S06.08: Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale: Romance Math
Today, we’re reading an absolute romance classic — one of those books everyone tells you is a must read, and one that neither of us had read before the podcast! We’re taking a few minutes at the top to admit our mutual folly, though, because Flowers from the Storm is stunning, and we now feel grown up enough to appreciate it.
We talk about Quakers, about dogs and kittens and apes, about men with pirate smiles and vengeance in their heart, about thees and thous, about capitalism and happily ever after and about how internal conflict can sometimes be the most difficult hurdle to overcome. Also, we find an undeniable reason to learn trigonometry.
Our next read along, and last of the year, will be Roan Parrish’s Rend. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Kobo.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
All about the Quakers, including some thoughts about pronoun usage.
You definitely did not want to be in an Insane asylum in the 1800s...or in 2023. Just ask Britney Spears.
People we think have read this: Ruby Dixon, Lisa Kleypas, Kresley Cole, Elizabeth Hoyt, Kerrigan Byrne.
People we know have read this: Kate Clayborn (this is her favorite book) and Kennedy Ryan (this is one of her favorite books)
The narrator of this audiobook is Nicholas Boulton, and Jen highly recommends it. Let Boulton do all the decoding for you. Here is a short YouTube clip of him talking with Kinsale about reading steam scenes.
Sponsors
Alyxandra Harvey, author of The Countess Caper,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
EF Dodd, author of Almost Perfect,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
use the code FATEDMATES for 30% off and free shipping
at microdose.com
S05.45: Emotional Navy SEALs: Divorced Main Characters in Romance Novels
After literal years of requests for this one, we’re finally tackling the divorced main characters in romance! We talk about romance between grown ups, about bad exes and good ones, about marriages that were mistakes and ones that help characters learn. This one is full of contemporaries and historicals, and you definitely don’t want to miss it.
After Sarah’s Knockout (preorder it signed, with exclusive FM swag, from her local bookstore), our next read along, the first of Season Six, will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.
If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Jen saw Beyonce for the Renaissance Tour at Solder Field this week for the Renaissance Tour, and also Barbie and Oppenheimer, although not on the same day, so not the full Barbenheimer experience.
Divorce is becoming less common in America, but it might not be a good thing.
A folder with PDFs of this week's articles.
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Andie James, author of Lost and Found by the Duke,
available in print and ebook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
and
Delphine Ross, author of The Poetics of Passion,
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books
and your local independent bookstore
S04.34: Celebrity Romance Novels
We’re tackling one of Sarah’s favorite tropes this week — the celebrity romance! We talk about all the ways that her buttons were installed (thanks Judith McNaught) and about how rare movie stars are in romance even now, all these years later. We discuss The Chrises, the appeal of celebrity/normal person pairings, the difference between film/tv romance and rockstar/sports star romance, and about why Americans especially love a celebrity.
Celebrity Romance Novels
Notes
A leaked memo from The Supreme Court makes clear the fate of Roe V. Wade, and the other civil rights they’re looking to eliminate next. We’ll be reactivating Fated States soon, and you can listen to some of our previous episodes (RBG, bodily autonomy, elda minger) related to these topics. It’s terrifying and feels like its all unraveling, so just fight where you can, remember we’ve been here before, and you should organize in your local community to help others. Check out the Auction for Reproductive Rightsbeing organized by The Meet Cute Book Shop, and donate to an abortion fundnear you.
Good Chrises only, please: Hemsworth, Pine, Pang, and Evans. As we say, name is destiny.
We feel bad about it, but both of us thought about the book Perfect after hearing about the shooting on the movie set Rust. Here is a timeline of how Alec Baldwin ended up with a live weapon.
Perfect takes place is some part of Texas where it snows, and Judith McNaught partnered with Coors to raise awareness of and adult literacy.
We love it when Normal people and movie stars get together.
Harry Styles will be on tour later this year, everyone.
I’m not sure why photographers love “the wet suit photoshoot”, but it’s definitely a thing.
If you think you've bought a book before on Amazon, but it's showing you the buy button. Go to Your Content and Devices and search for the book. You can also search your digital orders.
Charlevoix MI is a cute tourist town on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is very big by the way. Unsure about whether or not merpeople live there, but there are lots of shipwrecks.
The final girl is a horror trope.
Our next read along is Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin.
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Avon Books, publisher of Eloisa James’s How to be a Wallflower, available at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local independent bookseller.
Visit avonbooks.com
and
Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order
S04.13: AMA with Questions from Piper Rayne
We’re joined this week by author Piper Rayne, who is two authors! Elizabeth Grace (Piper) and Michelle Lynn (Rayne) have written dozens of wildly tropey, wonderfully romantic contemporary romances together. They join us for a few minutes at the start of the episode to talk about how they came to romance and how they write together, and then leave us with a list of questions about publishing, books, and romance recommendations.
