Rob Hart – The Medusa Protocol

Steve Thomas: Rob, welcome to the podcast.

Rob Hart: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Steve Thomas: Before we get into the books, can you tell me about your experience with libraries throughout your life? Did you go as a kid? Do you go as an adult? Now as an author, do you have a different relationship with them?

Rob Hart: Oh, man. I mean, I wouldn’t be here without libraries. I took my very first writing workshop in a library, the West Brighton, New York Public Library branch, which was the one near my house growing up. And I was the youngest person there. It was mostly adults and then I was like this little kid with a notebook and they would give us writing prompts and we would just write stuff and share them. It really was the first place that kind of instilled in me the appreciation of writing.

But also, I rented so many books from that place. I was a really avid reader growing up, and then, when I was working in government for a little while. I was working for the city council for the finance chairman, which was great because I got to advocate for libraries because libraries are always the first thing the city wants to cut whenever there’s a budget shortfall. So it was nice, and he was very much on board with it, with me, where we would go in and make that fight.

And now, even getting to visit libraries, do library events, the thing I love about libraries, and that I don’t think enough people realize is how much of a public service they are beyond just renting books. It’s a place that you can go if you’re prepping for a job, you can go there for assistance. You can do research there, you can get support there on so many things. And they’re so important to our communities and it’s, again, it’s really frustrating that whenever there’s a budget issue, the city’s like, “Eh. We’ll just close the libraries two or three days a week.” And it’s like, you really can’t do that. They’re the lifeblood of our communities.

Steve Thomas: So I wanted to talk a little bit about the books, obviously. Your new book is the Medusa Protocol and it is the follow up to Assassins Anonymous, and I know we talked a little bit before we started recording, spoiler warning for Assassins Anonymous. We’ll probably have to say a couple things about that book in this conversation, so if you haven’t read it and don’t wanna get spoiled, hit pause, come back later.

But for people who don’t know about either book, can you kind of give the concept of what the Assassin’s Anonymous series is and then kind of what the Medusa Protocol in particular is about?

Rob Hart: Sure. So Assassin’s Anonymous is almost exactly what it sounds like. It’s about one of the world’s deadliest killers who gets into a 12 step recovery program, for killers, and someone from his past comes back to try to get him back into the game, and he discovers how difficult it is to navigate that world without killing anybody. So that’s kind of the challenge that he faces.

His name is Mark. He worked as the Pale Horse for a clandestine agency, and then for the Medusa protocol I kind of turn the lens a little bit and Mark is still there, but we also follow another member from the group which is kind of the thing about the series that’s so much fun is that you’ve got this room of killers, and these people all have their own stories, their own specialties, their own traumas, their own past, the things that they’re trying to make amends for.

So I could write 20 of these, you know, there are so many ways to explore this and I’m so excited by that opportunity. So, the Medusa Protocol is a book that, if you read the first book you’ll get more out of it, but also, you can pick it up without having read the first and it’ll be fine.

Steve Thomas: I do love that because it’s a support group, it’s easy for you to bring characters in and out because if you want to introduce a new character, you can have somebody else decide that they want to go through this program. You always have a new mix of characters. I think we always want to come back probably and see Mark and Booker and lots of the other characters, but you can always get new mix of personalities in there.

Rob Hart: Exactly. Exactly. I just turned the third book in to my editor. It’s called Three Hit Men and a Baby, and yeah, I got to introduce some new characters there because it’s a totally different scenario, and it’s just, it is so fun and so rewarding. Again, I hope I get to write these books for a long time.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, it’s a good twist on the recovery narrative. Where did you get the spark for this idea of having assassins go through a 12-step program?

Rob Hart: So for the longest time I wanted to write a book about assassins because it’s just a fun, moral gray area to play in, and I initially thought group therapy would be kind of interesting ’cause I like this idea of these traditionally masculine and scary characters sitting in a circle and just sharing their feelings. And it was one of those things, it’s like, the two dozen other ideas I had that are just sitting at the back of my head just kind of percolating. And then one day it kind of clicked, like, oh, recovery would be interesting because the thing about the recovery process is that it includes making amends, and I was like, ooh, what does making amends look like for someone who professionally killed people for a living? And that was like, that was it, that was the moment I was like, oh, I think I got a book here.

It was really, really important to me to treat the recovery process with a lot of respect. You know, it’s not a gimmick, it’s not something like silly to hang my hat on. It saves people’s lives and I was very lucky to have a couple of friends who were in recovery who shared their time and their stories with me. I had a friend who took me to an open meeting, so I was able to experience that, but there are similarities there.

