full-length episode, read along, S05 Jennifer Prokop full-length episode, read along, S05 Jennifer Prokop

S05.09: Hold by Claire Kent: There is Nothing Soft in This Book

We’ve talked about this week’s read along so much it’s kind of impossible to imagine that we haven’t read it with y’all, yet! But here we are, finally cracking open Claire Kent’s brilliant novella, Hold. Set on a prison planet, this one dials forced proximity up to 11, and does the excellent job of answering just how horrifying a world can you write a romance in? The answer is very. Very horrifying. We talk about sex and consent and strength and humanity and how love blooms in even the darkest of places. Is it possible we needed this book this week? It sure is.

Content warnings for the book and headphones in for the episode, magnificent firebirds!

Get Hold at Amazon, free in Kindle Unlimited.

Thanks to the Meet Cute Bookshop in San Diego, CA and Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies, for sponsoring the episode. Visit the Meet Cute website to browse their Space Romance list, and use the code FATEDMATES for 30% your order at Microdose.com


Show Notes

 

Books Mentioned This Episode

Sponsors

This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:

Meet Cute Bookshop in San Diego, CA
visit their website at meetcutebookshop.com.

and

Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
visit their website at microdose.com,
and use the code FATEDMATES for 30% off and free shipping!

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S05, if you liked, full-length episode Sarah MacLean S05, if you liked, full-length episode Sarah MacLean

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

Ali Hazelwood’s Books

 

Pining Main Characters

 

The Professors

 

STEM Heroines

 

Great Banter

 

Microtropes


Reylo Fic recommended by Ali Hazelwood & Adriana Herrera


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.

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S05.01: Season Five! Romance World Domination!

Season Five starts today, you Magnificent Firebirds!

Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us -- the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, so just let us live (but also, there was a Roy Kent episode). Season Four introduced the Trailblazer episodes, where we featured interviews with the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years.

Season Five will build on all this — Deep diving on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally reveal how vast and magnificent the romance pool can get. We’ve got great interstitials planned, trailblazer episodes already recorded and waiting for you, and a few new episodes that will focus on the books that are putting romance on the map these days…and where readers should go from there.

We’re excited! Aren’t you? Head over to your favorite podcasting app and subscribe so you don’t miss a moment of it!

In the meantime, today’s episode covers some of the romance new that happened while we were away the publishing DOJ trial, the absolute explosion of great books on August 23rd, and what on earth is happening with TikTok? There's a new theme song! And Jen broke her arm!

Next week is an interstitial, and our first read along of the season is Lisa Kleypas’s Marrying Winterborne. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or at your local indie.


Show Notes

If you’re in MA, check out the Rom-Con, a full day celebration of “rom”ance at the “Con”cord free public library on Sept 24.

That skeleton in your high school might have been real bones. All about the radius and the ulna.

Gross Anatomy was a 1989 movie starring Matthew Modine.

The blood hand job from A Heart of Blood and Ashes continues to amaze new readers, and we are here for it.

Parking at Chicago’s hospitals is so prohibitively expensive that a grieving family created The Jackson Chance Foundation to honor the memory of their beloved son who spent all but 48 hours of his life in the NICU. The Jackson Chance Foundation provides parking assistance and transportation at three downtown hospitals where parking can often run almost $100 per day.

A few useful explainers we found about the PRH vs DOJ trial, a breakdown of why the statistics about books sales are so confusing, and why Stephen King was the government’s star witness.

That NPR article about TikTok, Gen Z, and romance.

 

The August 23rd Book Bonanza

 

Other Books Mentioned


Sponsors

This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:

Blair Babylon, author of A Billionaire in Disguise, available at in print,
in ebook via Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo and Nook.

Visit blairbabylon.com

and

Mary Rudder, author of the Kindle Vella series
Love on the Ropes

and

Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies
Visit microdose.com and use the code FATEDMATES
for 30% off and free shipping on your order

Read More