Show Notes
Hot Takes, Top Reads of 2026, and the MMCs We Actually Hate
#001: In this episode of The Everygirl Book Club podcast, Lauren and Garri share the books that made them lifelong readers, their evolving reading phases, and how BookTok shaped (and later sharpened) their tastes. They discuss mood reading, cringe in romance, DNFing, and their auto-buy authors. They share their all-time favorite reads as well as their 2026 highs and lows (so far). They swap current reads and audiobook habits, deliver hot takes (including loving Silver Elite despite the hate, disliking Crescent City, and Garri’s case against Fourth Wing’s Xaden), and answer member-submitted recommendation requests. Finally, they reveal and contextualize The Everygirl Book Club's summer picks—Let’s Not Go Overboard Here, Love By the Book, and Both Can Be True—plus a bonus read, A Good Person, and close with the LITigation segment, defending unlikable main characters and pushing back on the idea that “all romantasy is the same.”
Chapters 00:46 Read Receipts 06:24 Book Taste Explained 10:58 Auto Buy Authors 15:31 All Time Favorites 21:28 2026 Highs and Lows 25:41 Current Reads 27:29 Hear Me Out 36:41 Listener Prescriptions 42:41 Summer Book Club Picks 53:21 LITigation
Books Mentioned Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Twilight by Stephenie Meyer A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas The Princess Bride by William Goldman Normal People by Sally Rooney The Secret History by Donna Tartt Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon Heart of the Lover by Lily King Into the Blue by Emma Brodie Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower Habits of the Sea by Shea Ernshaw Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter Songbird of the Sorrows by Braidee Otto Crescent City by Sarah J. Maas Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas Silver Elite by Dani Francis Yellowface by R.F. Kuang Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab With All My Haunted Heart by Isabel Stirling Happily Ever Afterlife by Emma R. Alban Wayward by Blake Crouch Happy Place by Emily Henry June Baby by Shannon Garvey Let's Not Go Overboard Here by Erica Hendry Love by the Book by Jessica George Both Can Be True by Jessica Guerriri A Good Person by Kirsten King
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More from The Everygirl Book Club
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