There’s still time to buy the Fated Mates Best of 2021 Book Pack from our friends at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, and get eight of the books on the list, a Fated Mates sticker and other swag! Order the book box as soon as you can to avoid supply chain snafus.
Thank you, as always, for listening! If you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!
Our next read-along will be Nalini Singh’s Caressed by Ice, number three (and Jen’s favorite) of the Psy-Changeling series. Get them at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&N or at your local indie.
Show Notes
We are joined today by Piper Rayne, an author duo who are about to publish their 50th book, My Unexpected Surprise on December 14, 2021. They won the right to decide the topic of an episode after winning an item in Kennedy Ryan's Lift4Autism auction with Kulture City.
We mostly talked about and recommended books today, so check out the photo array for all the books we mentioned in today's episode.
S03.31: Morality Chain Romance
We’re so thrilled to be talking morality chain romance! We’ve owed this episode to Katee Robert for nearly a year, and we have no excuses for how long this has taken, except that time in 2020 was a flat circle. Here, we get down to business—we tackle the definition of Morality Chain, and how it differs from Dark Romance, how it connects with mafia, criminals, pirates, highwaymen, and the original Alpha.
Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!
Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you’re reading the best books this week.
Next week, we’re reading Alexis Daria’s You Had Me At Hola, one of our Best Books of 2020! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
One very important note: we highly recommend doing a thorough search for content warnings for all the books and movies we mention this week.
We love Katee Robert, who we had on as a guest for the menage interstitial. Katee bid on this item at Kennedy Ryan’s Lift 4 Autism auction. It happens every spring, so keep an eye on this page for the 2021 auction if you’d like to pick the topic for a future interstitial.
This week, Katee released Seducing My Guardian, the 4th book in her SUPER HOT Touch of Taboo series. If you'd like to read a morality chain romance written by Katee, we recommend The Bastard's Bargain.
“In springtime, the only pretty ring time” is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It's also possible Sarah knows it from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. She would like you to believe that it's from the former, but we'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. Either way, “If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it,” is from Beyonce.
As it turns out, Chicago is a great town for beach volleyball.
It’s hard not to talk about morality chain & dark romance together, but we think they are inverse tropes. The internet definition of Morality Chain is “is a character who is the reason another character is Good.” Jen and Sarah’s current definition is that in morality chain romance, the Love Interest pulls a hero towards humanity and goodness, while in dark romance, the love interest is pulled down into the hero’s lawless world.
Some examples in pop culture are Spike from Buffy and maybe Barney in How I Met Your Motherr. Also, check out a movie called The Professional, where a child (played by Natalie Portman!) befriends the assassin next door. The Jason Statham one with a kid is called Safe.
The Hero’s Journey is very common character archetype in literature and pop culture, but Sarah and Jen are both very taken with Gail Carriger’s description of the alternative archetype, The Heroine’s Journey.
If you want more about morality chain, so many of Kresley’s books from The Immortals After Dark series will work, so please listen to season one! Our favorites are Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Lothaire, and Sweet Ruin.
We were divided on whether the character has to be a danger to others in order to qualitfy as morality chain. In the Gamemaker series: The Professional is about an assassin who is a danger to others, while in The Player he’s only a danger to himself.
Jen Porter wrote a long thread about what she thinks of as PEA, or problematic ever after, romance.
Mickey is "kind of a Fagin-y" as a character, but without the antisemitism. In interesting historical facts, Dickens rewrote Oliver Twist later in life to remove all anti-Semitic characteristics from Fagin, after he'd been criticized for the portrayal of the character. Of course, it's not that simple. Read more about it from Deborah Epstein Nord.
Scottie is the main character of Managed, and is classified more as grumpy one/sunshine one, which we argue is just morality chain dialed down.
More about how most writers have a “core story."
Next week, we'll be reading You Had me at Hola by Alexis Daria
S03.23: Curvy Heroines Redux
Nearly two years since our first Curvy Heroines interstitial, which was short and sweet, we’re back with another that is longer and more meandering, but absolutely chock full of recs! We love a curvy heroine, and so do you all, apparently, as our original Curvy Interstitial is our most popular episode of all time!
Next week, we’ve got a special crossover episode with Erin and Clayton from Learning the Tropes, and the week after, we’re back to the deep dives with Naima Simone’s Blackout Billionaires series (With a little Derek Craven Day excitement in there, too!) In order, the books are: The Billionaire's Bargain, Black Tie Billionaire, and Blame It on the Billionaire. Find them at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books.