Like, there are studies that show similarities in brain structure between addicts and killers. You know, not to say that addicts are killers, but when it comes to decision making and things like that, and we know that it doesn’t have to be a substance to be addictive. Sex and gambling can be addictive. It’s about the endorphin rush. It’s about being good at something. It’s about that feeling of conquest. It’s all these things that kind of come together, and I was very happy when I gave it to my friends in recovery to read, and I was like, check me on this. Like, if I mess this up, tell me. And they were like, oh no, actually, like, you did okay. So it felt very gratifying.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and you definitely get into the part of it being a constant struggle. Like it’s not just a, oh, we’ll go through this for six weeks, and then you’re done and you’re recovered. It’s a constant ongoing process and all of the characters are, Booker in particular sometimes, is like, just, is there redemption out there for these characters? And do they believe that there’s actually redemption for themselves?

Rob Hart: Yeah. Yeah. And, and that’s the challenge about that. There’s no winning recovery. Like there’s no point where it’s like you’ve gotten enough, like you get to go home now, you’re fine. People wake up every day and have to make that decision every single day to continue with it, and I respect it so much. And it’s kind of a beautiful thing. I think a lot of addicts, like they still consider themselves addicts. They’re just getting the help that they need.

So again, exploring that with professional killers was definitely a bit of a trip, but what I hoped was that it brought something a little bit new to the genre because I love the assassin genre. I love it. John Wick movies are like my favorite things in the world. But, you know, I think there’s room to kind of question the way that we watch John Wick shooting people in the head and we’re like, “Oh, that’s so cool!” but every single person he shot in the head, they have a family or a friend or just someone whose life is now harder because that person is dead. So I think it’s worthwhile to look at the larger picture there and say like, what is the actual impact? What does it mean to like take someone else’s life?

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and there’s plenty of action scenes in these as well, but in prepping for the action scenes, the characters are bringing non-lethal weapons and trying to figure out ways not to kill people. Is that a fun challenge for you in writing these scenes that you have to find ways around that so that the characters don’t kill?

Rob Hart: I wouldn’t call it a challenge. It is really, really fun. It’s one of those things where sometimes when you have limits, it just forces you to be more creative. So yeah, the third book, which is gonna be called Three Hit Men and a Baby, I did a much deeper dive on non-lethal crowd control weapons and came up with a couple of fun ones that the group gets to use.

So I think it’s good because I’m trying to come from this place of like, how do we resolve something, maybe not nonviolently, because there’s still violence involved, but without like really grievously injuring or killing anybody. And having that limitation is always like, okay, cool, now I really have to sit down and think this through and figure it out and make sure that it clicks.

Steve Thomas: There are characters who relapse and do kill again, some of them for a good reason, some of them because something else has happened, trying to avoid spoilers here, but of something that just emotionally affects them and makes them just not be able to control it.

But then that’s part of recovery as well is sometimes you can fall off and you have to be able to figure out how to get back on, and one of the big parts of that, I think is having that found family that they’ve got together. Was that an important part of what you wanted to add to the story, the found family element?

Rob Hart: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s with anything I write. I just love that entire concept because look, we live in a tough world, and sometimes we’re unlucky to be born into families that just don’t stick up for us the way that they should and sometimes you gotta go out and you gotta make that family. I think it’s one of the most powerful things in fiction. I’m also, over time, like I’m starting to believe less and less in, who is it that did the Hero’s Journey thing? His name is escaping me right now.

Steve Thomas: Campbell? Joseph Campbell?

Rob Hart: Campbell. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, the Hero’s Journey is great and all, but I’m much more interested in the collective journey, because I think that’s why we read books. We read books ’cause we don’t wanna feel alone, and I think books are particularly important to people who do feel alone. So, you know, a story where one random person is our only hope is great, but I’m much more interested in stories where we’re all coming together and supporting each other.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. No, that’s great, and that’s so important in recovery, I think, of having that and the sponsor obviously is the most important thing there or one of the most important elements there. Do you feel like that was a big step for Mark to take someone on as a sponsor?

Rob Hart: Oh, absolutely, and that’s the thing about sponsorship, which again, like my friends in recovery would talk about is that you don’t just sponsor someone off the bat. Like, you have to work the program for a little while before you level up enough that you can do it. And even then sponsorship is a whole other can of worms. It comes with so many responsibilities, dangers, like you can’t tie up your recovery in theirs. There are so many elements at play there.

