intertextu[allie]ties | issue 13

The best things I read, watched, and listened to in July and August 2025 (plus an excerpt from my novel-in-progress!)

hello, dear reader.

It’s been a little while! The summer months are nearly at an end and, I must confess, I’m looking forward to the arrival of autumn. 🍂 Not only is it the season of my heart, but I believe the fall will bring with it a more leisurely pace.

July and August have been busy. Between crossing off a good number of items on our summer fun list, we also spent several weeks working on a major remodel of our media room. My husband and I share a deep love of film and, ever since we moved into our home a year ago, we’ve been dreaming up ways of shaping that space into a movie-watcher’s paradise. This summer, we decided it was time to tackle the first phase of Operation Home Theatre. 🎥 Check out the before and after photos at the end of this issue for the results!

I also took advantage of my revised newsletter publication schedule to move my novel-in-progress forward. Since you last heard from me, I’ve written a chapter and a half! In addition, I’ve queried five new literary agents and am roughly 95% through an application for a two-week writing residency in 2026. 🙌

As always, I’ve fed my imagination with plenty of books, movies, television, and music, and I cannot wait to share my favourites with you here!

✍️ Allie

Some of the best things I’ve read, watched, and listened to lately!

If my Substack and Instagram feeds are anything to go by, Atmosphere may just be the biggest book of the summer. 💫

Three years after the release of Carrie Soto Is Back, the latest offering from literary powerhouse Taylor Jenkins Reid (or TJR for short) easily lands among her best. In fact, Atmosphere now ranks just below The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo for me, demoting Daisy Jones and the Six to third place in my list of favourite TJR novels.

Atmosphere charts the course of quiet yet brilliant astronomer Joan Goodwin after she is accepted into NASA’s space shuttle program in 1980. An enigma to all except her beloved niece Frances, Joan has the mind of a scientist and the soul of a poet. She doesn’t really seem to belong anywhere until she meets the group of future astronauts she’ll be training alongside at the Johnson Space Center: Hank, John, Lydia, Donna, and, most importantly, Vanessa – the woman who will throw Joan’s world out of orbit and completely rearrange the constellation of her life.

There’s something special about the way Reid tells a love story. I think she understands that the most romantic thing in the world is to be truly, deeply known by another person and, in Atmosphere, she crafts the central relationship with such tenderness and care that it had me clutching my heart every other page.

A friend told me that the ending “brought her to her knees” and, even with that warning, I wasn’t ready for the finale’s emotional knockout. Buckle up (and have tissues nearby)!

I’m a little over a year late to the party, but I finally watched One Day on Netflix and it was, in short, a perfect adaptation. 😭 Based on the 2009 David Nicholls novel of the same name that was also turned into a 2011 film with Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, One Day follows Emma and Dexter over the course of twenty years after a failed one-night stand turns into a friendship that will define them both.

The latest adaptation is a fourteen-episode series with episodes running somewhere between 20-40 minutes apiece. The writing is smart, the soundtrack is a ‘90s delight, and the lead performances are superb. Forewarning: The ending will break your heart. 💔

If you’re looking to laugh instead of cry, I was thrilled to discover hidden gem Deep Cover on Prime Video, which asks the wonderfully bonkers question: Would improv comedians make good undercover cops? I promise Orlando Bloom’s performance will have you chuckling.

I’ve also recently become obsessed with Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date series, starting with her famously flirty sit-down with Andrew Garfield and going on to devour interviews by the dozen. There’s just something about the awkward first date energy Dimoldenberg so brilliantly engineers coupled with the zany chicken shop setting that makes for compulsively watchable chats with celebrities ranging from Paul Mescal to Elmo. I predict she’ll write and star in a phenomenal romantic comedy one day!

If you’d like the complete picture of every movie I’ve watched recently, you can check out my Letterboxd diary for all my reviews.

I, like so many others, am a big fan of NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concerts. A stripped-down showcase for established and emerging acts alike, this series has hosted everyone from Adele to Yusuf/Cat Stevens. 🎶

The summer always awakens a hunger in me to discover new music. So, when I saw a new Tiny Desk Concert on my YouTube homepage earlier this month, I clicked play and was blown away by bluegrass singer-songwriter Sierra Hull. A beautiful vocalist and nimble-fingered mandolinist, I’ve had her latest album, A Tip Toe High Wire, on repeat for weeks.

(A few other honourable mentions from my “Liked Songs” list lately: “Brutus” by Em Beihold, “21^st Century Cool Girl” by Chloe Qisha, and “Gut Feelings” by Debbii Dawson.)

As mentioned in my last newsletter, I recently passed the midway point in my novel-in-progress! Out of a planned four-act structure, I am nearly three chapters into the third act. This is exciting because a) it means I’m closer to the ending than the beginning and b) I now get to the write the scenes I’ve been setting up for nearly 100 pages.

Characters are about to meet for the first time in-person! Big conflicts and emotional reveals are coming up fast! Building romantic tension will finally break!

Case in point, here’s a snippet from the latest chapter:

With a softness that makes her positively ache, he lifts her right hand and presses it between both of his. “You are sunlight,” he declares with all the seriousness in the world, and she feels as if she is glowing from the inside out.

As much fun as it’s been to set everything up – to move the pieces to where they need to be on the proverbial chess board of this story – I’m ready to play now. To quote Taylor Swift, “Baby, let the games begin!”

Our media room before and after our remodel! ✨

I never could resist a good quiz and, lately, I’ve taken a few that you might enjoy as well, like: this friendship styles quiz (I’m a firefly!); this semi-quiz that tallies how many of the 100 best movies of the 21^st century you’ve seen (I’ve seen 67!); and the “Colbert Questionert,” which is guaranteed to make any dinner party or family gathering special.

And so, in an effort to get to know you all better, I’ll borrow my favourite query from the “Colbert Questionert” and ask: You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? (Mine is “Hey, Jude” by The Beatles. ✌️)

See you in October! 🎃