Transcript

AJ (00:21.198)
Hey everyone, welcome once again to podcast in death, the weekly podcast where we discuss the in death series of books by JD Rob. I am AJ.

Tara (00:36.792)
I’m Tara.

AJ (00:38.478)
And this is episode 290. are 10 away from 300, Tara, of a podcast in death. And in this episode, we are going to review the reviews of Dark in Death. And you know, Tara, I have this episode has a theme based on all of these reviews. This episode does have a theme. And do you know what this episode’s theme is?

Tara (00:52.546)
Can’t wait.

Tara (00:58.643)
this episode has a theme.

Tara (01:09.269)
No?

AJ (01:09.494)
I’m gonna give it to you musically.

AJ (01:22.104)
So it is a drama.

Tara (01:24.706)
Ha

AJ (01:27.864)
this episode.

Tara (01:29.299)
good.

AJ (01:31.534)
That by the way was a guy named Spencer Sutherland. I saw him on TikTok and he’s fantastic.

he’s very old school, like, kind of very kind of inspired by like Queen and, you know, that particular song.

Tara (01:44.12)
That’s

Tara (01:53.912)
was fun.

AJ (01:59.016)
I, so he’s got, he’s very.

AJ (02:14.038)
So it’s very Queen-like.

AJ (02:35.562)
Anyway, drama is the theme of this episode.

Tara (02:37.406)
Anyway. Good!

You know how much I love drama, so here we go.

AJ (02:44.662)
rights, all of these people need to stop being so fucking dramatic.

And we start with this really, really long, and I swear to God, Tara, this was in fact in one big long paragraph. So have fun with this.

Tara (03:00.422)
Okay, let me just have a little drink of water.

AJ (03:07.604)
Yeah. I thought you were, you know, having a little drink. Maybe that should have been something we did too, but.

Tara (03:13.752)
Right. Okay. Well, friends, here we go. One star. I tried so hard to like this book. Truly I did. But at one point not too far from the start of the book, I realized I was just kidding myself. This book was not only bad, but also problematic as well as just plain boring.

The main detective Eve Dallas is just not a good person and she has multiple very toxic mentalities. Also, hey, if you’ve never read these novels before, they are set in the future 2050 ish. This very unclear, so I suspect that she expects everyone to read the other 45 before this one, something as a former employee of a library that carries all her books. I can verify doesn’t happen.

AJ (04:06.636)
It does with most people, but.

Tara (04:09.27)
Right. Okay. Good job you worked in a library anyway. It’s strange to say that every other book would need to be read considering how big the list of them goes, but this is truly the case or you get random shocks from things like it being in the future or Eve’s husband being a former thief, yes, the billionaire, as well as lack of description of reoccurring characters.

AJ (04:13.9)
Hahaha

Tara (04:36.402)
and abbreviations for things that don’t currently exist. So I spent a bit of the book confused and had to use the context clues. Who is not fucking

AJ (04:43.712)
shock, shocking chat user context clues.

Tara (04:47.384)
That’s the whole fucking point of reading.

AJ (04:49.078)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Tara (04:51.916)
That is how it works. What? This book feels like it was written by a man. Like an extremely sexist man who has probably never had any woman friends. This book talk about how women could basically only envy other women or hate them. I don’t know what.

AJ (05:12.578)
I don’t even know.

Tara (05:16.436)
As a woman myself, I can confirm that this is untrue and I’ve had multiple friends who I’ve never envied or hated and multiple other women who I’ve been acquaintances with where this was also true. I’m so sick of movies and books and even the media’s sick need for pitting women against each other, including the I’m not like other girls trend. Why is this so necessary for women to all hate each other? It really disgusts me. It also has literally all the women as examples of that.

AJ (05:45.472)
It doesn’t though. Why? I don’t even know what they’re talking about in this. so here’s, here’s where I think that she got that from. They’re talking about, this was when Eve and Rorick read the books or were reading the books and they, and they were at dinner and they were talking about the books, right? And

Tara (05:46.71)
What?

What? Also every single woman was hot.

Tara (06:04.162)
Yeah.

AJ (06:13.0)
Eve said in her book that she was reading, she had figured out who the killer was. And they were talking about that. Like, how do you know? she said, Eve says something about the killer is a woman and Roarke is like, well, how do you even know that at the point that you’re at? How do you even know that? And

Eve says, it’s the way the killer looks at the Vicks body when the Vicks unconscious before the kill. It’s not with lust or disgust, not with admiration or perversion, it’s with envy. The firmness, the smoothness, the youth, an older woman envying the young. You could twist it sure and make it play the other way, but the killer’s thoughts and sensibilities at that moment are female and envious.

So like, that’s not even them making a statement about all women. know, and yeah, unless you want to take it as all older women are envious of younger women, that’s not the case, but some are, you know? So Eve is just saying in this case, how the book was worded was all about, look at this, you know, woman who is like young and her body is smooth and her,

Tara (07:21.024)
No, it’s literally this woman.

AJ (07:44.202)
know, thoughts that a guy wouldn’t have.

Tara (07:49.291)
Right.

AJ (07:50.21)
So that’s why she wrote it that way. So it’s not like she’s saying, you know, all women basically only envy or hate other women. Nothing else in this book says that. So I hate when people make generalities like this. It’s just dumb.

Tara (08:08.984)
These reviews are always so full of generalities and I’m just like, I don’t understand.

AJ (08:13.39)
Yeah, and it’s like, you can’t even use, you know, your, you know, what do you call it?

AJ (08:28.258)
What is the word, Tira?

Tara (08:30.84)
I don’t know what you’re trying to say.

AJ (08:32.546)
yeah, you, you, you, you basically, you can’t analyze the literature to actually understand what it’s saying. You have to, you know, this is somebody that’s skimming it and going like, well, she’s saying that you basically all women hate other women. You’re like, no, actually look at what was written and analyze it for what it’s saying. But we can’t do that for some reason.

Tara (08:59.276)
Yeah. Well.

This person has spent a large chunk of this review so far really focused on the idea that women supposedly hate other women. And I’m like, or just like let that go because that’s not what it is and you are overthinking it. But that’s just me, I guess. So anyway, also every woman was hot, had long legs and was skinny, except for the bad people who were the hated ones.

AJ (09:14.061)
Yeah.

AJ (09:18.186)
No. Yes.

Tara (09:32.19)
What are you talking about?

AJ (09:33.058)
What? They’re not… Okay.

Tara (09:36.872)
Another thing is this book used a slur to describe a trans person, and this is never seen as an issue. We have discussed this, and yes, and we agree with that statement, but I don’t know that that yeah, okay.

AJ (09:44.823)
Yes.

AJ (09:53.132)
And I believe that it was this book that was the last one that, because Nora’s used it a couple of times in this series, not a lot, maybe two or three, but this was the last book that she used that particular word. So.

Tara (10:01.558)
Yeah.

Tara (10:07.832)
Silence of the Lambs dealt with the trans community better, and it was published in 1988. This book was also very visibly sexist, where women were there to pleasure men only despite looking down on a man who controls his wife earlier in the book. I have no idea what you’re trying to say.

AJ (10:24.11)
And there’s no, this book wasn’t very visibly just about women pleasuring or they’re at a pleasure mat. don’t, again, I don’t even know where that, doesn’t know. Well, yeah, I mean, I think you could probably say that about origin because those, right.

Tara (10:32.076)
When does that happen in this series? This does not, it does not, like it doesn’t happen in this series any more than it happens in any series and anything out in the world.

Tara (10:49.272)
That was literally the fucking plot.

AJ (10:52.672)
And you can definitely say that about desperation, because that’s part of the plot. But the rest of the books, this is not about, know, or women are only good for, you know, pleasuring men. This is not, so I just really hate people that are like, this book is so sexist because it’s, you know, they’re saying this and it’s, when it’s not even that.

Tara (11:16.108)
Well, that’s the thing is like, it’s like even in those books, that’s not what the book is saying. The book is literally highlighting that as a thing, because guess what? A lot of the world thinks that way.

AJ (11:25.238)
Right. media literacy is what I was trying to, that’s the phrase I was trying to think about. So it’s, you know, yeah, people that lack media literacy. mean, even though, yeah, this person’s like, well, I used to work at a library. Well, great, but you have no media literacy. You cannot look at a thing. Yeah. You cannot look at a book and analyze it for what it is truly saying or what the, you know, message truly is here. So.

Tara (11:30.054)
okay, yeah, that’s okay.

Tara (11:42.508)
Yeah, you’ve no idea how to read a book.

AJ (11:54.7)
You know, I don’t know.

Tara (11:56.952)
Anyway, hypocritical. All good women in the book are given a tragic backstory, which is usually abuse. Eve is apparently abused, though it isn’t in this book, just on the Wikipedia page, and another woman’s husband is abusive. I know abuse is common, but this much of it felt like women are only valid if they’ve been abused, which is obviously untrue.

AJ (12:03.829)
Okay.

AJ (12:25.528)
What? What? What?

Tara (12:26.592)
What are you talking about? What?

AJ (12:32.042)
What? P-Buddy was never abused and she’s equally as valid as a character as Eve. Like, what are you talking about?

Tara (12:33.461)
I, I…

Tara (12:38.42)
Yes, but also like the the like the idea of a what I don’t think this person should read any books like zero books for you. You don’t have you don’t know how books work. Wow, this. OK. let’s see. The main character talks for probably a quarter of the book.

AJ (12:50.368)
Right? No.

Tara (13:05.674)
either mentioning in passing or full on paragraphs about how rich she is and then she says she isn’t rich but that her husband is. What?

AJ (13:17.934)
She doesn’t, god damn it, like stop. What the hell? She doesn’t talk.

Tara (13:22.422)
Like, my God.

like Eva else she keeps calling Eve, Eva. Don’t. Eva, darling. That makes you rich by association. There are also three sex scenes. I don’t care about them in the slightest and they were irrelevant in any way to the plot. You picked up a book where there is a young married couple. There’s going to be sex.

AJ (13:30.337)
Right.

AJ (13:46.518)
Right, and guess what? In any book, most of the time when you see characters eating dinner, it’s not relevant to the book either, but you put it in because it’s part of daily life.

Tara (13:56.416)
Ahem.

Tara (14:01.876)
Exactly. my god. Yeah, this person. I just want them to… I don’t know how you ever worked in library because you should not be around books. Speaking of being irrelevant to the plot, this author has obviously never heard of cutting the fat, or she has, but her editor already cut a lot and gave up and sent it to publishing. you’re so clever saying shit like that. God.

AJ (14:07.342)
You don’t understand books.

AJ (14:23.182)
Ha ha ha!

Tara (14:25.208)
There were so many unnecessary scenes that dragged on and then never led to anything and seemed to be for cameos of older characters. And since I have not read the 45 other books, I didn’t care, even though I did waste my time reading all the other I can all the other I can guarantee I wouldn’t care. That was all one bad sentence. OK.

AJ (14:43.31)
Okay, whatever.

Tara (14:47.16)
This book was very boring when someone was getting murdered and spent way too much time introducing characters who died and never shoo- or never showed up again. That probably compromised 70 % of the book.

AJ (15:00.247)
What?

Tara (15:02.904)
Again, you do not know how books work because that’s not what reading this book is like.

AJ (15:04.883)
It, you know what, it, literally couldn’t have comprised 70 % of the book because you’re saying up here that 30 % of the book was Eve talking about how rich she is. So 30 % of the book is Eve talking about how rich she is. And the other, you know, 70 % is talking about people who died that never showed up.

Tara (15:19.184)
Ahem.

Tara (15:29.036)
Yeah, so not only do you not understand books, you also don’t understand math. And while I can sympathize with not understanding math, this one’s pretty basic. So.

AJ (15:38.508)
I don’t know what percentage the sex scenes, because you didn’t give them a percentage up here, but…

Tara (15:44.28)
Well, again, the math will be off. So you also can’t guess the killer. So if you wanted to do that, like I did, it is impossible because they are never interviewed. That is not the fucking point of this book or any of her books. Thank you. Again, don’t read this book. That was disappointing. Also, she calls women skanks because of how they were living their lives.

AJ (15:47.317)
Okay.

AJ (16:11.342)
You know, I mean, we said when we reviewed it that, I mean, it’s not a favorite word of mine, but, you know, whatever.

Tara (16:11.392)
It’s there. Yeah.

Tara (16:18.008)
Yeah, that was how they were whatever. It’s their choices, so leave them alone and just don’t slut shame other women. It’s the same as comparing them like I already stated. It’s not not how it was done in the book, but OK. She also blames one of the murdered girls with her own death because she didn’t listen to police. You know whose fault it was that she was murdered? The murderers only. Yes. OK. But.

AJ (16:31.276)
Yeah, okay.

