Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

It’s summer, so we’re talking Country House Parties! We’re skulking around, having scandalous meetings in cupboards, getting caught in the rain near the groundskeeper’s cottage, and generally causing chaos during a summer party at an enormous country house where someone is definitely ending up married (or at least ruined). This is another one where we’re pretty shocked we haven’t done it before. G...

F1! WNBA! NY Nicks! World Cup! We swear we're not turning into a sports podcast, but we did feel like it's a great time to rerun our most recent Sports Romance episode with the brilliant Jessica Luther. But first, Jen talks with Cleveland Soccer Group CMO and Cleveland Astra cofounder Gina Prodan Kelly about women's soccer and the World Cup. GOOOOOOOOOOAL! Show Notes: S06.09: Sports Romance with J...

We’re filling summer reading lists and making sure that you have plenty of beach reads ready for whatever your plans are! It’s hard to believe it’s July, but we’ve got another quarterly upcoming romance episode here to ease the pain of half the year already passed! Here’s a huge list of books arriving in July, August & September 2026—historical, paranormal, speculative, contemporary, a YA or t...

Is it our birthday? It is not! But who says you need to celebrate a birthday in real life to celebrate birthdays in romance novels? Not us! Today we’re talking about books that focus on birthdays — something that you would think would be more common in romance. We talk about birthdays that are cursed, about mistakes made on birthdays, about why heroes don’t seem to have birthdays, and about old re...

We’re back with a deep dive on one of our favorite recent romances, Seven Days in June by Tia Williams! We talk about yearning in contemporaries, about books that have a powerful sense of place, about dual timelines, about secondary characters, about lines that stick with us years later, and about how fated mates works as a trope in a contemporary romance. Tia also has a new book out this month, T...

This week, we’re visiting with Mary Kay Andrews, a longtime writer and certified badass who we adore for her WTAF Wednesdays and her delightful books. We talk about her writing journey, her decision to get publicly, vocally political, and about her new book Road Trip . We had a great time chatting and talking about writing, about research, and about how we should all just take a road trip through...

We’re celebrating the paperback release of These Summer Storms this week, and that means we’re talking about the weather! We talk about rain and snow and wind and tempests and tornadoes and monsoons, and we talk about why we all like weather in books so much (hint, it’s because it’s dialed up to 11). Tell us all about your favorite weather in romance novels and find an endless list of books that a...

This week, we’re joined by one of the greatest, Veronica Roth, whose new book, Seek the Traitor’s Son , features one of her most beloved of tropes: Sad Boys Who Punch Things. We were delighted when she suggested we do an episode on this very particular, very delicious romance concept, and of course, we invited her to join us! We talk about how it works, why we love soft boys who are full of rage,...

We are thrilled to have two of our favorite people with us today to discuss one of our favorite genres! Ali Hazelwood and Adriana Herrera, the masterminds behind the AH2 Kickstarter of Historical Trailblazers are here to talk about all the ways historical romance is unmatched! We talk about the new Historical Trailblazer special edition box set that AH2 launched this week, about the power of histo...

We’re deep diving into one of our favorite historicals from the 00s today — Jennifer Ashley’s The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. It’s a great follow up to our Paris episode last week, but we also talk about how Ashley really wrote the heck out of this book. We talk about widows, about sex in historicals, about autism rep in historicals, romance families, and the way this series electrified us as r...

We Love Paris in the Springtime and we love Paris in The Paris Match by our very favorite, Kate Clayborn. Today, we’re talking about the City of Love itself, with Kate! We talk about the magic of the City of Lights, about the weight it has in romance, and about the mythology it carries with it whenever it’s included in a book. Yes, of course, we talk about Jessica and Dain, but we also celebrate K...

This season, we’re expanding our traditional Trailblazer series to include the romance writers who are trailblazing today. Our first guest on this branch of the legend tree is Ruby Dixon, author of the Ice Planet Barbarians series. Ruby joins us to talk about how she became Ruby Dixon, what inspired the Ice Planet Barbarians series, how she thinks about writing this ever expanding world, the busin...

