Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People – Details, episodes & analysis

Everything old is new again...or young again? We're talking about New Adult romance today, that is, romance novels where the love story is set at or during college! We're hopping in the time machine and headed a generation or two back in romance to talk about the first time New Adult came around changing the contemporary romance game. We're getting to the bottom of why these particular love stories work so well when it comes to feelings, and asking that eternal question -- has anyone involved in this subgenre actually met a 19 year old man? (JK, we support you!)

We're taking next week off, but we'll be back the week after for the start of our Seventh Season! If you'd like more romance chatter in the meantime, we encourage you to join our patreon, where you get another episode from us each month, and access to the incredible readers and listeners and brilliant people on the Fated Mates discord! Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our first read along of Season 7 will be Molly O'Keefe's Everything I Left Unsaid duology, selected by Jen which despite the first book being a cliffhanger should not surprise you because she contains multitudes. The second book is The Truth About Him. Read them both and get ready for Jen to talk to you for hours. You will thank us.

Also! We're back on the phonebanking train this election season! Join us on Saturdays between now and Election Day to phonebank with fellow romance lovers, Jen, Sarah, and special guests who will knock your socks off! Learn more and register at fatedmates.net/fatedstates.

• 50 Shades of Grey by EL James
• Wait for You  by Jennifer Armentrout
• The Wild Seasons Series by Christina Lauren
• Butterfly by Jo Brenner
• First Semester by QB Tyler 
• Losing It by Cora Carmack
• Never Sweeter and The Professor by Charlotte Stein
• The Unrequited by Saffron Kent
• Sincerely, Carter by Whitney G
• The Boys Next Door by Miranda Silver
• The Game On Series by Kristen Callihan
• The Deal by Elle Kennedy
• Foreplay by Sophie Jordan
• Lick and Play by Kylie Scott
• The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood
• Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros

We're back with Christopher Rice celebrating one of the longest running themes in romance: Daddy Issues (not the good kind)! Christopher writes romance under the pen name C. Travis Rice, and today, we're talking about his recent banger, Sapphire Dawn. We talk about the longstanding history of characters with terrible fathers, about why romance seems to love a bad dad, about our favorite characters with terrible fathers, and about why terrible fathers make the best heroes? (we know! it's problematic!) All that, and we're talking about Nora Roberts and (gasp!) Janet Dailey!

We're coming up on the end of Season 6 (what?! how!?), and so incredibly grateful to you for listening. If you'd like more romance chatter, we encourage you to join our patreon, where you get another episode from us each month, and access to the incredible readers and listeners and brilliant people on the Fated Mates discord! Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Also! We're back on the phonebanking train this election season! Join us on Saturdays between now and Election Day to phonebank with fellow romance lovers, Jen, Sarah, and special guests who will knock your socks off! Learn more and register at fatedmates.net/fatedstates.

• Sapphire Sunset by C Travis Rice
• Sapphire Spring by C Travis Rice
• Sapphire Storm by C Travis Rice
• Sapphire Dawn by C Travis Rice
• The Dream Trilogy by Nora Roberts
• In Death by JD Robb
• The Kate Daniels Series by Ilona Andrews
• The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles
• Love in the Time of Scandal by Caroline Linden
• Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey
• 52 Reasons to Hate my Father by Jessica Brody
• A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
• Her Naughty Holiday by Tiffany Reisz 
• This Calder Range by Janet Dailey
• Duke of Desire by Elizabeth Hoyt

• Welcome author Christopher Rice who writes gay romance as C. Travis Rice. His current series is called Sapphire Cove, and his most recent release is Sapphire Dawn. Christopher and his best friend Eric Shawn Quinn host a podcast called The Dinner Party Show. 
• The great

We are talking about a full on banger this week — Joanna Shupe’s The Devil of Downtown, which is Sarah’s favorite of the Uptown Girls series (Jen is a The Prince of Broadway fan, but honestly, all three are basically perfect). We love this one so much, you’re about to get an hour or so of squeeing and sighing — Jack Mulligan is everything you could possibly want in a romance hero, Justine Greene is the do goodingest do gooder who ever was, and the way they adore each other is enough to wreck you. If you haven’t read this one yet, do yourself a favor and go read the whole series right now…Joanna Shupe proves that historical romance is everything you want.

If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where 1000 other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as we do at patreon.com/fatedmates.

• Joanna Shupe also writes mafia romance under the pen name Mila Finelli, and we love The Kings of Italy series. 
• The Greene sisters are loosely based on the Schuyler Sisters, made famous by the musical Hamilton. 
• On the TV show The Wire, a popular drug dealer named Stringer Bell only moved up to the big leagues of evil once he started buying up real estate and rubbing elbows with politicians and businessmen, who are portrayed as the biggest crooks of all. 
• The story of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire is tragic, and ultimately led to labor reforms around the country. 
• The Sex in the City gals have some thoughts about butt stuff.

