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

S05.28: Women's Friendships in Romance with Sophie Jordan

Sophie Jordan is back again! She’s got a new book out, The Countess, the first in her Scandalous Ladies of London series, featuring a true Regency squad full of scandalous ladies and answering the question: What if the Real Housewives were actually Regency-era aristocrats? We talk about friendships in old school romances, about why groups of women are game changers in fiction and in real life, and fill your TBR with groups you will absolutely wish you could be friends with.

In two weeks, we’re reading Tracy MacNish’s Stealing Midnight—we’ve heard the calls from our gothic romance readers and we’re delivering with this truly bananas story, in which the hero is dug out of a grave and delivered, barely alive, to the heroine. Get ready. You can find Stealing Midnight (for $1.99!) at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.

Show Notes

Welcome Sophie Jordan. Her newest release, The Countess, is the first in the Scandalous Ladies of London Series. It’s loosely based on the reality TV show, The Real Housewives. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for the first two chapters of The Countess in Audiobook.

In horror, “the final girl” is a trope about who survives.

Check out the Pocket Bookshop next time you’re in Lancaster PA.

Enid is a secondary character from several of Sophie’s books in The Rogue Files series.

Check out the Ice Planet Podcast if you’re a fan of the series.

Books Mentioned This Episode

The Countess

Sins of a Wicked Duke

Ana Maria and the Fox

The Devil of Downtown

On the Hustle

A Scot in the Dark

I Kissed a Girl

Delilah Green Doesn't Care

Act Your Age, Eve Brown

A Lot Like Adios

Like Lovers Do

Ice Planet Barbarians

S04.23: Fake Dating Romance

You can’t throw a stone in romance in 2022 without hitting a fake dating story, so we figure it’s time to do an interstitial on it! We’re talking about when it works, why it works, how it works, and by whom it works, so get your library cards ready because this one will topple your TBR! While this one is, as always, for the readers, there’s lots of goal/motivation/conflict here for the writers, too. Thanks for listening!

This episode is sponsored by Isla Moore, author of The Jennifer Files, and BetterHelp Online Therapy.

Our next read along will feature some of Sarah’s favorite quick & dirty books by London Hale, the pen name of authors Ellis Leigh and Brighton Walsh. Their Temperance Falls series is full of kinks and tropes and HEAs and while we won’t be talking about all ten books, we’ll definitely be talking about a few of them, including Nanny With Benefits, Reunion, Daddy’s Best Friend and Sarah’s favorite, Talk Dirty to Me. The whole series is free in KU.

Show Notes

Hey, dating during the pandemic was, and still is, hard!

Sarah suggest that there are 3 questions an author must address for each character in order to make the fake dating plot work:

Why is this happening/why a fake relationship the only option?
Why this person and not some other person?
What happens if it all goes south?

In other words, what is the the stake, the thing the reader has to care about? In other words: goal, motivation, conflict.

One of our very earliest interstitials was on Escort romances, and another was on fake engagement/marriage of convenience, tropes that has a lot in common with fake dating.

#RomanceClass is the name for a group of authors from the Phillipines writing in English. You can learn more about the romance class authors and their story, which is strongly influenced by the fact that divorce is illegal in the Phillipines.

Fuck Me Gently with a Chainsaw is something from a very dark 80s teen movie called Heathers.

There is a Canadian equivalent to the Navy SEALs, it's called Joint Task Force 2. The Mounties (which stands for Royal Canadian Mounted Police) definitely do not have that same vibe, but here is a nice video of a gentleman talking about his the training of the RCMP dogs.

Fake Dating Romance Novels

Hell Breaks Loose by Sophie Jordan

Hold by Claire Kent

Gigolo All the Way by JN Welsh

Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey*

Island Affair by Priscilla Oliveras

Totally Engaged by Mina Esguerra

Like Lovers do by Tracey Livesay

Luck of the Draw by Kate Clayborn

A Caribbean Heiress in Paris

Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur

Worked Up by Tessa Bailey

The Penalty Box by Odette Stone

Beauty and the Baller by Ilsa Madden-Mills

Fake Fiancee by Ilsa Madden Mills

*The Fix Her Up audiobook is currently on sale for $5 at Chirp. Visit our Audiobook Deals page for more.

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: **