By request, we’re talking about the characters who have been exiled from family, from community, and from themselves—the irredeemable characters in romance. This is Morality Chain all over again. We’re talking about characters that have done terrible things on and off the page, to the detriment of their reputations in the text and outside, with readers, and somehow, by the end of their own book, a...

As always when we’re together, today we’re answering listener questions! In here, we’re recommending sex lessons books, motorcycle romance, books set in Toronto, Ohio and more — we’re also talking about the evolution of the trade paperback, how Jen edits, when Duchess is coming, and if we have favorite dinosaurs. It’s a full service episode for you, our faves. If you have more burning questions fo...

It’s time to fill those TBR piles again! April means the start of Spring and also another quarterly upcoming romance episode! We’re talking about romances hitting shelves and ereaders during April, May & June 2026! Whether historical, paranormal, contemporary or Romantasy, we’ve got something for everyone in fifty or so recs across every single genre. As a reminder, we haven’t read most of the...

It never fails to surprise us when we realize we’ve never talked about a really classic trope even now…eight years in. This week, we’re talking about kids in romance—which we’ve somehow never done before?! We’re covering Romance Babies, Romance Kids, and Single Parents in Romance — but so sorry to the Secret Baby lovers out there, that one deserves its own episode (someday). We’re talking babies,...

Someone said something real stupid, and that means we get to hit back in the best way possible — with romance recommendations! Today we’re talking about the Opera and the Ballet in Romance! We’re talking about historicals and contemporaries, about mafia enforcers and exasperated dukes, about football players and yes, of course, our sweet baby Conrad Wroth. You’re going to have a great time. Congra...

Calling all Loons! You’ve heated and reheated the rivalry, and now it’s time for us to talk about what you should read between now and Season 2. We’re joined by friend and fave of the pod, Christopher Rice, who writes m/m and sometimes m/m/m romance as C. Travis Rice. We talk about our feelings about Heated Rivalry, about the books and their impact, and about the transformational work of the show…...

Things are looking very wild out here in the real world so you deserve a deep dive on a book by an author with a big backlist and we are here to give you just that! Today's episode is on Sincerely, Your Inconvenient Wife , a modern day marriage of convenience story from Julia Wolf's The Harder They Fall series. We talk about fake husbands down bad, family drama, and the charm of an author building...

Continuing our series on Romance Vibes, we’re talking about Romance Wardrobe this week! We’re talking corsets and chemises, falls and Hessian boots, Armani suits and underpants that rip right off. We also get to the bottom of the pronunciation of bliaut . Do we recommend books? Not really, but it’s ok, we all deserve a week of goofing off sometime. All that, and Sarah saw “Wuthering Heights.” If y...

Our old pal Billy Shakes told us that music is the food of love, and we’re taking that to heart this week! By request from Eric (who’s never requested anything before), we’re looking at songs that charted in February over the years and matching them with romance novels that suit! We’ve got a little bit of something for everyone here, from historicals to paranormals, motorcycles to mafia to magical...

This weekend, the world is celebrating the second most important romance holiday in February (see last week’s episode for the most important)—Valentine’s Day! To lean into the traditions of the day, we thought we’d offer you a dozen roses this week, in the form of books! We’re taking the topic broadly—from character names, to author names, to rose scented things, to roses on the page — historical,...

It’s finally happened! In a perfect Derek Craven Day celebration, our Trailblazer conversations continue this week with thee Lisa Kleypas, historical romance royalty, who changed the game when she brought working class heroes to historicals. We discuss her four decades of work in romance, from historical to contemporary to magical realism and now into historical fiction, touching on the Kleypas he...

It’s a snowstorm, Jen’s from Chicago, and we’re feeling extra qualified to talk about Ice Planet Barbarians! It’s the book, and the series that took the world by storm back in 2015, and we’re revisiting the absolute powerhouse it was then, before it launched an entire subgenre of romance and changed the romance landscape. We’re also talking about Ruby Dixon’s clear skill, her obvious love of the g...

The brilliant Jayne Ann Krentz, romance trailblazer and royalty, joins us this week to talk about one of her favorite tropes--the shotgun wedding! We're talking all things forced marriage...how it differs from marriage of convenience, how it underscores the inherent conflict in romance, and how it often ends up being more like romantic suspense than one would expect! We also talk a bit about how s...