Episode 537 || Summer Readings: It's a Love Story
This week on From the Front Porch, we have a new episode series: Summer Readings! In this series, Annie introduces you to one book you should read this summer by reading an excerpt (with permission from publishers).
Today, Annie reads a passage from the delightful Annabel Monaghan’s new rom-com It’s a Love Story. Use code SUMMERREADINGS to get 10% off It's a Love Story and all of Annabel's backlist titles this week.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 537) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
It's A Love Story by Annabel Monaghan
Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan
Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan
Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, Annie is reading One Last Summer by Kate Spencer.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Beth, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, Jammie Treadwell, and Amanda Whigham.
Transcript:
Annie Jones [00:00:01] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
This feels like wealth, I think. This is the thing you save up for. You live your whole life so that you can be surrounded by too many people in too small of a room and tell the story of how it all happened. Annabel Monaghan, It's a Love Story.
[00:00:44] I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, we're kicking off our summer readings series. Before we get started, are you keeping up with all of The Bookshelf's events? It is true, summers are a little quieter in the shop. I don't know if you've heard, but it gets a little hot and humid down here, but we still have plenty going on and plenty that is already being scheduled for the fall. Maybe you think our events are just for locals, but even if you are not a nearby listener or customer, we've got plans in the books for you too. From our fall Reader Retreat to our Literary First Look programs to our holiday shopping night, we plan specific events for our long distance customers and friends too. We don't want you to be left out. So to keep up, you've got a couple of options and you can choose the one that makes the most sense for you. You can follow us on Instagram where we post regularly about in-store and virtual happenings. You can subscribe to our store newsletter which lands in your inbox every Thursday. And has a complete rundown of our shop events. Or you can check our website, which Erin keeps updated with event dates, tickets, and more. Links to all three, Instagram, newsletter, website are in the show notes. Summer may be quiet, but we are already gearing up for fall and we cannot wait for you to be a part of it.
[00:02:09] Now, back to the show. When I found out I was pregnant and realized it was really happening, I tried to brainstorm ways to keep the podcast coming to you regularly this summer. We rarely, if ever, run reruns on this show. And even though I'm not opposed to taking a break, we just haven't, really. Maybe ever. We do a lot of batch recording, holiday episodes look a little different, but when Olivia also announced she was pregnant at her own summer due date, much like Nancy Meyers, I knew something's got to give. I could only batch record so many episodes before my own maternity leave, whatever that maternity leaves winds up looking like. So, for the rest of July and August, we are launching two new podcast series. Next week, you will hear a From the Archives episode, where I've recorded new introductions for three backlist episodes with guests I love, and they're all perfect for summer listening for new and old listeners alike. I really did go deep in the archives, you guys. I went deep.
[00:03:17] And this week, perhaps what I am most excited about, our summer readings episodes. Even before I recorded the audio book of Ordinary Time, I have tried to find ways to incorporate book narration into our episodes. I want grownups to be read to, too. It's honestly why we start each episode with a book quote. And why each holiday season I read, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus. I'm supremely aware of copyright issues, hello, husband who is an attorney. So for this new podcast series, we did receive permission from publishers to read to you excerpts of some of my new favorite summer books. These episodes will be short and sweet, much like our Yes Virginia episodes, but hopefully they will provide you with a taste of some new summer books I think you'll really love. Each book featured can be found on our store website, that is of course, bookshelfthomasville.com, and each week you can receive 10% off that week's featured title. We are launching things with Annabel Monaghan's latest book, It's a Love Story.
[00:04:22] Just a little bit about my love for Annabel Monaghan. If you've been around for a long time, you know that I stumbled across her first romance novel, Nora Goes Off Script, well before it was released in the summer of 2022. I grabbed it off of a stack of ARCs sitting at the store and was immediately hooked, delighted, agog. I imagine this is how book editors feel when they pick something off of the slush pile and it turns out to be a winner. I have no publishing experience. I just am reflecting on episodes of Younger that I've seen, but it seems like the same high you would get from finding something in the slosh pile. A rom-com with substance? Yes. A romance featuring mature adults and precocious, but not irritating children? Yes. A believable miscommunication plot point? Yes. Characters I could picture vividly in my head. Looking at you, Chris Evans and Rachel McAdams. Why don't you star in anything of substance anymore? I'm not a re-reader, but I do believe I ultimately have reread Nora Goes Off Script five times, which maybe seems a little ridiculous. And sure, it could be because 2022 was as fragile and fraught as the two years that came before it. Maybe I was still trying to find feel-good fiction to massage my broken brain and psyche.
[00:05:44] But then, a year later, Annabel released Same Time Next Summer. And guess what? I liked it too, even though there was a blonde male protagonist. In 2024 came Summer Romance, which I could not wait to read. So much so that despite my preference for seasonal reading, I wound up devouring a book called Summer Romance at my dining room table on a cold January night. I wound featuring it on my list of top 10 books of the year so far back in 2024. I was so surprised and delighted once again by its depth, the rich characters Annabel creates. And I cried. I literally cried. I'm not making this up, I cried while reading it. Which again, not something I typically do, particularly with a rom-com. And then sometime in the middle of all that, in the middle of writing and publishing three books, Annabel Monaghan came to Thomasville. Not a lot of authors accept our invitations. We are, as has been well-documented, a bookstore that is off the beaten path, and it can be pretty inconvenient to get here. We also cannot guarantee a crowd the size of, say, The Strand, or Books Are Magic, or Fabled. I mean, literally insert name of almost any other bookstore here.