• Dr. Melissa Dymond, author of Paging Dr. Hart, available in print or ebook, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited
• Mary James Ketch, oil painter. Find her new series of paintings and prints, Book Lovers, at her online studio.
• Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA. Check out their new $40 Swoony Subscription Box for a monthly delivery of brand new, hand-selected romance novels and access to a discussion Discord. July’s box includes TRIPLE SEC by TJ Alexander, FOR REAL by Alexis Hall, and A LIAISON WITH HER LEADING LADY by Lotte R. James.

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2024/6/18/s0641-the-devil-of-downtown-by-joanna-shupe
• If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our...

It’s spooky season and that means we’re reading spooky stuff! We recommend some of our favorite recent witches and demons and incubii and ghosts and vampires and others…and then we try to get to the bottom of why paranormal romance and monster romance doesn’t feel like halloween romance to but these books do? This episode has it all: celebrity witch talk, a welshman named Rhys who isn’t the one you’re thinking of, a peek into Sarah’s past that reveals a painting that just might have installed one of her buttons…she had a beer before we recorded, so stuff happens! This one’s all treat, no trick…but headphones in, y’all. This one isn’t for the kids.

Thanks to Terri Green, author of The Swordmaster’s Daughter and Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry a Viscount, for sponsoring the episode.

Our next read along is Claire Kent’s HOLD. It’s a prison planet romance, so…you know…enter at your own risk. Get it at Amazon or in Kindle Unlimited.

Show Notes

Spooky Shit Nitro Stout isn’t a brand, it’s a process.

Although we’ve never done a Halloween episode before, we did have a monster romance interstitial in season 4 with guest Jenny Nordbak. Also, all of season 1, basically.

We came up with a new rule for what makes something a paranormal, which is it’s about whether or not the main characters are immortals or humans. Or, you know, the patriarchy.

And now time for a celebrity gossip interlude: Are Gisele Bündchen & Olivia Wilde witches? It's possible. It has something to do with altars & healing stones, [the Don’t Worry Darling controversy], Jason Sudeikis under a car, and Nora Ephron’s salad dressing.

We have two more Fated States phonebanks! Register here for Oct 29 at 3 eastern to Kentucky for Charles Booker, and Nov 5 at 3 eastern to Pennsylvania for John Fetterman.

Did someone mention a Welshman named Rhys?

Gather round and look at the painting The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. Here’s a cool explainer about the significance of the painting.

As of Oct 25, 2022, the United States has 1,090, 632 dead from Covid. Worldwide, at least 7.5M people have died. Get boosted. Wear a...

In the very best version of “third time’s the charm,” we are finally welcoming Christopher Rice to Fated Mates! A man of many talents, he writes fabulous contemporary romances as C. Travis Rice, and suspense, crime and supernatural thrillers as Christopher Rice. Today we’re talking Redemption Romance in honor of his most recent romance release, Sapphire Spring.

In this episode, we talk about how redemption romances and bully romances work, how tricky they are to write, and why so many of us are so drawn to redemption arcs — particularly when they involve sticking it to our childhood enemies. We had the best time with Christopher, who filled our TBRs…so get ready, because he’s definitely going to fill yours, too.

Thanks to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies, for sponsoring the episode. Use the code FATEDMATES for 30% off and free shipping. Thanks, also, to emjoy for sponsoring the episode. Visit letsemjoy.com/mates for a 14-day free trial.

Show Notes

This week's guest is Christopher Rice, who also publishes under the name C. Travis Rice. He and his best friend Eric Shaw Quinn host a podcast called The Dinner Party Show.

The inspiration for the Sapphire Cove series came from Nora Roberts's Dream Trilogy. The first one is Daring to Dream.

Jean Valjean is the main character in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

A Molly House was a British term for a place where gay men could meet up. Like Victorian Grindr.

In 2022, book bans in United States schools and libraries are at their highest since the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom started collecting data. Bans are happening around the country, in every state, and disproportionately affecting books by and about LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC people. What’s more, challenges are likely underreported, because librarians who are resisting them are facing unprecedented workplace retribution and in some cases physical danger.

Book Bans are on the ballot on November 8th, in every state and local election, up and down the ticket. State legislatures, local town councils, county leadership and school boards are being overrun with candidates supported by conservative activists looking to limit access to books and ideas that offer identity, empathy, awareness, and power to young people around the country.

We’re concerned, so today, we’re releasing a special episode of Fated Mates focused on book bans across the country. We interview three experts on what’s happening, who is most impacted, and how we can all help. Show notes are extensive, and we hope you’ll take a look at them.

Thank you to librarians, teachers, and kids and families who are standing up and speaking out. We are proud to stand with you.

Guests

Jarett Dapier, librarian, activist and author of Mr. Watson’s Chickens

Lily Freeman, activist and student in Central Bucks County, PA. Read Lily’s op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer and follow her instagram at ProjectUncensored.

Melissa Walker, political activist at The States Project, journalist, and Middle Grade and YA author of Violet on the Runway, Let’s Pretend We Never Met, Small Town Sinners and more.

