Episode 25 – True Believer
The Worst Bestsellers
Worst Bestsellers
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2015
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kait, Renata, and the ghost who lives in Kait’s apartment read True Believer by Nicholas Sparks, the inventor of the “love tragedy” genre. It’s a ghost story without ghosts and a love story without any real romantic chemistry. Listen now to hear our fan theory of how True Believer is a crossover with Outlander!
Readers advisory: Here.
Footnotes: Nicholas Sparks Confirmed My Fears
Author Nicholas Sparks accused of being racist, homophobe by ex-head of Sparks-founded school
Candy pairing: Kait says fake old-timey penny candy, Renata says ghost Peeps.
Coming up next: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan.
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(But no pressure, we’re also happy if you get these items from your local library or independent bookstore.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read about a perfectly normal, unhaunted small town so you don't have to. |
| 0:18.4 | I'm Renata. |
| 0:19.6 | And I'm Kate. |
| 0:20.6 | And for this episode, we read True Believer by |
| 0:23.0 | Nicholas Sparks. Joining us to discuss this romance novel disguised as a ghost story is the ghost |
| 0:29.7 | that lives in Kate's apartment. Hello, ghost. Um, we did have a living human guests lined up for this but unfortunately something came up and |
| 0:43.0 | they had to cancel so luckily this ghost was happy to step in and it turns out they actually |
| 0:49.0 | have a lot of opinions about the way Nicholas Sparks portrays ghosts so So I'm glad we have them here for this. |
| 0:56.7 | Who doesn't? Because Nicholas Sparks does not portray ghosts very well. No, he does not. |
| 1:02.8 | I guess before maybe we go into the book itself, we can talk a little bit just about the Nicholas |
| 1:08.1 | Sparks phenomenon. And my favorite thing about Nicholas |
| 1:12.9 | Sparks is that he has claimed many times that he does not write romance novels, that he has |
| 1:19.2 | invented his own genre, which is love tragedy, which is not a thing. |
| 1:26.1 | Romance novel, though. Yeah, this wasn't even a tragedy. |
| 1:29.3 | This is just straight up love. |
| 1:31.3 | I was really just waiting for like one or all of the people involved to die and it didn't happen. |
| 1:37.3 | And they would become the ghosts. |
| 1:39.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:40.3 | And it would become, they would go full circle, but alas, that did not actually occur. |
| 1:46.0 | Everyone lived in this novel. |
| 1:48.2 | Yeah. |
| 1:48.9 | Even the really old person. |
... |
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