And that’s again one of the things that I think helps sustain this as a series because the difficulty of writing a series is that you want your characters to grow, but not so much that the story is over so for Mark to be a sponsee in the first book and then a sponsor in the second book, it’s like, okay, cool. In the first book, he can have his ego death, he can kind of figure out his stuff, he can get a little bit more situated. But then in the second book, he’s got this entire new set of challenges that he has to deal with, which are still kind of couched in the same areas, but I just get to explore it from a different viewpoint.

Steve Thomas: And in this second book, you’ve split half the chapters are Mark and half the chapters are one of the other characters. Do you think you’ll continue to do that throughout the series as well? Of like, maybe Booker now gets a section to himself and things like that?

Rob Hart: A little bit. A little bit. So in the third book it’s the same two characters in the second book, but I did add a big long interlude chapter with Valencia because she’s doing her own thing. She has to go off and they’re watching her baby, and that’s kind of the problem that starts there.

I’m thinking about the fourth book right now. I mean, I’m meeting with my editor soon so we can talk about what’s next because there’s always all these different factors involved and who’s writing what and doing what, but yeah, for the fourth book, I think I’d really rather take a big swing and like completely switch over to, to another character. I do kind of feel like Booker would be a really fun character to follow in these.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And he’s very, I mean, they’re all tortured by the past, but he’s sort of literally sees ghosts of people that he has harmed and feels the most, I think, like he’s in the program and he’s working in the program, but he feels the most haunted, I think, by the past.

Rob Hart: Yeah, absolutely but again, like there’s a character I introduced in the third, one that, that a part of me is like, oh, maybe I wanna follow them. I don’t know.

Steve Thomas: And then even there’s a section of the new book that’s in a prison, and you’ve got other characters there that come in and one of them joins the group as well so that’s another character that you’ve got in the mix there. And that was a different kind of character, ’cause what we’ve followed so far are sort of the typical what you’re thinking about with assassins, the John Wicks or the Jason Bournes and that kind of thing, but he’s more of a terrorist, but then he’s also feeling the same remorse about killing as the other characters are.

Rob Hart: Yeah, which I thought was kind of interesting, I wanted to dive into this idea of, I think that the reason the assassin genre is interesting is, yeah, it’s a moral gray area, but we kind of build these characters into heroes. We decide like, okay, well even though they’re killing, which is still a very bad thing, they’re only killing “bad guys,” so we should cheer for them and it’s okay.

And I wanted there to be a sort of different layer of reality here where Mark didn’t always kill bad people. He was killing people who were troublesome for someone else, who may have been doing a good thing. And I wanted to introduce a terrorist who was based on a real life figure, who is like widely considered one of the most dangerous terrorists who ever lived. He was one of the founders of Hamas, he’s a very, very, very dangerous person, and I kind of wanted to play with this idea of like, no matter how bad someone was, if they’re willing to show remorse, is it worth redemption? And, you know, some readers might read characters like that and disagree. I’m open to conversations there, but I think there was just some fun area to explore in terms of like, how far can I push these characters into the depth and still feel like we can bring them back?

Steve Thomas: And then, we won’t say what the title exactly is referring to, but definitely does have the Medusa myth in there, and I love that you expound upon that and explain that even that story is kind of a, not a redemption story, but it’s deeper than just “Monster lady turns people into stone.” Can you kind of give the overview of what that story actually is and how it relates to the book?

Rob Hart: Yeah. Well, Medusa was a character who kind of just lost the PR war. In the proper story, she was a rape victim, I’m not remembering off the top of my head because I wrote the book like a year ago, but there was another character within the mythology who was jealous of her beauty and decided to like, make her ugly. So she became this mythical monster when she really didn’t do anything wrong. Like, her greatest sin was just being beautiful. And the reason I wanted to add that was just for the context, because you’ve got this thing in the book that’s referred to as the Medusa Protocol and it’s named by a man and it’s this big dangerous thing, and another character, a woman, has to kind of check him on that and be like, clearly you don’t understand the actual roots of this.

Steve Thomas: Mm-hmm. Well, and then even, we were talking before about who you know, that that other woman character, and yes, listeners, there’s the reason we’re kind of dancing around it and just saying “woman character,” but that character has her own, her past as an assassin is different, and the particular person that she killed that relates to this book is definitely much more difficult for her personally because of what the person did and she doesn’t feel like that was ever wrapped up appropriately.

