Buffering the Vampire Slayer, the podcast that this book surrounds, has been one of my favorite podcasts for the past six years. I can remember specific moments so vividly via listening to it: the author's divorce? I was laying in the bed at my apartment in disbelief, the first time I heard Prophecy Girl? At my old job trying very hard not to cry. They are still in my ears with their new podcast adventure the eX-Files. Yet, despite loving this podcasting duo, I wouldn't say I'm a die hard fan, I don't subscribe to the Patreon, go to live events, or even follow them on socials. Hell, I don't listen to any of Youngs's other music outside what she writes for the podcast. Despite all this, and much to my surprise, I loved this. I mean I knew I would like it, but I didn't expect to be sobbing while reading it. Not only did it tug on my heart strings, but it was incredibly well written. I saw a few reviews that rated it low due to it not focusing enough on Buffy proper, but I thought it was fairly evident that this was a recounting of what the show meant to these women through the context of their podcast; So I thought that was a pretty unfair critic. This is a love letter to their community, and I for one felt the love.

This was an interesting read but nothing really memorable and nothing I would read again or recommend to friends. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

As a longtime fan of Buffering the Vampire Slayer, I was so excited to be able to get my hands on this book! I ended up listening to the audio, which I highly recommend, as you get audio clips, and songs! This books uses Buffy as a framework, but is ultimately the story of how Kristin and Jenny built the podcast, got divorced, and continued their work together. At times very sad, but always shot through with humor, this was very moving and ultimately hopeful book.

As a huge Buffy fan, I loved this! Buffy lore meets memoir, and both writers did a wonderful job of writing their own version and together. Really well done!

Slayers, Every One of Us by Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs

4 Stars

Nonfiction; Memoir

I received an e-arc of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I will start this review by saying I have listened to the Buffering: The Vampire Slayer podcast - though I am not such an avid listener that I knew a ton of the lore behind Russo and Youngs before going into this book. This is, surfacely, a memoir about making a podcast about Buffy the Vampire, but much more a memoir about queer romance, divorce and the delicate balance of personal and professional relationships in bot public and private spheres of life. A greatly enjoyable memoir, even if you aren't overly familiar with the podcast, though it does delve into difficult topics of miscarriage and divorce and facing homophobia by family members.I ended up reading this book in a day - a feat for a medical student with a busy schedule. I liked the additions of lore and drawing and music chords in the memoir. My one main grip is that Russo's and Youngs' voices tended to blend together - different sections were written by one or the other or both of them, but their voices were similar for much of the book, and it is unclear if this is because of how much of this was a true joint effort of writing or because of some over-editing. Not enough to detract from the book overall though.

For fans of the Buffering Cast, this is a long-awaited memoir that tells the story of Kristin & Jenny's relationship, breakup, and continued friendship. It's a testament to queer love and found family, and I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes story of what happened as a long-time podcast listener. While the book (of course) talks about Buffy, the show is really the lens through which they explore bigger questions of love, friendship, and found family. I think this idea will be familiar to fans of their podcast, who are used to seeing the show as a jumping-off point to create a beautiful online community. I am not sure how much someone would enjoy this book if they weren't familiar with the podcast, but as a fan I found it really satisfying.

Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.

I can appreciate what this book is, but I don't think I was the right audience. Don't get me wrong, I love Buffy and this made me want to rewatch it for sure! But I'm not really into podcasts and I didn't realize that this was a memoir about 2 Podcasters and their love of Buffy. I didn't even know there was a Buffy podcast, but that makes sense cause there seems to be a podcast for everything 😅. I wasn't right for this book, but I know others will absolutely love it! Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for my digital ARC!

Memoir. I have never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After reading this book, it is on my "to watch" list! Kristin and Jenny share the story of how they met, how they became a couple, how they began a podcast called "Buffering the Vampire Slayer", and how they kept it going even as their marriage fell apart.
While this is the memoir of a relationship and the two people in it, Buffy and the podcast plays a large role within the story. It is at turns fun, entertaining, touching, heartbreaking, and affirming.
Highly recommend!

