Whoa!mance: Romance and Ourselves

With SPORTS shut down due to Entrop[e]y, yr girls are graduating to a more sinister set of games. This week, Morgan and Isabeau explore love in the military-industrial complex with Book Three in Rebecca Yarros’ Flight and Glory series, Beyond What Is Given. Lt. Greyson Masters is on track to become an Apache helicopter pilot when he gets a blip on his radar. Sam Fitzgerald, a civilian and as it tu...

After exploring romance through the lenses of hockey and American football, yr girls are calling a timeout to process all this masculine energy. This week, a few final thoughts on SPORTS romance, the normalization of male violence, and the toxicity of body image standards. Tune in since you can’t watch real SPORTS anyway. Whoa!mance is a part of the Frolic Podcast Network.

We raised a barn. We perfected our slapshots. This week, Morgan and Isabeau are back on the O-line discussing one of their favorite sources of bad feeling, the NFL, with Fumbled by Alexa Martin. Poppy Patterson has built a life for herself independent of her high school sweetheart TK Moore, and she couldn’t be happier. But when TK, now a starting wide receiver for the Denver Mustangs, re-enters he...

Last time, yr girls explored the subversive quaintness of Amish romance in our inaugural Entrop[e]y episode. This week, Morgan and Isabeau are back in the game for our first installment on SPORTS romance with Pucked, by Helena Hunting. Here we find Violet, the step-sister of a successful hockey player, linking up with the impossibly hung team captain, Alex, for a night of passionate goal making. B...

If it isn’t readily apparent (full disclosure, it is) Whoa!mance is made by white people. This week, in lieu of an episode and in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Morgan and Isabeau share some of their favorite black authors, critics, and thinkers in the romance community and beyond. Black Chick Lit - https://blackchicklit.com My Imaginary Friends with L. Penelope - https://lpenelope.com/podcas...

We’ve all been talked about. And we’ve sure as shit all talked about. Then why, despite its ubiquity, does gossip still feel like a dirty word? This week, Morgan and Isabeau take a closer look at how gossip functions as a literary device, and how we benefit from its use as a complex social and pedagogical tool. Whoa!mance is a part of the Frolic Podcast Network.

We’re coming out the gate at a wagon’s pace for this series y’all, beginning in the bucolic pastures of the middle west. This week, Morgan and Isabeau embark on a reverse rumspringa with a plunge into Amish romance, led by the deft hand of Patricia Davids in the first installment of her Amish of Cedar Grove series, The Wish. This slow burn sweet romance meanders through the agrarian and folksy clo...

That’s right y’all. We asked for fan favorites that center on yr girls' least favorite tropes, and y’all came through like you always do. This week, Morgan and Isabeau reveal the selections and get ready to dip their toes in the water. This week's episode of Whoa!mance is brought to by "In To Her" by JA Huss. Available now at audible.com. Whoa!mance is a part of the Frolic Podcast Network.

Ever have a steamy threesome with a coworker and the mark yr boss sent y’all to murder? Of course you have. Whoa!mance is excited to offer a sneak peak at In To Her, a harrowing new tale of crime and passion by JA Huss. Available now at audible.com. Whoa!mance is a part of the Frolic Podcast Network.

Why do bad things sometimes make us warm? And we’re not talking about some slicked back James Dean or the guy in Misfits PPE. We’re talking about straight up military industrial complex, black site torture, for-profit CIA hijinx, the full front and back nine of bad feeling. Because that’s exactly the kind of bad this week’s book, Nothing To Fear by Juno Rushdan, manages to dress up for a night on...

While we’re still not leaving the house, yr girls are giving the books a rest in favor of Romance on the silver screen. For this Whoa!nus, Morgan and Isabeau are revisiting their mutual childhood favorite and sleepover film par excellence, Romancing The Stone, directed by Robert Zemeckis. Joan Wilder (post-Body Heat Kathleen Turner) is a successful but cloistered Romance novelist, who embarks on a...

As yr girls Morgan and Isabeau continue to shelter in place, stories of normal life - drinks in a cozy bar, dinner with a friend - are becoming just as titillating as the triumphs of our heroines. So imagine the excitement when Not The Girl You Marry by Andie J. Christopher was set in Chicago, with real life landmarks transported to the page like distant comforts. But the novel, which turns How To...

This is an historic week y’all, for this is our final Boner. The ultimate rod. The closing chubby. That’s right, we’re going beyond the bone where no romance podcast has gone before, careening into the wild blue yonder to bring you: The Whoa!nus. Where it took plagues to discover gravity and write King Lear, our modern twist on the Black Death has generated untold megatons of creativity that bring...