Rob Hart: Yeah. I love how wonderfully vague we’re keeping this, which I hope makes it more enticing, but yeah, there were several challenges there ’cause one is like, you know, the first book is just Mark. The second book is Mark and this other character. So it’s like, how do I make their voices different, but also like, how are their journeys different? They can’t be coming from the same place. They all have to be driven by their own wants, their own needs, their own traumas. They have to have their own different backstories and the way that they react to things.

But also in the second book, I wanted to introduce a villain that was so reprehensible that just about anyone can make the argument for killing them. Because it’s like, again, it’s a challenge I’m setting for myself. How do I talk these characters into a pathway of non-violence when this is one of the worst people who’s ever lived, but you know, I like to make my life difficult.

Steve Thomas: And that person is probably based on a real person, the evil person.

Rob Hart: And anyone who reads the book is gonna figure it out. Yeah.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. But obviously the fate is different for that person and it’s not the exact same person and everything, but you still have those same moral arguments in your head of again, is it okay to kill a person like that? If you go back in time and kill Hitler, was that okay? I don’t know!

Rob Hart: See, and that’s an interesting question, and I actually raised that as a thought experiment in the first book, which is like, there’s this idea of like, well, go back and kill Hitler when he was a child. And it’s like, why not go back and show Hitler the loving compassion that he clearly never got? Why does it have to be about killing? Why can’t you make the kinder choice in the hope that he becomes a better person? Like, real clearly, Hitler is completely evil and is one of the biggest monsters in humanity, but at one point he was innocent, and he was probably shaped by his environment and what was going on around him. So would there be an opportunity to kind of flip that and is it worth doing that versus like killing a child?

Steve Thomas: And is killing ever the answer ’cause like even when you get adult Hitler, is it better to put him in prison for the rest of his life, or is it better to kill him? It’s hard to decide.

Rob Hart: Yeah. Yeah. And look, like, I don’t want there to be any easy answers here, and I want the reader to have room to be able to say like, well, I don’t agree with this, but you know, personally, like, not to make it too political, but like, I’m against the death penalty because I think that, someone who is in an actual situation where they’re contemplating the death penalty because like they lost a loved one, like I wouldn’t tell them how to think. That’s a much more different scenario. But at the end of the day, we can misapply it, it has been misapplied. People have been put to death who are innocent, and I feel like any system that’s imperfect like that is, if it’s an imperfect system, it’s not what we should be using. But that’s just me. I’m not telling anyone what to think on that. But again, there are conversations worth having.

Steve Thomas: But you wrangle with all that in your books really well. And I think you have the characters really wrangling with that because there are times even that Mark thinks, this would be so much easier for me to deal with if I just like went back to being Pale Horse and just murdered these people ’cause I could just go bang, bang, bang, and I’m done. But now I have to do all this and it’s annoying, but to feel like I’m going to be a better person, a good person, I need to do this.

Rob Hart: Yeah, and again, that was one of the challenges and it was one of the fun parts, but that was the question I went into the book with. Can we change, can we become better people? And I’m asking that entering my forties and looking back on my life and thinking like, wow, I’ve made mistakes. I’ve done some stupid things. Can I grow? Can I be a better person? So I thought the best way to explore that was just through a whole bunch of the killers.

Steve Thomas: And I like what you said that you’re starting a conversation with the reader.

Rob Hart: Exactly.

Steve Thomas: So you’ve worked with some other authors before on books, like James Patterson and Alex Segura, what do you like about collaborating with other authors? What do you get outta that that’s different from your solo writing?

Rob Hart: That just means I get to play with a different set of toys. It’s fun working with other authors because you’re benefiting from the fact that you get to throw a bunch of ideas in the pile and sift through them and figure out what the best one is.

I’m currently working with Jeff Rake, who is the creator and showrunner of the TV show, Manifest. We’ve got a book coming out called Detour in January. It’s like a mystery box book. It’s the most fulfilling and fun experience because like, he’s brilliant, and the two of us can just sit there and just throw ideas at each other and the best idea always wins. There’s no ego involved, and it allows me to pursue other projects that would be difficult to do on my own, just from a time perspective. But when you’ve got two hands in the pot, then it just makes it a little bit easier.

Steve Thomas: You mentioned that you have the next book in the series. Is there anything that you want to tease about it?

