S05.04: What to Read If You Liked The Love Hypothesis...
Today we start one of our new features for Season Five: If You Liked…Read This! We begin with Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, a book that took romance and BookTok by storm last year when it burst onto the NYT best seller list and hung out there for nearly a year, bringing so many new readers (and Reylos!) to romance.
This one is full of tropes romance loves, and we take them topic by topic, recommending read alikes for everything from grumpy/sunshine, to academic romance, to STEM heroines, to that spicy sex scene that was a delightfully unexpected surprise! That, and we’ve got a bunch of Reylo fic recommended from Ali herself (check the end of show notes)!
Notes
ReyLo is the ship name for Kylo Ren and Rey from the Star Wars movies. And the actor who plays Kylo Ren is Adam Driver.
All about Pansexuality.
Censorship on TikTok is so widespread is has its own wikipedia page, which makes it rife for misinformation about sex and sex education.
Small point of order, Jen was at the LPI (Lunar and Planetary Institute), which is close to the Johnson NASA Space Center in Houston. Obviously, she wasn’t at the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), because that’s in California.
Ali Hazelwood’s Books
Pining Main Characters
The Professors
STEM Heroines
Great Banter
Microtropes
Reylo Fic recommended by Ali Hazelwood & Adriana Herrera
$15 New, $15 Used, Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Abash the Little Bird, SecretReyloTrash
All Our Days, voicedimplosives
Can’t Turn Off What Turns Me On, audreyii_fic
Coarse and Rough and Irritating, frak-all
Composure, Skyelo_Ren
Count the Rings, lachesisgrimm
Cupcake Wars, crossingwinter
Embers, Sciosophia
The Girl in Terminal B, nightsofreylo
Juniper and Bergamot, SaintHeretical
Lascivious Weapons, CoraRiley
Let Go (Never Let Me Go), crossingwinter
Light Carries on Endlessly, lachesisgrimm
Misprint, JenfysNest
A Night for Firsts, TheAlchemistsDaughter
Shade on a Sunny Street, tigbit
Sharp Dressed Man, audreyii_fic
She Uses Tangerines, Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
So Long, My Adversary, Like_A_Dove
Something Beautiful but Annihilating, SecretReyloTrash
Why Don’t You and I Combine, Crossingwinter
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Blair Babylon, author of Twisted and Tangled,
available in print and ebook, wherever you get your romance,
and
Emjoy, your audio journey to female pleasure.
Visit letsemjoy.com/mates for your 14 day free trial.
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
S02.20: Managed by Kristen Callihan: Scottie!!!
Scottie!!!!!!! It’s Managed week here at Fated Mates — this is one of Jen’s favorite romances, and we’re talking about it and the next book in Kristen Callihan’s VIP series, Fall. We’re revisiting the rockstar romance and the found family trope, talking about the slow burn, and Jen’s talking about first person present tense narration and not yelling…so it’s a banner episode!
Don’t miss a single moment of our 2020 episodes — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast if you’re so inclined!
In two weeks, we’re reading one of Sarah’s picks, Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With the Duke, which was a tough choice because Lorraine is amazing and Sarah wants you to read all of her books. Read Waking Up With the Duke at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.
Show Notes
Jen's disappointed with the iHeartRadio Podscast awards. It's an honor just to be nominated, and that didn't even happen! For your consideration: Best Pop Culture Podcast and Best Fiction Podcast! Come on! Literary Disco wasn't even nominated!
Everyone loved The Pegging episode! Jen found this really interesting article too late for those show notes, but why not drop them here? We don't really think that we jumped the shark. Oh, and any chance to drop the "smashing from the back" rap.
The 20 minutes Eric cut were about RWA. So just read Jen's article for Kirkus instead. Just kidding. We don't really need D & O insurance. Do we? Either way, Eric should stop harshing our dream mellow.
Our Kristen Callihan origin stories: Sarah recommends Evernight in the Darkest London series, but Jen can't help but think of Tony Stark. Jen wrote about Kristen's book The Hook Up in the Who Did it Better in the Library post.