Show Notes
This piece in Book Riot by Carole Bell argues that fat representation is different than fat acceptance, which is something we grapple with as we’re talking. She also wrote this list of romances with fat representation.
If you haven’t read books by Charlotte Stein, you should. Which ones? ALL OF THEM. Fat Monica, if you don’t know, is a reference to the TV show Friends.
Watch Olivia Dade talk about where we are now with fat representation in romance.
Cult of Glory, a 2020 book about the true history of the Texas Rangers paints a grim picture of the storied law enforcement agents.
In case you’re interested, last week Jen was googling “anal hook” and this week she landed on a bunch of Christian websites when she googled the Magi, so she got freaked out and just used a wikipedia link. It's fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thea de Salle is one of author Hillary Monahan's pseudonyms. Back in the day, Jen wrote about Catholicism in romance based on a later book in the series, The Lady of Royale Street.
Luciana Barroso is married to Matt Damon, and she’s a regular person.
In Get a Life, Chloe Brown, the heroine suffers from fibromyalgia., and so does the author, Talia Hibbert.
We did a whole episode on Alisha Rai’s Serving Pleasure in season two.
Jen recently read The Ravenels series by Lisa Kleypas. She’s obsessed with Rhys Winterborne, and West Ravenel is pretty great, too. Don’t worry, Derek Craven is still her favorite, and if you haven’t ordered yourmerch for our upcoming Derek Craven holiday, what are you waiting for?
On the show Bridgerton, Penelope Featherington is a curvy girl; however, in the books, she loses weight in the 10 years between when she comes out and when she finally gets her HEA with Colin.
Iman is one of the most famously beautiful supermodels in the world, and she married David Bowie in 1992.
“That’s what he said” is a long running joke from the sitcom The Office.
The Queen’s Gambit is a Netflix show about chess, and Crash Landing on You is a K-Drama about a woman who accidentally paraglides into the DMZ in a tornado.
Curvy Heroine Recs
S02.13: Best Romance Novels of 2019
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Sarah’s Top Five of 2019
Jen’s Top Five of 2019
BEST BOOKS BY FATED FRIENDS
Show Notes
In between our recording and release of this episode, Kristen Callihan did release a new book, Outmatched, which is cowritten with Samantha Young. But don't miss Scottie from Managed, who will appear later in season 2 as a book that blooded Jen.
Munro. That's it. That's the show note.
Some of the best of 2019 lists from Bookish, NPR and Kirkus. Sarah's website has all of her past Best of the Year Lists for the Washington Post. Amazon also has a best of the year list, but the Goodreads Award list is strange.
Emma Donoghue's Room was a big literary fiction book back in 2010, and it was on all the end of the year lists.
Jen will be appearing at The Book Cellar on Dec 7, 2019 if you're looking for something to do. She'll be talking about the best books of the year with other critics.
Around the same time we recorded this episode, Kini at SmexyBooks wrote this thoughtful piece about transparency in romance reviewing.
Kylie Scott's Repeat was also on our Amnesia episode.
Love's Sweet Arrow is a romance-only bookstore in Chicago's south suburbs.
Jen also likes Rebecca Zanetti, who also resists romantic suspense that is just "women in peril" plots.
Face/Off is a very goofy movie from the late 90s. So of course they're going to remake it.
In this Juno Rushdon series, Jen wants the boss's book.
We're talking about historicals, but we're not talking about Brazen and the Beast even though Jen wants you to know it's spectacular and you should definitely read it.
I guess we're singing this episode: Just One Night is a twist on Phil Collins's One More Night in the Moulin Rouge movie and All Night Long.
Jenny Nordbak recommended Dare to Love a Duke to Sarah, and after the unreliable narrators essay, Amy Jo Cousinsrecommended Any Old Diamonds to Jen.
Who wouldn't want to talk about Frankenstein, Shelley, and Wollstonecraft?
Don't sleep on the Gilded Age.
Kennedy's Basketball series is also great. But in The Kingmaker duet, she also tackles the problem of missing and murdered indiginous women and land grabs on Native land. Here is a list of #OwnVoices Native American authors from BookRiot, and another from Smart Bitches, but Jen specifically recommends Pamela Sanderson.
Jen interviewed Robin Lovett for Kirkus. And our friend @Bandherbooks was quite taken with the "space chaise" in this book.
Jen and Sarah tried so hard to undersatnd the cinnamon roll phenomenon.
Maybe you want to check out Jen's many amazing Pinterest boards featuring very specific romance novel cover kinks.
Looking to buy some swag? You can buy Fated Mates buttons from Best Friend Kelly and Sarah has an awesome line of romance themed t-shirts and other swag from Jordanene.
This week, our listener-recomended books are When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn and Truly, Madly, Yours by Rachel Gibson.