Episode 29: Museum Books (With Guest Elise Hooper)

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This week on the Read Carpet Report, Jackie and Kirsten talk about museum books. In the Read Carpet Rundown, they discuss The Love Hypothesis, which is headed to Prime, and they’ve got the latest on Practical Magic 2. For the Plot Twist, they pick four books that will bring the museums and galleries into your home. They are also joined by author Elise Hooper to talk about her book, The Library of Lost Dollhouses. 

The Library of Lost Dollhouses by Elise Hooper is a historical fiction book set in an archival library in San Francisco. When the head curator discovers two dollhouses, she sets about finding answers about where they came from. We travel to Belle Époque Paris, the English countryside during wartime, and Walt Disney’s studios in the 1950s, and more in this fantastic book. Join us on October 26th to discuss this book (and get a tour of some real dollhouses)

Chapters

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 00:23 – Read Carpet Rundown
• 04:31 – Plot Twist: Museum Books
• 16:55 – Interview with Elise Hooper, Author of The Library of Lost Dollhouses
• 25:02 – Bookmark
• 31:45 – Reader Question

The Read Carpet Rundown (00:23)

Jackie and Kirsten cannot wait for the Prime release of The Love Hypothesis. Practical Magic 2 has hit movie theaters with a bang, and they cannot wait to see it!

• Books Like the Love Hypothesis
• Practical Magic Books in Order

Plot Twist: Museum Books(04:31)

The October prompt for the Beyond the Bookends book club is to read a museum book. In these books, the museums themselves are essential to the plot. Jackie and Kirsten highlight a few choices from various genres: Magnolia Palace by Fiona Davis, The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager, The Art Thief by Michael Finkel, and Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser.

• Books Set in Museums

Interview with Elise Hooper, Author of The Library of Lost Dollhouses (16:55)

Jackie and Kirsten have a talk with Elise Hooper about her book, The Library of Lost Dollhouses. The book was inspired by her great-grandmother’s 1895 dollhouse. She also had real-life inspirations from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for the library setting and true-crime dollhouse pioneer Frances Glessner Lee.

Jackie and Kirsten will be discussing the book with Elise on October 26th. There will be spoilers, as well as a tour of the dollhouse

The Bookmark: Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult (25:02)

This episode’s staff recommendation is Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult. It is landing right around the anniversary of 9/11 and the uncomfortable overlap with the ongoing Lindsay Clancy case.

• Hollow Bones Book Club Questions

Reader Question: What are your predictions for the October 2026 Celebrity Book Club? (31:45)

• October 2026 Book Releases

The Books We Discussed

Shop for every book or product we discussed in this episode below.

More Ways to Watch or Listen

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Transcript

Jackie (00:00)
Welcome to the Red Carpet Report, your backstage past for celebrity book clubs, book adaptations, and new book releases. I’m Jackie.

Kirsten (00:08)
And I’m Kirsten.

Jackie (00:09)
we’re your hosts.

Kirsten (00:10)
Today’s episode is a plot twist. We are gonna be talking about novels and some nonfiction books too, set in museums. But before that, we have a very brief red carpet rundown. Take it away, Jack.

Jackie (00:22)
So I’m so excited because this week we have The Love Hypothesis (by Ali HAzelwood), and it is coming to Prime on September 23rd.

Kirsten (00:32)
I’m watching Reacher, you know, you know, as one does, I’ve seen nonstop commercials about this.
And I am somebody who never read the book, which I know is shocking to you, but also is not shocking to me because science and math, that’s not my forte. But I know that this is like one of your favorites. So are you excited about the casting? Are you excited about what it looks like?

Jackie (00:55)
So we have Lily Reinhardt, who’s playing Olive, and Tom Batterman, who’s playing Adam.

Kirsten (01:01)
Okay. And are you happy with the casting?

Jackie (01:03)
I am happy with the casting. I think I’ve seen some of the commercials, so I think it’s gonna be fantastic. And this is obviously a STEM romance. It’s a fake dating situation.

Kirsten (01:15)
They look like they have actual chemistry, which I know like every summer after the big disappointment there was that it didn’t really feel like they had any chemistry. But these guys look like they do have some chemistry, so that’s going for it.

Jackie (01:26)
They do have some kind; I think it’s gonna be great. I think what you should do is you should watch it, and then you’re gonna love it. And then you could start reading some of these, and then you’ll have a more positive association with math and science because you have the whole romance component.