In a lot of ways, I feel like the Buffering podcast raised me. I was in high school when I started listening to the podcast in its early days, when it was maybe halfway through the first season. I grew as the podcast did and it accompanied many significant moments in my life, so for me, reading this book was a reminder of big moments in the series, the podcast, and my life. It's a unique format, with individual and dual sections, and it may not be as meaningful for people who are simply fans of Buffy the show. It's a book for the fans of the podcast (and for people who were reading between the lines of Instagram posts) - and in that sense, it's wonderful. It carries the same humor, warmth, and heart that Youngs and Russo have created throughout their body of individual and collective work.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I love books about TV and film, and this one was a great read for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This combines memoir with love for the television and how the show eventually changed the authors' lives. I have never listened to their podcast, but I did really enjoy the book and the author's relationship shines through in the writing.

A two-person memoir about a marriage, a divorce, and a podcast about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I liked the two-person memoir style. I can’t say I have read anything done this way before and it was fun to get the same story from two different angles. While I have not listened to the podcast that this memoir is about, now I want to!

The thing that I guess let me down a little, was how little actual Buffy content there was.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC.

I’m only halfway through, but this is already a five-star read for me. As a huge Buffy fan, I jumped at the chance to review this book. I’ve never been into podcasts, so Buffering was new to me, but now I’m excited to go back and listen. With talk of a possible Buffy reboot, it feels like the perfect time to rewatch the series and dive into Kristen and Jenny’s podcast. I’m especially curious about how their post-divorce dynamic plays out in the podcast, but I’ll have to finish the book and start listening to find out. Thanks for the opportunity to review this!

BOOK REPORT
Received a complimentary copy of Slayers, Every One of Us: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On, by Kristin Russo & Jenny Owen Youngs, from St. Martin's Press/NetGalley, for which I am appreciative, in exchange for a fair and honest review. Scroll past the BOOK REPORT section for a cut-and-paste of the DESCRIPTION of it from them if you want to read my thoughts on the book in the context of that summary.

Well, I have only myself to blame this time. I should’ve realized they meant what they said in the last line of the summary: While chock full of Buffy-related content (and Buffering!) for true fans, this is ultimately a memoir of queer love and chosen family. It's a heartwarming story for anyone who's experienced lost love, and a roadmap for staying close with your ex.”

Sigh.

That’s not what I wanted to read. I wanted to read about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer changed people’s lives, not about songs written about Buffy episodes that were going to be talked about during a podcast that—until this week—I’d never even heard of (https://www.bufferingcast.com/about ).

I’m guessing this book was written with the target market of podcast listeners in mind, though, so that will probably put me in the minority with my opinion on this book. Which is…..that it felt like a vanity project for Jenny Owen Youngs in particular.

Oh, well. At least it brought back some good memories of scheduling my life so as to be able to watch Buffy back in the day, when it aired in real time and we did not have the option to record it live (finances, I guess?). As well as a few other Buffy-related memories…..

- I was in an awful car wreck (not my fault) in 2006. Had to see a psychiatrist because of ensuing bad dreams. In the course of my time with him, he noted that I talked a great deal about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how it was coming to a close, and asked had I given any thought to how I would grieve when the time came. I pretty much rolled my eyes at what I perceived to be a ridiculous question (conveniently forgetting at the time that I had actually sobbed when WKRP in Cincinnati came to an end years earlier). Well, Dr G was spot-on; I did grieve. It was like I had lost a best friend or close family member.

- During one episode of the show, when we were living in a very hilly neighborhood in Birmingham, Alabama, there was some bizarreness involving an abandoned vehicle careening down the street and through our across-the-street neighbor’s yard, crashing to a halt at a partial wall around it……which kept the vehicle from continuing on into our yard (and house). Things get fuzzy right about here….to the best of my recollection we wound up hollering at a young black man who was totally uninvolved with the crash to come into our house because the police were on their way and we didn’t want him getting accused of anything. So this total stranger sat there in the den with us and watched the last part of the episode while the police came and went. He’d never heard of the show before. I urged him to go back and start watching from the beginning. I wonder if he ever did?

- I loved the Buffy movie, too. Totally different vibes in most respects, but still a classic. Can’t remember if we forced both Precious Nephews or just No. 2 to watch us with it in the past year or so….

