You guys - it's the last show of 2022! We were able to get one last book into the year - Kiley Dunbar's SPARKLING "Christmas at the Borrow A Bookshop"!

Eagle-eyed listeners will know we've covered this book's predecessor in Series 6, and this second installment in the series is JUST as gorgeous!

Topics covered include (but are not limited to):

• We love that it's not a Hallmark movie Christmas story. That would have triggered us too hard
• Jowan is a bad bitch and Saoirse absolutely would
• Magnus and Alex falling in love at first sight and what that has to do with the unbearable lightness of being (oh we can get wanky if we want you guys)
• Magnus triggering all our internalised misogyny by being a feminist ICON
• The Pride & Prejudice insertion and a related argument over whether that is better content than the time BTS's Jungkook's jacket couldn't withstand his pecs
• The romance of someone taking responsibility for themselves for the sake of the other person
• Ben being the actual worst. Seriously, he is lucky he's not a real person. He would have caught these hands
• The whole book is a death defying balance between high romance, sexy sexual tension, proper melodrama and some serious old school action - anchored in people being human and understanding that dramatic stuff is transient - being okay in yourself is the one thing we can work towards as a constant. And we are HERE FOR IT

Plus, it wouldn't have been an episode without some tangents right? We found ourselves talking, for some reason, about:

• How we're freezing
• Chloe's stance on bobble hats
• BTS's Jin going into the military and the weirdly biased Wikipedia page about women in the Korean military
• What is quite possibly our very first masturbation joke ever (how did we make it this long?
• Katie's mam makes her own mince pies. No one is surprised.
• Though all her adorableness is harnessed at this time of the year to help the St Vincent de Paul Christmas appeal and we encourage our listeners to support similar organisations if they're in the position to do so :)

It's all here in this week's Chick Lit 4 Life!