Kirsten (01:42)
I don’t know that that’s how that works, but okay.

Jackie (01:44)
Yeah.

Kirsten (01:45)
But okay. We’ll rewrite my childhood wrongs in math and science

Jackie (01:49)
They’re not talking about… they’re not going deep into theories of physics, right?

Kirsten (01:56)
Well see, because that was my problem with the Christina Lauren -their summer one. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was about the science of bringing somebody back to life. Yes,

Jackie (02:08)
Wasn’t it Romance Revival (by Christina Lauren)?

Kirsten (02:09)
that was it. And I just was not at all interested in the science part where I was like, this is own I’m out. And I DNF’d it because it was too sciencey.

Jackie (02:18)
Yeah, but that’s also fake is fake science. So I don’t blame you for not wanting to read a book that’s entirely based on fake science.

Kirsten (02:27)
It is fake science, that is true. That’s fair. That’s fair. Okay. Okay. Point taken.

Jackie (02:31)
Okay. there is something else that we have to talk about this week, and that is practical magic two bumped Spider-Man out of its number one spot at the box office.

Kirsten (02:43)
I know. And this is unfortunately your second of three times that you’re gonna hear us talk about Practical Magic 2 because we’re that excited about it, but we are not gonna see it. We’re seeing it the day the podcast drops. So we’re obviously gonna come back with our review next week. We talked about it last week, but you know, I’m not surprised that it’s like a number-one box-office smash. This was a cult favorite.

Jackie (03:03)
Okay, but so fun fact: I was watching an interview with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock. Sorry, I was having memory issues. They were saying that the first movie did terribly at the box office.

Kirsten (03:19)
Why?

Jackie (03:20)
And do you know why? Because men said, ” How many women do you need to have on screen at one time?”

Kirsten (03:29)
There’s really not very men in the first movie. That’s hilarious. And do you know that on Rotten Tomatoes, because I tried to get my husband to watch it? I’m like, my God, Practical Magic. We have to watch it in advance. Have you ever seen it? He said he’d never seen it.

Jackie (03:39)
Seen

Kirsten (03:40)
I’m like, well, let’s watch it. And he always checks Rotten Tomatoes. It has like a 30% on the Rotten Tomato meter. Like it is it was universally panned, which is ridiculous because it’s a cult classic.

Jackie (03:51)
is ridiculous because It’s fantastic. That’s so rude. Can you imagine in this day and age?

Kirsten (04:01)
Yes.

Jackie (04:02)
Like now, how many years has been?

Kirsten (04:06)
I can still imagine it happening in this day and age right now, sadly.

Jackie (04:10)
I’m lying. I can totally picture it, but the fact that now they’re totally calling everybody out and saying it didn’t do well and it was trashed at the boss office and in all the reviews because people didn’t like that there were so many women

Kirsten (04:17)
Mm-hmm.

Jackie (04:26)
and I love that they’re calling it out and everyone goes see this movie and

Kirsten (04:29)
yes, yes, because it’s gonna be great. Now we’re gonna take it into the plot twist. So the plot twist is when we talk about the reading challenge for the next month because we have a yearly reading challenge, coincides with our book club. We announce what the book is, the author’s gonna come on shortly and tell us about the book, which is really exciting because you can have a chance to read the book and discuss it with the author and with us, which is so much fun. But even if you don’t participate in the book club portion, you can do the reading challenge on your own. And this month’s or I should say October’s prompt is read a book set in a museum. And I love that this is our first time doing something like this, and I’m obsessed with this prompt. This is my favorite of the year, I think.

Jackie (05:14)
It’s so much fun. I think because there’s so many different genres of books. So we have historical fiction and fiction and nonfiction and fantasy thrillers. I mean, whatever type of book you love, we have one that will fit your reading preferences.

Kirsten (05:31)
Yes. And some of them, some of them are about art and artists, which we’ve done in the past. But a lot of them, even if they are set in a museum, it’s almost about the museum setting itself or the history of the museum or something that makes that museum unique. And some of them are, yes, about art, but museums are special.

Jackie (06:00)
Don’t you think?

Kirsten (05:55)
They’re just places that I think readers, they’re like adjacent to libraries and bookstores. Like they’re just little cultural nugget places to go and just while away your time and learn something new every time. And if you’re a reader, chances are you probably enjoy a good museum.

