Whoa!mance: Romance and Ourselves

As many of you know, JOHANNAuary has fallen under a somber hue. With the news of Johanna Lindsey’s passing, this month’s project will take on a retrospective, celebratory stance that we hope will dovetail nicely with our usual bouillabaisse of critical and irreverent commentary. So, without further ado, JOHANNAuary commences with a real keeper, Defy Not The Heart by the indomitable Johanna Lindsey...

Who’s the hottest of Santa’s reindeer? We posed this question to you, our dear listeners, and you replied with Vixen. So in the spirit of the season, yr girls Morgan and Isabeau took a trip to the North Pole to spend a little time with the deer/man himself, in Vixen’s Fated Mate, Book 4 of R. E. Butler’s Arctic Shifters Series. There’s a lot to unpack with this novella: Santa as a quasi-authoritar...

Last year, yr girls Morgan and Isabeau spent the month of January, excuse me, JANEuary, celebrating all things Jane Austen. This year, get ready for another deep dive into a high priestess of the romance genre, because JOHANNAuary is coming. Every week this January, yr girls Morgan and Isabeau will be exploring a different novel by the indomitable Johanna Lindsey, a lioness in her field, and an ev...

Abigail McKenzie felt like an outcast in her one train stop town. Yet when two men are wounded in the same train robbery, she agrees to take them in: David, the model of a gentleman, and Jesse, hot-tempered and alluring, vie for Abigail’s affections. But as she nurses them both back to health, intimacy and proximity push our heroine to explore her sensual side, and the true identities of her patie...

For this Boner, Isabeau guides Morgan through the waters of fated mates, blood scenarios, and the requisite comfort/suffocation of inevitably. What is the difference between fate and destiny? Does the trope of love at first sight still sparkle through the lens of affect theory? Is male “passion” just camouflage for latent male aggression? Bring your own beret for this one y’all and start perfectin...

Folie Hamilton thought nothing of corresponding with her husband’s cousin, Lt. Robert Cambourne, deployed across the world in the interests of the East India Company, on behalf of the English Crown. But when love creeps into their epistles, no distance or arrangement is beyond collapse. This week, Morgan and Isabeau swoon over My Sweet Folly by Laura Kinsale, a tale of passion, conspiracy, and unb...

Are we at a point in history where our passions have become our capital? And what are the repercussions, if any, that sometimes it might be totally worth it? For this lil’ Boner, Morgan and Isabeau explore how WebToon is contributing to the romance ecosystem, do a little self reflecting, and politely ask for more WebToon coins PLEASE. Whoa!mance is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find...

Lucy Muchelney is in a rut. But when she’s commissioned to translate a celebrated astronomy text by the deceased husband of Countess Catherine St. Day, her professional demeanor is eclipsed by desire. This week, Morgan and Isabeau turn their sights to 2019’s Great Big Romance Read The Lady’s Guide To Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite, a dovetail of caste and scholarly love set in post-Napoleonic...

Long before Twilight, and 26 years before Ol’ Abe Stoker had visions of Dracula, there was another drinker lurking in the annals of western lit. This week, Morgan and Isabeau explore the classic gothic vampire novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, a prototype for the prolific genre. Set in a shloss in the forests of Styria, Laura, our heroine, describes her lonely childhood through epistles...

One could say this is a boner about blow jobs. But blow jobs are about so much more than just blow jobs. This is a boner about power. A boner about tropes. A boner dissecting the misnomer of a “right” penis. It’s a boner about what we do with boners, and why what we do with boners does and does not matter.

Why bears? What is it about our ursine cousins that prompts such a curious and violent fascination? This week, Morgan and Isabeau turn these questions over anew with the graphic novel My Boyfriend Is a Bear by Pamela Ribon, illustrated by Cat Farris. What does pop culture’s fetishization of bears say about our sexual proclivities? Are bears just apolitical lumberjacks? And what right do we have to...

What are the rules of modern dating? For many this is an ethical or existential question, but for app developer Rhiannon Hunter, providing the correct answer could be the financial HEA of a lifetime. This week, Morgan and Isabeau tackle The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai, and put some overlooked institutional ducks in a row. Questions arise as to what a feminist dating app should look like; who, if any...

