The Best Romance Novels of 2024! This is our favorite episode of the year, where we get to shout at you about the terrific books we read this year, and tell you all the ways romance continues to excite us. It's the best and worst job, because we get to shout about books we love, but we are limited to only ten! And choosing ten favorites is very dif…

Like many people, we don't have much to say this week, and whatever we might have said probably wouldn't have been very eloquent, so we've decided to talk about something we know about: Comfort reading and the way romance provides us solace, peace and hope. This week's books are our old reliables--books that we turn to again and again for a reminde…

It’s just a very normal first Tuesday in November, and you need — and deserve — a distraction! We’re here to help with an episode that not only avoids discussing anything that might or might not be happening in the US today, but also lacks anything remotely of consequence (we promise 100% vibes!). Today, we’re releasing the November 2024 Bantr+, wh…

Today we're talking mermaids with our friend, Zóraida Cordova, an author of many genres who also writes romance under the name Zoey Castile. We talk about the appeal of mermaids, why we're so drawn to them as creatures, their history in mythologies around the globe, and yes, we get into biology, because we give the people what they want. If you wan…

This is a bit different than our usual Halloween adjacent episodes -- we're talking about the rise of romance centered around ghostly secondary characters (Jen) and funeral homes and mortuaries (Sarah). These two themes have become more and more prevalent in romance over the last few years, and we talk about how and why they've risen and what they …

Happy anniversary, Firebirds! Seven years ago this week, we launched Fated Mates with our first Episode, "A Wolf Without a Foot," in which we planned a tight 18 episode series, here and gone before you'd know it. Seven years later, we're still here, and we're celebrating by doing the obvious: Talking about Sin! We've taken the seven deadly sins and…

We're starting our Season 7 read alongs off with a bang! M. O'Keefe's Everything I Left Unsaid duology is some of the best contemporary romance out there, and if you need proof, here it is: The first book ends on a cliffhanger and it holds a prime spot on Jen's keeper shelf. We're talking about all the ways this book works, the way O'Keefe wields t…

An episode for the old school romance readers in the audience, we're talking about kidnapping this week! A trope that either absolutely works for readers (aka us) or absolutely doesn't, we talk about why that is, how the original romances of the 80s and 90s installed these buttons and how we still see the bones of old school kidnapping in delicious…

We are so thrilled to have thee Meg Cabot with us, one of the original queens of YA romance. We talk about her longstanding writing career, about the authors who inspired her, about her early historical romances, written as Patricia Cabot, about her pivot into young adult romance and the power of the subgenre, about her own love story, and, of cour…

There's a particular kind of romance hero who makes us feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy, because all he wants to do is stare in awe at his partner and tell everyone in the world to do the same. The Wife Guy is everything we love when it's done right, and we're so very excited to share a list of books that deliver this straight shot of serotonin eve…

Everything is new and crisp in the fall, as F. Scott Fitzgerald likes to say, and the romance novels are no different! We're starting to think about cozy fall reads under warm blankets with cider and pumpkin spice...and we're talking today about our massive autumn TBR piles! There’s something here for everyone — chefs, witches, sexy anthologies, va…

Seven is heaven! Today, we are celebrating seven seasons of Fated Mates and this genre that we just can't get enough of with two people we just can't get enough of--Kate Clayborn and Adriana Herrera! We're talking about books, about the tropes we love, about the little bits of romance that make it the very very best. We're also thanking you for lis…

While we're off this week, we're encouraging everyone to listen to our Stop Book Banning episode, rereleased with new content! This week, we're talking to Maggie Tokuda-Hall, one of the founders of Authors Against Book Bans about the growth of book bans around the country in 2024. Book bans in United States schools and libraries are at their highes…

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…

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 seem…

This week, we're back to Mafia books, because it's been a few years since we've tackled this one and the landscape has changed drastically. We're talking about the appeal of the organized criminal, the way the genre is the direct descendant of the Medieval romance, and the fact that it underscores some of the deepest seeded patriarchy in the genre-…

It's coming up on the end of Season 6, and that means we're talking about one of Sarah's books! We're finishing up (or beginning?) the Bareknuckle Bastards series today with a deep dive of Sarah's Wicked and the Wallflower, the first in her Bareknuckle Bastards series--part Rumplestiltskin retelling, part Peaky Blinders fic, all justifiable face pu…

We're back this week living Olympic vibes and recommending books with big Olympic vibes! Whether you're drawn to the sports of it all or the France of it all or you just really love Flavor Flav stanning women's water polo, or you were very drawn to the wild, exciting, perplexing opening ceremony and just want to read a romance with beheading, we've…

This week, we are doing something a little different, talking about the New York Times's Best 100 Books of the 21st Century, a list that Sarah was asked to contribute a ballot for. We talk about how Sarah made her list, what she put on it, and why...and why we think there are no romance novels on the final top 100 list. Don't fret, though -- on the…

Jen and Sarah are together at last (again), and we’re taking your questions! Listen as we revisit some of our favorite past episodes of the podcast, as we discuss our favorite books with our least favorite tropes, and recommend a bunch of books that take the finger. We’re also talking about historical romance, and why it remains an absolute bop. We…

For the last few years, The Ripped Bodice bookstore has published a Summer Romance Bingo Card and this year, we're helping you win! With absolutely no prep, we're recommending books for every bit of the game, from Lost Treasure to Time Travel to the Olympics. Head to The Ripped Bodice's instagram feed to see the bingo card and get reading! Books Me…

We're taking a break this week, but we forgot to tell anyone about it. We’ll be back next week. In the meantime, check out Romancing the Vote 2024!Fated Mates

Who says it has to be Halloween to celebrate witches? It’s 2024 and frankly, we could do with a few more powerful, spell-casting women around here. We’re talking about our favorite witch romances, many of which (see what we did there) have nothing at all to do with spooky season! There are rumors of a new Practical Magic in the air, which (ope!) ma…

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…

We’re talking about brothers and sisters as secondary characters in romance today — by popular demand from listeners, it’s our sibling episode! We get to the bottom of why we all love secondary siblings—the overbearing olders, the wild child middles, the delightful youngers, the equally handsome and broad shouldered boys, the snarky, stunning girls…