As you know, we at Whoa!mance possess an undying reverence for yr grrl Jane (see JANEuary if you don’t), and we’re smitten with this own voices retelling of P&P. This week, Morgan and Isabeau escape to Toronto in Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin, a modern Muslim twist on the Austen classic. Ayesha is an aspiring poet struggling to repay loans to her wealthy uncle, when her life collides with Khal...

Ever wonder what yr girls Morgan and Isabeau are like when they’re not behind the mic? Or what their high school experiences were like? Or the ins and outs of how they feel about this or that aspect of romancelandia? We asked you, our beloved listeners, to submit questions via our various social platforms, and thankfully, you asked back. This week, Morgan and Isabeau answer your questions in an ex...

If you caught a whiff of death, how would you restructure your life to make the most of its remainder? Chloe Brown’s penchant for computers, coupled with the chronic pain of fibromyalgia, has left her with a formidable bucket list. But it took a near-miss with a speeding car to get her busy living. This week, Morgan and Isabeau check off some to-do’s with Get A Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert....

This unprecedented time of crisis and distancing has us thinking a lot about bad feelings. For yr girls, this means topics in Romance that are typically a no go on the show: secret babies, sports, and the armed forces. This week, Morgan and Isabeau raise this lil Boner to ask you, our beloved listeners, to share your favorite novels that feature one of these topics. What’s the cutoff age for a sec...

What’s a dealbreaker for you? What’s something that, no matter how many luxurious nights and sumptuous meals, would continue to nag at the corners of your mind? Write it down. This week, Morgan and Isabeau get in touch with their teen angst for this YA retelling of One Thousand and One Nights, The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh. For this rendition, the Caliph of Khorasan has taken to marrying...

We love Romance. But sometimes having all your stories feature muscular, taciturn, bodice-ripping, secret baby/royalty/wealth and/or spouse-having heroes is too much excitement in this chaotic world. Sometimes you just want a story that’s relatable. This week, Morgan and Isabeau tread the bureaucratic waters of non-profit management where Rayanne (heroine) and Henry (hero) are tasked with saving t...

We wanted to take a moment to pop this lil boner and organize our thinking on Own Voices. What do we mean when we say Own Voices? It’s when the author, artist, filmmaker, producer, etc. is a member of the community they are representing in a given medium. This week, Morgan and Isabeau discuss the societal barriers within mainstream [white] culture that can keep Own Voices stories marginalized, and...

We’re celebrating our cotton anniversary this year at Whoa!mance, and what better way to wax nostalgic about marital bliss than to pretend to do it all over again. This week, yr girls Morgan and Isabeau are joined by producer Nick to unpack The Unhoneymooners by the writing duo Christina Lauren. This contemporary enemies to lovers features Olive, the perpetually unlucky twin sister of the soon-to-...

What a month y’all. This was a veritable roller coaster of emotions as yr girls Morgan and Isabeau took stock of Johanna Lindsey’s legacy and work, and sussed out how to feel about the harsher realities depicted in her novels. This week, our last installment of JOHANNAuary, features a viking novel of your choosing: Fires of Winter, Book 1 in the Haardrad Family Saga Series. Published in 1980, it’s...

As the ghost of JOHANNAuary continues to plague this humble project, we are reminded here at Whoa!mance of the importance of friends when doing battle with distraught paranormals. Yr girls Morgan and Isabeau are joined this week by Erin, the Veteran of Learning the Tropes, for a gracious re-recording to once again discuss Brave The Wild Wind, Book 1 of Johanna Lindsey’s Wyoming series. We meet our...

00h00m00s: message received via interplanetary communications systems re: distress signals circa terrestrial surface Kystran [] > [] terrestrial being i.e. “heroine” identified Tedra De Arr: class known: warrior re: terrestrial being i.e. “hero” Challen Ly-San-Ter: class known: bronzed_barbarian [] > [] unclear if distress product of misery/ecstasy; unclear as to issues of consent re: sexbots; unc...

It's another beautiful JOHANNAuary day, and yr girls Morgan and Isabeau are embarking on a farcical romp on the high seas. This week, Gentle Rogue, the third installment of Lindsey's Malory-Anderson Family Saga series, a sultry comedy worthy of the great Bard himself. The novel centers on Georgia Anderson, who, fed up with England, disguises herself as a cabin boy to secure safe transport back to...