Rob Hart: Yeah, sure. It’s called Three Hit Men and a Baby. Valencia has her baby, the baby is now three, and she has to go do something and she leaves the baby with three the characters in the group and things go sideways really quickly for a variety of reasons. It’s a book that I really thought was gonna be more of a romp and ended up being sort of like emotionally devastating, but I’m really happy with how it came out. I’m waiting for my editor to tell me whether or not I actually did a good job on this one ’cause I always assume that it’s garbage until someone tells me otherwise.

Steve Thomas: Was there a particular book or series of books that really inspired you, you mentioned you went to writing classes early when you were young, that made you said, “I want to be a writer ’cause of this. I wanna write stuff like this!”

Rob Hart: I don’t know. I mean, I guess, I started off reading Encyclopedia Brown and then moved up to Hardy Boys. And then, in, like the seventh or eighth grade, my mom started giving me Dean Koontz books, which I was way too young to be reading those. I should not have been reading those, but I think Koontz does like a really wild, high concept, and I think that might have helped kind of build out my DNA a little bit in terms of where I am as a writer.

Steve Thomas: And, we were talking about Nazis earlier, and Lightning is one of my favorite books of his, and it involves Nazis.

Rob Hart: Yeah, oh, that was a good one. Man, I should go back and revisit some of those books.

Steve Thomas: So Rob, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I appreciate it, and I did love the book and again, listeners, please read the first book first and then read the next one. But you can read it on your own, but you will completely spoil the first book, but they’re both great. I loved them. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about the books.

Rob Hart: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

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Rebecca Vnuk: Hello, and welcome to the Circ Desk. I’m Rebecca Vnuk, the Executive Director for Library Reads.

Yaika Sabat: And I’m Yaika Sabat, a librarian who works for NoveList. Make sure to stay tuned after the Circ Desk for a special offer for listeners of this podcast.

Rebecca Vnuk: And today we’re finding you read alikes for The Medusa Protocol by Rob Hart.

Now, as you just heard when you were listening to Rob and Steve talk, we’ve got Assassins Anonymous, love it, the only 12-step group where joining can be deadly. That cracks me up. So we’ve got this black humor / assassins, which of course is a lot to try and find a read alike for, so this is definitely one of those titles where you’re trying to find something. You look for those appeal characters that, maybe things match, maybe they’re close enough, maybe it’s something that’s gonna hook that reader.

So when I was looking at the Library Read selections, I came across a few choices. We don’t end up with a lot of spy / assassin stuff on the Library Reads list.

Yaika Sabat: No, you don’t.

Rebecca Vnuk: One of the things, I can find you. I’ll find a witchy romance if you want! One of the things that came up was, all right, I’m gonna look for, let’s start with assassins is my keywords, right? And just see what comes up. So a bunch of books come up. I’m reading the descriptions and I’ve landed on two authors where we have had books from their series, very popular series, hit our list. So I think I will use those for our matches today.

So the first one is going to be the Tearling Trilogy by Erika Johansen, and she’s had all three of those hit our list. We had Queen of the Tearling in 2014, Invasion of the Tearling in 2015, and then Fate of the Tearling in 2016. And that’s the annotation that I’ll read off as our read alike because I think it gives you a lot of those clues and keywords that we’re looking for when we do read alikes.

So the blurb is, “It’s been fascinating to watch the Tearling saga evolve into a riveting blend of fantasy and dystopian fiction with characters developing in unexpected, but satisfying ways into people I actually care about. With the introduction of new characters in the town, a third timeline is woven into the story leading to a plot twist readers will not see coming. The book will give you lots to think about: community, leadership, use and abuse of power, and they’ll want to reread all of the trilogy.” And that comes from Beth Mills, one of our power users. She’s a Library Reads Ambassador, in fact. So I thought that that was good because this is definitely a character driven book, and I thought that would be a good match for the character of the Medusa Protocol.

My second choice then as an author overall is Jim Butcher. We’ve had several of his books hit the list as well, a long running series. Boy, I can’t even remember how far back this goes. Harry Dresden is the main character in that, and there’s definitely more fantasy in this for sure. The most recent book of his that hit our list was Battle Ground in 2020, and the blurb on that is “Battle Ground has more at stake than any previous book in the Dresden file series and more changes for Harry. Filled to the brim with nonstop action, this entry has Harry and almost every supernatural being he knows coming to defend Chicago from a mad titan bent on reshaping reality.”

