Halley Sutton is back from a trip through Greece and Turkey, and she shares some of the highlights of her trip! We also discuss books, tv shows and movies we've been watching and reading recently, and dive into THAT Summer House Reunion a la Scamanda.

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, Emma West, Kara Confer and I talk with Emma Brodie about her love story Into the Blue!

Listen to hear about:

• How a single character—Noah—kept appearing across multiple abandoned projects until he became the foundation of Into the Blue
  
• A behind-the-scenes look at how Emma's theater classes, improv training, and fascination with performance shaped the book's unique portrayal of acting and creative connection.
  
• The emotional reality of publishing while working in the publishing industry, including the vulnerability of releasing work when you're surrounded by people who understand exactly how the business works.
  
• Emma's approach to writing about chronic illness, grief, fame, and the idea that we can never fully know what's happening inside another person—even someone we deeply love
  
• The incredible journey from writing Into the Blue as a deeply personal "heart song" to becoming a Reese's Book Club pick and a Read with Jenna selection

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, Gare and I talk with Olivia Worley about her new horror-thriller Man of My Dreams!

Listen to hear about:

• How Olivia's real-life dating experiences—and meeting a man eerily similar to a character she had already written—inspired the premise of Man of My Dreams
  
• A deep dive into blending rom-coms with psychological thrillers, why modern dating is the perfect backdrop for suspense, and how Olivia carefully balances romance with increasingly dark twists
  
• Writing morally complicated women, the thrill of surprising readers, and why some of the most compelling stories happen when romance and danger collide

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, Elizabeth Rose Quinn and I discuss revelations we had while reading Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Each Other by Sophie Gilbert.

Listen to hear about:

• How Sophie Gilbert's Girl on Girl traces a throughline from the 1990s to today, revealing how pop culture, celebrity media, and entertainment industries shaped modern misogyny and women's relationships with each other.
• A discussion of the "post-privacy era," from Pamela Anderson's stolen sex tape to social media, influencer culture, and the normalization of treating women's lives and bodies as public property.
• Why movements that begin as authentic expressions of female empowerment—like Riot Grrrl and "girl power"—often get repackaged, commercialized, and stripped of their original political meaning.
• An exploration of reality TV, celebrity culture, diet culture, and the male gaze—and how they continue to influence the way women are expected to look, behave, and present themselves.
• Misogyny as a cultural system: why women are often disbelieved, how abuse tactics show up in institutions and media, and what happens when we stop viewing these incidents as isolated events and start seeing the larger pattern.

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, I talk with Rob Hart about his third Assassins Anonymous book Three Hitmen and a Baby!

Listen to hear about:

• Why the series resonates beyond action: Hart uses professional killers in recovery to examine guilt, redemption, personal growth, and whether people can truly change.
  
• Rob's writing philosophy, and why he believes even pantsers need to know where their story is headed emotionally.
  
• Why humor is essential in thrillers, arguing that comedy acts as a pressure-release valve that helps readers connect more deeply with characters and makes even high-stakes action scenes more memorable.

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, Gare catches Steph and I up on his trip to the Montreal Mystery Festival, and we all share what we gravitate toward in books, movies and TV shows when we need a comfort story!

Books We Talked About

• Verity
• Hot Girl Murder Club
• We Used to Live Here
• Sublimation
• The Midnight Knock
• Jar of Hearts
• The Truth About Melody Browne
• The Spin

TV Shows We Talked About

• Orphan Black
• Severance
• The Vampire Diaries
• New Girl
• The Office
• Parks and Recreation
• Schitt's Creek

Movies We Talked About

• Basic Instinct
• Oddity
• Cape Fear
• Black Christmas
• Verity
• Scream
• I Know What You Did Last Summer
• 10 Things I Hate About You

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, I talk with CJ Leede about her new horror novel Headlights!

Listen to hear about:

• How CJ originally planned to become a medieval historian, but after a professor helped her discover storytelling was what she wanted to pursue.
• How Headlights began with the idea of people waking up on the side of a highway wearing the skin of strangers, and evolved into a story about grief, mortality, family legacy, and the search for meaning.
• Why Leede treats setting as a character, using Colorado's beauty, danger, wildlife, and landscapes as metaphors for the novel's larger themes about life, death, and the unknown.
• How the novel contains investigative thriller and horror elements, but is really a book about confronting sadness, loss, and the things we cannot outrun within ourselves.
• Why horror can uniquely encompass mysteries, romance, literary fiction, supernatural stories, social commentary, and psychological explorations, making it one of the broadest and most creative genres available.

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Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

This week, Emma West joins and shares her reading journey, her favorite genres, and how she ended up the Inventory Manager at Wild Geese Books.

Listen to hear about:

• Emma's reading journey beginning as a substitute for formal education, and how she approached books as a way to keep learning and expanding her worldview.
• How both of us gravitate toward layered, "mind-bending" stories that require active engagement rather than straightforward "popcorn thrillers."
• How romance works best for uswhen it's about more than romance—family dynamics, grief, friendship, identity, or creative life make the emotional stakes richer.
• How books can explore identity, trauma, religion, immigration, and society through speculative or horror elements, with special praise for Sublimation and Yesteryear.
• Our shared obsession with Ashley Winstead, and how both of us now consider Hot Girl Murder Club our favorite book of hers!

Check Out Author Social Media Packages

Check out the Bookwild Community on Patreon

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Get Bookwild Merch

Follow @imbookwild on Instagram

Other Co-hosts On Instagram:

Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba