S04.45: Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
This week, we’re talking about one of our (and many of your!) favorite recent contemporary romances, Talia Hibbert’s Get a Life, Chloe Brown. We’ve talked about Talia on a number of episodes before, and we’re so happy that our final read-along for Season 4 is this one — which is a straight shot of sexy joy directly into readers’ hearts. Also…these two are so thirsty for each other and it’s great.
We talk about artists and handymen and cats in trees and heroines with bucket lists who are just a delight. Sarah goes on a Seth MacFarlane tangent, and yes, we’re still cataloguing the greatest romance grandmas around.
Fated Mates Live, in person is happening — if you have tickets to the live show in Alexandria, VA on July 30th — let us know on our Twitter thread (and find friends!). If you didn’t get a ticket, but want to order signed books from participating authors, you can do that at Old Town Books in advance of the event!
Thanks to Alyxandra Harvey, author of, How to Marry a Duke, Kate McBrien, author of One Night Together, and Amazon’s Kindle Vella, publisher of Nikki St. Crowe’s Hot Vampire Next Door series, for sponsoring the episode.
We’ve got interstitials and trailblazers coming your way in August, and we will finish out Season 4 as is traditional — with a deep dive episode on Sarah’s summer release, Heartbreaker! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, at your local indie, or signed and with special swag (and a Fated Mates sticker!) from her local indie, WORD in Brooklyn!
Show Notes
Get a Life, Chloe Brown is the first book in the Brown Sisters Trilogy by Talia Hibbert. Here’s a great interview with Talia Hibbert in Kirkus, written by Jen's editor Laurie Muchnik. Jen reviewed some of Talia’s books for The Book Queen back in 2017.
If you would like to help out with Kansas’s constitutional amendment vote, you can phone bank on your own with the ACLU. Fated States will return in late August or Early September.
You can still sign up for Sarah’s “Mastering the Art of Great Conflict” class!
Check out all these starred reviews of Heartbreaker from Kirkus and Library Journal. You can order signed copies from Word in Brooklyn. Um, there are a lot of songs with lyrics about heartbreaker, soulshakers, and lovemakers, but the one Jen was mangling was Don’t Let Go by En Vogue.
Here’s the story about Seth MacFarlane oversleeping on 9/11.
Here’s a great twitter thread about ableism in fictional characters.
Some great romance grandmas: Gigi in Chloe Brown, Grandma Frida in the Hidden Legacy Series, Genevieve in Lord of Scoundrels, and Grandma Carol from Every Road to You by Phyllis Bourne.
Here’s a quick primer on potential vs kinetic energy in case Jen’s deranged cat explanation didn’t make sense.
The Brown Sisters Series
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry an Earl,
available at Amazon.
Visit alyxandraharvey.com
and
Kate McBrien’s One Night Together, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Apple Books.
Visit katemcbrien.com
and
Amazon’s Kindle Vella, publisher of Nikki St. Crowe’s Hot Vampire Next Door series,
available at amazon.com/kindlevella.
S02.12: Lord of Scoundrels: Reel or be Reeled
It may be Thanksgiving week in the US, but that didn’t stop us from recording a monster episode about one of our (and all of Romance’s) favorite books of all time! It’s Lord of Scoundrels week! We’re talking gloves and fans and prologues and why Jessica is one of the best heroines of all time! All that, and Sarah is on a rant about Byron…so don’t miss it!
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!
In two weeks, we’re moving across the pond to Beverly Jenkins’s Indigo, with one of Sarah’s favorite heroines ever—Hester Wyatt, Underground Railroad conductor! Read Indigo at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or your local indie.
Show Notes
Lord of Scoundrels has its own wikipedia page, which in case you're curious, is kind of unusual.
Just look at this gorgeous Lord of Scoundrels embroidery.
If you haven't listened to our episode on Dreaming of You, what are you waiting for?
Maybe you want to find out what you first ordered in your Amazon account.
Jessica Trent is not a Mary Sue.
Erin from Heaving Bosoms is famous for not liking epilogues, but it's a pretty good reason why. But prologues are fine.
You've been lawyered is from How I Met Your Mother.
Sarah wrote the prologue to a new edition of The Transformation of Philip Jettan.
Love's Sweet Arrow is a romance-only bookstore in the Chicago suburbs. It's awesome.
Gentle Rogue started too late.
More about Russian religous icons, but maybe you want to buy some.
The gloves scene in the Age of Innocence movie. All that repressed longing from Daniel Day Lewis! In the book, it's this chapter where Newland Archer "bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissed her palm as if he had kissed a relic."
If you want to know about demon seals and the Wroth brothers, then listen to season one of Fated Mates.
What does it even mean to dance a waltz in the Continental style? Probably not this Continental-style.
The Beverly Jenkins book where the heroine shoots the hero is Tempest.
Reading the banns and a list of people who were married at Saint George Hanover Square.
You'll be shocked to know that Jen has some theories about internal vs. external conflict.
When they're at the wrestling match, Dain says his friend could have "stayed comfortably at home and pumped his wife."
She Walks in Beauty Like the Night is a glorious poem, but that doesn't make Byron any less of a scumbag. That Ada Lovelace was Byron's daughter is kind of wild, but we're glad she's known for being her own person. Despite Sarah trying to create an authorship question for Byron, that's not really a thing. There's no such person as the Duke of Summerville. Jen just made that up.
If you're interested in The Romantics, you can find Jen's old college syllabus here. Lots of Wordsworth, but no Bryon, which is just fine. But we still love the way Loretta Chase used Don Juan in the text of Lord of Scoundrels.
Friend of the pod Adriana Herrera has been reading Lord of Scoundrels for the first time and her tweets about it are honestly the most amazing thing.
Maybe you want to buy some romancelandia buttons or some of Sarah's t-shirts.
Coming up next on December 11, 2019, Indigo by Beverly Jenkins