Welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read about the OG vegetarian vampire so you don't have to.

I'm Kate.

And I'm Renata.

And for this episode, we read Benicula by Deborah and James Howe.

Joining us to discuss this iconic middle grade horror story is Laura.

Hello, Laura.

Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

You're happy to have you.

This was one of my, oh, flashback summer.

Let's start by saying it's flashback Summer. Oh, yeah. It's

flashback summer. Yeah, this is a recurring feature that we do, partly because it's fun,

partly to give ourselves a little bit of a break in the summertime, and, you know,

partly because everyone seems to really enjoy these little trips to, I can't say everybody, everybody that talks to us seems to enjoy these trips to memory lane, no one's complained about it, which is great. To your face, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, save what you want behind me back. I'm just don't at me about this. I'm totally here for it, though. Like, I was so delighted when you said you were going to be working on this book, because it's this book and the subsequent books are some of my favorites and have such, I have such fun memories when I was a kid. So it's, I think it's a great idea. And I'll say that to your face. Oh, thank you. The only thing, we just have to sort of specially designated flashback summer and get this out of the way immediately because otherwise people are like, wait a minute, your worst bestsellers and you're reading binicula, does that mean you think this book is bad? Because that book's not bad, I'll fight you. I'm like, no, I would fight myself also. I did worry about that at first, actually. I was like, does that mean that they don't like it? Am I supposed to say?

Because we can have a fight on the podcast. That could probably, you know, be really interesting. Yeah, exactly. So Flashback Summer, we're just giving ourselves. And of course, as if you listen to the podcast, you know, sometimes we listen to these books, or we read these books that we think might be bad. and then we actually really like them.

This is, you know,

but this is a case where, like, read these books that we think might be bad and then we actually really like them.

This is, you know, but this is a case where like we remember them as being good and we just

let's want to check back in with them and we generally find that they still are good.

And that's why we're specifically calling it Flashback Summer to just separate it from

the worst bestseller's brand a little bit.

Yes.

This was one that I chose, and Renata, I'm not sure it was so loud in that restaurant when we talked about what we were going to be doing for Flashback Summer.

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