We're thrilled to have audiobook queen and Voice of the Summer (USA Today), Julia Whelan with us today! Aside from being the voice of Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, VE Schwab and Kristen Hannah, she's also an author of her own delicious books and the founder of Audiobrary, an audio book company that pays narrators on a royalty structure. She's here to talk about her journey to writing and to narrating, about the way she thinks about her work, her advocacy, and the world of audiobooks. We are so incredibly thrilled to have her!

Julia is also the narrator for Sarah's book, These Summer Storms, available next week wherever books are sold. The audiobook is perfection, and you can read it on Audible, LibroFM or Apple Music...or wherever you get your audiobooks.

There are still tickets to see Sarah on tour in NYC, Chicago, Winston-Salem, NC, Newport, RI, Cambridge, MA, Decatur, GA, or Franklin, IN. There are a handful of tickets still available for Fated Mates Live in St. Louis, MO on July 8th! Join us!

If you can't make the tour, you can preorder These Summer Storms signed with a special romance dust jacket from The Ripped Bodice.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Notes

• Welcome Julia Whelan, USA Today's voice of the summer, audiobook narrator extraordinaire and the founder of Audiobrary.  A Netflix movie of her book My Oxford Year is coming soon.
• Sarah wants you to know that she realized later that she was remembering the plot of The Girl on the Train when she was talking about the audiobook Gone Girl, but that they're both bangers.
• Like everything, AI is creeping into the audiobook world.
• An audiobook Julia recommends is Jess Walters’s Beautiful Ruins, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.

Books

• These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
• Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan
• My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan
• Casanova LLC by Julia Whelan
• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
• Animal Bodies by Suzanne Roberts
• Heroine by Mary Jane Wells
• American Queen by Sierra Simone

Sponsors

• Avon Books, publishers of Alexandra Paige's An Irish Summer, available in print, ebook or audio from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
• Chelsea Fagan, author of The High Dive, available in print, ebook or audio from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo or wherever you get your books.
• Alyxandra Harvey, author of A Deal with the Devil, available in print, ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
• MA Wardell, author of Stirring Spurs, available in print, ebook or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

The Rest

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/7/1/0741-a-conversation-with-audiobook-narrator-julia-whelan
• 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.