What we loved: January 2024
The Post Office drama, new Mean Girls and a new female scammer podcast to devour.
Oh hello, 2024! Despite a month that felt like it was 647 days long we still didn’t get ourselves together enough to send this to you within January! Whoops.
It was a busy month for me (Michelle) at work with our huge post-Christmas sales and celebrating my husband Jack’s 30th birthday. We enjoyed a very nerdy few days exploring Bletchley Park (home of WW2 codebreaking geniuses) and the Harry Potter Studio Tour.
Caitlin and I also finally tackled a recording to reflect on our favourite things from 2023. We hope you enjoy our Oscars category of favourite books and find some new favourites as well. I had high hopes of publishing wrap-ups on here of all of them before this edition but life very much got in the way.
You can listen below or in your favourite podcast app.
What did you enjoy reading, watching and listening to in January? Leave us a comment and let us know! What was your first book of the year? Did you enjoy it?
*denotes review copy
Reading
Poster Girl by Veronica Roth
I was drawn in entirely by the cover of Veronica Roth’s adult dystopian thriller. In this, we meet Sonya who, for ten years, has been living in a detention facility after the fall of a totalitarian regimen. A chance at freedom in exchange for finding a missing teenager forces her to confront old beliefs.
This is not my usual type of read. Admittedly, it did take me a while to get fully invested, but then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I loved the way this story made me question the role of technology, surveillance and data storage. It was an unsettling read, but I appreciated the way it also reflected on grief and legacy while maintaining a thread of mystery.
– Michelle
Not Here To Make Friends by Jodi McAlister
Already read my most anticipated book of 2024, the third instalment in Jodi McAlister’s Marry Me Juliet series! I’m obsessed with this series, all set concurrently on a COVID season of a Bachelor-style reality dating show. Our season villian, Lily, and showrunner/producer, Murray, might have the best story yet. Lily isn’t who she says she is, so this romance is actually friends to lovers with all the banter and drama of enemies to lovers.
– Caitlin
The Trials of Marjorie Crow by CS Robertson*
Marjorie is an outcast in her small Scottish village. One day she sees something horrendous involving a local teenager. When the village finds out that she knows and doesn’t immediately call for help, she is targeted and terrorised. Old prejudices surface as fear grips the locals and it becomes easier to blame the “old witch” than to examine what else might be going on as more teenagers go missing. I was drawn into the story immediately and read with a chilling unease. Robertson paints such a vivid picture. This is the type of crime novel I love, where characters and motivations are at the heart of the story. Marjorie is wonderful, and I loved seeing her grow a little in confidence and eventually tell her story.
– Michelle
Between Us by Mhairi McFarlane*
Following Roisin as her relationship with her long-term boyfriend Joe, and their close-knit friendship group, crumbles. Does she know Joe as well as she thought? Are these friends meant for life, or is it time to drift apart? Every single time I read a new Mhairi novel, I am impressed with the twists and turns in the complex emotional story, and surprised she gets me to root for such an unlikely love story. Michelle and I discussed in our 2023 Wrap-Up episode that Storygraph tells us our top reading moods are emotional, light-hearted and funny. That’s a Mhairi novel, plus so much more.
– Caitlin
Watching
Mr Bates vs the Post Office
This drama has been something of a phenomenon in the UK in January. After more than two decades of fighting for any kind of recognition, this brilliant and emotional ITV mini-series to captured the public’s heart and culminated in the government actually taking action. However, the fight for justice in real terms continues.
What’s it about? The Guardian describes: “Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office accused about 3,500 operators of theft, fraud and false accounting based on information from its Horizon IT system installed in the late 1990s. More than 700 were prosecuted, despite the Post Office knowing from 2010 that there were faults in the software.” People’s lives were absolutely ruined, at least four people suicided over these allegations. It’s been described as one of the largest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
The story around this drama is just as interesting as the show itself, but I highly recommend watching this. It’s a masterclass in taking a huge story and drilling down to the humans at its heart, with empathy and sincerity. Both Jack and I cried and felt burning anger – as, I’m willing to bet, did the millions of other people who watched it.
