Julia and Victoria try to find the line between history and fantasy in The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang. They use their incredible communication skills to meet in the middle of their opposing opinions.

The Book Club takes a big bite of all the genres and references in Casey McQuiston’s fourth romance novel, The Pairing. Julia invents a new branch of theory entirely based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Victoria calculates her Saturn Return.

Julia and Victoria marvel over the masterful point of view shifts and scream about the ending of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Victoria buys some lemonade.

Julia and Victoria discuss the last vampire book of The Vampire & the Octopus series and then get very excited about two questions: Are there any ethical choices under vampirism? And, if so, are ethical vampires even interesting?

Julia makes her case of why the creature in Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is NOT really a vampire, and Victoria makes a counterargument that it is actually the MOST vampire. They are both generally infuriated with everyone in this novel except Mrs. Green.

Julia and Victoria read a pandemic book called The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller where the octopus is not the focus of the story, but is at the heart of the book’s major themes of captivity and embodiment. Victoria makes the ill-advised choice to revisit some of her early-pandemic journals.

Julia and Victoria get very hungry talking about the trope-flipping, contemporary vampire novel Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda.

Julia and Victoria discuss Sea Change by Gina Chung and how authors use the octopus to contemplate loneliness and change. They discover that life really is about the friends we made along the way in this first book of The Vampire & the Octopus series.

Julia and Victoria learn what the word “flannel” means in British English and formulate their own theories about what happened to a stranded deep-sea researcher in the devastatingly beautiful novel Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

Julia and Victoria conclude that How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu is a very good book–Julia is just sad.

Julia and Victoria grapple with the grotesque narrative choices in Whale by Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated by Chi-young Kim. Julia incorrectly uses the word “epigraph” when she means “epitaph” approximately 25 times.

Julia and Victoria try to decipher the rules of Eight Billion Genies, the newest comic book series from Charles Soule and Ryan Browne, because Julia likes rules. They also learn about how one random French guy playing fast and loose with a One Thousand and One Nights translation made up most of what the “Western” world “knows” about “genies.” Tale as old as time.