Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

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. GuestsJarett 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. ResourcesThe Youth Censorship Database at the National Coalition Against CensorshipBook 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 groupIntellectual 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 weeklyPEN America’s data on School Book Bans and Index of Educational Gag OrdersAmerican Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, full of resources and toolkits on challenges and how to combat themWhat’s happening in Central Bucks County, PA is happening all over the country. Kids, families and educators are protesting loudlyAdvocates for Inclusive Education, for more information on what’s happening on the ground in Bucks County, PAA map from ALA Banned Books week at the University of Illinois Library, and another from Red Wine & Blue. Teens around the country can get library cards from the Brooklyn Public Library. To apply for the card, teens can send a note to BooksUnbanned@bklynlibrary.org, or via the Library’s s teen-run Instagram account, @bklynfuture. The $50 fee normally associated with out-of-state cards will be waivedLearn more about the Book Ban Busters at Red Wine & Blue.Ballotpedia is a resource for your local ballot and your local election mapsVote.org, to check your voter registration, locate your voting place and moreHow to HelpEducate yourself about the book challenge process in your school district: How it works, who sits on the book challenge committee, how those committee members are appointed.If there are book bans and protests in your school district, attend local school board meetings and support students, teachers & librarians who are speaking up. Tell your local public and school librarians they have your support. Write letters. Visit the library. Thank them for standing for intellectual freedom.Research school board candidates in your district. Vote accordingly. Consider running for something! Your school board and your state legislature need you! Consider this us telling you seven times! (We’ll phonebank for you!) Vote to flip your state legislature blue. Rally your friends to join you in a Giving Circle at the States Project.Donate to organizations (listed below) that support intellectual freedom and combat book bans. Organizations to Support (and Volunteer with)You can join PenAmerica, and your membership helps defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture.Donate to the Freedom To Read Foundation and become a member. The Freedom To Read Foundation effectively conducts important first amendment legal work regarding book bans and censorship.GLSEN, Creating a Better World for LGBTQ StudentsIntellectual Freedom Endowment Fund at the American Library AssociationThe National Coalition Against Censorship, providing direct intervention for people and groups facing censorshipThe States Project, helping to flip (or keep) state legislatures blueThe Trevor Project, supporting LGBTQ young people 24/7, all year roundWe Believe in Education, a movement of parents and families fighting for students’ freedom to learnThe Most Banned Books of 2021Gender Queer by Maia KobabeReasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit imagesLawn Boy by Jonathan EvisonReasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicitAll Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. JohnsonReasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, profanity, and because it was considered to be sexually explicitOut of Darkness by Ashley Hope PerezReasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicitThe Hate U Give by Angie ThomasReasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agendaThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman AlexieReasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references and use of a derogatory termMe and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse AndrewsReasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and degrading to womenThe Bluest Eye by Toni MorrisonReasons: Banned and challenged because it depicts child sexual abuse and was considered sexually explicitThis Book is Gay by Juno DawsonReasons: Banned, challenged, relocated, and restricted for providing sexual education and LGBTQIA+ content.Beyond Magenta by Susan KuklinReasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit.Find more info and more books from this episode at fatedmates.net.

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 NotesMoonstruck 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)!Show NotesTattoos 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. The RestFor 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.Show NotesMaybe 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.The RestFor 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, 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.

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 NotesGet boosted!When a book starts in the middle of the action, it’s called in medias resIf 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.

Season Five starts today, you Magnificent Firebirds!Season One gave us a full lAD deep dive (if you’ve never read Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, general existential malaise is a really good reason to start), and Season Two gave us The Books That Blooded Us -- the books that made us the romance readers we are. Season Three was during a pandemic, so just let us live (but also, there was a Roy Kent episode). Season Four introduced the Trailblazer episodes, where we featured interviews with the people who have built the romance house over the last fifty years. Season Five will build on all this — Deep diving on books that are new and fabulous, old and transformative, and generally reveal how vast and magnificent the romance pool can get. We’ve got great interstitials planned, trailblazer episodes already recorded and waiting for you, and a few new episodes that will focus on the books that are putting romance on the map these days…and where readers should go from there. We’re excited! Aren’t you? Head over to your favorite podcasting app and subscribe so you don’t miss a moment of it!In the meantime, today’s episode covers some of the romance new that happened while we were away the publishing DOJ trial, the absolute explosion of great books on August 23rd, and what on earth is happening with TikTok? There's a new theme song! And Jen broke her arm! Next week is an interstitial, and 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 NotesIf you’re in MA, check out the Rom-Con, a full day celebration of “rom”ance at the “Con”cord free public library on Sept 24.That skeleton in your high school might have been real bones. All about the radius and the ulna.Gross Anatomy was a 1989 movie starring Matthew Modine.The blood hand job from A Heart of Blood and Ashes continues to amaze new readers, and we are here for it.Parking at Chicago’s hospitals is so prohibitively expensive that a grieving family created The Jackson Chance Foundation to honor the memory of their beloved son who spent all but 48 hours of his life in the NICU. The Jackson Chance Foundation provides parking assistance and transportation at three downtown hospitals where parking can often run almost $100 per day.A few useful explainers we found about the PRH vs DOJ trial, a breakdown of why the statistics about books sales are so confusing, and why Stephen King was the government’s star witness.That NPR article about TikTok, Gen Z, and romance.

We’re still on our break (back next week!) but this week we have two episodes coming to your earholes! Today, we’re releasing our crossover episode with the brilliant Melody and Erin of the Heaving Bosoms podcast to talk Burn For Me by Ilona Andrews! Burn For Me is a longtime favorite of Jen’s and the first book in the Hidden Legacy series and Sarah deeply regrets taking so long to read it because WOW IT IS GREAT. Here is one for the slow burn lovers in the group! We get to the bottom of sexy times at the mall, whether or not slow burns and lawn mowing go together, and we talk a lot about waterbeds. You’re going to love it. Head over and subscribe to Heaving Bosoms! Season 5 starts 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.