There’s a lot to be excited about with this one y’all. Not only is there now a bookshop in Tinley Park, IL dedicated exclusively to the genre, but Love’s Sweet Arrow: A Romance Bookstore was kind enough to host the inaugural live recording of Whoa!mance. A special thank you to all those who came through and contributed to the conversation on Gorgeous by Motzie Dapul, a selection from Start Here: S...

This one's for all you toons creeping in on Fabio's turf. Morgan and Isabeau discuss trends in cover art, the ethics of disguising a novel’s heat, and the politics of reading a good ol’ fashioned clinch on the bus. So don’t bother covering up this boner, because we’re letting it all hang out.

Have you ever despised someone so much you wet your desk chair? Or been so blinded by hate that you popped a boner? Of course you have. We all have. That’s what makes the Hating Game by Sally Throne so relatable, because a good romp is always the best way to relieve some tension. This week, Morgan and Isabeau track Lucy and Joshua, rival administrative assistants for two newly merged publishing ho...

Shake the sand out of your corset and get ready for a cockney romp. This week, Morgan and Isabeau return to Judith Ivory to examine her 1999 novel The Proposition, where linguist and social etiquette coach Edwina is tasked to shape hunk of marble and rat catcher extraordinaire Mick into a right modern gentleman. If Beast didn’t quite tickle your ambergris, this reverse pygmalion will have you feel...

Do you like gaming hells? Bad dudes who become good dudes and heroines who find their voices? US TOO!!! In this week's episode Morgan and Isabeau tackle a peculiar faultline in Romancelandia--is "The Devil in Winter" really worth the hype and love it receives? Really? Listen and find out where Isabeau and Morgan land on the critical question. Part of our Lisa Kleypas series. Listeners be warned th...

It's been quite the sojourn y’all. This week marks the third and final in our triptych on sheik romance, a series that we hope has never ceased to surprise and horrify. A familiar pattern continued in Hired: The Sheikh’s Secretary Mistress by Lucy Monroe, a text in full cultural retrograde as the title is quick to suggest, where Morgan and Isabeau were once again exposed to a veritable galaxy of s...

Last week, yr girls Morgan and Isabeau took a trip to the Big Apple to speak on a panel for the Golden Network as part of the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference. After much networking and mingling, there was so much to unpack. Is Romance inherently feminist, or should we demand more? Is pleasure, in and of itself, enough of a political statement? What is patriarchy, and how and with wh...

Ok. A lot of trigger warnings y’all; we’re talking about rape, human trafficking, colonial occupation, castration, and handsy nuns. But plz know yr Whoa!mance crew would never let you go in alone. This week, Morgan and Isabeau continue to hold Sheik romance accountable with a truly breathtaking example of what-the-fuckery: Savage Sands by Christina Nicholson. It’s a rolling blackout of unchecked s...

Back in the center ring, as promised, for the first of many sheik downs. To kick things off, Morgan and Isabeau crack the OG model for so-called “desert romance”, E. M. Hull’s 1919 novel The Sheik; and like any good origin story, it’s fraught with power and contradiction. Can a novel with such a damaging socio-political cache be redeemed by the resonant impact it has on the evolution of genre and...

If you’ve been around this whole mess long enough you know we love kicking up some dust. So that’s why we felt it was high time one of the elephants in this here circus gets called the fuck out. Clowns and jokers can take a hike for this next couple y’all; round these parts there’s no wishing our way out.

Here at Whoa!mance, we believe wet dreams are always better with a buddy. That’s why this week, Morgan and Isabeau took a trip to the 206 to hang out with bored pharmaceutical employees Vanessa and Altan, as they explored their sexual tension in a shared hallucinatory dreamspace. But what began as a flirtation spiraled into addiction for Vanessa as her drug induced sexcoma proved a too tempting ba...

Much like a long day, ICEWINE could only set in the west. This week, Morgan and Isabeau put the series out to pasture with Debbie Macomber’s 1993 novel Morning Comes Softly where Travis, a rugged non-millionaire chauvinist cowboy is seeking a wife to help maintain his shack and family in Montana; lo and behold, Mary, a shy librarian in Louisiana, responds to his personal ad and travels sight unsee...

BRAINFREEZE - all this ICEWINE’s got to our heads y’all. This week, Morgan and Isabeau take a break from the box to rub shoulders with the courtesans in Jeannie Lin’s novel The Jade Temptress; and who better to show them around than Chicago’s very own scribe of passion Suleikha Snyder, who selected this title as a personal all-time-fav. It’s a triple shot of historical mystery romance sure to get...