Jackie (06:10)
actually this is very of the moment for me because my daughter and I went to the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia this weekend because it is closing at the end of September. It’s over 150 years old, I think. for whatever reason, they’re closing it. It’s so sad.

Kirsten (06:29)
I know. Lack of visitors, I think, because visitorship to museums are down, which kind of doesn’t surprise me in this world today either.

Jackie (06:37)
No, it’s and so we don’t know what they’re gonna do with I mean, they have dinosaurs in there. Right. So I don’t know what they’re gonna do with the T Rex.

Kirsten (06:46)
Me neither. maybe in reading a book set in one of these places, you’ll it will inspire you to go and visit. And actually, that is what happened with me with the first book that I’m gonna talk about. So if you don’t mind me segueing in and I take the first slot.

Jackie (07:00)
Love it.

Kirsten (07:02)
The book that I chose to highlight first is a historical fiction. It’s called Magnolia Palace. It’s by Fiona Davis. And it takes place at the Frick, which I had always heard of The Frick, but I didn’t go to the Frick until after I read this. And I just thought that was like a really fun thing. This book inspired me to go visit.

Jackie (07:21)
Tell everybody where The Frick is, in case they don’t know.

Kirsten (07:24)
Okay, so the Frick is based in New York. It is a museum. It is actually somebody’s house. So the Frick family had this house. And when the fortunes were going away, they decided essentially to gift this house and their extensive art collection to turn it into a museum. so it is this Gilded Age mansion on the Upper East Side. It is simply stunning from an architectural standpoint. And all of their artwork is all over as it was displayed in these various rooms. Now the furniture and stuff has been taken out, but it still explains what each room was. And so you’re walking through the dining room, the nursery, the maids quarters, their bedroom. The very cool part about the book, Magnolia Palace, is for a while, while it was a museum, one of the descendants, the daughter of the owner, was still living at the house.

Jackie (08:18)
No way!

Kirsten (08:19)
Yes. And so the story is about a model who kinda gets like stuck in the house overnight and they’re searching for a piece of jewelry. So it’s also a jewelry novel. they’re the this like missing I think it’s a set pink sapphire or something. but you also are getting the timeline back to this woman. She was li I think it’s a it’s a dual timeline historical fiction, but they’re both historical fiction timelines. So one is I wanna say the seventies.

Jackie (08:46)
Those are so much fun.

Kirsten (08:45)
And one is in the Gilded Age. Those are so much fun. Or the fifties in the Gilded Age. But yes.

Jackie (08:50)
That they’re both historical fiction is such a fun book to read.

Kirsten (08:52)
Yes. Very cool. And so it’s fun to see her as an elderly woman living in the museum, but then also you go back in time to when it was her home. mean, it is just a really immersive book. And then to be able to go back and go in and see this real space. I can’t recommend Fiona’s an excellent writer. All of her books are these fantastic stories with iconic destination in New York, an iconic building. So that’s where what she builds them around. She’s done one about the New York Public Library, but all set at an iconic place, and then she builds a story around it. Okay.

Jackie (09:27)
That sounds fantastic. I was gonna talk about another one first, but instead I’m actually gonna talk about the Art of Vanishing. Okay. And it’s by Morgan Pager. And the reason I wanted to talk about that one next is it is set in the Barnes Museum. So it’s very similar to the story that you just told. For anyone who doesn’t know, the Barnes Foundation was this man who started buying pieces of art after the First World War. And he amassed in his house hundreds and hundreds of pieces of art.

He has the biggest collection of Renoirs in the entire world, 180 of them. It was a huge deal because the Barnes was located in Lower Merion. It was his house. He had everything on the walls the way he wanted to arrange it. There were so many pictures on every wall. And the city of Philadelphia decided that it needed to move downtown with the rest of the museums, and there was a big fight. The city of Philadelphia won, and the entire Barnes Museum was moved downtown. Fun fact: they kept every room and every size exactly the same, and every picture was hung in the exact same place.

Kirsten (10:52)
Yep. It was in his will that this was how it had to stay. And so, in order to break the will. Essentially, they had to like go to court, figure this out, and recreate his home in a museum, which is really cool. It’s a great museum here in Philly. Yeah.