Tara (16:44.022)
You literally were given every fucking thing you could to avoid this. Because because, yes, it was the murderers fault, but you know what? What? You know how you could have not gotten murdered? You could have not listened to or not. You could have not gone. We talked about this. my God. Also, like, don’t come in here with your like holier than thou. Don’t blame the victim like. Yes, we get it. We we’re actually.

AJ (16:49.566)
Right, and you didn’t listen.

AJ (17:00.138)
Right. Yeah.

Tara (17:13.49)
Eve didn’t actually go, well, it’s her own fault she’s murdered. Eve was like, this is so fucking disappointing, because I gave her all the tools she needed to not die. God, you don’t know how books work.

AJ (17:20.492)
Yet she was frustrated. Yes. But next, yeah, the next line.

Tara (17:28.886)
As a victim of assault, she should understand how horrible victim flaming is.

AJ (17:34.702)
A completely different, completely different thing. There’s no way on earth that you could have blamed Eve for anything that happened to her.

Tara (17:40.01)
Yes, again, because it was.

Tara (17:47.192)
And that was lit.

AJ (17:48.17)
On the other hand, like we said, this, the woman that was murdered that she’s talking about here, you can kind of blame her because Eve told her and she didn’t listen.

Tara (17:58.124)
Yes, I mean, and here’s the thing is, it’s not even that we’re blaming her. It’s it’s extra frustrating because she had all, all she needed to survive that. And that is the part that we’re like, this is sure. Like, I guess you want to be like, yeah, that’s blaming the victim. What the fuck are you thinking? Like, what the fuck? This is not the same as being like, well, that’s what you wore and that’s what you deserve and blah, blah, blah. Like, what were you wearing? That kind of shit. That is.

AJ (18:07.946)
Right.

AJ (18:17.101)
Yeah.

AJ (18:25.656)
Right.

Tara (18:26.678)
This is like, you saw, you read the scene, or maybe you didn’t, because you don’t know how books work. You read the scene where Eve said, this is what’s going to happen. Don’t do it. Don’t go to the place. Here is all the information.

AJ (18:35.886)
Right. It’s kind of like if you had somebody who, you know, say you had somebody who you were at a bar with and you saw that they were super drunk when you were leaving the bar and you said, let me, let me drive you home. And they refused, let me get you a cab. They refused. tried to take their keys away. They refused. then next thing you know, next morning you’re hearing news reports that this person crashed into a tree and

and passed away. And it’s like, it’s kind of the same thing. Like you’re sad that that person did that. it was avoidable. You could have allowed me to drive you home, allowed me to call you a cab, all of this stuff. I tried to help you and you didn’t listen and now you’re no longer with us. And it’s like, you’re not gonna sit there and go like, know, fuck that person. What a complete asshole.

Tara (19:09.228)
Yeah.

Tara (19:13.376)
Yes, because it was avoidable.

AJ (19:35.168)
You might in some part of your brain say that like, why didn’t they listen to me? You would be frustrated more than anything else. Like we were saying about Eve and that’s, that’s, that’s where Eve was coming from in this situation. She was frustrated.

Tara (19:40.748)
Right, and.

Tara (19:49.624)
Right. Well, and also it’s not like Eve said that to the world. It’s not like she was like, you know, like being interviewed by Nadine and being like, and this victim did this to herself. She’s saying that to like Roark and Peabody. You know, like that I told her everything to look for and she didn’t listen. And all that’s coming from a place of frustration. That’s very valid. That’s incredibly valid.

AJ (19:54.325)
Right.

AJ (20:14.39)
Yes. Yes.

Tara (20:19.304)
I don’t know, man. I hate this reviewer. I know. I am also so overhearing the murderer’s description because Eve probably said it to 20 different people in the book who then repeated it back later. That’s.

AJ (20:22.254)
You

AJ (20:35.47)
Why is she telling a bunch of people how the murderer looked? Why is she doing that? Why could she possibly wanted to? Well, just in case somebody sees the person and then they can stop them. Like what is she supposed to do? Like I want you to be on the lookout for this person, but I’m not gonna tell you how this person looked because that would be boring.

Tara (20:42.808)
I know, right? I don’t know.

Tara (20:51.512)
AJ

Tara (20:59.712)
Because that would be boring for the people reading this book. Ugh, my god.

AJ (21:02.05)
Figure it out. How stupid would that be? I’m glad this person, hopefully this person’s not writing books now. Can you imagine?

Tara (21:10.75)
they don’t know how books work. So probably not. This book wasn’t worth the 799 I paid for it, not because of how boring it was, but just how problematic it was and how I hated every character. Okay. Eve also calls her husband by his last name, which was said so often, I was certain it was just a strange first name. No, that’s his name. That’s just his name.

AJ (21:14.409)
Hehehehehe

AJ (21:24.973)
Wow.

AJ (21:34.562)
That’s his name. Like you don’t understand this book series and now you’re judging it. Now you’re being all judgy.

Tara (21:40.952)
I also feel like if I read a book and they just refer to this character by a name the whole time, I’m just gonna be like, that’s their name. Why do you get to be, first of all, how do know that that’s not his first name? Because it’s his name, you know? But she’s like, I know it’s his last name. Do you? Because you don’t know how books work, especially not this series. His name is Roy.

AJ (21:52.749)
Right.

AJ (22:01.878)
Right.

AJ (22:07.904)
Right. I love this next part too.

Tara (22:10.954)
good. Also Eve’s friend gives her boyfriend a fake name and then ends up really liking him and that is apparently not an issue. What?

AJ (22:21.646)
I couldn’t figure that out either. It took me some time. It took me to some time to figure out what was going on here. But because this person doesn’t understand, has no media literacy and doesn’t understand how to read books, this person thinks that Nadine gave Jake the name Lois. And now everybody’s pretending like, that’s not a problem that she gave him a fake name.

Tara (22:24.312)
What the fuck?

AJ (22:49.73)
because this person doesn’t understand because they haven’t read the other books that he gave her that nickname and why. But it’s worse than that because in this book is when Eve and talk about that and Eve says to Roarke, he calls her Lois and Roarke goes, Lois, for Lois Lane. It’s even, yes, it’s even explained in this book and you still didn’t get it.

Tara (23:05.002)
Yes! Yes, that’s right!

Tara (23:12.148)
Yes, it’s in in this book!

AJ (23:20.044)
because you are a dumbass who has no media literacy.

Tara (23:27.19)
Yeah, but no, you tried to give some fake, what? Okay, I can’t.

AJ (23:34.03)
Like, now I like him and what am I gonna do? I gave him the name Lois because that didn’t happen.

Tara (23:34.476)
There are so many.

Tara (23:40.342)
That’s not what happened. my God. There were so many loose ends and parts unfinished because she didn’t write an ending that would be an extra hundred pages. Quick tip. If you feel like your ending is too long, but you haven’t given people endings, cut them for the first part of the book, because if they aren’t in the natural ending, they are likely unimportant. What?

AJ (23:43.896)
Dumbass. Honestly.

AJ (24:01.134)
You know what, you are not, you are not worthy to give anybody like Nora Roberts a quick tip on writing a book. Quick tip on writing this book, Nora Roberts. Like, can we?

Tara (24:13.24)
Could you imagine? Could you imagine? Like, Nora Roberts reading, reading some of these reviews, like, just, just like, you know.

Like, feel like, I feel like for a vacation, Nora just needs to be like, I’m gonna turn on. I feel like if Nora listens to any episode of ours, it’s gonna be a review of the reviews. And she’s gonna be like, of this one.

AJ (24:37.614)
It better be a review of reviews. And it better be a review of the reviews of this. This review of the reviews is going to be the one that she has to listen to.

Tara (24:45.108)
I mean, I think it is, and Nora, we got you.

AJ (24:47.246)
Yeah, everybody out there, make sure that you continually tell Nora she has to listen to this particular review of the reviews. Thanks for listening, Nora. I’m just anticipating that she’s actually going to listen. What now? What now?

Tara (24:53.688)
Review the reviews of Dark and Death. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Nora. Oh my God. Oh. Right. Also. Oh, what now? Here we go. Also, everyone in the book remembers the exact number of days since something happened because they all had some serious event happened to count.

AJ (25:07.906)
Hahaha

AJ (25:17.738)
You know, that’s how fucking memory works. Tara, you, like listen, I can’t, I cannot give you like the exact day and the time, but I can probably clock everything that’s happened to me by when my mom died.

And that’s not, and that’s just how memory works.

Tara (25:42.22)
Yeah.

Tara (25:46.104)
Yeah.

AJ (25:47.501)
You know.

Tara (25:49.044)
It’s also like, again, this is this is fiction. We’re writing a fucking book here. Well, OK, but here’s the thing is that this this reviewer said also everyone in the book remembers the exact number of days and something happened because they all had some serious event happen to count. That isn’t how people work. I don’t trust you to know how people work.

AJ (25:54.637)
Yeah.

AJ (26:12.928)
It’s exactly how people work. No, you don’t know how people work.

Tara (26:16.504)
You have not given me any reason to think that you have any authority to say this. OK. Oh, oh, oh. Also, the author obviously thinks highly of herself because she basically did a self insert with the author of the dark series.

AJ (26:24.686)
Okay.

AJ (26:39.608)
No

This so it’s hard for me to believe that this person did not come into the series with a specific agenda like this person had in her mind that they hated Nora Roberts and They’re gonna absolutely hate this book there. cannot convince me that this person didn’t read this book specifically because they hated the author Because that’s what this is this is their hate of the author even before they read the book and

Tara (27:09.014)
or the, yeah.

Tara (27:15.192)
Yeah.

AJ (27:15.724)
Because of that, basically didn’t understand the entire book because they were so fixated on hating everything about the book.

Tara (27:25.272)
on hating. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, there’s, there’s this whole thing where you’re trying to like, hate on this thing that’s popular and well known and considered good by so many people. And like, we’ve, we’ve all done that. But you know what I’m not going to do? I’m not going to do that on the internet. I’m not going to be like,

AJ (27:38.166)
Right. Right, I-

AJ (27:45.344)
Yeah, it’s really funny how this person was complaining about I hate this trend quote unquote of I’m not like all girls. But they they have basically decided to continue the trend in my opinion, of hate reading a book because you dislike because it’s popular. That’s what happened here.

Tara (28:06.134)
Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. I, and I’ve said this on the podcast before, I have done that, I have done that, it’s been a long time since I’ve done that. And I would never do that again. And also, when I did, I didn’t go to the internet and go, let me tell you why this is terrible.

AJ (28:15.203)
Yeah.

AJ (28:20.728)
But.

AJ (28:24.958)
Yeah, that’s what I was gonna ask. Did you then go and write a one-star review for that author?

Tara (28:34.582)
I mean, I didn’t. also, like, it’s also really funny to me. Like, first of all, thank you, I guess, for the entertainment for our review, the reviews. But but here’s the thing is that, if I’m reading, if I because I will read reviews on Amazon for books and whatever, I am actually not interested in the one star reviews. I want I will read the four and five star reviews and I’ll only read a few because I want to know how someone truly feels about it. And I don’t think that you’re getting

AJ (28:42.755)
hahahahah

AJ (28:50.401)
Right.

AJ (29:02.487)
Yeah.

Tara (29:04.384)
I don’t think you’re getting real feelings from this kind of review. You’re getting someone hate reading, you’re getting someone who just wants to be an asshole. You’re getting, I mean, and I know this because we do the review, the reviews, you know, and if I read a review, if I read a five star review, that’s just like, my God, I love this book. And maybe, you know, maybe so happy. I love this author. That’s not a helpful review to me either as a potential reader. But what it is, is also like the joy that I see in some of these reviews of people just being excited.

AJ (29:09.357)
Yeah.

AJ (29:17.015)
Yep.

AJ (29:26.712)
Right.

Tara (29:34.048)
about a book that they like. And that’s like, it takes more effort to go on here and be a negative bitch than to like, go, my God, I just love this book and I have to share that with the world. So you do that. I mean, like, again, I’m grateful for the entertainment or review the reviews and we love it. And I’m happy to, you know, always bitch about these people. But it’s just a wild, it’s just a wild like thought process to me.

AJ (29:42.094)
Right.

Tara (30:03.704)
that you are so angry about this book that I am still reading the first fucking review and it has been 30 minutes since you hit 30 minutes since you hit record on this episode. I know you’re going to cut things out, but that is wild to me that you are so passionately nasty about this and about a bestselling author who does not give a fuck what you say.

AJ (30:03.936)
Yeah.

AJ (30:14.882)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

AJ (30:21.133)
Yeah.

AJ (30:26.551)
Right.

AJ (30:31.188)
No, she does not. Yep.

