...and a Hello from Carrie and Mia
Here's our plan for RTL moving forward + plus important paid subscriber info
Hello again, friends. Today is the day we share where Reading Through Life is going after saying goodbye to Sarah (it’s still makes us sad to read those words!). But in case you were worried, RTL isn’t going anywhere. Carrie, who you all met in this post, has graciously agreed to co-host with Mia and keep bringing you all the bookish conversations.
Naturally, with a change in co-hosts, we thought we’d make a few little changes around here as well (more on that at the end of the post), but first, Carrie is going to tell you a bit more about herself.
About Carrie
Hi lovely readers! I’m Carrie and I’m so excited to join Mia as a creator for RTL. What an incredible opportunity! I’ve been a long-time listener/reader of RTL and love what Sarah and Mia have built on this platform (we miss you Sarah!). I hope I can add my own flavor and bring more of what we all love to RTL… good books and even better conversation.
I live just outside of Boston with my husband, 2 crazy kiddos (both boys currently ages 2 and 4), and my velcro dog, Marty. I’m an actuary by day and do everything I can to fit reading into my busy life! Just recently I started sharing more of my reading life online and I’m excited to expand on that through RTL. I will read just about anything, across any genre, front or backlist, you name it! I’m currently on a big literary fiction and horror kick, but I don’t like to limit myself.
Outside of reading, I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, walking my dog around the neighborhood, golfing with my husband, going to concerts, and obsessing over Peloton.
Can’t wait to chat with you all about books!
Now, let’s talk about the changes you can expect.
We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel or make any super drastic changes, so we hope you’ll stick around and hang with us. But here are a few things to expect:
IMPORTANT: If you’re a paid subscriber, please read this!!!
Because Sarah is leaving us and because of how our Substack is set up, we’re going to have to cancel your paid monthly and annual subscriptions, effective immediately (basically, Substack and Stripe, the payment processer, don’t make this process easy at all, UGH). So, if you see a cancellation notice, please don’t panic.
The cancellations will automatically revert everyone to a free subscriber to RTL. But here’s what you’ll need to do if you still want to be a paid subscriber:
UPDATED July 10, 2025: If you’re a paid monthly subscriber, you’ll have to re-subscribe to the paid monthly plan. We’re really sorry for the hassle, but there’s just no other way around that. It might take us a few days to get the new subscriptions up and running, depending on how things go with setting up a new Stripe account, but we will let you know ASAP. you don’t have to do anything! Thanks to some hard work and diligent communication from Sarah to Stripe, they figured out a work-around and you do not have to do anything to remain a paid monthly subscriber. Hallelujah!
If you’re a paid annual subscriber, you won’t have to do anything on your end. What we’re going to do is give everyone who was already an annual subscriber a free full year of RTL, starting now, no matter how much remaining time you have left on your subscription. So whether you purchased an annual subscription 2 months ago or 10 months ago, it doesn’t matter, you’ll get 12 free months starting now in July. Again, Substack just doesn’t make things easy on us, so we’re trying to avoid the hassle of figuring out how many months everyone has left and how much the payments work out to, etc. This way, no annual subscribers lose any money on what they’ve already paid, and they also get a little something extra.
We hope you’ll bear with us during this transition stage and we’re really sorry for all the fuss.
Changes to RTL content
There really aren’t many. Check it out:
All subscribers get:
Free bookish essays twice per month - sometimes from both of us, sometimes from one of us - filled with book lists/recs, book talk, and other bookish goodies.
Free Discord group chat - come talk to us about books, but also about other life-related things. We want to get to know you better!
NEW: A book club - more details to come, but we’re excited to implement this! For all our mood readers… stay tuned you might like what we’ve got brewing.
Paid subscribers also get:
NEW-ish: Our weekly reading journal, each Sunday, of everything we read that week in a bite-size review, plus other reading thoughts and happenings in our world. This is a slight format change from our weekly reading snapshot, but we think you’ll enjoy it!
A monthly podcast episode filled with what we read for the month and a deeper dive into the books we really NEED to discuss.
Five star book vibes chats where we gather together on Zoom and you tell us what you’ve loved recently.
That’s it! Those are all the changes that are happening in this part of the interwebz. If you have any questions at all, regarding your subscription or otherwise, please feel free to comment below or reach out to Mia at kindredwriters@gmail.com.
We’re excited for this new chapter of RTL and we hope you’ll stick around. Happy reading!
Love,
Carrie + Mia
Hi all and welcome Carrie! I don't know if I'm in the Discord...how do I get access to that?