the tangledly talented, the one and only Adel Dazim. Page 148.

Bridget 1:38:58

Garrett says, My pulse races and my balls tighten.

Laura 1:39:03

It would not be a male perspective in a subpass smart novel if the balls were not tight. No. Constantly, I don't know, folding in on themselves. Perpetual. Perpetual nuts. On page 175, I actually don't even think this was in a sex scene. He was just watching her like eat or drink or be nervous. Garrett says, I see her slender throat bob as she gulps. Yuck.

Bridget 1:39:32

That's gross. It's like all I can imagine is like a seal or something eating a fish. And you can just see it. Glow, glue, glove, glove, down the gullet. And the last one we have on the list is on page 307. And I would also like to point out, I'm pretty sure this is coming just after they've had quite a traumatic visit to the father's house for Thanksgiving. And he's upset because he's had to revisit the site of his childhood abuse and have dinner with his abuser and see that his abuser is now abusing someone else. Then this line happens. I've fucked girls in my car before. I've never made love to one.

Laura 1:40:12

Oh it wouldn't have there were too many instances of like quite a deep emotional scene followed by a couple of paragraphs later, explicit sexual content.

Bridget 1:40:28

Okay. We have now been recording for nearly three hours, and I will say we haven't even covered everything we had on the list. There are things that we have decided to leave behind.

Laura 1:40:40

We were really self-congratulatory. We were like, we've never been more prepared. We are so prepared. But sometimes preparation comes at a cost. Yeah, it's 10 o'clock on a Saturday night, and we are too prepared. It's time to cut the shit. It's gonna be hard, but Bridget, do you have a favorite character in the deal?

Bridget 1:41:02

Allie is my favorite character. In book and TV show, I think Garrett is second, which is not where I thought I'd be landing. But I don't like Hannah. I definitely don't like Tucker, Logan, Scene, and Dean. Sean and Dawn. I don't like those. I don't like that crew. So it's Allie first for me. How about you?

Laura 1:41:23

Yeah, I also would have picked Allie. I think, as in the show, she's a real ride or die for Hannah. She's constantly protecting her. And it's just a nice change because I feel like the female best friend is always like a real pain, but I liked their friendship.

Bridget 1:41:37

Yeah, same. I don't know if I want to ruin this good feeling by reading her book. I don't think you want to. I don't think I want to, but for now, love her. How about your least favorite character?

Laura 1:41:48

I mean, I guess my least favourite character was probably like Garrett's dad. And the fact that he just gets away with it as well. Like, I don't know if that's something that changes in recent books. I know, like, there's a degree of closure because Garrett like tells some people and he opens up and he like has a small change of heart around how he feels about this. Or I guess Hannah's rapist as well. If those were off the table, then maybe Dean.

Bridget 1:42:13

Yeah, I was considering Hannah, but I actually don't think Hannah was that bad. I think she was just quite boring. I felt sorry for her. She really made me cry in the TV show when she told Allie about the assault. I think I just can't get past some of the gross things that Dean was saying and doing. And I just I can imagine his room and I can imagine his mody bathroom. I just don't think he would be a very clean kind of guy. And I don't like him.

Laura 1:42:46

Here, here. Well, Bridget, I mean, I feel as I so often say at this point in the episode, I'm not sure that there's a lot of doubt in my mind as to how you feel about this book. But if you could rate the deal by L. Kennedy, lit or shit, where do you land?

Bridget 1:43:00

It's gotta be shit. Definitely not the worst book we've ever read. But I just I can't see it landing anywhere other than shit for me.

Laura 1:43:08

How about you? I agree. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, which is to say that it's a miracle I enjoyed it at all. The bones are there, but the reality is like I didn't connect with these characters, I didn't like what they thought, I didn't like what they had to say, and also I guess we didn't really talk about it, but by the time we got to the third act, breakup drama, confrontation with abusive dad, music recital, breakup with Cass, breakup of their relationship, like all the things I was done. I was checked out of that book.

Bridget 1:43:41

Also, because every conflict that they had was like so stupidly resolved. Yes. Like the breakup was like, oh well, babe, if you had told me, I would have told you I had a secret inheritance.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:52

What? Yes.

Laura 1:43:54

So ridiculous. So ridiculous. Because he has like quite a long internal monologue about like, oh no, what am I gonna do? Yeah. So why is it a secret even from yourself? I don't know. It was a stupid book overall. I wouldn't have finished it if I wasn't reading it for the podcast. It's shit.

Bridget 1:44:10

How do you feel about the show though? Because we have watched the show as well. So I think we you know, we're allowed, we're allowed to comment on the show. Did you find off campus season one, the show, to be lit or shit?

Laura 1:44:24

I found it to be lit. I had a great time watching it, and I think the changes that they made were only positive. I think it improved the story so much.

Bridget 1:44:31

Yeah. I think I have to agree. What you said before, it has good bones, and I think you can see those good bones in the TV show. The sets were great, the costumes were great, the soundtrack was amazing. I loved the changes they made, like just off the top of my head, turning Justin into a musician was a great idea. I love seeing Allie and Hannah's friendship explored a little bit more, and I I agree, I think it was lit.

Laura 1:44:57

Well, that brings our episode to a close. We hope that our voices slid into your ears like a warm embrace. I'm not so sure if we figured out what the puck everyone is going on about, but we sure did have a pucking great time. Buck yeah.

Bridget 1:45:15

We'll be back later this month for a bonus chapter. But in the meantime, leave us a rating and review wherever you're listening to this podcast. Have your say of what we read next by keeping an eye on the link in our show notes and on our socials. Make sure you subscribe to the show and if you want to be on the same page as us, otherwise at talklit.get on Instagram and TikTok.