Tara (30:32.107)
But we do because we’re going to make fun of you. We don’t know your name. We’re not coming at you. So it’s fine. At least I think it is anyway. So the author obviously thinks highly of herself because she basically did a self insert with the author of the dark series. Her series is called In Death and the book is called Dark In Death. Really? Also, this author was the only one the cops said, right? Actual good police novels ever.

AJ (30:39.516)
Hahaha

Tara (31:01.824)
And they talked often about how good she was and how everyone was so much of a fan because they like it. Yeah.

AJ (31:07.276)
No, that’s not, it’s, they never said she’s the only one that’s ever written any good books about, they just said she does. She writes good books about police procedures. Like, not that she’s the only one ever.

Tara (31:13.397)
They didn’t!

Tara (31:18.326)
Yeah.

Tara (31:24.97)
Also, like if Nora did want to, because I, you know, sure, like there was definitely, we talked about this when we were viewed, like there’s definitely a little bit of that, like, I guess, I guess you could say inserting herself. Sure. I don’t care. It’s her fucking book. Right? Like, come on. you haven’t, how many books, like how many books are out there that are published that are,

AJ (31:37.954)
Did she self insert is that yes. So what? Right.

Tara (31:51.937)
I’m not even going say whether they’re good or bad, but how many published books out there include like one note main characters who perhaps the author has been like, I’m, you know, I’m imagining myself falling into this beautiful romance. And so they’re describing them and they kind of sound like the who fucking cares? Are you going to read it? OK, maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t like I don’t I don’t care. Nor Roberts can insert herself any fucking story she writes. I don’t I literally.

AJ (32:04.605)
Right, right.

AJ (32:18.154)
Exactly.

Tara (32:19.69)
If her next, if the next Eve Dallas book has a writer named Nora Roberts in it, I’m going to be like, that’s so cool. Right. Do do what the fuck you want, Nora. Like, like she doesn’t need my permission. She definitely doesn’t need this person’s permission. It’s good to know that if she were looking for permission, she’d probably ask us before this person. But she’s never going to be looking for permission from any of us. So it’s fine. She’s a star. And yeah, fuck this person anyway.

AJ (32:25.326)
That would be fantastic. Yeah.

Yeah. Nope.

AJ (32:42.58)
No.

Tara (32:49.58)
We’re still talking about this review. The book, the book felt like she tried to write a criminal minds episode, but it got rejected. So she just turned it into a book. I would it would clearly work so much better as a script because you don’t have to read all the boring screen directions, which there were many of. Again, you don’t know how books work. You literally don’t know how books work. my God. OK, I suppose my rant is over, is it?

AJ (32:51.982)
We’re almost done.

AJ (33:09.358)
Okay. No, you don’t.

Tara (33:16.332)
This book sucked and it sucked even more for being so sexist, transphobic, and just plain problematic. Obviously I’m a minority here, but I stand by my opinion and believe that these are true problems. If you find them okay, you should seek help seriously. You, someone should seek help.

AJ (33:30.956)
I’m honestly, I am not the one that needs to Kelv. Yeah.

Tara (33:35.522)
That like that wasn’t an unhinged rant that had won so many untrue statements.

AJ (33:39.182)
And the thing is, I don’t… Look, there are so many actual transphobic people in this

Tara (33:51.064)
Thanks

AJ (33:51.86)
Nora inserting probably a word that, I mean, it was a word that was popular. It was even a word that was said by trans people for years when Nora, you know, I mean, when Nora was growing up. So it was just something that she was used to saying, probably, and

Tara (34:19.512)
Probably.

AJ (34:19.944)
One character said it once in this book. And like we said a couple of times before that, that does not make this book transphobic.

Tara (34:32.056)
Yeah. The other thing is like you have to you have to think about the context that is like, you know, like we we get like in the theater world, we get a little anxious when we’re like, oh, my God, like I like when we did ragtime, the guy who like. like you’ve I don’t know if you’ve seen ragtime, but the guy who like destroys Cole House’s car, he’s like super fucking racist and he

AJ (34:33.632)
I don’t agree with that.

Yeah.

Tara (35:02.454)
Like the guy who played the role when we did the show is like the super, super nice guy. And he’s like, I have to say that word. And we can’t be like, well, we can’t say it now because we’re not telling the story properly. And no one in that room is going, well, Shane is a piece of shit because he says that word. No, we know that that’s the story and that’s how it’s written and that’s how it’s supposed to be written because that’s the story we’re telling. When I did that World War II drama and we’re out here like saying

AJ (35:09.921)
Yeah.

Tara (35:32.082)
racial slurs about being around people in Japan. Like, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not like it’s not that we are racist. And it’s not that the playwright was racist. I mean, he could have been, I guess, I don’t know. But like, that was that was what they were doing. That’s how they were speaking about these people. And within the context of the story, and even like,

AJ (35:38.541)
Right.

Tara (36:01.428)
Even if, again, Nora is choosing to use this word at this time, and we’ve already talked that we did not like that, we don’t think that’s okay, and we wanted that to be better, that does not automatically mean that she is transphobic. It meant that she made a choice to use that word. that’s like saying that because a person that you know transitioned and you got their pronouns wrong while you’re…

AJ (36:10.242)
Right.

AJ (36:16.055)
Right.

Tara (36:30.966)
while you’re inserting that into your life, that you’re transphobic because you got their pronouns wrong once. No, you’re not. You don’t want to get their pronouns wrong. You want to get them right. You’re going to get them right. But you got them wrong once. If a trans person was like, well, I can’t be friends with you because you got my pronouns wrong. They wouldn’t have anyone. Yeah, so I’m suddenly transphobic if I…

AJ (36:38.624)
Right. Yeah.

AJ (36:54.624)
Right. So you’re clearly transphobic.

Tara (37:00.396)
You know, and I’m again, like, I’m not, I’m not Nora. I’m not, you know, and I know, I, feel like it probably sounds like we are out here trying to like, be like, I have to understand why, why Nora would do this because I know she’s a really, really good person, but that’s what we’re doing because we know she is like, that’s, that’s why we’re talking like this. That’s why we’re going, Nora did not intend this. We didn’t say it’s okay.

AJ (37:01.325)
Yeah.

AJ (37:21.068)
Right. Well, we’re not saying we have to understand it. I understand it. I, because that word was used regularly. That word was a word that people used. And, and I think it was just that probably nobody had said it to Nora before like, you know, it’s probably another word you should use. But clearly somebody said it after this, that after this book came out, because she has not used it since then.

Tara (37:27.19)
Yes!

Tara (37:38.68)
Yeah.

AJ (37:48.094)
So it does take, know, somebody saying like, hey, maybe you shouldn’t use that. The transphobic person would be the person where if you said you probably shouldn’t use that word anymore. And they were like, I don’t care what you say. I feel like my characters would say that. So going to continue to use it. That would be problematic.

AJ (38:17.805)
Right.

Tara (38:36.556)
when you didn’t actually read this book properly, you’re allowed to not like the book. You’re allowed to be like, Eve’s a bitch, Eve is a bitch, yes. You’re allowed to be mad that that word was used because it is harsh to just be like, God, right? Because we live in this time and we’re, as a, I guess, world of people who are actually decent humans are trying to be better. So I’m not saying that,

AJ (38:52.504)
Right.

Tara (39:05.782)
that’s wrong for you to feel these ways, but the amount of incorrect false statements and just assumptions and the fact that you don’t know how to fucking read a book.

AJ (39:13.006)
All right.

AJ (39:16.576)
Right, and that’s what I take exception to. Like somebody reading this and seeing that word like once in the text and then automatically going, well, this book is transphobic. Instead of saying in your review, like she used this unfortunate word, I wish she hadn’t used it. She should think about maybe not using it anymore. Hopefully her future books won’t use it. And,

And that’s perfectly fine to me to say that, but just like, well, this whole book is transphobic, obviously, you know, gives somebody some fucking grace. You know what saying? Anybody, anyway. Anywho.

Tara (39:57.9)
Yeah. Anyway, so 40 minutes in, AJ is going to read the next for you.

AJ (40:03.822)
Thank goodness we’re finally past that. I did tell you that you were going to be angry at the first one.

Tara (40:09.112)
Yep, yep, you weren’t me.

AJ (40:11.584)
I warned you. Yeah. Okay. Next one star review. How could this book get four and a half stars? Dark and Death is so far off the scale of Rob’s earlier novels in the series that the context is perjurious to Rob’s name.

Tara (40:29.1)
That doesn’t mean what you think it means, okay.

AJ (40:30.804)
Yeah, the basis of the story is a killer taking characters from author Blaine Delano’s novels and murdering real people that simulate these fictional characters. Good premise for an interesting storyline, but terrible writing. Our heroine, Lieutenant Eve Dallas, known to be an intelligent, strong cop, seems to run in circles while others solve the mystery and take down the perp.

AJ (40:58.58)
Others are solving this mystery. She’s just running in circles like what? Like, yeah.

Tara (41:01.938)
yep, yep. Someone else. Yes, someone else physically took down this person because they were strong and an ass kicker just like Eve. Who solved? Yeah, who solved this? Who solved this? Because I read the book and it was Eve.

AJ (41:12.002)
Right.

AJ (41:20.93)
Well, apparently Nadine did because it was Nadine brings Delano to Eve. Since Delano figures out through the media, her characters were carbon copies of two recent murders. How was Eve supposed to know that before then? Like she didn’t read these books. So it’s not like they solved the mur- we solved it. Eve didn’t solve what we did. Right, exactly. And who figured out from there who it was? Yeah.

Tara (41:36.384)
right? But also who right? Who read the fan mail? Eve read the fucking fan mail. Like it’s not like Delano came in. Yeah.

my god. Anyway.

AJ (41:52.169)
boy. Detectives from face recognition of witnesses find the name of the killer.

Tara (41:58.656)
That’s how being a police works. Being a police.

AJ (42:00.812)
Right, that’s being a police. That’s how, no, you’re right. Being a…

Tara (42:06.648)
I’m sorry, I lost all my intelligence when I read that last review.

AJ (42:09.76)
Right? Yeah. We did lose a few brain cells listening to that first one. No, that’s how a team of police work. That’s that, you know, because Eve doesn’t do that work. Eve doesn’t look through facial recognition. She has somebody to do that. That’s not her job. So she goes to that person. And that’s not like, well, other people solve this. No, they all work together. That’s the whole fucking point.

Tara (42:13.698)
Yeah.

Tara (42:19.318)
Yes! Yes!

Tara (42:36.374)
Right? That does not equal Eve running in circles. What?

AJ (42:42.306)
Right, and okay, so to continue, and the big letdown after 300 plus pages of chasing her tail has Eve standing there watching a civilian take down the killer. Eve’s big moment is to harass and book the killer. What a disastrous addition to what was once an exceptional and enticing series.

Tara (43:07.988)
If you didn’t find that takedown fucking awesome, what is wrong with you? Yeah. The rest of the world who loves the series was like, hell yeah, that’s awesome. Eve thought it was awesome.

AJ (43:12.002)
Well Eve didn’t do it. Somebody else had to do it for her. Like I-

AJ (43:19.416)
You know, it’s like, yeah, it’s like, I hate to like use this example, but it’s a good example to use. The recent like shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia. And it would be like you saying a civilian had to run in there and take the guy’s gun away, you know.

Tara (43:36.716)
Yeah. Yeah.

AJ (43:48.29)
The police did nothing. Like, well, no, because the police, you know, it’s like the civilian decided to act before the police did or before the police could get there. Like that’s all that happened in that situation. The civilian decided they could act and they acted. Like sometimes that happens. And the civilian, like this is, we have, this is why we have terms like citizens arrest because sometimes civilians see something happening.

Tara (44:08.758)
like we look at this.

AJ (44:17.802)
and they subdue a person and then they call the police. Like that happens all the time. So you can’t, but you can’t, you know, like sit there and go like, but so Eve did nothing. Eve did absolutely nothing. She didn’t even do anything. She was like chasing her tail while no, she wasn’t. She was at the house, wasn’t she?

Tara (44:20.983)
Yes.

Tara (44:31.8)
You didn’t even do anything.

Tara (44:42.018)
Thank you.

AJ (44:42.082)
She was at the house. She was like, if that woman hadn’t done anything, she would have caught them. But we just happened to be that this one character in this one book had the training to take down the person. Like, don’t understand, so people are so dumb.

Tara (44:58.882)
Well, that that’s completely like, no, that doesn’t make any sense. It’s a disaster. is a letdown of once great series because Eve, Eve got to take a break and watch someone else kick ass. Do they say that when like Roarke takes someone down? Wasn’t there a book where wasn’t there a book where Peabody took down the bad guy? Yes. What how do they feel about that?

AJ (45:03.127)
Disasterous.

AJ (45:19.501)
Right? I don’t know.