Jackie (11:04)
In a museum, I love that museum. So this book takes place in that museum. It is about a cleaner who comes in at night and discovers that she can actually go into a Matisse painting and she can move with Henry Matisse’s son, who is in the painting.

Kirsten (11:41)
And that’s really fun.

Jackie (11:33)
And the two of them fall in love and they can move around from painting to painting at night while she’s supposed to be cleaning in the museum. It’s amazing. And they talk about all the different pieces of art and the pieces of art that are in that room. And I had the best time after reading this, going and following the path that she took when she would go from painting to painting.

Kirsten (12:01)
That is really, really fun.

Jackie (12:03)
So if you want a book about a museum, I highly recommend this one. It’s fantastic.

Kirsten (12:08)
Love that. Well, going abroad is my next one. And it’s a nonfiction pick. So these are real pieces of art.

Jackie (12:16)
Mm-hmm.

Kirsten (12:17)
It’s called The Art Thief (by Michael Finkel). And it is about a criminal who stole billions of dollars’ worth of paintings and artifacts from all these small museums all across Europe because, unlike, let’s say, the Louvre- although I think possibly he did steal from the Louvre or something- some of these artifacts you can just

Jackie (12:35)
steal from the Louvre, but I’m saying

Kirsten (12:39)
like walk in and like drop it out the window. And so it talks about how he would steal. He would case something, and then he would just steal like a piece of art. Like he would just swipe it. And then they found him, and it’s a true story. He’s in jail. I believe he helped with the interview, as did his girlfriend, who I believe is not in jail. And some of the the works that he stolen like were burned and disappeared. And we’ll never see some of them again.

Jackie (12:50)
That’s nuts. Did he did they recover some of the pieces?

Kirsten (13:15)
Some of it, sort of. I think he tells the story where he’s like, ” And then I went on a whim to this castle, and I stole a tapestry.”

Jackie (13:22)
What was his purpose? What was he doing with them? Was he selling them to make money or hiding them in his house? Hiding them in his house. no.

Kirsten (13:28)
He was not selling them to make money. He wanted to live this extravagant lifestyle, and he just wanted to surround himself with beautiful. Sounds like, kind of?

Jackie (13:38)
Sounds like the real life Thomas Crown affair. crazier. Wow. Wow.

Kirsten (13:46)
They talk about how what the where the art was, when it was found, what was destroyed, and what it was? It is; you would not believe that it was true, except that you know that it is true.

Jackie (13:57)
That’s nuts. Wow.

Kirsten (13:58)
And many articles have been written about it, but this is a deep dive. It’s not a long book. It is fascinating. Fascinating. And of course it talks about all the individual art pieces, but fascinating his mentality and then just how he did it. Like he just how he did it. It’s wild.

Jackie (14:12)
That sounds nuts. Yeah,. So mine is the my next one is also abroad. It’s Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser. And this one is a book in translation. You and I both read this book. I love this book. It is a story about a young girl and they think she’s going blind.

Kirsten (14:29)
I love this book so much. Yes.

Jackie (14:38)
She is supposed to go to see a psychiatrist every week to deal with this. But her grandfather decides that he’s not taking her to a psychiatrist. Instead, he’s going to take her to different art museums all over Paris. And every week they’re going to talk about one piece of art. And so the cover of this book has every piece of art that they talk about. And they talk about 52 pieces of art. And the way that they talk about the art in the museums, going from museum to museum, all over. Paris and they’re talking about Musée d’Orsay and sitting in there.

Kirsten (15:26)
Beautiful. He’s an art historian, and you really get that because it’s not only just the painting and a description of the painting, which so many of these are. But it is the history on how the painting came to be and the when you zoom in and you look at the different strokes and the different and then when you zoom in and you look at the different strokes and the different…

Jackie (15:46)
I felt like I was having a lesson in art history, but it’s so lyrical. I just took my time, and I actually listened to this one, and I just felt like so relaxed, like I was being taken away. This is a phenomenal book, if anyone, if you have not read it.

Kirsten (16:07)
I think it was the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year last year. It is definitely literary fiction. So if that’s not your genre, I wouldn’t go there because it is a harder, I would say, to read novel and it’s really big. But we both flew through it, couldn’t put down.