– Michelle
Theater Camp
Nobody makes fun of theatre kids, except theatre kids. Written, directed, and starring four lifelong theatre kids. Following the eccentric staff of a summer camp while their beloved founder is unwell and her bro-ish son is in charge. Ben Platt and Molly Gordon star as inseparable best friends who write a show for the kids to perform every year, and this year they write a show about the camps founder. It’s so, so funny. I want to recommend it to everyone, but if you’re not a theatre kid you probably won’t get it? But you’re also probably not interested so it doesn’t matter.
- Caitlin
What We Do in the Shadows (season 5)
Right, I’ll keep this one short. At the start of the month, we devoured a new season of mockumentary sitcom What We Do in the Shadows faster than a group of vampires at a blood buffet. The delight was two-fold: we didn’t actually know this season existed, and it wrapped up storylines with callbacks to the earliest episodes. It’s an outrageously dark comedy, and we absolutely cannot get enough of Lazlo, Nadja, Nandor, Colin and Gizmo (Guillermo).
– Michelle
Mean Girls (2024)
Ooh what a fun time! We’re wearing pink, we’re singing songs, we don’t have any candy canes for Glen Coco. I confess, I don’t know the stage musical very well so I wasn’t crushed to see certain songs cut or changed. I enjoyed the fresh take on many iconic moments, and the modern updates were all done really well. The best part of this movie is definitely our three stars: Angourie Rice as Cady, Reneé Rapp as Regina, and Auli'i Cravalho as Janice. All of them absolutely kill it!
- Caitlin
Listening
‘Catherine the Great’ on You’re Dead to Me
After loving The Great, I really enjoyed hearing the actual reality of Catherine the Great. She’s a fascinating woman in history who really did leave a huge legacy – potentially most notably in her championing of smallpox inoculations. Despite the huge, very deliberate inaccuracies in the comedy historical drama, the descriptions of the real Catherine (and Peter) actually made me appreciate even more how perfectly Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult inhabit their respective roles.
– Michelle
Pulp Kitchen
I’d seen clips on Instagram and TikTok of Pulp Kitchen hosts, James and George, playing games and little snippets of film reviews. I do want to mix up my podcast listening a bit, so I gave this one a try. It was perfect timing actually, starting off with their various 2023 wrap up and 2024 anticipated episodes. I want to watch more movies and go to the cinema more in 2024, so I’m definitely going to keep listening.
- Caitlin
Carrie Jade Does Not Exist
Fascinated by the Belle Gibson story? Can’t get enough of Elizabeth Holmes? Listen to this podcast. This 6-part series explores ‘Carrie Jade’ supposedly a disability activist who went viral after claiming AirBnB discriminated against her. Except she’s not real. And neither are the multiple other identities she has over the years. This story is incredible but told with sensitivity and care. It’s also an addictive listen: I devoured it in two days!
– Michelle
Office Ladies podcast
As mentioned above, I mainly listen to my regular shows on rotation. I had been a bit behind, but I’ve been catching up on the wonderful Office Ladies podcast this January. We’re up to season 9! What am I going to do when this rewatch podcast is over? The last season of The Office can be a bit controversial, so I am really looking forward to hearing more about it from Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey.
- Caitlin
Something else
Keanu and co: how celebrities became bestselling novelists on The Guardian
This Guardian article was a really interesting read. I actually heard about it on the podcast Richard Osman co-hosts, The Rest is Entertainment (starting about the 30-minute mark), where they gave even more insight into the trends of publishers paying for ghostwritten celebrity novels. I certainly agree with the sentiment that people can see through gimmicks and that crime, in particular, doesn’t sell just because it’s apparently written by a celebrity. Having read this, I’m even more curious to know all the secrets of just whose work was ghostwritten…
- Michelle
Spotify’s daylist
I love it, I think it’s so fun to click in and check what the internet/algorithm/probably AI thingy decides my afternoon should sound like. I texted Michelle when it said ‘panicked home friday evening’ (rude) and had the best time doing chores listening to ‘soft melodramatic saturday afternoon’.
- Caitlin
Theater camp is easily one of my favorite movies of 2023!
What We Do in the Shadows is bizarre but entertaining nonetheless!