AJ (45:24.675)
Yeah.

that

I mean, just, I know what to say about this. Dumb. That’s all I can say. Stop it. So, and I also keep in mind that I wanted to hit all the highlights that were in the book of Ghost Rider and what else, what was the other criticisms in the book that they were saying like,

Tara (45:33.654)
Wild.

Tara (45:37.666)
Dumb! Ugh. Anyway, okay. Well, let’s read another one I’m sure that I will not feel angry about.

Tara (45:58.795)
of people.

AJ (46:01.454)
them wanting the character to, you know, do things that the writer didn’t write. Yeah. So I wanted to try to hit all the highlights with these, you know, because it’s ironic to me that these people read that book and then still complain about the same things that were in the book. It’s, it was, it’s just amazing. So, sorry, go ahead.

Tara (46:06.186)
the characters to get together or to, yeah.

Tara (46:14.968)
Can’t wait.

Tara (46:24.568)
I love I love it. No, I love it. Okay One star did someone besides JD Robb write this book was it supposed to be witty hip it was not When did Eve start swearing so much?

AJ (46:42.706)
also swearing. That was another thing that people in the book were complaining about, the swearing. Like real people don’t say fuck.

Tara (46:50.804)
Yeah, we were like, we were like, Nora took that right from a review. when did he start swearing so much? It was irritating and pointless. When did everyone start repeating words over and over? This entire book was so poorly written. It was adolescent and boring. There was no feeling at all in the characters. The sex scenes were nothing. Maybe it was written badly on purpose.

AJ (46:52.578)
When did Eve start swearing so much?

AJ (47:11.575)
Wow.

Tara (47:18.616)
To emulate the bad writing of the killer, I have read the entire death series, except the two prior to this one, more than once and I am afraid to waste my time and money on the two I missed. Very, very disappointing.

AJ (47:32.894)
And we talked about how one of the sex scenes specifically in this book is one of my favorite. Just because of everything that happened in that scene. it’s like, this is somebody that, I mean, I’m sorry. You know what? I’m not sorry to say it. This person’s a fucking prude. I can’t, the swearing, the swearing was just irritating and pointless. And the sex scenes, my God.

Tara (47:41.63)
Yeah!

AJ (48:02.21)
Like, you know, shut the fuck up. Don’t read this series, it’s not for you.

Tara (48:04.972)
You have been reading this, yeah, like, if you’ve been reading this series and you’re like, the sex scenes, wow, wow, wow, like, what, what are you just like, what?

AJ (48:11.982)
This was one of the better sex scenes. was so romantic. That whole scene in the ballroom was fantastic. It was very meaningful for both of them. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. You need to stop reading the series.

Tara (48:37.388)
Yeah, well, you know, don’t go back and read those two you missed. You’ll be disappointed.

AJ (48:42.944)
Yeah, yeah, don’t do it. All right, let’s go to this next one start review. So glad I’m not the only one that picked up the on the fact that this is not Nora Roberts writing style for the in death series. And quite frankly, it sickens me that they thought they could pass off, pass this off on those of us that have literally been reading these stories for the last 20 years. I am absolutely

Tara (48:56.051)
my god.

AJ (49:12.854)
devastated by this turn. Do you see why- do you see why the theme of this is drama?

Tara (49:19.138)
Drama. So much fucking drama.

AJ (49:21.506)
Drama. I am devastated by this turn of events. But it’s imagined turn of events because she’s not using a fucking ghostwriter.

Tara (49:25.954)
What? I need you to get a fucking life.

AJ (49:33.326)
So to continue, boring, beyond belief, and so deeply frustrating when you know beyond any doubt that you are not reading the characters that have been a part of your life, personal time for almost half of your life. Did the writer publishers honestly believe that we wouldn’t, couldn’t tell the difference between book one and book 46?

Tara (49:33.42)
Get a fucking life.

Tara (49:41.335)
Ahem.

AJ (50:02.466)
The last three books have been written by someone other than Nora Roberts, and after this much time, I am afraid that it’s time to walk away from this series. I’m absolutely heartbroken that Nora Roberts would treat her fans like this.

Tara (50:07.729)
my god.

AJ (50:21.983)
And the Oscar goes to…

Tara (50:24.984)
this person. That’s too dramatic. We we we’re we’ve gone too far. We’ve gone too far, guys.

AJ (50:31.854)
Absolutely heartbroken that Nora would treat her fans in this way. Like, what the fuck, dude? Honestly, like you are the exact person that Nora wrote about in this book. I think that a lot of this is people saw themselves and were pissed.

Tara (50:40.298)
Yeah, what the fuck?

That was…

Tara (50:49.832)
yes! maybe… yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, maybe Nora Roberts is a time traveler and she knew that people would write this about this book. And she was like, I’m not only am going to write exactly what you wrote, but fucking insane. my God.

AJ (51:00.204)
Maybe.

AJ (51:04.012)
Maybe?

AJ (51:12.814)
Now I have another long one that’s also very traumatic.

Tara (51:16.984)
Well, it’s all good. Let’s go. Let’s go with the drama, because guess what? It’s two stars. It’s a two star drama. mean, this is should I read this like it’s a dramatic monologue?

AJ (51:21.72)
Drama!

AJ (51:32.204)
Yes.

You

Tara (51:41.426)
stars. The essence of the characters is what makes this series so special. After 45 plus books with these characters, you develop a sense of who they are and what they’re like, of course, you allow room for change and personal growth. The main character in this latest installment seemed off. They sounded flat, lifeless, and without their usual spunk and je ne sais quoi. Only Galahad, the cat.

seemed very much like himself. There wasn’t enough interaction between the secondary characters, Dr. Mira, McNabb, Nadine et al., and Dallas, which made their appearances very perfunctory. Even Peabody seemed to have a limited role. She was there, but didn’t have a presence. Distracting syntax errors were cause for frustration.

I had to reread some sentences to make sense of what was happening. There were also times when I had to reread dialogue to discern who was speaking. As for the mystery, it was okay, but did not compensate for the flat characters. The idea of a serial killer copycatting the murders from the books of a popular mystery author sounded promising. However, I couldn’t get into how the case was worked. Again,

AJ (52:46.136)
Mmm.

Tara (53:07.252)
Not enough Peabody, not enough McNabb, and not enough Feeny. There were things I appreciated, like the fact that the majority of Dallas’s dreams have moved away from the unspeakable horrors of her childhood and unto other things, a sign of progress in her recovery. Some of the reverie between Dallas and Peabody was entertaining. I enjoyed the humorous use of the word skank.

Additional insight into a few of Roarke’s past crimes was interesting. I also liked Nadine’s young new protégé, Quilla, who I believe first appeared in Concealed in Death. I’m curious to see where they’ll take her character. And something that gave me a hearty chuckle was the reference to ghost writing. I felt the reference was a hat tip from JD Robb to the naysayers, me included.

who have suggested that ghostwriting has occasionally been used for this series. If you’re new to the series, take heed. These books make good standalone mysteries, but I highly recommend them in sequential order for maximum enjoyment and understanding of the characters. This book missed the mark by a ton. It’s undoubtedly the worst one in the series thus far. Nevertheless, my love for the series remains

untainted and I’m willing and I’m hoping the next installment will exemplify why.

AJ (54:38.122)
Okay, I don’t… Sure.

Tara (54:43.224)
I’m very confused as to like…

AJ (54:43.63)
Tara (54:49.921)
I don’t know.

You were like, I didn’t like that all of this was not here or everyone seemed off. And then it was like, I really liked these moments. I really liked this moment.

AJ (55:02.932)
Right. And I just realized that that was a two star and I added two more one stars after it. So at least that was a two star. So just a couple of short one stars because I saw these and I had to include them. I just couldn’t not include them. One star. It was OK if you like a book that doesn’t make sense.

Tara (55:11.546)
well, you know, that was a highlight. We can just jump back into one stars for a moment, because that’s how that goes. Well, that’s Understandable.

AJ (55:32.108)
The police introduced some information about suspect they were looking for without ever mentioning how they obtained it. I wrote to the publisher and apparently they don’t care. Maybe the last JD Robb book I read.

Tara (55:48.792)
The police introduced information about a suspect they were looking for without ever mentioning how they obtained it. Literally, we watched them obtain it. We watched them obtain it in the fucking book.

AJ (55:57.246)
Right? No, no, you’re wrong. No, you’re wrong. You’re so wrong that this person had to write to the publisher about it. they apparently, the publisher apparently didn’t care. Didn’t care about her opinion. Like this is all, this is exactly what this whole book was about, but sure. Sure, Jan.

Tara (56:03.486)
AJ (56:17.58)
This one’s gonna make you angry. This next one is written by a man, it’s gonna make you angry. I’m very sorry, even though it’s so short, but it’s still gonna make you angry.

Tara (56:26.05)
Okay, here we go. One star. Well, I gave it 100 pages. It was my first of this author, but I won’t be back. I just don’t enjoy this type of story from female authors. They try to come across as vicious and sexy, but it just doesn’t work. They don’t think the same as men and the stories always suffer in my opinion. I wish I could say different.

AJ (56:47.246)
You can. You just chose not to. You chose to put your sexism all up in this, you know, review.

Tara (56:52.152)
Wooah!

Tara (56:56.504)
They don’t think the same as men and the story has always suffered, my opinion.

AJ (56:59.451)
Wow. Yeah.

Tara (57:03.864)
Wow, wow, wow, you are so tough because you wrote this anonymously on the fucking internet. Wow, you’re big. Well, that’s true. I’m well, ooh. Wow, that’s that’s bold. You’re very brave, very brave saying shit like that on Goodreads.

AJ (57:07.054)
Hahahaha

AJ (57:11.95)
They didn’t though because their names are on there. It’s Goodreads.

AJ (57:26.85)
Well, the fact that he feels like he’s so right that he can put it on Goodreads and not worry about what people think about it.

Tara (57:31.192)
yikes, that is messy.

AJ (57:37.362)
That is, well, know, sexist. don’t know. That’s one of the most sexist reviews I’ve ever read and it’s only like four paragraphs. How you can fit all of that sexism into four paragraphs. I mean, I have to give you some props for that. You fit a lot of sexism into these four paragraphs, but my God, dude.

Tara (57:40.684)
Wow. Fucking.

Tara (57:57.72)
Yeah, you

Tara (58:02.528)
I’m not gonna give you any of that, fuck you. I’ll let AJ be the nice one.

AJ (58:05.142)
Okay. All right.

So how about we go back to two star reviews?

Tara (58:15.197)
Okay, well, we know how well it went last time, so I’m sure it can’t be any worse.

AJ (58:18.158)
No, right? Alright, two stars. JD Robb lets her fans know that she doesn’t appreciate the speculation that she as Nora Roberts and as JD Robb might have a ghostwriter. I’ve been reading that speculation in reviews for standalone books by Nora Roberts and in the Indes series for a couple of years. This book lets her fans know what she thinks about it and it isn’t nice.

Well, yeah, if somebody was accusing you of having a ghostwriter, like, you know, I’m not going to read through the reviews to see if anyone else agrees with me, but did you read that too? Yeah, that’s what this book was about. Dumbass. She made it obvious. She wasn’t hiding that. That she’s pissed off that people are accusing her of having ghostwriters. That was not hidden in this book. So like, you’re not doing anything by saying

Tara (58:49.622)
Why would it be nice?

Tara (59:04.223)
Ha

Tara (59:07.98)
Right?

AJ (59:17.098)
I noticed that. Did anybody else notice it? Like, yes. Because all the rest of us know how to read a book.

Tara (59:23.126)
Yeah, well there are people here who don’t as we know, so.

AJ (59:25.549)
haha

This book, in the vernacular, was a spanking or the middle finger, whichever visual you prefer. Drama!

Tara (59:37.144)
Fuck, okay. You didn’t have to say it like that.

AJ (59:43.254)
but she did, Tara.

Tara (59:46.118)
Sarp. I guess so.

AJ (59:49.242)
the plot is typical. The follow through is routine right down to the botched op and the rush to wrap it up with Roarke. The op wasn’t botched. What are you talking about? I don’t, okay. yeah. the rush to wrap it up with Roarke at her side while everyone else follows other leads. It’s not bad. Just typical.

Tara (01:00:01.423)
They don’t know how to read books either, clearly.

AJ (01:00:13.374)
I’ve written mediocre reviews before and I do point out that Nora Roberts at her worst is still a better writer than a, and storyteller than many, many, many published writers. Bottom line, right? And here’s another mediocre review that you’ve written. Bottom line, the story was bland. I didn’t appreciate the.

Tara (01:00:26.37)
This is a mediocre review, correct?