Jackie (16:21)
I loved it so much. And the audiobook version is really fantastic. So if reading it is something that’s maybe a little bit too difficult and you don’t want to try literary fiction that way, try it as an audiobook.

Kirsten (16:36)
Right. And the audio I believe comes with a PDF of the the 52 works of art. So there’s a thought on that too. the next book that we’re gonna talk about is a really fun one. It’s the one that we’re gonna be discussing with our book club. It’s the Library of Lost Doll Houses by Elise Hooper, but we don’t have to tell you about it because she’s here to do it herself.

Kirsten (16:55)
Hi, Elise, thank you so much for joining us today.

Elise Hooper (16:58)
Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here. I love your pink room. It’s gorgeous.

Kirsten (17:04)
Thank you. This used to be my dining room actually. And we realized we don’t really need a dining room of this size because our family’s so big. So I turned it into my office.

Elise Hooper (17:14)
I love it. What a great transformation.

Kirsten (17:17)
Thank you. why don’t you start off by telling everyone a little bit about your book? It is the Library of Lost Doll Houses.

Elise Hooper (17:26)
Yes, the Library of Lost Dollhouses is dual timeline, historical fiction. It’s about a mysterious collection of dollhouses that reveal the secrets of their former owners. This book was so much fun to write. And I’m really hoping it’s as fun for readers to read because I just had such an adventure writing this one.

Kirsten (17:49)
Such an adventure reading this one, I have to say that it was one of my favorites from last year.

Elise Hooper (17:54)
Thank you.

Kirsten (17:55)
I read it on a plane, I felt like I was traveling to England, I was in Belle Epoch Paris, like I was all over the place, and I just I loved it. And even the present-day timeline of the setting of how they were found, I really loved. So, why did you want to write a book with the setting of in this case it’s a it’s an archive, which is Museum adjacent, and I’m gonna take that as a museum, but why that setting?

Elise Hooper (18:18)
Yes. I’m so glad you asked that. I started this book in fall of 2020. So much as we don’t want to think back to that period,

Kirsten (18:27)
Yes.

Elise Hooper (18:28)
I was trapped here in my office in Seattle and missed so many things. Like I missed travel, I missed going to libraries, I missed going to bookstores, and I missed museums and archives and all these things that always give me so many ideas. So I had this is my great-grandmother’s dollhouse sitting beside me here. we believe it was built in probably about 1895 for her. And at the time I was using it as a bookshelf. I had just paperbacks, no furniture in it, just paperbacks jammed in it. It has been played with by five generations, including me and then most recently my two girls. And I looked at this dollhouse and I remembered, boy, this is where my creative life began.

Kirsten (19:16)
Mm.

Elise Hooper (19:16)
Sitting in front of this dollhouse for hours as a kid, moving things around, telling myself stories, learning to make things for it. So I decided I’m gonna write a story about a dollhouse and or dollhouses. And then I really thought about if I were to come across a news story that would bring me so much joy, because the news back then was pretty gloomy and pretty awful.

Elise Hooper (19:42)
I would love to read about this like mysterious collection of dollhouses being found in an old museum archive, and the person who finds them needs to figure out who is the mysterious woman who made them and what’s their what stories do they reveal. So it was really inspired by feeling kind of trapped at the time by this pandemic. And the story is really like a love letter to all my favorite places in the world. I lived in San Francisco right after college. It’s where I got married. I love like I love Belle Epoch Paris. I was doing a Downton Abbey rewatch. So that of course kind of got so all these places. Yes,

Kirsten (20:20)
Yes. Okay, I was thinking that.

Elise Hooper (20:24)
100%. That was research, right? To rewatch Down and Abbey. So this book is really kind of like all my favorite things rolled up into one novel.

Kirsten (20:38)
So much. I’m so glad that that dollhouse made its way into the story because I’ve been looking at it since you came on the screen. I know. It’s absolutely stunning. it’s so pretty.

Elise Hooper (20:48)
Yes. Thank you. Well, when we do our longer our book club meeting, I can take you all on a tour of it and show you some of my favorite things. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

Kirsten (20:55)
Yes, please. That I would be obsessed with.

Elise Hooper (21:00)
Let’s do it.