- Oh, I almost forgot! We went to a wedding in Boulder, Colorado, in the summer of 2025. While on the trip, we went out to eat at a place we had somehow heard about—it had Slovakian food, and we’d been to Slovakia in 2002. It was sort of castle/mansion up on a hill out from the city. We should’ve realized when the parking lot was mostly empty and the one for the restaurant across the street was full that something was off, but no…..anyway, we went in, and nobody was in the dining/bar area. We could hear someone in the back. So we sat for a bit, and that’s when we noticed there were pictures of Eliza Dushku all over the place. And HUGE hummingbirds flying around outside, seemingly keeping time with the music they could hear from inside because a door was open. Eventually someone came out and quite angrily took our order for beer and brought it out, after, like, FOREVER. And then we ordered something to eat, and he disappeared again. At which point my husband said, “Let’s just lay down a twenty and run.” Which was kinda did. As we walked to our car in some really weird twilight I grabbed his hand and said, “And Hansel and Gretel promised themselves never to go to anybody else’s house alone ever again.”

PS
Eliza Dushku played the character Faith both on Buffy and on Angel. An awful lot has changed for her since then…..here’s a great piece on all that from Boston Magazine: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2...

DESCRIPTION
A memoir reflecting on heartbreak, perseverance, and life lessons learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the hosts of the hit podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer.

Kristin and Jenny’s marriage started with an ultimatum: to further their relationship, Kristin must watch Jenny's favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With the terms set, they began a journey that has led them through seven seasons of the beloved genre show, a podcast rewatching the series with their newly minted listenership of “Scoobies,” unexpected success, and a divorce. Through it all, their love for Buffy and their commitment to their community held them together against the odds.

Slayers, Every One of Us is the story of how two queer women navigated divorce on a very public level and managed to stay in each other’s lives through it all. While chock full of Buffy-related content (and Buffering!) for true fans, this is ultimately a memoir of queer love and chosen family. It's a heartwarming story for anyone who's experienced lost love, and a roadmap for staying close with your ex.

I just finished reading this delightful deep-dive into the making of the Buffering podcast, and it was as engaging and entertaining as Jenny Owen Youngs and Kristen Russo themselves. The book deftly balances tongue-in-cheek humor with insightful commentary on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the broader pop culture landscape. Jenny and Kristen’s warmth, inclusivity, and unabashed geekiness shine through on every page, making you feel like a part of their cozy, welcoming community. With anecdotes that range from laugh-out-loud hilarious to genuinely moving, this book is a perfect companion piece for fans of the podcast—or for anyone who simply enjoys smart, heartfelt musings on fandom and friendship

It was a classic love story: two women met and fell in love. They married and started a podcast about "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (because of course). And then the classic love story went the way so many do, and they got divorced...but they kept joint custody of their podcast and learned to navigate a whole new relationship in a way that most divorced couples don't.

"From the moment our separation began (and no matter how hard we tried to make it otherwise), we were in constant contact." (loc. 1191*)

It's been years since I've watched "Buffy", and until I picked up this book it had never occurred to me that someone might have made a podcast (let alone a queer podcast!) about the show; I listen to podcasts only while running or playing the Sims (we all have our oddities, okay?), and I'm particular and idiosyncratic about which ones interest me. But my gosh. I'm going to have to listen to the podcast now, and I'm, well, praying to Buffy that it holds its own against this book, because this was a pretty fantastic ride.

"We'd sat together for hours (and hours and hours) doing this *thing* we loved doing: creating work together that we found beautiful, that we found joy in, that brought us a deep sense of satisfaction. We had returned to a space that we'd only ever occupied as two people in love and had flipped the light switch back on, terrified of finding that the other person we had loved so fiercely would no longer be there. Instead we had found that the best parts of us were even more powerful after the dark had gone." (loc. 2094)

Part of the strength of the book is of course the basic hook: forging a new relationship in the wake of divorce. I've read books by people who have maintained positive relationships with exes, or built better and stronger relationships after divorce than they had before divorce, but never something with quite this intensity or quite this context. And then part of the strength is the other basic hook: "Buffy". It would be really hard not to love something that pulls together "Buffy" and queerness and the application of "Buffy" to real life in both its trivial and serious moments. I'm left thinking that I need to check out the podcast *and* that I need to do an intensive "Buffy" rewatch.