AJ (01:00:37.77)
I only like my fans when they leave me alone and nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen attitude. Get over yourself already. I did appreciate the continuation of the story. I did appreciate the tightness of the cast. Sometimes it feels like she’s gotten to include every character she’s ever written in the series in this book. There was a little of that, but as much as in past books.

And I appreciate that she tells a good story even if it isn’t her best. I don’t buy Nora Roberts books anymore. I only buy the In Death series when the price goes down, meaning another has been released and I won’t buy that one until another has been released. But I’m not interested in more if she continues to bite the hand that feeds her. And she gave me her response to that line in the book. Have it your way, Miss Rob.

Tara (01:01:27.357)
my god.

Tara (01:01:37.388)
Wow, you are so tough. Have it your way. Right? Like, I promise you the like $17.99 you spent on this book is like not making a break in it for her. She does not give a fuck.

AJ (01:01:41.99)
Bite the hand that feeds her.

AJ (01:01:55.51)
Yeah. I won’t read her books anymore if she continues to complain about the shitty things we say about her in our reviews. Like, okay.

Tara (01:02:02.912)
right? Right? I can’t believe she does that. Wow.

AJ (01:02:12.782)
boy. I don’t know. All right, more drama in this next one.

Tara (01:02:18.523)
Well, here we go, another, more drama!

Two stars.

Tara (01:02:30.27)
more of personal attack than anything else. A very obvious swipe at the ones who accuse JD, Nora of plagiarism, and a swipe at her fans that want Eve and Roarke to have a child, all wrapped up in a mystery connected to a mystery writer. As with the most recent books in the series, this story runs to the monotonous rather than intriguing. Maybe it’s just about time to put Eve to bed as it seems. JD lov- maybe it’s about time to put Eve to bed as it seems JD has lost.

interest and is more concerned with hitting back at those that irritate her via her books. Or you are one of the dumbass that she’d be talking about. Personal attack? Yeah, I guess so.

AJ (01:03:06.286)
hahahaha

Again, I feel like a lot of these people saw themselves in this book and were pissed. This person obviously saw themselves and was pissed.

How dare she?

Tara (01:03:26.274)
How dare she talk about truth?

AJ (01:03:29.749)
Right?

Tara (01:03:31.66)
Wow, that is, that, this one was wild.

AJ (01:03:35.928)
Hahaha

All right, next two star.

Tara (01:03:43.694)
good.

AJ (01:03:45.218)
Ghost written! Something is wrong with this book. I would swear it was ghost written. The characters are not as they have previously been presented. In every other book, there has been at least one appearance of the commander and usually Chief Tipple. Not this time. Dallas threatens Peabody too often and too violently. Dallas doesn’t have her usual snarky way about her. She was just not written correctly.

Tara (01:03:46.942)
No.

Tara (01:03:50.302)
my God.

AJ (01:04:15.53)
I have every book in this in-depth series and this one just clashes with the rest. Ms. Roberts, Ms. Rob, whatever you want to call yourself, please be true to Lieutenant Dallas Rorke and all and do not let this series go to crap like many other of my once favorite authors have. I refuse to read books

Tara (01:04:19.224)
You’re not getting a medal fuck off

AJ (01:04:43.938)
by Patterson, for example, because they are all ghostwritten now instead of coming from the heart and mind of themselves. I don’t know what that means. Dark in Death was written in your formula without the fun, without the expression. Don’t do this to your devoted readers.

Drama. Right? Yes.

Tara (01:05:08.344)
And not everything is about you. Not everything is about you. None of this is about you. fact, zero of this is about you. What the fuck? Also, like, here you are, like, also coming for another author in this review. It’s like, I don’t read James Patterson. I have read some. But like, what did he do to you?

AJ (01:05:15.438)
hahahahah

AJ (01:05:30.52)
Well, but I’m, I feel like, and I could be wrong that Patterson does come out, does say that he has ghost writers, that it’s well known. I think so.

Tara (01:05:38.06)
Does he? mean, yeah. But also, one, I don’t really care if he does. But two, like, okay.

Like, if, yeah, we’re becoming hard for people, you know, because how many books do you have written in person?

AJ (01:05:52.222)
yeah. They really are.

AJ (01:05:58.264)
Probably none.

Tara (01:06:00.226)
So no books written by you, so I feel like I don’t care what you have to say. Don’t do that to your devoted readers.

AJ (01:06:07.243)
Yeah.

AJ (01:06:10.782)
Yeah. Drama. Honestly.

Tara (01:06:15.8)
so much fucking drama. Yeah, you’re not wrong. For real three stars this time, real three stars, not for 10 ones, not a break in it. So three stars. Loved the book based case, but there was a lot of mention of women’s bodies in an unhealthy way.

AJ (01:06:18.706)
We’re going under three stars. They’re not going to be that much better, be honest.

Yeah.

Tara (01:06:39.37)
a hyper fixation on skinny and anything over 110 being super awful and unhealthy. It happened like three times and it was icky. It pulled me from the story, but the case outside of that was magic and this could have been five stars for me without all the toxic weight talk.

AJ (01:06:57.474)
I don’t, did we, was there toxic weight talk?

Tara (01:07:02.624)
I don’t think there was, and we have actually talked in the past about how Nora just does not quite understand what regular sized bodies are. But this was no different than any other book as far as like mentioning people’s size and assuming weights and them always sounding like people who are perfectly normal sized are huge. Because again, I don’t think she’s ever done a great job with it. We’ve talked about that.

AJ (01:07:12.962)
Right.

AJ (01:07:28.14)
Right.

Tara (01:07:30.988)
But I didn’t think there was anything in this book that was specifically like, you have to be skinny or you’re bad, you know, like.

AJ (01:07:37.398)
Right, exactly. I mean, they did talk about how this woman was, you know, more on the, you know, slightly overweight size and not what would conventionally be considered, like, attractive.

Tara (01:07:41.675)
Ahem.

Tara (01:07:55.488)
And I don’t even think that they referred to her as like, they didn’t go, she’s disgusting or fat. Like, in fact, I think whenever Eve referred to her as not necessarily conventionally attractive, it was at a different time that she also once stated her physical appearance. Like it wasn’t even in the same time where she even said like, she’s fat and ugly, essentially. Like she didn’t say it like that. I mean, she essentially said that, but not like,

AJ (01:08:02.112)
No. No.

AJ (01:08:14.881)
Right.

AJ (01:08:19.446)
Yeah. No.

Tara (01:08:24.724)
assume not I don’t know it’s I didn’t feel that that way

AJ (01:08:26.644)
It was more because of the fact that I say fact, you because when I say something is the theme of the book, it’s a fact, as you know, Tara. Because of, think the theme of the book was not being noticed or wanting to be noticed. They did put more emphasis on the fact that this character, the way she looks is, she,

Tara (01:08:36.034)
Well, yes, I do know.

AJ (01:08:55.774)
is somebody that would not necessarily be noticed. And one of the ways they did that was, think, Jake, when he was talking about her, called her a fader or something like that, which just meant that not somebody that you would necessarily notice, know, somebody that wasn’t like, you know, but that was the whole point of it, you know, I mean, that they…

Tara (01:09:08.67)
Yes.

Tara (01:09:14.444)
which again is part of the point.

AJ (01:09:24.194)
that she’s somebody that is not overly attractive that everybody looks at her. And she is somebody that is often looked over. that was part of the plot point, I think.

Tara (01:09:40.8)
Yes, I mean, that’s the thing is that was the fucking point.

AJ (01:09:45.438)
And the thing is that it’s not, and she wasn’t really even making a judgment call about whether that’s good or bad, just that there’s those people out there. And there are, you know? you know, I don’t know, but trying to make it seem like, this is toxic because, you know, she’s mentioning it, it’s…

Tara (01:09:57.474)
There sure are.

AJ (01:10:13.626)
I don’t think that that’s toxic. It just is what it is. It’s no different than saying like, this killer, you know, was attractive. We’ve had attractive killers, like killers who are good looking and it’s said in the books. She mentioned a lot about, like, she mentioned a lot about in Shadows about how Lorcan Cobb was good looking.

Tara (01:10:15.68)
Yeah. I mean.

Tara (01:10:30.294)
Yes, I’ve had 20 of them.

Tara (01:10:43.852)
Yeah, we’ve had multiple good-looking. Here’s the thing is like, first of all, I can relate to the idea of being like, I want to feel like I’m reading about normal everyday people and not everyone has to be conventionally attractive. And like, I’ve definitely been in that space, but I also then, as I get older, I’m also living in a world where I believe in like, just kind of normalizing that.

AJ (01:10:44.002)
You know? Yeah.

Tara (01:11:09.464)
attractiveness is like it’s it’s based on your own personal beliefs and so if a writer wants to write all their characters as seemingly attractive to you like that’s what they’re gonna do because that’s what they’re gonna do that’s what it is to them and like that to me for me again other people are gonna feel differently but for me that does not change how a story feels to me that

AJ (01:11:24.27)
Right.

Tara (01:11:34.932)
is me recognizing that that’s how the author writes and I’m not offended when I don’t necessarily see people who physically fit a description that I want to see can depict it as attractive. Like I don’t need to read a Nora Roberts novel where she is writing about a plus-size person and also making sure that her plus-size readers are seeing themselves and

seeing themselves as someone who’s attractive because Nora Roberts thinks that those people are attractive or whatever. Like, I don’t need that. One, because I already know that Nora has no fucking idea how bodies work and I have forgiven her for it and I love her anyway. Like, when she’s like 140 pounds is big and I heard like, it’s not Nora, but okay. again, like that’s just where her, does not, why does she need to like…

AJ (01:12:09.292)
Right.

AJ (01:12:14.158)
Right?

AJ (01:12:22.914)
Right.

Tara (01:12:31.414)
be an expert on that. mean, sure, if she knew better, that would be great. But like, for me, it doesn’t hurt my experience. And so when you’re like, well, she says everyone who is unattractive is bad. And then she says people who are fat are unattractive. I was like, those are not the same thing. She doesn’t say that literally in every book. You meet new characters, you meet new victims. They all have a physical description, not just because that’s how Nora writes, but because this is a police procedural. And guess what?

AJ (01:12:34.402)
Yeah.

AJ (01:12:39.266)
Yeah.

Tara (01:13:01.388)
The cops have to know what people look like so they can do their jobs. They can find bad guys so they can identify victims like us. I don’t know, man. I don’t know.

AJ (01:13:14.968)
Yeah, it’s… Okay. You know.

Anyway, so let’s continue with three stars.

Tara (01:13:21.728)
Yup, weight talk, yup.

AJ (01:13:31.278)
were restless right

Tara (01:13:32.972)
Well, can’t play more.

AJ (01:13:36.568)
Can they do?

Tara (01:13:38.506)
I’m so fucking literally not.

AJ (01:13:40.984)
Like I’m gonna come over here and you know, see if you’ll pet me. Okay. Okay, so three stars. I just finished this va- there’s- I just finished this thinly veiled slap at rabid fans of the In-Death series, including those wonderful folks who have the nerve to pay homage to this series by writing In-Death fan fiction.

Tara (01:13:44.929)
Lily.

Tara (01:14:09.239)
What?

AJ (01:14:11.118)
I have absolutely no idea where this is coming from. I really don’t. No, it isn’t, no. Well, unless you can, no, you can’t even say that. was gonna say unless you consider what the killer was writing as fan fiction, the book that they, but that, don’t even think you can make that case. Anyway, so.

Tara (01:14:14.936)
Fanfiction is not mentioned at all in this book, thank you.

Tara (01:14:32.972)
Yeah, but that’s…

AJ (01:14:39.47)
can’t say I’m impressed with her portrayal of those of us who have read her series multiple times. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Wow.

Tara (01:14:49.625)
did you plagiarize that from someone else? I’m just kidding.

AJ (01:14:51.83)
Right? Norris writing continues to reflect the new Eve style of choppy staccato evidence summaries. The crimes were interesting enough, but the on-page scolding of those foolish enough to consider themselves fans, distracted from the story. Clever in concept, cutting in execution, four stars for the story, two stars for the slap.

She didn’t slap at you, dude. Again, you saw yourself in this, and that says more about you than it says about Nora.

Tara (01:15:28.854)
Yep.

Yep, because she like there was there was absolutely zero zero attack on people who have read the series multiple times. It was not about people who have read this. She wasn’t out here being like, yeah, and fuck you guys who read the series over and over again.

AJ (01:15:32.31)
Yeah

AJ (01:15:40.332)
Yes. Yup.

AJ (01:15:48.234)
Yeah, because you and I both have read the series multiple times. I didn’t feel attacked in this book. Did you feel attacked in this book? No. Right. Exactly. So.

Tara (01:15:53.25)
Yep. I didn’t, I didn’t feel attacked probably because I’m not a piece of shit. So sorry. That was kind of mean.

