Getting Lit with Wendy and Ilana

By Simone St. James. This month, Ilana and Wendy go to the Roaring Twenties in this murder mystery-romance with psychics, seances, and cloche hats. We didn’t get the horror we were looking for, but we did get a psychic investigator with street smarts, a work-a-day accent and well built shoulders, so it’s a trade-off.

By Rainbow Rowell. Ilana’s kid sister Naomi joins us to read the first YA Romance of the podcast. Naomi and Wendy start the Youngest Sister Support Group, where we bemoan weird nicknames and getting punched for various reasons. Family dynamics are hilarious! We talk about fatness, adolescence and how we are all really glad we aren’t teenagers anymore.

By Lorraine Heath. Wendy and Ilana take a pilgrimage to sort-of-historical post-Civil War Texas in this novel published in the 90’s, but first Ilana tells us about her apple adventure with a truck driver that may or may not be a witch. Also, this book is 100% inspired by the Oregon Trail computer game. Yes, they ford the river. Yes, there is a snake bite. Will they die of dysentery? Stay tuned to find out!

This episode, Wendy and Ilana give our best and worst recommendations for the romance novels we have read on this podcast. Also we read a book with some of Ilana’s favorite things: descriptions of food, puns, and nerdery.

Wendy and Ilana read 19th Century nerd love in This Rake of Mine by Eva Leigh. But first, we review the latest adaptation of Emma, and give book reports. Ilana also uncovers the Great Purple Skittles Conspiracy.

Wendy and Ilana dive into (get it?) Mermaid Romance with The Selkie Bride by Melanie Jackson. Bonus subgenres: Highlander and Secret Prince! We discuss the high and low points of when an American human woman and a sexy Selkie Scottish Laird traverse the treacherous tides of love, inter-species pregnancy, and bad guys being bad. Included: dramatic reading of a particularly horrendous sex scene.

Ilana and Wendy turn up the heat with Deep Burn by Kimberly Kincaid, a firefighter themed romance novel. Ilana bemoans the lack of feelings talks, and Wendy turns in her book report for Stolen By an Alien.

Things get weird when Ilana and Wendy read a novella from the Stolen By An Alien series by Amanda Milo. Our hero has horns, scales, and breathes fire...but he saves the heroine thousands in child care, so who cares!

Ilana and Wendy dip into Tattoo Parlor Romance with a torso on the cover, because that always goes well. Spoiler alert: it's not good. Weirdly heteronormative for the genre. But that's not the worst part of the novel...