Jennifer Prokop 4/17/24 Jennifer Prokop 4/17/24

06.32: Secret Babies, Friends-to-Lovers and More — Books we love with tropes we don’t

This is the first of three episodes inspired by the incredible time we had at Fated Mates Live in Brooklyn. During the event (which was so so fun we love every single one of you who came!), we asked guests Nikki Payne, Kate Clayborn and Lauren Billings of Christina Lauren to choose an interstitial topic they would like us to tackle on the show. Lauren chose a great one: Exceptions to our rules, meaning…tropes we don’t care for that are done really really well.

So! This one is for everyone who’s ever asked Jen for Secret Baby or Virgin Heroes and anyone who’s ever asked Sarah for Friends to Lovers or Spies. We talk about the books that make us go…not that…but maybe that?

We also want to thank the following publishers and authors for their incredible generosity in making sure that almost every attendee of the Live went home with a romance novel. We are so lucky to share Romancelandia with you: Avon Books, Ballantine Books, Blue Box Press, Dell, Grand Central/Forever, Gallery Books, Lauren Blakely, LJ Evans, Pippa Grant, Ana Huang, Parker S. Huntington & LJ Shen, Elle Kennedy, Avery Maxwell, Ava Miles, Max Monroe, Kathryn Nolan, Amari Nylix, Meghan Quinn, Piper Rayne, P Rayne, Stephanie Rose, Lucy Score, & TL Swan.

Photo credits: Stephanie Keith

Show Notes

We had the very best time at Fated Mates Live, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as fun without Lauren being there. Christina Lauren’s newest book, The Paradise Problem, is out May 14th. Preorder it now, and check out their tour schedule to go see them (they’re even more terrific in person) when they’re near you!

Solar eclipses are very cool, and Jen really should have gone home…. as it turns out, 95% is not anything like 100%! If you have the chance, you should go get in that path of totality. Jen’s brother Erik was at his office rooftop in downtown Cleveland and saw people getting married, and also took a very cool video at totality. New York earthquake twitter was pretty funny, too.

Jen, staunchly anti- virgin heroes since 2018.

Kevin Costner’s speech about luck from Bull Durham.

The book about women in the CIA is called The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy.

Books Mentioned This Episode

The Game Plan

Demon from the Dark

Dark Needs at Night's Edge

Thief of Shadows

At First Spite

Only and Forever

The Duchess War

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover

Like Lovers Do

Scoring off the Field

The House on Mulberry Street

Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating

Duke, Actually

Baby Come Back

Nobody's Baby But Mine

Lies You Tell

One Fine Duke

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

The Spymaster's Lady

The Paradise Problem

S03.50: Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian: a Perfect Modern Historical

We’re nearing the end of Season Three and we are so happy to be reading one of the most delightful books in modern historical romance, Cat Sebastian’s Unmasked by the Marquess. We talk about Cat’s masterful plotting within a three-act structure, about friendship, trust and sacrifice in relationships, and about writing a modern historical while still delivering the bananas plots that made the early books in the genre the best.

We also announce our next Fated Mates LIVE! to celebrate the release of Sarah’s next book, BOMBSHELL! Join us and some of our very favorite people on August 24th! Tickets are a copy of the book, and available at five participating romance friendly bookstores. Get them here!

Our next read along is Sarah’s BOMBSHELL! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, or Bookshop.org, or signed via Sarah’s local indie, WORD, or one of the participating romance-friendly bookstores hosting the Fated Mates Live/Virtual Bombshell Launch! Orders from WORD or the launch sponsors will come with a Fated Mates Sticker!

Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.

Show Notes

The virtual launch event for Bombshell will be on Tuesday Aug 24 at 7eastern/4 pacific. If you pre-ordered a signed book from Word!, keep an eye out for details for how to join the event.

Unmasked by the Marquess received excellent reviews from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and the New York Times.

A guide to nonbinary pronouns.

The audiobook of Unmasked by the Marquess is great, and narrated by Joel Leslie.

Cat Sebastian is a fanfiction expert and routinely talks about some of her favorite fics. If you don’t know, the Stucky ship of Cap & Bucky is the most written about ship on Ao3.

“Natural child” was the nice way of saying that a child was born out of wedlock. The mean way, of course, is bastard.

More about the three act structure.

This is a great interview with Cat Sebastian in Jezebel about writing queer characters in historical romance.

Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian

Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian

Bombshell by Sarah MacLean

Jennifer Prokop 9/9/20 Jennifer Prokop 9/9/20

S03.04: Friends to Lovers with Tracey Livesay: Handstand, Hammock, and Horse

Two years in the making, we’re finally talking to one of our very favorites, Tracey Livesay, about friends-to-lovers romances! Ironically, for a group of people who say they don’t love friends-to-lovers, we sure had a lot of books to recommend! We’ll also peel back the curtain on Tracey’s feelings about Jamie Dornan, talk about the strangest places romance couples have sex, and get to the bottom of why this trope works so well when it works.

Sarah wrote a contemporary novella during a pandemic, and it's coming out September 15th! Preorder the Naughty Brits (an anthology with Sophie Jordan, Sierra Simone, Louisa Edwards and Tessa Gratton), wherever you get your ebooks: Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Apple or Google, or in print at bookshop.org.

Next week, we’re deep diving on Milla Vane’s A Heart of Blood and Ashes, which is a long fantasy romance. If you are a reader who needs content warnings, you might want to check out reviews on Goodreads.

Find it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or Bookshop.org.

Thank you, as always, for listening — we hope you’re having a great (and safe!) summer! While we’re apart, if you are up for leaving a rating or review for the podcast on your podcasting app, we would be very grateful!

Show Notes

Linda is keeping a calendar of romance events. You should subscribe.

The Fifty Shades movies aren’t well reviewed, but really who cares. We definitely recommend the unrated version if you have the money (editorial note: would we say "recommend?"). Some interesting facts about the movies, including the director change from Sam Taylor-Johnson to James Foley. The soundtracks for the movies are terrific, especially two Beyonce songs: the remix of Crazy in Love and the song Haunted. May all of your contract negotiations look like this. Tracey said “we see more of Jamie” in the next two movies, so maybe she didn’t know about his modeling career. All further 50 Shades questions should be directed to Nisha Sharma.

Unrequited love is way more stressful than friends to lovers.

In Like Lovers Do, Ben's ex-girlfriend is racist to Nic in a way that Ben doesn't quite understand, including a reference to Courvoisier, which Ben thinks is referring to an SNL skit.

Unsurprisingly, we adore Like Lovers Do, but we're not sure we can give it a better review than this one by LaQuette, who really hits the nail on the head with the promise of this particular premise (aka, hammock sex friends-to-lovers).

Martha’s Vineyard is for fancy people.

A New York Times article about Interracial romance in media in 2020.

Handstand. Hammock. Horse.

Are bachelor auctions even a thing?

A history of taxidermy.

Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher are amazing in all ways in When Harry Met Sally, and the "pesto is the quiche of the 80s" scene gets quoted more than anyone in Sarah's house would like.

Up next: A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane.

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**Books discussed in the episode: **