AJ (01:16:06.67)
Well, I mean…

Tara (01:16:07.296)
I just like, I’m just like so frustrated by this whole idea that we have to like, that we that Nora is like required to fit into that’s the whole what’s the whole fucking part of this book. It’s like you didn’t understand the book and said you were like, I’m offended by this book. We’re like, well, there’s a reason why you’re offended because you are not respecting an author who has created these characters that you are like, I think they should do this. I think you know, like you just don’t

AJ (01:16:32.662)
Right.

AJ (01:16:36.962)
Yeah.

Tara (01:16:37.354)
Again, you don’t understand how to, I guess, be a good fan of an author, maybe.

AJ (01:16:40.718)
And it’s also a bit of, and we’ve gotten this too in some of the comments people have made about our show, especially these episodes. There is this feeling among people that write reviews like this, that it’s okay for them to be really vicious and rude or whatever in a review.

Tara (01:16:44.344)
Ahem.

AJ (01:17:08.556)
But heaven forbid anybody say anything about their review. then it’s like, how fucking dare you say anything about the words that I’ve put in my review, my words that I wrote so that I worked so hard on or my, you’re, you’re, you know, coming after me for my opinions, you know, and it’s like, there’s, to me, there’s no difference. Like, so, you know, I think that that’s what a lot of this also is. Like they felt like,

Tara (01:17:20.568)
Yeah.

Tara (01:17:37.569)
Yeah.

AJ (01:17:38.742)
they could say whatever the fuck they wanted in a review over and over and over again, you know, accuser of ghost writing, accuser of horrible writing, accuser of all kinds of things. And that they would be that they would just be ignored or that we would just continue to say like, yeah, that’s fine. You go ahead and say that without anybody saying anything about your review. And as soon as Nora wrote this book, which is, you know, a review of their reviews, essentially.

We say or we do this kind of show. They’re like how fucking dare you

Tara (01:18:13.42)
Yeah, why you can’t say that about my opinion.

AJ (01:18:15.232)
You know, and it’s like, exactly, you know, you don’t have any problems saying shitty things about Nora’s work. But when Nora kind of like, slaps back a little bit, you’re like, how fucking dare she bite the hand that feeds her? yeah, but well, how dare you say that about her books? But you don’t see it that way. You can say whatever the fuck you want. But when she comes back at you, you’re like, clutching your pearls and shit. Yeah.

Tara (01:18:22.718)
Ahem.

Tara (01:18:31.628)
Yeah, that’s.

Tara (01:18:42.456)
can’t believe this. This is outrageous.

AJ (01:18:46.378)
It’s yeah, because we have gotten that before. Like we just recently got somebody on Spotify who put a review and basically said, hope they, they listened to our first, we review the reviews and basically said, I hope they don’t continue to do this because then I can’t listen to this podcast because this is wrong. And it’s like, why? Cause you didn’t have any problem reviewing.

Tara (01:19:00.545)
Ahem.

Tara (01:19:15.156)
Right.

AJ (01:19:15.83)
in a negative way. But when somebody says, let’s take a look at their review and let’s review their review, somehow that’s wrong. Somebody has to explain that to me, because I don’t understand it, honestly.

Tara (01:19:29.056)
I don’t understand that either because the other thing is like, is like, we, and you know, I said this before, we aren’t, we didn’t like find you and like shame you all over the internet. No one knows who you are when we do this.

AJ (01:19:44.268)
I mean, you could go back and look it up, I suppose. None of our listeners aren’t gonna, yeah, they don’t care that much.

Tara (01:19:46.738)
Sure, I know, but like if someone cares that much, like also, also here’s, here’s the thing is that the internet, it’s already on the internet. You put it out there. You, you gave us this. You gave us this. This was your choice to go on the internet and leave this review. And if you’re like, no, someone is saying something about my review. And that’s so mean. Like,

AJ (01:19:58.871)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tara (01:20:14.24)
I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry because you said you put it out. You wanted people to read it and it’s yeah. Like I don’t I don’t know, man. It’s yeah, it is. It’s just like, it’s a.

AJ (01:20:18.304)
Yet you put it out there for everyone to see. It’s in a public space.

AJ (01:20:26.869)
It’s weird.

Tara (01:20:34.58)
Anyway.

AJ (01:20:35.054)
Sorry, I swallowed the wrong way. Let me turn off my mic.

Tara (01:20:40.3)
You okay? I did that.

Tara (01:20:47.84)
Okay, I’m gonna read this. stars. Another good Eve Dallas adventure, though this one was lighter than the usual. Most of the story was spent on profiling and locating the killer who was reenacting scenes from her favorite murder series. It’s not that it wasn’t gory enough, but it wasn’t as suspenseful as past stories. And then my pet peeve. Gratuitous sex.

Even Roark had more sex in this story than they’ve had in quite a while. There’s usually one brief, very brief sex scene. Right? It’s certainly not needed in this type of murder mystery series.

AJ (01:21:22.574)
That’s not true.

Tara (01:21:30.294)
Are you an expert on this?

AJ (01:21:30.872)
What, so what? It’s a married couple. Like they can have sex, like what? Not needed.

Tara (01:21:36.236)
It’s not needed in this time. What what who are you to make that decision? I don’t get it anyway This time they were hornier maybe because summer fields. That’s what they called him was away I decay, but I didn’t care for it. Want a challenging murder mystery when I read this series so well good It wasn’t the best PS I listened to the audio version and the narrator as always was superb. Yes, we agree with you, but but

AJ (01:21:41.527)
Mm-hmm.

AJ (01:21:48.428)
Mm-hmm. boy.

AJ (01:22:01.587)
Well, we agree with you there, yeah.

Tara (01:22:04.94)
The rest of it, your PS, great. Everything else. This isn’t a murder mystery series.

AJ (01:22:10.134)
Right. So I don’t know why do you want that in a series that’s not about that?

But, you know, I don’t know. Weird. The people that are like so, like, why is there sex? It’s just, it’s just weird.

Tara (01:22:26.048)
Right? They’re like, because what? So weird.

AJ (01:22:29.07)
It’s so weird. Really.

Okay.

Sorry, I spelled the wrong way and now I’m like, yeah, I’m okay.

Tara (01:22:40.448)
No, it’s okay. Are you alright?

AJ (01:22:46.028)
but now I’ve put a cough drop in my mouth.

So, do you want to read mine and then yours? Maybe I’ll be done with my cough drop by the time.

Tara (01:22:54.646)
Sure. So another three star. Three stars. I didn’t love this one. In some places Eve seemed dumb and she’s too smart for that. Wow, that’s a brilliant sentence. Good job.

AJ (01:23:10.03)
She’s too smart to be dumb.

Tara (01:23:14.262)
That’s like something I would say, actually. But then as I say, I’d be like, well, that was a stupid sentence. So here we are. This book had none of the humor that some of the series has, which furthers my belief that ghostwriters are writing these things. Nora Roberts, just give them credit already. You’ll still be uber rich like Patterson.

AJ (01:23:16.5)
I know what I’m doing.

AJ (01:23:33.356)
That is a trashy thing to say.

That is really a bad thing. And also, I don’t agree that this book had none of the humor.

Tara (01:23:45.972)
I thought I quite enjoyed this book. I laughed a lot. even I even laughed out loud at the like scene leading up to the sex scene. Like, I thought all that shit was hilarious.

AJ (01:23:50.506)
yeah. well…

AJ (01:23:56.609)
You

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The part with the dog was hilarious.

Tara (01:24:07.219)
yeah, the dog was a little…

AJ (01:24:10.6)
Her getting the cream soda out of the machine was hilarious. That was one of the funnier scenes in this series.

Tara (01:24:13.398)
my god. That for- Yes! That was really a fucking hilarious scene. I don’t- I don’t know. I don’t know what-

AJ (01:24:24.595)
Jake asking if, you know, Nadine and Eve ever argue while they’re less formally attired was fantastic.

Tara (01:24:31.544)
Right? He’s like hoping that they’ll rip each other’s clothes off. You’re like, this is hilarious. I mean, I enjoyed it. I guess, mean, everyone is different, sure. But I was like, this was fun. I had a great time. I had a great time. So that’s me.

AJ (01:24:36.046)
Hahahaha

AJ (01:24:45.164)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

AJ (01:24:51.328)
Alright, we’re finally at four stars.

Tara (01:24:53.152)
We’re at four stars. Do you want me to keep going or do you want to read this one? OK. Sorry, you guys have to listen to me more. Four stars. This installment in the series is less of a whodunit and more of a why done it as Eve and her team track a killer who is reenacting murders from a series of bestselling novels. As with the other books in the series, the police procedural elements are well written and it is fun to follow along with Eve’s investigative process. The people before do not agree, but.

AJ (01:24:55.629)
Yeah, go ahead.

AJ (01:25:00.301)
Haha.

Tara (01:25:23.666)
I do, so. Nevertheless, the real highlight of the book is the not so subtle critique of aggressive fandom and the idea that readers have the right to make demands of the author and dictate their writing decisions. Yes, this is hogwash. Authors owe readers nothing. And if a reader dislikes the direction of a book or series, they don’t have to read it. this is amazing. Attacking authors, publishers or other readers is childish and unacceptable.

AJ (01:25:23.932)
Ha

AJ (01:25:39.08)
It certainly is. Yup.

AJ (01:25:46.144)
Right? Exactly.

AJ (01:25:52.237)
Mm-hmm.

Tara (01:25:52.49)
Okay, rant over back to the book. no, that was beautiful. That was beautiful, beautiful thing. yes, yes. So well done. Rob’s characterization is excellent as always, and it is a delight catching up with Eve and Roarke and the rest of the secondary cast. The scenes with Nadine and her new love interest, Jake Kincaid, are particularly appealing, and I would definitely read a book that focuses on their romance.

AJ (01:25:56.63)
100 % yes, wait this

Tara (01:26:19.638)
All in all, this is one of the more insightful additions to the series, and the inclusion of realistic concepts is an added bonus. I agree. That was a great review. Obviously it was a great review because we agree with it, but also it’s correct. So there’s that.

AJ (01:26:31.31)
100 %

Tara (01:26:40.898)
We love a correct review.

Tara (01:26:51.636)
Okay, I’m so… You can do it! it’s a long one. Okay. I believe in you! It’s fine. I believe in you! You can do it!

AJ (01:27:01.422)
All right. Yay. Okay. Four stuff. Hang on. I still have, you know what’s the best thing, Tara? I don’t know if you, if you realize this exists, I’ll let you know what the best thing is. It’s Halls Minis. Now you know how Halls usually, or any cough drop is usually like this big, you have to suck on it forever. These.

Tara (01:27:08.011)
No.

Tara (01:27:21.438)
okay.

Tara (01:27:27.407)
yeah, I like off drops. Yeah.

AJ (01:27:31.692)
I’ll show you. These are tiny. See how tiny that is?

Tara (01:27:36.196)
those are tiny. Sorry.

AJ (01:27:37.9)
So it’s like, this is great if like, you know, in the middle of the night I get coughing fit or something like that. I can put this in my mouth and suck on it for maybe five minutes and it disappears and it helps. So I’m not like with this big, huge like cough drop in my mouth for like an hour. So, but you don’t see those very, very often in stores. I get them online, but it’s Halls Minis. Highly recommend.

Tara (01:28:05.368)
That’s awesome. yeah. I- I do, I’ll have to send it to you, but whatever I get, they’re like those, like, soft ones. yeah. And I buy them online, because I can’t fucking find them in the stores. Anyway.

AJ (01:28:07.616)
Alright.

AJ (01:28:17.421)
Mm-hmm.

AJ (01:28:21.994)
Yeah, all the best things are online unfortunately nowadays.

Tara (01:28:26.648)
hate that, but yeah. You can do it.

AJ (01:28:28.32)
All right, so four stars. Good book, held my interest around and I easily polished it off in two days. But compared to others I’ve read in this series, one of my favorites, by the way,

AJ (01:28:45.632)
One of my favorites, but compared to others I’ve read in the series, one of my favorites, by the way, it, yeah, okay, maybe. It just didn’t have much pizzazz, kind of like driving a Maserati with half inflated tires.

Tara (01:28:52.044)
Maybe one of their favorite series.

Tara (01:28:57.569)
Ahem.

AJ (01:29:05.407)
I mean, I appreciate that description.

Tara (01:29:05.749)
Okay.

