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 wrestle with their frustrations with The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki and try to get to the bottom of important questions like, “What happened?” and “Who is this book for?”

Julia and Victoria apply a postcolonial perspective to Ayana Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds, a novel about death, magical matriarchs, love, and VIBES.