Ho ho ho! Merry January 21st! Lena and Nadine read A Princess for Christmas like a week too late to begin with, and then Lena got COVID and everything got annoying but we're back now.

Ever wished Hallmark movies had more dirty talk? Love yourself some good Bronx people? Have you read no less than eight of the Princess Diaries books? This read just might be for you!

A few of the things mentioned in this podcast:

Thanks, as always, to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Deoxys Beats⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

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Uuuuuuugh. On this episode, Lena and Nadine read one of the Goodreads Choice Award nominees for Best Romance of 2023. That book is "Wildfire" by Hannah Grace, a 400-page cautionary tale about the hubris of the publishing industry and the dangers of skipping English class.

Are we being too harsh? What do you think of the TikTok-popular-glorified-Wattpad-fic-to-Big-Five-Publisher pipeline? Let us know in the Q&A section or by dropping us a line at [email protected]!

Thanks, as always, to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Deoxys Beats⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

As a heads up, we discuss sexual violence in this episode.

Today on the pod, Lena and Nadine go toe to toe with a misogynistic priest who almost minored in Women's Studies, Catholic implements are used in ways they never should be used, and Lena gets just plain mad. Was Sierra Simone possessed by a misogynistic ghost or should the romance community get a little more down with critical thinking? You be the judge.

Some sources for stuff we talk about:

Thanks, as always, to ⁠⁠⁠⁠Deoxys Beats⁠⁠⁠⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠⁠⁠⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

We try to get the real romantasy experience with a niche KU title, A Kiss of Iron by Clare Sager. Nadine hates the lack of detail, Lena is glad not to have to deal with lore, Kat (our heroine) is a deeply ambiguous trama queen, and Bastian (our hero) is such a gentleman we never even see his throbbing member. Throw in some sabrecats and you've got a very robust discussion about the nature of this particular subgenre, fat representation, and what on earth a Fae even is.

The sequel to A Kiss of Iron, A Touch of Poison, is out now, and Lena is very unironically going to read it. If you're interested in Kat's pirate sister, here is info on that quadrilogy.

Thanks, as always, to ⁠⁠⁠Deoxys Beats⁠⁠⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠⁠⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gird your loins for another surprise weekday episode, a.k.a. EPISODE 8, where Lena and Nadine...actually...really like???? The book???? For the first time???? What is HAPPENING?!

If you thought the book that would get us would be poorly-plotted Hades x Persephone smut, that makes one of us!

Thanks, as always, to ⁠⁠Deoxys Beats⁠⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Thanks for your patience as Lena battled two colds, the New York Film Festival, and a demanding part-time job to get you EPISODE 7, where we encounter a completely unforeseen phenomenon. Also featured in this episode: Lena and Nadine's Therapy Corner; the word "frottage," mispronounced; puppy snores.

⁠Here⁠ is the TikTok we cited by Kristen Granata.

Thanks, as always, to ⁠Deoxys Beats⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ALSO IT'S NADINE'S BIRTHDAY EVERYBODY SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

FYI! This episode discusses infertility. If that's a sensitive topic for you, you may want to skip, even though the discussion is mostly lighthearted.

On our latest safari, we encounter yet another Cool Girl, Lena is actually moved to read a straight romance in her free time (!), and our upstairs neighbor's A/C unit will not stop dripping onto ours and making a goddamn ruckus. If you like explicit talk about menstruation and lots of digressions, then have we got an episode for you!

Here is the viral TikTok starring Abby Jimenez's real-life dog, Stuntman Mike.

Thanks, as always, to ⁠Deoxys Beats⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Thanks for joining us for this (slightly late — sorry!) episode about Pucked, a hockey romance that is light on both hockey and romance but heavy on creative nicknames for genitalia. We laugh out of joy instead of nervousness in this one, so definitely an upgrade!

Here is the Jia Tolentino essay Lena talks about in the beginning, and here is the article Nadine cites when talking about the BookTok vs. Kraken beef. This is the video Lena is pulling her spooky summer reading recs from.

Thanks, as always, to ⁠Deoxys Beats⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

If you want to skip some serious talk about dating violence, including stalking and sexual abuse, that discussion takes place from 32:22-1:03:22.

Twisted Love is absolutely a book, we absolutely read it, and now, we are absolutely terrified for the female population! Join us for a deeply researched, at times harrowing discussion of our most bonkers book yet, which features a "romance" between a delusional 22-year-old woman and the man hell-bent on abusing — sorry, wooing — her. The book also features weird toddler flashbacks, a lot of Krav Maga, and dubcon sex in an apple orchard, but we genuinely don't have time to get into all that. Hope you enjoy some little-known facts about human sexuality and domestic violence instead.

The books cited in this episode were Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski and Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft. Here is the Guardian article Lena mentioned about sexual strangulation.

Thanks, as always, to ⁠Deoxys Beats⁠ for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

⁠Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

If the publishing industry was a dinosaur,
Colleen Hoover was a meteor shower.
If the girlies who love basic-ass fiction were a house in Kansas,
she was an u n s t o p p a b l e tornado.
We had,
believe it or not,
a borderline-pleasant time
reading one of her books.

On this glorious day, we're talking about Ugly Love by the internet sensation Colleen Hoover. Come for the anticipated cringe, stay for the nuanced discussion about poetry and finding the clitoris.

The YouTube video we reference throughout is this one. (For what it's worth, we were not fans and didn't watch the whole thing.)

Here's the Ugly Love teaser trailer and that feverish bonus chapter.

Thanks, as always, to Deoxys Beats for our intro and outro music, "RedLips."

Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)