AJ (01:29:11.22)
Even though Lieutenant Eve Dallas and her hunky Irish husband Roarke heath up a few rooms in their house now and then, they seemed a titch off of off their usual game. Even Roarke’s faithful majordomo, the curmudgeonly Somerset, is off on a rare holiday. Only Eve’s co-worker and friend Peabody remains as bubbly and colorfully dressed as usual. The plot, while clever and interesting, was a bit plodding.

with not much real action, again compared with previous books in the series. Early on, Dallas is called when a dead woman turns up in a movie theater, just as Janet Leigh is reeling from horrific stabbings in her hotel shower in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie, Psycho. The woman’s life was similarly ended by a single ice pick plunged into her neck. In the thrill of the movie,

no one noticed the killer, who left virtually no clues for Dallas and her team to follow. Then out of the blue, Dallas gets a visit from the author of a popular series of books featuring former police detective Deanne Dark. The real life movie Murder, the author says, mirrors events in one of her books too closely for her comfort. Dallas tends to agree and when an earlier homicide turns out to copy scenes from yet another,

of the books, she is convinced they’re tracking a very determined and very careful serial killer. It seems clear that the serial, it seems clear that the killer has taken the dark books to heart. Problem is, there are quite a few others waiting to be brought to life or more accurately to death. To try and get ahead of the next hit, Dallas and Roarke hit the books

hoping to learn who the next victim might be. Overall, I enjoyed the book despite its more laid back feel. Every once in a while, in fact, it’s nice to read a murder mystery in which I’m not biting my nails worrying that one or two of the main characters will land in the hospital or worse. But I also suspect that not many readers, including me, would call this a pick of the series litter.

Tara (01:31:27.48)
you

Tara (01:31:35.093)
AJ (01:31:36.588)
I mean, I… They’re not… Yeah.

Tara (01:31:38.132)
I mean, it was a very honest review. They shared how they felt about everything. I thought it was a very, it’s a pretty generous, you know, star rating with that review. So there’s that at least.

AJ (01:31:46.947)
Yeah.

AJ (01:31:53.26)
Yeah. And I think Nora does tend to every once in a while throw in a book that’s like kind of lighter. That’s less suspenseful, just because sometimes you need a break. know?

Tara (01:32:02.871)
Yeah.

Tara (01:32:07.124)
You need it. can’t, like, you can’t, you can’t just sit in that place and it be just awful all the time, you know? So, no, I get it.

AJ (01:32:15.168)
Right, yeah.

Tara (01:32:21.176)
I appreciate the honest review. All right. Another four star. It’s it’s really good. Good. Sorry, it’s I’m cold over here. So it’s it’s no, that’s OK. I was just like trying to warm up over here. I might pause to go get a sweater. Hold on.

AJ (01:32:23.49)
Yes.

AJ (01:32:26.892)
And this is a long one.

AJ (01:32:34.067)
okay, sorry.

AJ (01:32:42.914)
Okay.

Tara (01:34:08.472)
Okay. Am I wearing a sweater over a sweater now? Or a sweatshirt over a sweater? I am. Did I buy my… It is 19 degrees right now. Well, so I bought my office partners these blanket jackets for Christmas.

AJ (01:34:10.431)
Okay.

AJ (01:34:16.64)
Look, it’s probably way, way colder there than here.

AJ (01:34:24.878)
Yeah, mm-hmm. I would be wearing probably a jacket over a sweater

AJ (01:34:36.183)
Hmm.

Tara (01:34:37.732)
And because I like to open the window and I’m hot all the time. Well, I’m not hot right now, but it’s OK. They still like them. It’s fine. my God. Anyway, sorry. OK, so now we can do this four star review. I apologize. I am warmer than I was. Yes, it’s fine. It’s good. OK, here we go. Four stars.

AJ (01:34:45.901)
Right.

AJ (01:34:50.53)
Okay.

AJ (01:34:57.27)
Now Terra is warm again.

Warmer. Okay.

Tara (01:35:07.746)
There is no doubt about it, J.D. Robb is a master storyteller. After 46 novels, she still amazes, stuns, captivates, and spellbinds each and every time. As the alter ego of Nora Roberts, she is known for her prolific writing and gripping plots. I personally look forward to each new book in this series. So far, even after reading 46 books, almost the entire catalog written by J.D. Robb, I have not come to the point yet where I feel her stories have become repetitive.

Every single in-death installment has been pure genius. In Dark and Death, Lieutenant Dallas of the New York Police Department is hunting a killer that uses someone else’s imagination, stories, books for their own personal playing field. As always, the mystery is on point, vibrant, and meticulously executed. The suspense and race against time left me on the edge of my seat.

and the premise of murdering individuals by virtue of a book series made this case even more exhilarating. The series is beyond amazing and deserves an award, not only for its outstanding plots, which are always incredibly well researched, unputdownable, and utterly engrossing, but also for the cast of characters. I love your word unputdownable. That’s a great word.

AJ (01:36:24.628)
unpretentable and also drama but in a good way.

Tara (01:36:30.518)
Yeah, yeah, like very, very committed to this feeling. And I respect that.

AJ (01:36:34.922)
Yes, I appreciate it.

Tara (01:36:38.557)
In all honesty, this cast is the best cast of all books I’ve ever read, from the two main characters to each and every one of the supporting cast. After 46 books, every single member of her family, friends and colleagues are near and dear to my heart. I couldn’t imagine an in-depth book without them. Eve is one of the most layered and skillful characters I’ve ever read about. Her character development throughout the series has left me amazed.

She is one tough woman, incredibly hardworking, no nonsense with a heart made of gold. That’s right. The way she takes care of her department, friends and family is what makes these novels so excellent and extraordinary. She is the glue that holds it all together. She is the sun that everyone revolves around. Roarke, a former billionaire, a former, wow, former Irish thief. I couldn’t read, hold on.

AJ (01:37:16.087)
Yup.

AJ (01:37:35.308)
Ha ha ha ha.

Tara (01:37:37.528)
Roarke, a former Irish thief, now billionaire, is used to towing the gray areas without remorse. Now he is happily working with EU side by side, solving murder cases. Is he happy about it? You know, I think he is. I think he is. But just don’t just don’t tell me he thinks like a cop. It’ll be fine. He has become a crucial part of her team.

AJ (01:37:51.054)
Yeah, you know what? I think he is. I think he is.

Right? Yeah. That’s, you know, fighting words.

Tara (01:38:04.726)
Roarke is respected by her colleagues, admired and revered by New York high society, and the only person that Eve opens up entirely. On the outside, he is the exact opposite of Eve. Smooth, polished, rich cultured, but deep down, they found an equal and missing part in each other.

I can say with absolute conviction that Eve and Roarke have the most incredible romance of all romances. No other book series allows the couple to grow, change, and fall deeper in love over more than 40 books. The depth of feeling, understanding, and communication between Roarke and Eve is beyond comparison. They truly have the ultimate relationship. Far from perfect, but perfect nonetheless. But it’s not just about the lieutenant and her billionaire, which is honestly I love how that the lieutenant and her billionaire.

AJ (01:38:51.106)
Yeah.

Tara (01:38:52.864)
It’s also about the reoccurring characters that give life, color and laughter to each book. The supporting cast is a delight because every single cast member has a unique personality and distinctive voice. The various relationships, ongoing inside jokes, as well as side stories feel real as like friends that are missed and visited twice a year. The reader is part of an ongoing story arc. I’m invested in each and every person from this cast. I know them like I know them by name.

their likes and dislikes, backstories and bits and pieces of their personal lives. Their individual personalities enrich each book and allow for the ultimate reading experience. If you love fantastic character development, romantic suspense, and are a fan of serials, this series is a must read.

AJ (01:39:38.465)
I love that review.

Tara (01:39:39.948)
That was, again, that was just such a fun review of them just going on and on about how much they love this. that’s, that’s, that just makes me happy. Just like very, yeah, makes me happy.

AJ (01:39:46.86)
Right.

AJ (01:39:53.578)
Yeah. Yeah. mean, and it is the romance of all romances. And the thing that I think the thing that people often miss when they are like, poo-pooing the sex scenes is what the sex scenes represent. And that is that even Roark are truly like really connected to each other, you know? And especially with this one, you know, because

Tara (01:40:09.036)
Mm-hmm.

Tara (01:40:18.272)
Yeah. Yeah.

AJ (01:40:23.084)
Like we said, when we reviewed the book, the thing that made this sex scene so great was the fact that Eve was like, we got to check off another room. First of all, that was funny. know, she decides it’s going to be the ballroom. And she’s like, I’m going to be in there completely naked, except for my underwear, my weapon holster, which was again funny. We’re going to do it right here in the very middle of this huge ballroom. And then Roarke decides, no, you know what?

Tara (01:40:34.348)
That was funny as hell.

Tara (01:40:45.108)
So good.

Ahem.

AJ (01:40:53.302)
I’m going to turn on some sexy music and the fireplace and we’re going to dance a little bit first and have some romance. like, and it was just perfect because like if, first of all, kind of threw Eve off a little bit, but she got in it totally, you know, once, once he started doing that, he, she understood the, you know, this is something different for him. And, and they also have this kind of, especially Eve.

Tara (01:41:04.94)
was lovely.

Yes.

Tara (01:41:18.071)
Yeah.

AJ (01:41:23.48)
this kind of thought that she spoke out loud to him that essentially nobody saw her before him. Nobody really saw her, who she was. And it, yes, and it makes me, it kind of does make me a little sad for people who just like, another sex scene, like, you know, because they miss that.

Tara (01:41:35.318)
Yeah, I love it.

Tara (01:41:50.124)
Yeah, that’s such a good point.

AJ (01:41:50.882)
You know, it, yeah, they miss that whole thing. They miss all of that feeling and that like connection to each other. Eve realizing or telling him you’re the first person to really truly see me. All of that, you miss it. And it’s just so, so sad.

Tara (01:42:12.928)
It’s, yeah, it is such a big part of the series and I… It’s not even like when people are just like, ugh, sex scenes. It’s like, you’re like, I just don’t… Because listen, I don’t love sex scenes. I read them in this series and I understand why they’re there. But like, if you don’t, then why are you reading the series? I don’t know, I guess it’s like…

AJ (01:42:15.363)
Mm-hmm.

AJ (01:42:38.35)
I’m right.

Tara (01:42:43.032)
For me, listen, I don’t have a lot of time to read. And if I’m gonna read something, I wanna be excited about it. And I’m not gonna be excited about this series if I’m like, well, I read half of it, but every time they do something that’s like cheesy and romantic, or there’s a sex scene or whatever, I have to put that away, because I don’t like that. Like, okay, I’m just gonna find something else to read at that point.

AJ (01:43:04.375)
Right.

AJ (01:43:08.663)
Yeah.

Tara (01:43:09.878)
I guess that’s how, I mean that’s how I feel about it. Everyone is different of course.

AJ (01:43:13.59)
Yeah, you know, everyone is different. It just, you know, to like dismiss something like that, you’re kind of like dismissing the whole point of the series. No, no, Just doesn’t make me happy. It is very weird. So, okay, now we’re on to five stars.

Tara (01:43:28.3)
Very weird for me.

AJ (01:43:37.062)
five stars. While this didn’t ring as my absolute favorite, I really love this book. I may be wrong, but I actually think Mrs. Roberts may have been poking fun at herself in this book. Now see that’s some, that’s an angle that most of the other reviews didn’t see. She is kind of a little bit poking fun at herself. It’s a slap at, at, at fans that criticize her books.

Tara (01:43:52.695)
Ahem.

Tara (01:43:56.692)
No.

Yeah, I mean, yeah.

AJ (01:44:05.876)
Absolutely, but it is a little bit of like self depreciating humor. Really.

Tara (01:44:12.374)
Yeah, you’re not wrong.

AJ (01:44:14.606)
So writing about an author who has a killer who is killing the characters from her books because she, in the killer’s mind, plagiarized her work seems very tongue-in-cheek to me. I thought there were a lot of plot twists and turns that kept the story moving, and while I honestly think it could have been a little bit harder to find the killer, I like the way that it was handled. Even Roark have the ultimate love affair, and that just keeps getting better.

I would like to see more of them one-on-one, that might take away from the storyline. A shot story every now and then would be nice. Maybe in the newsletter? I think we get enough of them, but okay. I understand somebody that can’t get enough.

Tara (01:44:58.456)
you

That’s fair.

AJ (01:45:02.382)
I’m always excited to see the characters grow and develop. I think that one thing we forget as readers is that the storyline for this series has only covered about three years. Peabody is still learning about being a detective. She has to gain another level. True Heart is ready to take the exam to become detective. He’s already done that by this time, right? Yeah.

Tara (01:45:27.916)
Yes, he has.

AJ (01:45:30.612)
This is a slow progress and I like the continuity. When I’m not crazy about a book, I just look at it as a regular crime. Like Eve can’t have the big ticket crimes every time. There is a chapter when Mavis visits with Bella and Leonardo and Bella is just too precious. I love her. And it’s easy to forget she’s only about one or two in this storyline.

