Jennifer Prokop Jennifer Prokop

S06.04: Sweater Weather: Romance Novels with Fall Vibes

This week is full ✨vibes✨ and we’re not sorry about it. By request, we’re doing a “Romances for Sweater Weather” which aren’t spooky for Halloween and aren’t (mostly) snowbound romances, but are just…full of apple cinnamon, pumpkin spice, fuzzy socks feelings. We’re talking about sports, about crunching leaves, about small towns, about pumpkins and about elections, so it must be fall here on the pod. Light that fire, put on that cable knit sweater, and get to reading. We’ve got you sorted.

Our first read along of the season will be Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or from your local indie.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, you are welcome at our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.


Show Notes

Check out Louisa Edwards’s chef romances. The first is called Can’t Stand the Heat.

We like a man in a cable knit sweater. So sue us.

Katy, Texas is home of a lot of football and a lot of book banning.

We don’t really have any opinion about Taylor Swift’s new boyfriend, but his mom seems great.

 

Books Mentioned This Episode


Sponsors

Ava Miles, author of The Paris Roommates,
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited

and

Avon Books, publisher of Nisha Sharma’s Tastes Like Shakkar
available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books,
or your local independent bookstore

and

Kelly Washington, author of Claiming the Heart of Vraithe
available at Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited

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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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S03.13: Fated States Author Recommendations

The last six weeks have been rough, but Fated Mates listeners and a wild number of Romance Authors made them easier by being a part of Fated States, our weekly phonebanking initiative with Indivisible Action. We don’t know how yesterday went, but we know we are so incredibly proud to have worked alongside so many listeners who volunteered their time to phonebank, and so many amazing authors who donated books to phone bankers!

On this episode, we rec books by every author who donated free books to Fated States — all 49 of them! Your TBR is going to be full for years after this one! We promise! Special shout out to Julia Quinn, Suzanne Brockmann, AJ Cousins, Carrie Ann Ryan & Cassandra Carr, who each donated books to EVERY phonebanker, once a week for five weeks.

Below, in Show Notes, you’ll find a full list of the books we recommend, and links to Amazon. You can buy print versions of books and support independent bookstores at our bookshop.org shop!

AND…thanks to our sister pods, Heaving Bosoms, Learning the Tropes and The Wicked Wallflowers, who donated podcasting swag, and to BestFriendKelly for stickers!

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This Thursday, November 5th, we’ll be recording our 100th Episode LIVE on Zoom, and we want you to be there! Join us and special guests, for games, laughter, romance recommendations, and as much joy as you can handle. Sign up here.

Next week, we’ll release the 100th Episode for those of you who can’t make it Thursday, and the following week, we’re back on read alongs with Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game! Get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple or at your local indie via bookshop.org.


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S02.29: Health Care Workers in Romance Novels

We are very pro health care workers these days — we love all of you…doctors, nurses, EMTs, home health aides…if you know how to work a stethoscope, we’re into you. This week, we’re taking about some of our favorite medical romances. Listen for Jen getting thoughtful, and Sarah getting wildly inappropriate. We’re all just doing our best.

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!)Barnes & NobleApple BooksKobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!).


Show Notes

As we all shelter in place, romance twitter has been very entertaining. Julia Kelly posted a thread where she posed her pets as romance novel covers, and everyone had fun with it. Sarah also loved this one about a dog who howls along with the Law and Order theme song.

We forgot to tell you last week when we talked about Devil's Bride that Stephanie Laurens has a new book out, The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster. We also have added information about how to pronounce Honoria and details about peach silk.

Now is the time to get the BookBub daily romance email. Here's Sarah's Bookbub page.

The nurse and doctor books were the backbone of early Mills and Boon romances, and the forerunner of the modern Harlequin Medical Romance; whereas Americans often find big, soapy hospital dramas on TV.

Budleigh Salterton looks like a very nice place to hang out unless you are a bored American 12 year old.

The roots of American and British romance are different, as proven by this absolutely WRONG LitHub romance essay. (They're wrong about romance a lot.)

Sarah has talked about Radclyffe and the origin of Bold Strokes Books, but many of her romances are about doctors or set in hospitals.

Jen doesn't really care too much about job details. Sorry not sorry.

No one likes a Bloodletter. We want our historical doctors to be foreward thinking. Or as Eloisa James does in When Beauty Tamed the Beast, use a modern TV character like House as model for a hero.

In Tempest, Jen spoke out inequities in acess to medical care for black patients, and that's still true today.

If you're looking to see some "don't fuck your doctor" romances that definitely fall somewhere on the Simone Scale. Wrong by Jana Aston and Medicine Man by Saffron Kent.

Jurgen Klopp wants you to put your hands away, and this amazing thread by comedian Laura Lexx and support all the Liverpool fans out there (especially Jen's brother).

Jen's cool TikTok project is up and running, she's interviewing YA authors and hoping to get kids to read while they are sheltering in place.

You can order buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordandene.

Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.

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S02.27: Sickbed Scenes in Romance with Kate Clayborn

Sarah has the flu! She wants you to know it’s absolutely terrible and you should all get your flu shots even though she got one and still got the flu but vaccines are good for you. Also, we all want you washing your hands and air high-fiving your friends because it’s wild out there. But you are IN FOR A TREAT this week — as our fave Kate Clayborn is pinch hitting for Sarah, and we’re talking romance sickbed scenes this week! If we have to be hyper focused on sickness, shouldn’t there be yearning and vigiling and a veiled death threat against a doctor (don’t threaten doctors)?

We love having you with us! — subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform and like/review the podcast, please!

Next week, we’re reading Stephanie Laurens's Devil's Bride, starring Devil Cynster, who also happens to be the only romance hero Sarah's husband can name (yes, even now). Find it at: AmazonBarnes & NobleApple BooksKobo, or your local indie.


Show Notes

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2.5: Brother's Best Friend Romances

Next week we’re going to get into Werewolves and Witches with Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night, but this week, we’re so excited to talk best friend’s sibling/sibling’s best friend romances with one of our favorite people: Kate Clayborn!

Show Notes

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