Kirsten (21:01)
and I love it because it’s art in and of itself. And and dollhouses you don’t think about as being works of art, but especially like something like this. Our local bookstore, actually, one of our favorites, she has her grandmother’s dollhouse down there. in Plexi in her children’s section so everyone can come and see it. She decorates it for the seasons. Like I love it. And it’s so much huge and you could look at it from all the sides and it I mean it’s a doll mansion really. It is a doll mansion. But I love them.

Elise Hooper (21:27)
that is yes. As it should be. This is a pretty humble one by all things considered. A family friend made it for my great-grandmother. But the thing is is once you kind of get into doll houses, suddenly everyone’s like, Will you take my old house or all this old furniture? So I now have a couple more. But this is the OG. This one’s the one that stays in my office. Thank you.

Kirsten (21:53)
I adore it. I do. so for anyone that’s going to be joining us or anyone who plans on reading the book and they haven’t read it yet, is there something that you want them to take away from the book? Or know about in advance?

Elise Hooper (22:09)
Well, I think that I get asked a lot about where the Bell, the Belle, the Curtis Lafarge Library is in San Francisco. And my book is all fiction, but it’s very much inspired by real-life women and places. So, like the Isabella Storm Gardner Museum in Boston is very much the inspiration for my library in San Francisco my library archives in San Francisco. And

Kirsten (22:34)
Okay.

Elise Hooper (22:34)
while all the women in the novel are fictional. They’re all just a step or two away being from being inspired by real life women. And I write about all of that in my author’s note. People can figure out, sort of do the little research to see where these

Kirsten (22:49)
Mm.

Elise Hooper (22:50)
people came from. But there was a real woman who built dioramas of crime scenes. And each one, it was like almost like the game of clue. Each one had actually an answer of what. Had happened. You had, she invited every like law enforcement from all over the country, FBI agents, everyone, to come and study these and use the clues in front of them to figure out the crime that had happened. And

Kirsten (23:17)
Sounds amazing.

Elise Hooper (23:18)
her name is Frances Glesner Lee. She was from Chicago. I was fascinated by this woman, but also don’t like to write about scary things. So I didn’t want to write about crime scenes, but I was fascinated.

Kirsten (23:30)
Yes.

Elise Hooper (23:30)
Fascinated by this idea of mysteries being solved through clues in a dollhouse. So that’s that’s the where this idea all began. So again, I hope readers have so much fun reading this because it really was a delight to write. I’ve had, in some ways, a lot of trouble letting go of this book.

Kirsten (23:53)
Well, it was a delight to read and I I cannot wait to discuss it with you. I’m obsessed. Spoilers! I can’t wait to discuss it with spoilers. I know. That’s gonna be so good. Yes, yes.

Elise Hooper (24:04)
No spoilers until our big day. No spoilers

Kirsten (24:08)
Thank you so, so much for joining us. We’re so excited to do the book club with you next month. And my goodness. This is gonna be fantastic.

Elise Hooper (24:17)
Well thank thank you for having me. I am so grateful to readers. I mean, life is so busy these days, you know, September, like maybe everyone’s kids are going back to school or I am grateful whenever people take that time for themselves and read and take the time to connect with an author. So thanks to all of you. I’m really looking forward to this. Can’t wait to tell you more about dollhouses and this specific one and all the things. We’re gonna have a great time.

Jackie (24:46)
I’m so excited to read this book with the book club. So you still have plenty of time. If you would like to read it with us and listen to our interview and have a chance to have a conversation with Elise yourself, you can still sign up for the book club. And now we’re gonna talk about our bookmark of the week.

Kirsten (25:08)
And once again, Jackie is usurping my book, Mark, ’cause it’s technically my turn. But I’m okay with it. I really am, because this one actually might have been my suggestion that you stole it from that you steal it from me.

Jackie (25:19)
Yeah, no, you told me that I should it because it’s very, very timely. Yes. It is Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult

Kirsten (25:24)
Yes. And tell us why it’s timely because it has come out by the time you’ve listened to this podcast.
And I know that you did the book club questions for it, but why, if you are doing it for your book club, which is a great pick, we have those questions for you. But tell us why it’s particularly timing, not just release date-wise.

Jackie (25:46)
So if you’ve been following the Lindsay Clancy case, this is the book that you need to read. It is so apropos of what is going on in the news right now. I don’t know if she’s psychic.

