S04.24: The London Hale Oeuvre
Welp, we’re back in a doom scrolling spiral this week, so why not take a visit to a small town full of hot single dads and firemen? We’re reading London Hale this week, and talking about the appeal of the quick and dirty romance! We’ll also talk about the value of a genuinely hot read and where all the stops are on the romance-to-erotica spectrum. We’re also talking about kinks and why daddies are installed in so many of us. Basically, we’re telling y’all to read these London Hale books so they’ll write more of them for us. Thanks for listening!
The Books We Discussed
Notes
Authors Ellis Leigh and Brighton Walsh are the two authors who write as London Hale. Sarah talked about their books back on the Quick and Dirty interstitial in Season 2.
You should read Circe. And Jack Reacher.
If you've run out of Jessa Kane books, try Chloe Maine.
There is not a Harlequin Presents called The Pregnant Billionaire’s Italian Mistress, but you can find The Italian’s Pregnant Mistress, The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride, The Italian’s Pregnant Cinderella, The Italian’s Pregnant Virgin, The Italian’s Pregnancy Proposal, and The Italian’s Pregnant Prisoner.
Robert Redford was a snack. So was Richard Gere both in Pretty Woman and in “the one where he’s an Air Force pilot.” (An Officer and a Gentleman, and it was the Navy. Fine.) We also admire the silver fox good looks of Benecio del Toro, Idris Elba, and George Clooney.
Andie J. Christopher coined the phrase “stern brunch daddy” and we’re all better off for it. Unfortunately, she’s the kind of person who deletes old tweets so you can't see that picture of Oscar Isaac with an eating utensil that inspired it, but luckily they talked about it on Reddit and Andie talked about it on the Wicked Wallflowers Podcast.
We’re constantly trying to explain the difference between Romance vs erotic romance vs erotica.
The Great Stepbrother Explosion was mostly 2015-2016, but I’m willing to talk some more about it or cite sources if you have them.
The 2020 Netflix movie 365 Days was originally released in Poland under the name 365 dni and was based on a book by Blanka Lipinska. Apparently, there will be a sequel. It doesn’t have a release date, but we’ll keep you updated, baby girl.
Jo Brenner and her friends have a gray scale for dark romance, and I hope she’ll explain it all on twitter so I can link to it.
Does calling a stranger for phone sex still exist–I bet you’re shocked to find out that there was an uptick in demand during the pandemic.
In editing, TK means “to come” as in I’ll fill it in later. In Fumbled by Alexa Martin, it stands for Trevor Kyle.
Eucalyptus is native to Australia and was introduced to England in 1774.
You should follow the Male scent catalog on twitter, and if you want to read more about it, check out the book Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells.
Sponsors
This week’s episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by:
BetterHelp online therapy.
Fated Mates listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/fatedmates.
and
Kennedy Ryan, author of Reel, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble,
Kobo, Apple Books or your local indie.
Continue listening to the audiobook at Audible or Apple.
Visit Kennedy at kennedyryanwrites.com, or follow her on
Instagram at @kennedyryan1 or Twitter at @kennedyrwrites
S03.33: Age Gap Romance
Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes. Look, Sarah’s buttons were installed young, OK? We’re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happened (or not!) in the books to make them viable in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic…but by the end, we’re not making any real promises.
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 Kresley Cole’s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we’re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books. Or find it from your local indie via bookshop.org.
Show Notes
You can buy Iris Johansen’s mansion in Cartersville, GA for a cool 8 million.
Maybe Chaotic Evil isn’t the best writing plan.
Here’s some pop psychology about the May December romance. By the way, the phrase May-December romance apparently dates back to Chaucer. In The Merchant’s Tale, a young woman named May marries a much older man and a confusing idiom was born.
As it turns out the “half your age plus 7” rule is not something Jen made up, because once you google it, you get charts and graphs and articles and everything.
Sarah’s reference to “Every terrifying post on that reddit board” is r/relationships, although r/amitheasshole is always available with some new tale of terrifying bad behavior.
This problems presented from lack of sex ed are pervasive though historical romance, but how much better are we doing by our kids?
Jen was talking about Marvin Gaye when she mentioned "Everybody wants their own piece of clay" shit.
Diana Palmer has a long, storied romance career, and none of it involves that kind of DP. The first book in the Long Tall Texans series, Calhoun, was published in 1988, and the latest one is #57 in the series, Texas Proud, and was published in October of 2020.
All joking about the Pioneer Woman aside, she does have some great recipes.
It turns out that the “boiling frog” analogy is just a myth, so keep on reading!
The movie Carol is based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt.
The Jessa Kane book with the dirty version of the talk is called His Prize Pupil, in case you want to read it yourself. For science.
Our next read-along episode will be The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole. If you want more Kresley, all of Season One is for you.
Books Mentioned in This Episode
S3.5: Holiday Romance
It’s the Holiday Season™️, which means it’s time to talk about Holiday romances! Get ready because there are A WHOLE LOT of books in this show. Also, get ready, because next week, on December 26th, instead of releasing our Dark Needs at Night’s Edge episode, we’re releasing a bonus Ask-us-Anything episode as a special holiday present to you!
Show Notes
Our official IAD reread will resume January 2nd, with Néomi (ghost) & Conrad (vampire) and we have so. many. feelings. SO MANY.
- In case you're curious, here's where Jen learned to properly pronounce Therese Beharrie's name. Therese wrote 2 Christmas books this year: A Wedding One Christmas and Her Festive Flirtation, and Jen liked them both.
- Before Sunrise came out in 1995, a sequel Before Sunset in 2004, and a third Before Midnight in 2013. This New Yorker review is a perfect example of everything Jen hates when people review anything romantic, so hate-read it if you're in the mood.
- Jen completely got the name of that chapter book wrong, it's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
- Novellas are really common in romance, maybe more than other genres, and Jen anxioulsy awaits the think-piece explaining why.
- Speaking of novellas: The anthology of Chanukah stories that Sarah mentioned is called Burning Bright; Reindeer Games is an anthology of stories with the snowed-in trope; and in Silver Belles, all the characters are over 40.
- Sarah described the cover of A Holiday of Love as an example of a certain type of old-school book package. But just last year, A Christmas to Remember with Lisa Kleypas, Lorraine Heath, Megan Frampton, and Vivienne Lorret followed the same exact cover protocol.
- Epistolary novels are super fun to read (Jen's favorite is Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Sarah is--unsurprisingly--very pro epistolary romance; her favorite is Kleypas's Love in the Afternoon), but Jen's pretty interested in how they are changing in the age of the internet.
- All three of the books in the Men at Work series by Tiffany Reisz are delightful, but the Thanksgiving one is an absolute classic.
- Last year, Jen ranked Thanksgiving romances for The Book Queen.
- How the Dukes Stole Christmas is pretty great, and here's where Jen talked about Joanna Shupe's novella on twitter.