[00:07:06] But Annabel came for one of our Reader Retreats. She mingled with customers, gamely appeared on the podcast. She's still one of my favorite author guests we've ever hosted, and has been supportive of the store over and over and again. And she's also been supportive of me in ways I couldn't have imagined when I was curled up with Nora way back in 2022. Annabel agreed to blurb my book, Ordinary Time, which I could not believe, and was still such an act of generosity and kindness. We are so lucky to have writers who miraculously create new stories for us every year. And this summer, Annabel is back with It's a Love Story, a book I distinctly remember her researching when she came to visit The Bookshelf way back when. It's a Love Story has already received rave reviews. Readers I trust have already called it their favorite of Annabel's books. I find her work to be refreshingly consistent. And although I was originally saving my reading for maternity leave, I found an excerpt of the book that I'd like to read to you today.
[00:08:09] It's a Love Story is about Jane, a former child star turned Hollywood exec who's trying to get her first big project greenlit. The only problem, well, she's maybe made some promises she might not be able to keep. And, of course, there's always a guy who you hate, who might be able help. "I sit under my desk where it's safe. There's no place left to fall when I'm down here. It's where you'd sit in an earthquake. My office door is closed and I just need a minute in this small space to regroup. The hard plastic mat that my chair rolls around on feels cool under me. My knees are pulled up to my chest, and I look up at the underside of my desk drawer where I've written the word please six times since my promotion. I can't say exactly why making it in this business means so much to me. Show business was a lifeline for my mom and me when I was a kid, and I mean that literally in the way a life line can be food and shelter. But it was also such a weird way to grow up, on television, always being a joke. I just want to be taken seriously for once, and preferably in the world I was raised in.
[00:09:24] I can't bear the thought of being part of the next round of layoffs, sent home with a cardboard box and a pity smile. I want Hollywood to give me a hug or a gold star, or at least a better table at the Ivy. My current office has a view of the very top of Pantheon Television and the sound stage where Pop Rocks was filmed. The show followed four middle schoolers, unlikely friends, who started an after-school band and became pop stars. If I get a film made, there's a chance I will move to an office on the other side of the building where I won't have to look at it. Inside that studio was our fake high school classroom, fake recording studio, and fake auditorium where we were discovered and given our own fake record contract. My character, Janie Jakes, is immortalized as a meme, the one you send your friends after they accidentally reply all or pull out of a parking lot with a bag of groceries on their car. Oof! I'm 33 now and people seldom recognize me, but it happens. They see me at Starbucks making my famous oof face while trying to force open the cream container and they sing the familiar show ender. Poor Janie. Doot-todoot-todoot. I smile politely at their joke and pose for their selfie, but honestly, it's a nightmare.
[00:10:50] Hailey Soul, the lead singer, went on to be a soap opera star and is now a Manhattan mom of three kids with a million Instagram followers, including me, who like to see what she's wearing and harvesting in her urban garden. Hailey has long legs. She has a dad who used to surprise her on set and calls her Cricket. Hailey and her husband have a meet-cute story that involves a horse. Hailey is the haver of good things. Hailey is an eternal frontliner. Even in sweatpants plucking leaves off her basil plant for the camera, she is a star. Like Jack Quinlan, Hailey is a measuring stick for me. It's not healthy, but I scroll her Instagram and keep score. Me, one small house. Hailey, two large ones. Me, an awkward side hug after a third date with an orthodontist. Hailey, a surprise trip to Lake Como for her fifth wedding anniversary. My Manifest a Solid Partner project was born just after her third child when she posted a photo of the baby in her arms, wrapped in cashmere, and bathed in the soft light of her East Hampton fire pit. I reach on top of my desk for a pen and write, please, one more time on the bottom of the drawer before crawling out and standing up like a normal person."
[00:12:15] Annabel Monaghan's It's a Love Story released on May 27th as a paperback original. You can purchase it and any of Annabel's backlist titles from The Bookshelf website. Receive 10% off this week by using code SUMMERREADINGS. Make sure you include that S at checkout. Again, SUMMERREADINGS for 10% off your purchase of Annabel's books this week.
[00:12:44] This week, I'm listening to One Last Summer by Kate Spencer.
[00:12:45] Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website:
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found at:
Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell, Gene Queens, Beth, Jammie Treadwell…
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins
Annie Jones: If you’d like to support From the Front Porch, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your input helps us make the show even better and reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for From the Front Porch, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Or, if you’re so inclined, support us over on Patreon, where we have 3 levels of support - Front Porch Friends, Book Club Companions, and Bookshelf Benefactors. Each level has an amazing number of benefits like bonus content, access to live events, discounts, and giveaways. Just go to:
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.