Kirsten (26:04)
I’m wondering. You know, she lives up in that area. And so I’m wondering if she was sort of inspired a little bit by this whole postpartum psychosis, because that is a major through line in this story, which is also a trigger warning. If you have postpartum depression or you can’t read that, then definitely be do not read this book. But why don’t you give us a an idea of what’s happening? And it’s timely too for the nine eleven part of it.

Jackie (26:29)
For the nine for the nine eleven. So the main character is Molly Fitzgerald. She is the head of the Rhode Island Department of Emergency Preparedness. She lost her mom in 9-11 when the second tower went down. She was two months old at the time. So she always grew up with this thing in the back of your head that there’s going to be things, and you should be prepared. She’s married to Jesse. We’ve seen him before.

Kirsten (26:44)
Okay. Okay.

Jackie (27:00)
He was a character in My Sister’s Keeper. Very cool.

Kirsten (27:03)
Stop it! That is so cool.

Jackie (27:09)
So anyone who’s read that, we’re so happy that he grew up to become a lie detector specialist for the police department. They are married, and that is timeline number one. They find out
something and now they start questioning everything that they grew up knowing. The second timeline is actually when we go back, and we see her mother before 9-11, and we see part of her story. So we are seeing both parts of the story. It is so well done. There were so many questions and thought points, and It’s a bigger book, but I flew through this book. I absolutely loved it. And I just couldn’t believe how of the moment it was, not only because of 9-11, but because of what we said before, because of this case that’s going on with Lindsay Clancy.

Kirsten (28:19)
It is almost like when Jo (Piazza) wrote her museum novel (The Parisian Heist) and was like announcing it the same week that the Louvre heist happened. I’m sure she was inspired by the twenty fifth anniversary of 9-11, but then also to have this Lindsay Clancy in the news at the same time as the release is happening. What a wild, what a wild ride.

Jackie (28:44)
I think she said that she got a letter from a woman who was in jail with postpartum psychosis. And I think that’s where some of the inspiration came from. it I learned a lot. I wonder if this is gonna be

Kirsten (29:00)
Wow. it I learned a lot. I wonder if this is gonna be a very divisive book too, because I I’ve seen how the Clancy trial has sort of gone and people this is it’s really interesting. I’ve not seen a lot of people here in the middle. Like you are one way or you are the other, and then to put like a 9-11 scrambled all in there. That this, I don’t know. I’m I’m very curious about. I mean, at this point we might know what some of the more preliminary responses are. but I’m curious what people are gonna think about this one. If there’s gonna be a controversy around it or if they’re just gonna appreciate it for, you know, the literary work that it is of trying to address some very complicated topics of childhood trauma, postpartum depression, like all of it.

Jackie (29:57)
No, and I love the way she did it for this book. It was touching. It was so thought-provoking. That’s why I did the questions because I had a hundred of them. So I was just writing them. But as I was reading, I was like, wait, what about this? What about this? What about this? She does a really, really good job

Kirsten (30:02)
it for this book. Right.

Jackie (30:24)
presenting stuff in a way that doesn’t feel like Yes.

Kirsten (30:31)
like she has an agenda. Yes. I remember reading the one about the abortion clinic, and it was like she presented every single side of that argument without making a ruling on where she was in that argument. Yeah. So

Jackie (30:45)
Yeah. So and and it’s also not alarmist. She is not writing a book to rile people up and make them petrified that something’s gonna happen. She’s writing it to Raise awareness, open dialogue, and sh I think she did it perfection.

Kirsten (31:12)
And that’s what A good book does, right? I mean,

Jackie (31:14)
Yeah.

Kirsten (31:15)
that’s why the literacy that we harp on all the time is so important that more people are able to read at a higher level because stories allow you to walk in the shoes of someone else and learn about something different. And this is a perfect example of that. I

Jackie (31:28)
Yeah.

Kirsten (31:29)
cannot wait to read this. So Hollow Bones, Jodi Picoult, it’s out now.

Jackie (31:32)
So we are off next week.

Kirsten (31:34)
That’s right.

Jackie (31:35)
And after that, we have already, where did the time go? October celebrity book club picks. So if you guys have guesses for what you think the book club picks are going to be, we have guesses. We I mean, we have guesses. but if you guys have guesses, we’d love to hear what you think.

Kirsten (31:54)
we always have guesses. Yep. Let us know and tell us why. that’s it. So like, follow, subscribe. We will see you in two weeks.

Jackie (32:07)
And happy reading.