So I thought, wow, there we go. I thought that would be a great match. So Yaika, what did you find for us via NoveList?

Yaika Sabat: So I decided to sort of hone in on what makes Assassins Anonymous stand out to me. You can look at thrillers that have spies and there’s a ton to look at, but I think what is really unique about The Medusa Protocol, which is the second in Assassins Anonymous, is the sort of offbeat humorous element. This has likable characters, sarcastic characters. It’s witty. So it’s not gonna be the more serious, I think, super official detailed spy novel that you’re gonna get a lot of the time. And so I went into NoveList and started with one of my favorite things, which is in any book record in NoveList, there’s a search for more sections. So I sort of went and clicked all the little story elements that stood out to me focusing on things like offbeat, likable characters, thrillers and suspense, and I got a couple that I think match the energy and genre of The Medusa Protocol.

The first one is Killing Me by Michelle Gagnon, and that is from 2023. It’s the first in the Amber Jamison novels, which follow Amber, a lifelong grifter who’s sort of reinventing herself as a law abiding graduate student, and in the series ends up encountering sort of serial killer after serial killer. In Killing Me, she becomes the latest captive of the Pikachu Killer, which I love as a concept and is rescued by this sort of impressive, fierce woman. This series, it’s definitely a more humorous, quirky thriller. It has the sarcastic and likable characters. It’s definitely offbeat, still has the suspense. This one also has LGBTQIA characters. And so while it doesn’t have assassins, I think it has a lot of the same energy that you’re gonna find in The Medusa Protocol. 

Rebecca Vnuk: Energy, that’s a great word. I don’t think we think about that enough when we’re talking about books. I’m gonna use that from now on. What is the energy of this book? Ooh, I love it. I love it.

Yaika Sabat: The energy, the vibes, the overall feel of it.

Now my second one is The Recruiter by Gregg Podolski, and this is the first in the Rick Carter novels. This one also came up with suspense, likable characters. This one’s action packed, it’s fast paced, it’s got that dark humor, and it centers on Rick Carter who is the person that bad guys call when they need good help. So he is a criminal recruiter. He searches for assassins, gun smugglers, hackers, any other sort of villain you might need.

And so I love this idea sort of like there’s this 12-step program for killers. Well, there’s also this recruiter for criminals, and so I like the mirror image of that. And I thought it lined up nicely and it does have assassins. So it might not be solely focused on that, but it’s in that same criminal underworld, but looking at it with that sort of humorous lens. So I thought that that could be a really good matchup.

Rebecca Vnuk: That sounds great. This is gonna be something I’m gonna use going forward, I think, when I look for read alikes, what’s the energy of this book? I know you and I have chatted before at the Circ Desk about how do we find a read alike that maybe isn’t an exact read alike? Because maybe it’s not the assassins part that they’re interested in. Maybe it’s that funny darkly comic stuff that they’re interested in. Maybe it’s this, why can’t dystopia be funny?

Yaika Sabat: It’s like, why can’t there be some humor in the criminal underworld?

Rebecca Vnuk: And I like the thought of what is a book’s energy? And that’s what’s fun about read alikes is we’re not necessarily looking for exact keywords. We’re not looking for exact plots. We’re looking for something that’s got that same feel.

Yaika Sabat: Yes, absolutely. And I’ll say if you haven’t read a book, one thing I suggest, if you’re trying to get a sense of the energy is, if you’re in somewhere like NoveList, for example, read the descriptions, read the story elements, but also read the reviews because…

Rebecca Vnuk: Oh, a hundred percent, yes!

Yaika Sabat: Yes. The reviewers will give you a sense of it without you having to go in and read the whole book ’cause we all know you can’t do that when you’re at the desk and someone’s asking a question.

Rebecca Vnuk: Boy, that is, I talk about that in every presentation I give about Library Reads. I was like, look, it’s 12 books a month that you don’t have to read to be able to tell people about it. We’re filling your head, and that also, that’s one of the things I love about NoveList is you guys have all of those keywords in there, but then you also have the reviews that are available. So I can look at it and I can see just really quick in one place, what did Library Journal say about this? What did Booklist say about this? You know, we’re featured in there too. What did Library Reads say about it? So it really is, it’s like a one stop shop for book recommendations.

Yaika Sabat: Exactly.

Rebecca Vnuk: We love it. And that’s what we do here at the Circ Desk is those book recommendations. So we will check you out next time at the Circ Desk!