Tara (01:45:32.364)
Ahem.

AJ (01:45:57.09)
There are 46 books with about 12 novellas and we’ve only covered three years to 2058 to 2061. That’s really tight rating for stories and characters that averages out to just under a book a month in Eve’s time. I’m reading the series, yeah, you know, that is something that people forget or can’t wrap their heads around. Yeah.

Tara (01:46:14.112)
Yes.

Tara (01:46:19.838)
all the time are forgetting about.

AJ (01:46:24.098)
I’m reading the book again. I couldn’t stand to finish it when this book came out. So I’m back reading a number or I’m reading the series again. I couldn’t stand to finish it when this book came out. So I’m reading. I’m back reading number 36 and I’ll go through until I read Dark and Death again. This is one of my absolute favorite series more because of the characters than the story. Although that’s a great part of it. I look forward to the next one.

Tara (01:46:36.088)
Aw.

AJ (01:46:54.646)
So yeah, I really liked this review too, yeah.

Tara (01:46:55.896)
great review.

You love these five stars.

AJ (01:47:01.102)
100%. It’s a fantastic review.

Tara (01:47:05.244)
Next 5 star review. I don’t care what anyone says JD Robb is a genius. That’s right. Eve Dallas, right? Eve Dallas solves the cases with a methodical detailed look at all information and clues. Roarke is a billionaire who loves helping his wife dropping and dropping his business and planet purchases to be an expert consultant with benefits. Their relationship has grown so much in the series and it just gets better.

AJ (01:47:11.254)
Yup. You’re not wrong.

Tara (01:47:33.016)
Peabody, McNabb, Feeney, and the murder team are still as personable as homicide can allow. I adore Bella and Mavis and see them being friends for the rest of their lives. More and more and more. Susan, you are the freaking best. So we love another Susan love.

AJ (01:47:49.102)
Susan is the freaking best.

Tara (01:47:51.906)
She really is. Love it.

AJ (01:47:54.39)
Yeah, we need to talk in a podcast business. We’ll talk about Susan’s Instagram that she just posted.

Tara (01:48:03.754)
Yes, yes.

AJ (01:48:06.174)
so the last review, five stars from untrained puppies to flying dwarves, Eve and Peabody have their hands full tracking the latest serial killer. And Susan Erickson does a wonderful job reading as always. What’s not to like? I mean, people up here found out a lot, but they are insane. They’re all wrong. Exactly.

Tara (01:48:22.508)
Hell yes.

Virtually nothing. Right? And they’re all wrong. It’s fine. They’re all wrong.

AJ (01:48:36.344)
So, okay, a mixed bag, but lots and lots and lots of drama.

Tara (01:48:43.042)
so much drama.

AJ (01:48:43.86)
So, that’s all I can say about that. We’ve said so much. I can’t really say much more. Can’t really say much more. Yeah, too much drama. People that read this book and got mad that they saw themselves.

Tara (01:48:50.752)
You were you were not wrong. You were not wrong. There was so much drama.

It’s like,

Yes. And they like had to approach it with like the most dramatic response. Like, you know, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. come on. No one fucking talks like that. Come on. yes. So, I mean, I guess some people must, but I don’t know, man. just, yeah, so much drama.

AJ (01:49:10.07)
Right. Lots of pearl clutching in this episode. No, no one does.

AJ (01:49:22.19)
Stop being so dramatic, people. Too much drama.

Way, way, way too much drama. Okay, so should we go on to podcast business?

Tara (01:49:32.907)
you

Tara (01:49:39.96)
Let’s do some podcast business.

AJ (01:49:42.094)
All right.

So we don’t have any new patrons. Somebody just re-upped, which I appreciate. Jude Murray just re-upped for the year. Thank you, Jude. We appreciate it.

Tara (01:49:52.075)
Okay.

Tara (01:49:58.24)
Okay. Yes.

AJ (01:50:08.662)
I’m just trying to figure out like what, if there’s anything I need to talk about. I do. I do want to talk about something. This is a, did you read the, they’re on our Facebook. Who made the post about, our last episode.

Tara (01:50:17.964)
Okay.

Tara (01:50:30.334)
No, I have been bad about Facebook. Should I open it?

AJ (01:50:34.83)
Yeah, open it. It is.

AJ (01:50:41.95)
Ellen, you need to read that. It’s like two or three posts down.

Tara (01:50:46.846)
OK. Ellen Johnson. Ellen Johnson said, just ordered lightsaber, chopsticks and mini tube man for my daughter and son in law. I never knew these things existed. I’m so out of touch with the world. Yes. OK, wait. But Melissa Steinman said, Ellen, I have the lightsaber, chopsticks. They’re great until they accidentally end up in the dishwasher. Human error. The set doesn’t light up anymore, but the rest are going strong. I love it.

AJ (01:50:50.337)
Yeah.

AJ (01:51:00.981)
Hahaha

AJ (01:51:17.057)
Yeah.

Tara (01:51:19.576)
That’s great.

AJ (01:51:24.12)
So, and I posted, we’re just out here trying to be helpful. But I just love the fact that somebody listened to our episode and went, wait a minute, lightsaber chopsticks, mini tube man. It’s fantastic. It makes me so happy. So thanks for that, I appreciate it. Or, you know, you’re welcome. Maybe I should say that. You’re welcome.

Tara (01:51:29.42)
That’s, yes, you very helpful.

Tara (01:51:39.148)
That’s amazing. That is amazing.

Tara (01:51:49.622)
Right? You’re welcome.

That’s so great.

AJ (01:51:56.203)
We’re almost done, honey. I promise, okay? We’re almost done.

Tara (01:52:01.208)
She’s like, yeah.

AJ (01:52:02.134)
Yeah. She gets this, you know, it’s so funny cause she gets this, this like, the pack needs to be all in the same room together, but she wants to be in the living room on the couch. So like she gets restless if I’m in here like this late. and I’ll go out there sometimes I’ll, you know, I still have things to work on, so I’ll take my computer out there.

And as soon as I like sit on the couch with my computer and start working, she’ll hop up on the couch. And next thing I know, I’ll look over and she’s back to sleep. She just wanted the pack to be together on the couch. Like, this is the time we sit on the couch. And I take my nap before we go to bed, you know, so.

Tara (01:52:26.892)
Yeah.

Tara (01:52:41.314)
Lily.

We love a nap before bed.

AJ (01:52:47.154)
Right? Anyway, so what I mentioned earlier, Susan Erickson made a post on Instagram
So basically what Susan said was, first of all, she thanked everybody for being fans. And which is lovely. And she essentially said that she hopes that in the next, in the upcoming year, people are, you know, listen more or are better listeners. Maybe that’s why she,

Tara (01:56:08.993)
lovely.

AJ (01:56:27.906)
deleted it because she thought maybe I could have said it better. But I understood what she was saying. Not necessarily better listeners in terms of her audiobooks or anything like that, but I took it as we should all be better listeners in terms of like, you know, in our private lives and listening to people, listening to other people, listening to opposite opinions, listening. You know, I agree. We should all be better listeners.

Tara (01:56:33.048)
I did too and I thought it was perfect.

Tara (01:56:50.241)
Yeah.

AJ (01:56:58.254)
She’s not wrong about that.

Tara (01:56:58.814)
great and I agree I agree as well.

AJ (01:57:01.934)
Yeah. So, um, yeah, I mean, you know, I, that’s probably something that we should all vow to do in, in 2026 be better listeners.

Tara (01:57:17.42)
We could all be better listeners.

AJ (01:57:18.708)
and B and that kind of goes along with like be better readers in terms of comprehending what you’ve read. Everybody out there who’s horrible review we just read.

Tara (01:57:33.782)
Learn how books work.

AJ (01:57:35.278)
Do better at reading and comprehending what you are reading.

Tara (01:57:42.326)
Yes. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but I kind of mean to be an asshole, so.

AJ (01:57:43.307)
So.

AJ (01:57:46.926)
Yeah. also, I don’t know if I don’t think I, I don’t think I sent you this, but, on the Tik Toks, I have got, I posted this thing just because I thought it was funny. And I like, I posted it a few days ago and I’ve got 126,000 views.

Tara (01:58:15.983)
my God.

AJ (01:58:17.428)
So like, yeah, it’s always the weird stuff. Like the weird stuff that I think I’m just going to quickly like put this together because I think it’s funny. Essentially, let me send it to you. cause I don’t think I sent it to you. Yeah. So that you can see it because,

AJ (01:58:41.55)
You know, I think we all feel in it. I think we all pretty much feel the same in that 2025 wasn’t the best of years.

So I sent it to you and then.

Tara (01:58:54.302)
No. No.

AJ (01:58:57.408)
It just wasn’t the best of years. So.

Tara (01:59:10.328)
a bad day did you die i got shocked but did you die oh you’re having a bad day did you die i got shocked but did you die

AJ (01:59:19.372)
So it basically just says me looking back at 2025. But did you die? No, I didn’t, but you know.

Tara (01:59:24.684)
That’s hysterical. But did you die?

Tara (01:59:32.638)
No, but it wasn’t a great time. Wasn’t a great time.

AJ (01:59:35.934)
It wasn’t a great time, but I got shot. Yeah, but did you die? No, but you know. Anywho, so yeah, I don’t know. Is there anything else we need to see? Any other podcast business we need to discuss?

Tara (01:59:48.856)
Ahem.

Tara (01:59:55.193)
can’t think of any, but that doesn’t mean anything.

AJ (01:59:57.482)
Okay. Right. Okay. So the next book coming up is Leverage, which is a hard one. Yeah, it’s one of those like I’ve told you before that there are a few that I can put on even this one, Dark and Death.

Tara (02:00:14.796)
That’s a hard one.

AJ (02:00:23.284)
I can put on at night and like use it as, you know, to listen to as they go to sleep. And, not that one. Yeah, there’s no way. it’s too hard, but, yeah. So that one’s going to be interesting one to, to review. and that’s coming up. Are are we going to skip a month? What’s gonna, what’s gonna happen? Cause we’ve kind of like, done ourselves. This is the end of the.

Tara (02:00:29.912)
Not that one.

Tara (02:00:50.739)
yeah.

AJ (02:00:53.108)
of the month and we typically review a book at beginning of the month. But then the next book comes out in February. But we don’t read that book until… So I guess we’ll kind of like play it by ear. See if we can get it done. And we really haven’t taken any kind of a break.

Tara (02:00:55.501)
Yeah.

Tara (02:01:01.632)
I mean, I guess we just kinda s-

Tara (02:01:09.474)
I mean, guess we just kind of see how it falls.

Tara (02:01:18.721)
now.

Tara (02:01:24.096)
No, we haven’t taken a break. mean, we took some forced breaks last year, so we might be feeling like it’s different, you know?

AJ (02:01:31.854)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, anyway, we’ll figure it out. I don’t know what’s going to, you know, 2026 is up in the air, you know, we just don’t know what’s going to happen.

Tara (02:01:43.352)
It’s in a few minutes, but it is up in the air.

AJ (02:07:55.22)
Exactly. Right. So we’ll think about what we’re going to do in the upcoming months, whether we’re going to get to leverage or not. We’ll see. If you have any suggestions as to things that we can do, topics that we can talk about.

Contact us on any of our social medias. We’re on Instagram and blue sky and tick talk. And we’re on Facebook. We have Facebook group. we have one listener that was really disappointed that our discord was no longer active. So sorry about that, but if anybody wants to start up discord again, I guess we could do that. But, you can also send us an email at show at podcast and death.com. can call the number number is two zero five four seven six two seven five three.

Tara (02:08:35.608)
I’m sorry.

AJ (02:08:52.234)
And that spells out two zero five four Roarke. And yeah, get in touch with us in any way you can. Let us know what you want us to talk about in the upcoming year. And like I said, our 300th episode is coming up. like 10 episodes away. So I have to start working on like a best stuff for that. So that’s another thing you can do for us. If you have a best stuff, if you can think of like the last year of

Tara (02:09:10.05)
wild.

AJ (02:09:21.93)
episodes. What were your best, what were your favorite moments? Let us know so I know what to put in the best of. And I think that’s it, unless you have anything else for this episode.

Tara (02:09:27.894)
Yes.

Tara (02:09:33.867)
I do not.

AJ (02:09:35.264)
Okay. people stop saying that Nora has a ghostwriter. does not. So just stop saying that. Just stop, being so dramatic in your reviews. Okay. It’s not about you. So anyway, so yeah, so I guess that’s it for this episode of podcasts and deaths. So for podcasts and death, this is AJ and we’ll see you next week guys. Bye.

Tara (02:09:40.034)
Don’t say that. That’s not okay to say.

Tara (02:09:49.1)
You

Tara (02:09:58.754)
This is Tara.

Bye guys.