We're on hiatus until September 14, when we'll start Season 5, but you won’t miss us, because this week, we have the recording of Fated Mates Live, our first-ever in-person live! Headphones in for this one, y’all. We were joined in Alexandria, VA by Kate Clayborn, Adriana Herrera, Tracey Livesay, Naima Simone, Ali Hazelwood, Diana Quincy, Andie J. Christopher, and Sophie Jordan, and we had the best time! This audio is imperfect, but there’s so much laughter here — we hope you’ll join us for the next one (which will hopefully be in the spring)…stay tuned on that front! Be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite podcasting app so you know the moment we return.Thanks to Fox & Wit, creators of the Foxglove Special Edition Book Box of Kennedy Ryan's Before I Let Go, available for preorder now. The box comes with a special edition cover of Before I Let Go, a signed book plate, and a letter from Kennedy herself.Season 5 starts in two weeks! 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 NotesOur first in-person Live event was a smashing success! We welcomed Kate Clayborn, Adriana Herrera, Tracey Livesay, Naima Simone, Ali Hazelwood, Diana Quincy, Andie J. Christopher, and Sophie Jordan. Thank you to Old Town Books for partnering with us on this event. Thank you to the audience for their participation! We used a platform called Menti, which turned the screen behind us into an interactive platform (like an Instagram Live) where our audience could respond and comment. If we all have a reaction to something you can't hear....it's because someone in the audience said something brilliantly funny using Menti.The book Sarah accidentally interstitialed during the recording is C.M. Nascosta's Sweet Berries.

Sarah has a new book out, so as is tradition for our last episode of the season, Jen is playing host, and Sarah is playing guest, and we’re talking about journeys vs. quests, how being a romance heroine is political, and why Heartbreaker just might be Sarah’s most romantic book. It’s mostly a spoiler free episode, but you might prefer to finish your read before listening. Enjoy! And don’t miss the first two chapters of the magnificent Heartbreaker audiobook, narrated by the incomparable Mary Jane Wells, at the end of the episode! If you haven’t purchased Heartbreaker yet, you can get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, at your local indie, or signed and with special swag (and a Fated Mates sticker!) from Sarah’s local indie, WORD in Brooklyn!Thanks to Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry a Duke; to Amazon’s Kindle Vella, publishers of Rebecca Zanetti’s Knife’s Edge, Alaska series; and to Lumi Labs, creators of Microdose Gummies, for sponsoring the episode. Use the code FATEDMATES for free shipping and 30% off your first order at microdose.com.This episode wraps up Season 4 of Fated Mates! Jen’s returning Lil’Romance to college, Sarah’s taking a break from social media, and we’ll be back in September with Season 5, which will look similar to Season 4, with read alongs, interstitials, trailblazer episodes and some other fun things we’ve got cooking. Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful.Show NotesNext time you’re in Brooklyn, check out The Center for Fiction. You can register (it’s free!) to see Sarah and Adriana Herrera in conversation with Greta Johnson from the Nerdette Podcast at the Printer’s Row Lit Fest in Chicago. The panel is at 11:30am on Saturday, Sept 10, 2022. If you’re in MA, check out the Rom-Con, a full day celebration of “rom”ance at the “Con”cord free public library on Sept 24.Jen’s planning a pilgrimage to The Book Barn in Niantic CT on Labor Day Weekend.Pick your local gathering spot: The Peach Pit, Central Perk, Luke’s Diner, or in the MacLeaniverse, The Place.Every book in the Hell’s Belles series has a cold open.Adelaide stole the tesseract!On TikTok, check out this amazing video by emmkick that compares MacLean to Kleypas, and friend of the pod Brittney has an entire TikTok series about the MacLeaniverse. Start with the first one here.What’s a Himbo? I bet you’re glad you asked.Speaking of Kleypas, our first read along for Season Five (what!) will be Marrying Winterborne, but we recommend that you read Cold-Hearted Rake first to get “the full Winterborne.”

The final Trailblazer of Season 4 is a very excellent one—we’re welcoming JR Ward to Fated Mates! Best known as the author of The Black Dagger Brotherhood (a series that blooded Jen), JR began her career writing contemporary romances under the name Jessica Bird before turning to the vampires the romance world adores. In this episode, we talk about the twists and turns of her early career, about the influence of her mother and other powerful women in her life, about the business of being JR Ward, about her process of writing the Black Dagger Brotherhood, and about her relationship to her characters. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did, and we are so grateful to JR Ward for spending some time with us.Thanks to Avon Books, publishers of Beverly Jenkins’s To Catch a Raven, Blackstone Publishing, publishers of Nora Zelevansky’s Competitive Grieving, and Alyxandra Harvey, author of How to Marry a Duke, for sponsoring the episode. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for an audio excerpt of Competitive Grieving.Next week, we finish out Season 4 as is traditional — with a deep dive episode on Sarah’s summer release, Heartbreaker! Get it at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, at your local indie, or signed and with special swag (and a Fated Mates sticker!) from her local indie, WORD in Brooklyn! Show NotesWelcome J.R. Ward, author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, a series of paranormal romances. She also wrote category romance under the name Jessica Bird.We did a deep dive of JR Ward's Dark Lover in Season Two. Listen here. People Mentioned: editor Hannah Braaten, publisher Jennifer Bergstrom, publicist Andrew Nguyen, editor and publisher Kara Cesare. Authors Mentioned: Sherilyn Kenyon, Laurel K. Hamilton, Christine Feehan, Kresley Cole, Nora Roberts, Kristen Ashley, Christopher Rice, and Gena Showalter.