Slumpbusters from this week: The Player and Sweet Ruin for Sarah, and two Sophie Jordan books, While the Duke was Sleeping and The Scandal of it All, for Jen. And the shipbuilder book by Holley Trent is called Lowdown Dirty.
If you're trying to find the sex scenes in books, Jenny Nordbak from the Wicked Wallflowers Podcast has the sure-fire keyword search word: thrust.
The kind of super fancy first class where the seats turn into beds looks pretty great. Recently, we saw this happen in the movie Crazy Rich Asians.
Unbuttoning a glove is a huge romantic moment in Lord of Scoundrels and The Age of Innocence.
In case you have to travel with a rock band on a bus, the internet provides useful tips, of course! Jen loves this famous tour bus scene from the movie Almost Famous. Also, read Daisy Jones and the Six, which uses interview format to tell the story of the rise and fall of a 70s rock band.
Our Rock Star Romance interstitial was our very first interstitial. It's 20 minutes long, and you can listen to it here.
Revision is everything, but it is also very hard.
Interested in more slow burn romances? Goodreads has you covered.
Kerrelyn Sparks is the one who told Sarah romance is like a football game.
If you're worried you have an STI like Chlamydia, please see a doctor. Also, if you have kids, make sure they get the HPV vaccination.
Being a professional friend is a real job.
More about the A in the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.
If you're ever in Chicago, you should go to the dining room of the Chicago Athletic Association, check out the trophies, and play some bocce ball.
Looking to hang out with us in April? We'll be at KissCon and Spring Fling.
Buy buttons and stickers from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordan.
Next up, Waking Up With the Duke by Lorraine Heath, a book that blooded Sarah.
other books we mentioned
15.5: Epistolary Romances
Love letters are the best because they’re personal and honest and raw and beautiful, and this week—by request—we’re talking about all the different ways romance tells epistolary love stories! Leave us your own version of a love note in comments!
Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting platform — and while you’re there, please leave us a like or a review.
Next week, IT IS HAPPENNNINNNGGGGG! We’ll be talking about Sweet Ruin, Sarah’s favorite book in the IAD series, and she is BEYOND EXCITED to talk about her favorite Kresley hero and the magnificent, perfect heroine who refuses to back down from their fated matehood. Block off some time, as we can’t guarantee this will be anything near a normal length episode! Read Sweet Ruin at Amazon, B&N, Apple Books, Kobo, or from your local Indie. Also, we promise you won’t be disappointed by the audio of this one!
Show Notes
It was @jenalice1 who requested an epistolary interstitial.
"That INXS song" that played in the universe when Sarah met her husband was Never Tear Us Apart.
Sarah didn't like the movie Mystery Men. (Jen did.)
Text messaging has come a long way since ICQ, but it looks like there are ICQ nostalgia apps in case you miss it.
We muddled through our Kristen Callihan favorites for a while: The one where they fuck in the library, the one with the virgin NFL player with the piercing, and the one with Scottie.
When Sarah said "Mr and Mrs Smith but make it gay," Jen was thinking of The Spies Who Loved Her series by Katrina Jackson but couldn't remember them.
Salt with Angelina Jolie.
Archie was a non-cool name that is experiencing a resurgence.
when Jen said Not if I Save You First was "An RWA book," she meant it was a RITA finalist.
Atonement, fuck that book.
The Crimea? The Napoleonic Wars.
A still funny New Yorker cartoon about Power Point.
The Vixen and the Vet (not that kind of Vet) has extensive heroine-groveling.
The problem of how we should archive our personal electronic communication is soemthing people think about.
Multimedia apps for The Waste Land and Ulysses.
The Cyrano story is well-entrenched that it has become a trope.
A perfect tweet from Kate Clayborn.
Pre-order Brazen and the Beast from Word in Brooklyn, mention Fated Mates at checkout, and you'll get a bunch of cool swag.
Kelly's business is Resistance Buttons, so check that out.
Buy fun stamps, including these that Jen pre-ordered.
Write some postcards to voters.
Sweet Ruin is coming.