Resources

The Youth Censorship Database at the National Coalition Against Censorship

Book Riot’s censorship coverage is excellent and updated almost daily. They have an excellent explainer for how to find and develop a local anti-censorship group

Intellectual Round Table Freedom Blog: an exhaustive list of links related to news about challenges, censorship, and banning incidents, developing issues, and controversies that is updated weekly

PEN America’s data on School Book Bans and Index of Educational Gag Orders

American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, full of resources and toolkits on challenges and how to combat them

It’s our 200th Episode and we’re finally doing the thing we’ve been talking about doing for 200 episodes! A full deep dive into one of our favorite — or possibly our favorite! — romcoms…Moonstruck! Moonstruck was released December 18th, 1987, one day after Sarah turned nine…auspicious Sagittarius energy! It’s set in Brooklyn, is a perfect romance novel on film, and features more than one wolf, bewitched by the full moon. It is everything.

Go watch it (you won’t be sorry), then come back here and listen to us wax poetic about it.

Thank you for being with us for 200 episodes…you’re the moonlight in our martini.

Show Notes

Moonstruck was released on Dec 18, 1987. It was nominated for several oscars. Cher won for best actress, Olympia Dukakis for best supporting actress, and Best Original Screenplay for John Patrick Shanley.

Everyone loves Moonstruck and there are lots of fun listicles and essays about the movie. Here’s a great thread from Vulture where a movie critic named Rachel Handler live-tweeted a rewatch.

Most of the film’s exteriors were filmed in Brooklyn, but many interiors were shot in Toronto.

Sarah mentioned an essay by Emily VanDerWerff, Moonstruck: Life in the In-Between, about the beauty shop scene and how it can be analyzed as showing the power of the female gaze in Moonstruck.

The last scene at the breakfast table is a good example of farce. An article about the making of Moonstruck and the ending scene played in the style of a farce, with lots of cool info on Loretta's grandfather, played by Feodor Chaliapin Jr.

Jen liked all that moon stuff.

When Cher won the Oscar, she was wearing a very memorable dress. May we all vow to live our 40s with her as our guide.

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)!

• Tattoos are expensive!
• ReyLo is the ship name for Kylo Ren and Rey from the Star Wars movies. And the actor who plays Kylo Ren is Adam Driver.
• All about Pansexuality.
• Censorship on TikTok is so widespread is has its own wikipedia page, which makes it rife for misinformation about sex and sex education.
• Small point of order, Jen was at the LPI (Lunar and Planetary Institute), which is close to the Johnson NASA Space Center in Houston. Obviously, she wasn’t at the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), because that’s in California.

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2022/10/4/what-to-read-if-you-liked-the-love-hypothesis
• If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
• Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
• If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

It’s official! Sarah has broken the glass and taken Marrying Winterborne out of the vault and she has exactly as much to say about it as you expect! We’re talking perfect heroes, heroines who deserve to be revered, brilliant writers and plots that require the kind of skill you only get with Lisa Kleypas. Rhys Winterborne is nearly crushed by a building and still shows up at traditional calling hours (with 30 minutes to spare) to propose. An absolute king.

Thanks to Lucy Leroux, author of Making Her His, and Emjoy for sponsoring the episode. Visit letsemjoy.com/mates to access your 14-day free trial.

• Maybe you’d like a very fast-talking man to describe the organization and countries of the United Kingdom to you, so watch this video Jen shows her students.
• Rhys Winterborne isn’t the only one who thinks Wales is better than England.
• Along with being a guy you definitely wouldn’t want to be your dad, the word Albion means England.
• They say Helen of Troy started a whole war, but probably a bunch of dudes were just looking for something to fight about.
• The state of Sex Education in America is bad and getting worse.
• The oathing stone in weddings, and Rhys’s description of the word hiraeth, along with the TikTok Sarah mentioned.
• We partnered with The Bawdy Bookworms, and selected A Caribbean Heiress in Paris as the book! Check it out!
• Join us this weekend and every Saturday between now and the midterms as we phonebank for Democratic candidates.

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2022/9/24/s0503-marrying-winterborne-by-lisa-kleypas
• If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
• Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram,

Not that kind of bang! We’re talking about beginnings today, on the first interstitial of Season 5! This one edges into a bit more writing shop talk than usual, but we’re still name checking lots of favorite books, many of which we’ve done deep dives on already! So consider this your nudge to go back and read some great books we’ve talked about! Also, Sarah has Covid, Jen’s on the mend, Fated States is back, and next week, we’re reading Marrying Winterborne.

Thanks to Lucy Leroux, Eva Moore and Torie Jean for sponsoring the episode. Read Making Her His, Caught a Vibe and Finding Gene Kelly now.

Next week, our first read along of the season is Lisa Kleypas’s Marrying Winterborne. Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or at your local indie.

Show Notes

• Get boosted!
• When a book starts in the middle of the action, it’s called in medias res
• If you’re in MA, check out the Rom-Con, a full day celebration of “rom”ance at the “Con”cord free public library this Satruday, Sept 24, from 10-3. Tickets are free!
• Fated States has returned, and it looks like we’ll be phonebanking every Saturday starting Oct 1 through the election.