WE HIT 100 EPISODES!!

This week we are covering Once Upon a Time in Dollywood by Ashley Jordan. A playwright must grapple with her difficult year and writer’s block while falling for the single dad living next door in this emotional debut novel. Eve is a rising star playwright, but her personal life is falling part. Jamie is restructuring what his life looks like as a single dad. A fairy-tale ending could be in the cards, but only if the new couple can get out of their heads and put their hearts first.

Triggers:

• Miscarriage
• Sexual Content
• Panic attacks
• Grief
• Abandonment
• Infertility
• Pregnancy
• Adoption
• Infedility

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

BONUS EPISODE!

For this bonus episode, we sat down with the new author Ashley Jordan to discuss her debut novel, Once Upon a Time in Dollywood, which released on August 5, 2025. Ashley Jordan (she/her) is a millennial from Atlanta by way of Brooklyn. She attended Spelman College, obtaining a degree in Psychology and a lifelong love and appreciation for women’s stories. While she currently works in public health, she has embraced writing as a hobby since penning her first short story in second grade. When Ashley isn’t at the day job or writing, she is either at a Beyoncé concert, rewatching Mad Men, or arguing about basketball with anyone who will listen. In 2023, she became a Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow.

Check out Ashley at https://ashleyjordanwrites.com/about/; her substack at https://ashleyjordanwrites.substack.com/about; and on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ashleyjordanwrites/.

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

This week we are covering King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby. A son returning home. A dangerous debt. Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma and the accident may not be what it seems. Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything. Nothing lasts forever and Everything burns.

Triggers:

• Violence
• Murder
• Gun Violence
• Drug Abuse
• Suicide
• Death of a Parent

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

This week we are covering Truth Is by Hannah V Sawyerr. Make sure you check out our last episode were we sat down with Hannah! Seventeen-year-old poet Truth Bangura begins senior year unsure of life after graduation, but when she learns she's pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, she makes one decision she is sure about—an abortion. When Truth performs a poem about her decision and her emotionally turbulent home life, the performance is recorded and posted online for everyone to see—including her mother.

Triggers:

• Emotional abuse
• Abortion
• Grooming/Inappropriate age gap
• Toxic Friendship

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

BONUS EPISODE!

For this bonus episode, we sat down with the amazing Hannah V Sawyerr, author of Truth Is, which released on September 16, 2025. Hannah V Sawyerr was recognized as the Youth Poet Laureate of Baltimore in 2016. Her debut novel in verse All the Fighting Parts was a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award, a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, a Rise Feminist Book Project Top Ten Title, a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, and an ABA Indies Introduce/Indie Next Pick. Her spoken word has been featured on the BBC’s World Have Your Say program as well as the National Education Association’s “Do You Hear Us?” campaign. Her written word has been included in Essence, xoNecole, and gal-dem. 

Sawyerr holds a BA in English from Morgan State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her sophomore novel in verse Truth Is (Abrams/Amulet) is slated for release on September 23, 2025.

Check out Hannah at https://www.hannahsawyerr.com/; and on instagram at http://instagram.com/HannSawyerr.

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

Happy October! This is our first official monthly chat! We plan for our first episode each month to be a chit chat where we can sit down, recap last month, look at our goals for the upcoming month, and blab a little (mostly spoiler free!)

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

This week we are covering Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab. This is a story about hunger. This is a story about love. This is a story about rage. From 1532 to 2019, from Santo Domingo to Boston. This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts.

Triggers:

• Blood

• Blood drinking

• Toxic relationships

• Violence

• Death

• Death of parent

• Injury and injury details

• Murder

• Gore

• Alcohol use

• Grief

• Suicide

• Sexual harassment

• Misogyny

• Sexism

• Sexual content

• Child death

• Fire injury/fire

• Homophobia/Lesbophobia

• Misogyny

• Sexism

• Domestic abuse

• Panic attacks

• Gaslighting

• Physical abuse

• Toxic friendship

• Emotional abuse

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

This week we are covering Can't Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan. Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions but she's facing her toughest challenge caring for an aging parent. Tech mogul Maverick Bell is a dilemma wrapped in an exquisitely tailored suit and knee-melting charm. Forbidden fruit is the juiciest, and this man is off limits if she plans to stay the course she’s set for herself.

Triggers:

• Dementia
• Sexual Content
• Grief
• Death of a Parent
• Racism
• Medical Trauma
• Body Shaming
• Car Accident
• Death

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

This week we are covering Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. They call them wayward girls, unwed mothers hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened. Then they meet a librarian who gives them an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid . . . and it’s usually paid in blood.

Triggers:

• pregnancy
• blood
• gore
• self-harm
• graphic description of birth
• racism
• mental abuse

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.

Our first post hiatus review!

This week we are covering the upcoming release - If Looks Could Kill by Julie Berry, releasing September 16!

In 1888 Jack the Ripper is on the run and an awakened Medusa is hunting him. Tabitha and Pearl's reluctant partnership is tested as they team up with an aspiring girl reporter and a handsome Irish bartender to mount a rescue effort, only to find their fates entwine with Medusa’s and Jack’s.

Check out Julie at https://julieberrybooks.com/; on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/julieberrybookspage; and on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/julieberrybooks/.

Triggers:

• Racism
• Religious prosecution
• Violence

• Prostitution implied

As always, our episodes contain spoilers in our podcast is intended for those 18+ as it does contain mention of mature content. Please listen, like, rate, review and share our episode! Check out our website at www.booktrospective.com. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube @ Booktrospective.