It's worth noting that although this will be best for readers who have seen (and loved) substantial amounts of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Russo and Youngs do an excellent job of providing enough context to carry the reader forward (without recapping so much that readers who have seen the show more recently than I have will find reading tedious). Well worth the read.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

There is no piece of media that I love more than Buffy, so when I saw this book available on NetGalley, I grabbed it without scrutinizing the synopsis too much. I didn't quite realize that it was really more about a podcast about Buffy, and about the personal lives of the hosts of the podcast. I still would have read it if I'd realized - I like memoirs, and I know of Jenny Owen Youngs' music, and did I mention Buffy? - but since I'm not a podcast person and I wasn't aware of this podcast or its community of listeners, I don't think I was fully the right audience. It felt really voyeuristic at times, since they were jointly talking about their divorce and sharing some gnarly details together. I would have rather read a book where they talked about the topics they covered on the podcast, rather than a behind-the-scenes deal, because those bits where they shed some light on that were my favorite parts.

I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My sister, who inherited our mother’s DVD box set of the series, probably loves it even more. When Slayers, Every One Of Us: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On landed in my inbox as part of a feature on upcoming memoirs, I excitedly snapped a screenshot of the cover to show my sister what I’d be reading next.

What I Thought This Book Would Be: described by the publisher as “a memoir of queer love and chosen family […] chock full of Buffy related content for true fans,” I expected life lessons for women through a Buffy-themed, queer-leaning lens, including the authors’ personal stories throughout as well.

What This Book Actually Was: the dual POV narrative of a pair of Buffy fans’ marriage, podcast development, & divorce, with little to actually do with Buffy itself.

If you are already a fan of the authors’ podcast (“Buffering the Slayer”), this book is for you, a peeling back of the curtain on the authors’ personal lives during the time they were making the podcast together. I am aware that both authors have significant followings for their podcasts, music, advocacy work & more, and I think they seem like admirable people, for whose fans this book will be a treat. But for somebody like me, who never listened to the podcast and didn’t know who these women were, it was unclear why I was reading this book: I was hooked in by the Buffy themed title, but the book was by and large not about Buffy at all. Apart from one fun section toward the end of the book that was about meeting Buffy actors at conventions/interviews, the authors’ podcast could have practically been about anything else at all, and the substance of the book would have been essentially the same.

Who would I recommend Slayers, Every One of Us to? Anyone who is already a fan of Kristin Russo, Jenny Owen Youngs, their podcasts, or their extended universe of content. I would not recommend it to Buffy fans in general if they aren’t already fans of the authors.


*** This review will be posted to my book blog at http://suzeish.blog on March 25, 2025 as well as to my StoryGraph and Fable accounts @suzeishreads

I have been waiting for this book for months, and I'm so glad I finally got to read it. Jenny and Kristin candidly share their story in such a relatable way. I learned so much about them, and so much about their ability to create an epic community that loves and supports others. Plus, all things Buffy The Vampire Slayer. If you love the podcast (Buffering), you'll love this book.

I received a free copy of, Slayers, Every One of Us, by Kristin Russo; Jenny Owen Youngs, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Kristin and Jenny are now divorced but still love, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they co host a podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer. I loved watching Buffy, for the first couple seasons. This is an interesting read.

Slayers, Every One of Us is an uplifting memoir meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom book. It follows the journey of two podcasters who start off married and continue working together after they divorce during their podcast, Buffering. Buffering manages to combine joyful fandom with discovery and music. It's a delight.

As a long time listener of Buffering, I found the behind the scenes look illuminating and heartbreaking and it made me realize we don’t really know those podcast hosts. It's easy to think of people talking in your ears weekly with familiarity. I enjoyed both parts of the book, the strands that went through the Buffy fandom, and those of the personal lives of Jenny and Kristin. I would recommend this book for any fans of the podcast or actually any Buffy fans.

Thank you, St. Martin's Press, for this ARC.