Season 3, Episode 33: Reckoning with Romance - Special Guest Rebekah Hoffer Mon, 3/29 • 47:03 Kaytee Cobb 00:10 Hi, readers, welcome to the Currently Reading podcast. We are bookish best friends who spend time every week talking about books that we've read recently. And as you know, we do not shy away from having strong opinions. So get ready. We are light on the chitchat, heavy on the book talk, and our descriptions will always be spoiler free. We'll discuss our current reads, a bookish deep dive, and then we'll press books into your hands. I'm Kaytee Cobb, a homeschooling mom of four living in New Mexico and books can always make me feel some kind of way. I'm here today with Rebekah Hoffer, who lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with her husband and three kids. She is a regular co-host on the Sorta Awesome podcast and blogs at simplyrebekah.com. Rebecca, welcome to Currently Reading. Rebekah Hoffer 00:53 Thank you so much for having me, Kaytee. Kaytee Cobb 00:55 Thanks for being here. This is episode number 33 of season three. And listeners, we are also so glad that you are here. So today with Rebekah, we wanted to do this episode together. Because as Meredith has mentioned before, she has a cold dead heart and does not read romance. But I do. And Rebekah does. And we have some things and some thoughts that we want to share about it. So that's gonna be our deep dive today. Are you excited, Rebekah? Nervous? Rebekah Hoffer 01:21 I cannot wait. I really truly, I'm so excited for this. Kaytee Cobb 01:24 She's so excited. I'm so glad. And just so everybody knows, if we mention any kind of romance terms in our current reads today, we will absolutely get to those during the deep dive. So if you're feeling a little lost or anything, don't worry, we're going to cover all of it. It'll be great. But first, we're going to get started the way we always do, which is with a bookish moment of the week. And Rebekah, as my guest, I would love for you to go first. Rebekah Hoffer 01:47 Well, thank you, Kaytee. So my bookish moment of the week is that I am celebrating meeting my reading goal for 2020 and not even realizing it. 1 Transcribed by https://otter.ai Kaytee Cobb 01:57 for 2020 or 2021? Rebekah Hoffer 01:59 2020. Here's the story. Okay. I never set reading goals. Okay. But after I started turning towards reading as my main form of escape in 2020, I decided to set myself a small goal that was pretty sure I was gonna hit. And then I didn't. And it wasn't until I was preparing for this podcast that I've realized I had left a couple of books off of my reading log. And surprise. Here we are a quarter into 2021 nearly and I suddenly realized I met my reading goal for last year. Kaytee Cobb 02:34 Well, that's a fun little happy dance. I love that. Rebekah Hoffer 02:37 Yeah, that's how I felt. I was like, surprise, surprise. Look at me. I did it after all. Kaytee Cobb 02:44 Okay, can you tell me how do you track your books? Or you are a spreadsheet user, a Goodreads user? How do you keep track of them that you would have forgotten that you read some books? Rebekah Hoffer 02:53 I am exactly one year into a reading log. Okay, I never because I didn't read very much before 2020. So I decided once I started reading so much in 2020. I was like, I'm curious how many I've read. So I just keep a list in my bullet journal. And then for I would say like work related purposes, as being a podcaster and a blogger, I take photos of most of the books that I read. Whether I end up sharing them on social media or not is like a whole other thing. But it was in going back through my photos that I realized, Oh, wait, I I actually I didn't put this one in my reading log. And so I found three that were missing from my reading log, and boom, I hit my goal. Kaytee Cobb 03:36 Awesome. That's, that's like retroactive winning. Rebekah Hoffer 03:41 Exactly. Yes. Kaytee Cobb 03:42 Perfect. Okay, my bookish moment for the big readers out there is going to be like a duh for a lot of people. But for me, it's the first time that I have used interlibrary loan. So I've always had a pretty good library. I like using the digital services. So I don't do a lot of paper picking up especially because our library is still closed. So I can't go in and browse and chat with my favorite librarians and such. But I had a book recommended to me that I could not find anywhere. So one of our one of our Instagram followers, rclark411, sent me this title, and said, I think you would really love this it has all your scent and your vibes that you love. And I couldn't find it at on Libby. I couldn't find it at my library. I couldn't even find the audio on Libro FM, I was willing to spend a credit on it. Nothing. So I used interlibrary 2 Transcribed by https://otter.ai loan, and I got a copy from the High Plains Library District which serves all these tiny towns in Colorado. So I have a book now at my house that doesn't even belong in my state. And it just makes me so happy. Kaytee Cobb 04:43 That's fantastic. My sister was just telling me that she got a cookbook from Virginia. We're in Pennsylvania, and she got a cookbook from Virginia through interlibrary loan and I thought to myself, I forget about Interlibrary loan all the time. Why don't I utilize it more? Kaytee Cobb 05:00 It's so cool. I love that libraries want to play nice with each other and let each other borrow their their book collections. I think that's so great. I'm very excited about it. All right, so now we're gonna get into current reads Rebekah. And that means we're going to go back and forth about something we've been reading lately, and I cannot wait to hear what you're bringing to the show. So what is your first current read this week? Is it one of the three that you found magically last year? Kaytee Cobb 05:27 No, it's one that I just read here in 2021, actually, so it is the book I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella. This is a closed door contemporary romance. And I loved this book so much that I just made it my awesome of the week on the Sorta Awesome podcast, which I'm a co-host for. So here's, let me explain to you. So Poppy is engaged to the ideal man. He's handsome and incredibly smart. Very well off. And at the start of the book, Poppy loses her engagement ring at a hotel event. While looking for the ring, her phone is stolen. So how will the hotel staff call her to tell her they found her ring if she doesn't have a phone? Well as luck would have it, she finds a phone in the trash can and claims it as her own. Kaytee Cobb 06:14 Because it's romance and that's what happens. Rebekah Hoffer 06:16 You have to suspend disbelief just a little bit sometimes in romance. So the actual owner of the phone is a businessman named Sam. His assistant quit and trashed the phone. Now Sam is not pleased with Poppy taking over his assistant's phone. But Poppy promises to forward Sam all the messages if he will just let her borrow the phone until her engagement ring is found. So Poppy and Sam end up meddling in each other's lives and really unexpected ways as they navigate sharing a cell phone. So there there's always some predictability to a happily ever after romance. But this book surprised me several times. There were times I found myself like shaking my head at Poppy's choices, but her intentions were always really pure, and I found myself really rooting for her. So it was a surprising book. It was a delightful book. It was a low stakes high reward book. Again, it's a closed door romance. There's absolutely zero sex in it. And it is titled I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella. Kaytee Cobb 07:20 That is very fun. Okay, my first one this week is called Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers. And I did of course, selectively go through some of my recent reads to make sure that I got to talk about romance a 3 Transcribed by https://otter.ai little bit with you. So this one is billed as LGBT romance. But that is not where I would shove it in the bookstore. And I ended up being surprised about that.