ALC Review: This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum
This Story Might Save Your Life
Author: Tiffany Crum
Narrators:
Julia Whelan
Sean Patrick Hopkins
To Be Published: March 10, 2026
Audiobook: 10 hours 39 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: January 7-12, 2026
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.
The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny will stop at nothing to find them, even as the police zero in on him as their prime suspect.
Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other.
Jessica’s Review:
This book! It was my first five star read of the year and I know it will be in my ‘Top 10 Reads’ of 2026. Where, exactly? Close to the top if not my top spot! We will have to wait until the end of the year to see where it ultimately ends up!
Anyways… This book! It’s pretty much everything I love in a book and a debut novel too!?!?! This Story will be one of THE books to read in 2026. I listened to an advanced copy and it is perfection! We have two main narrators: Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins. They portray Joy and Benny as BFF’s with such precision! You can just feel the chemistry and more with these two. Both Julia and Sean Patrick are in fact Joy and Benny.
With the audio we also get podcasts, Benny and Joy’s dual POVs, voices of tipline callers and even some occasional special effects added in. Everything just makes this audiobook a MUST LISTEN to for 2026!
This novel really is everything. You just love Benny and Joy: Their present and backstory. I was transfixed for the entire novel! And the directions this novel goes in.. I would have never expected. The fact that this is a debut novel for Crum, wow, she is on my list to see what is written next!
As you can tell from the book description, Benny and Joy’s podcast is a survival podcast that takes off. We have Joy who suffers from Narcolepsy, and as a listener I learned a little about it. One of their podcasts Joy asks a question: “What is the most dangerous home appliance?” I am proud to say I guessed that one right in one guess! And one of the tipline calls mentions Snellville, Ga… I was shocked to hear that city’s name! I looked it up and the author is now local in Georgia! And Snellville is the area I grew up in. Being Crum lives in my state, this is another reason I will be keeping up with her and what she writes. I love supporting local-to-me authors! And the fact that Crum was able to get Julia Whelan as a narrator for a debut novel???? I’m ready to see what Crum brings us next!
And I will have to buy myself a physical copy of this book to go with my favorites….
Many thanks to the audiobook publisher Macmillan Audio for granting me an advanced copy to listen to and review. It was a great pleasure to listen and review this one!
Novella Review: What Does it Feel Like? By Sophie Kinsella
What Does it Feel Like?
Author: Sophie Kinsella
Published: October 8, 2024
Hardback: 133 pages
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Read: December 20-22, 2025
Jessica’s Rating: 5 stars
Book Description:
From #1 bestselling author Sophie Kinsella, an unforgettable story—by turns heartbreaking and life-affirming—of a renowned novelist facing a devastating diagnosis and learning to live and love anew.
“What Does It Feel Like? is fiction, but it is my most autobiographical work to date. Eve’s story is my story.”—Sophie Kinsella
Eve is a successful novelist who wakes up one day in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there. Her husband, never far from her side, explains that she has had an operation to remove the large, malignant tumor growing in her brain.
As Eve learns to walk, talk, and write again—and as she wrestles with her diagnosis, and how and when to explain it to her beloved children—she begins to recall what’s most important to her: long walks with her husband’s hand clasped firmly around her own, family game nights, and always buying that dress when she sees it.
Recounted in brief anecdotes, each one is an attempt to answer the type of impossible questions recognizable to anyone navigating the labyrinth of grief. This short, extraordinary novel is a celebration of life, shot through with warmth and humor—it will both break your heart and put it back together again.
“Why did I write such a personal book? I have always processed my life through writing. Hiding behind my fictional characters, I have always turned my own life into a narrative. It is my version of therapy, maybe. Writing is my happy place, and writing this book, although tough going at times, was immensely satisfying and therapeutic for me.”—Sophie Kinsella
Jessica’s Review:
What Does it Feel Like? was a bittersweet read. It is fiction, but the closest we get to an autobiography of Sophie Kinsella. She passed away December 10, 2025, just two days shy of her birthday. Kinsella fought the battle of Glioblastoma for three years, longer than most patients who fight the disease. Glioblastoma is a very aggressive brain tumor and there is no cure.
I was actually not aware that she had been sick until after she passed away. I then found out she had written What Does It Feel Like? and very quickly ordered a copy off Amazon, which temporarily sold out of the book. Looks like a lot of readers wanted to read this novella.
It is a short novella under 150 pages; readers are given Eve’s story of battling cancer and working on recovering after having surgery: Having to learn to do the most basic things that anyone else takes for granted. It is a very moving and quick read. I read it in a 24-hour period over the course of two days.
Each chapter is an anecdote giving more of Eve’s experiences. This novella is a celebration of life with warmth and humor given along with the heartbreak knowing Kinsella’s ending. This is a moving novella and I did tear up towards the end. Even though this is Eve’s story, this is also Kinsella’s story. Kinsella will always carry a piece of my heart as her novel Can You Keep a Secret? is the book that helped me to fall in love with reading again, and I have yet to stop reading.
I wish I could tell her thank you for writing her novels, so many readers have come to love her over the many years she wrote. What Does it Feel Like? was the last book that I read in 2025 and it also was in my ‘Top 10’ of the year.
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
A Re-Listen to The Santa Suit by Mary Kay Andrews
The Santa Suit
Author: Mary Kay Andrews
Narrator: Kathleen McInerney
Published: September 28, 2021
Audiobook/224 Pages
Book Description:
When newly-divorced Ivy Perkins buys an old farmhouse sight unseen, she is definitely looking for a change in her life. The Four Roses, as the farmhouse is called, is a labor of love—but Ivy didn’t bargain on just how much labor. The previous family left so much furniture and so much junk, that it’s a full-time job sorting through all of it.
At the top of a closet, Ivy finds an old Santa suit—beautifully made and decades old. In the pocket of a suit she finds a note written in a childish hand: it’s from a little girl who has one Christmas wish, and that is for her father to return home from the war. This discovery sets Ivy off on a mission. Who wrote the note? Did the man ever come home? What mysteries did the Rose family hold?
Ivy’s quest brings her into the community, at a time when all she wanted to do was be left alone and nurse her wounds. But the magic of Christmas makes miracles happen, and Ivy just might find more than she ever thought possible: a welcoming town, a family reunited, a mystery solved, and a second chance at love.
Jessica’s Review:
I can’t really say much more than what I said on my previous review back in 2021. My review is with Kim’s as a double review here. I wanted to share this before we got too far away from Christmas! Definitely click the link to see what both Kim and I had to say.
This was a reread for me and a book club read for December. It’s MKA which you know I adore her, and the book bringing up nostalgia for me with my dad playing Santa when I was younger and remembering those days. He was Santa in the 1990s before it became the very popular ‘thing to do’ that it is now.
I hope you and your loved ones had a great Christmas!!!
Purchase Links:
Amazon US
Amazon UK