Whoa!mance

Ever find yourself on a country ramble when the object of your ire and distain just happens to also ramble your way? No? Just us? Why is Darcy always around? Why is he asking pertinent and insightful questions? Why is his hot cousin talking about things he can't have? Is it all for Lizzie? Who knows dear reader--but we're about to find out!

Nobody move! There's blood on the floor. And yr grls can't find their hearts. Thanks to whispered romance classic- "To Have and To Hold" by Patricia Gaffney. Sebastian has everyone's fave romance hero first name and a brand new estate in an idyllic country town. Total snoozefest, but then most things are to Sebby. That is, until a captivating former-con with (gasp) SHORT hair named Rachel captures his fancy AND his rather horrid whimsy. Will these two be one another's reckoning in a good way or a bad way? Are historical romances actually written about three times - the setting, the publication year, and the time it is read in? How can a text deconstruct while bolstering conservative sexual politic? CAN "the help" consent???

You know how sometimes you build a narrative around someone you maybe like, and then they totally mess it up for you? We're not saying that Lizzie is a bit of a small town girl or that Darcy is a city boy--but we are saying that Darcy got some cold reality and it bites.

In light of the recent events around romance and it's fave sport, hockey, including our eppy on THE DEAL, we're rereleasing our discussion of the iconic stick slapper - PUCKED > Last time, yr girls explored the subversive quaintness of Amish romance in our inaugural Entrop[e]y episode. This week, Morgan and Isabeau are back in the game for our first installment on SPORTS romance with Pucked, by Helena Hunting. Here we find Violet, the step-sister of a successful hockey player, linking up with the impossibly hung team captain, Alex, for a night of passionate goal making. But when Alex starts to pursue Violet, her status among the other players, including her sexually possessive step-brother, takes a bender. What kind of relationship, if any, do yr girls have with hockey? When does a gesture become too grand? And did we mention how buck-fucking-wild this book is? We’re running this zamboni straight through yr five hole for this one y’all, so lace up.

Is Lizzy a hedging sarcastic wit punching up at her social better while he (meaning Mr. Darcy himself) is meeting her in earnest and vulnerability? Is she just trying to be funny in front of Darcy's hot cousin? Hard to tell, but we try to suss it out for you--because we care.

Is that a hockey stick in your pocket or is your weiner just like super big and bent at the very end? Let's find out while discussing TikTok sensation "THE DEAL" by ELLE KENNEDY! Garrett needs help figuring out how different philosophers would justify genocide so he can pass his midterm and remain the beloved captain of his small liberal arts/Ivy-adjacent/D-1 unverisity's hockey team. Enter singer/songwriter/skinny-big-boobs Hannah. She's got an "A" in the class and a deal to strike. Tutoring for mutual orgasms so she can be ready for primetime with her quarterbackin' crush. What's a little sexual healing between friends, right?? Don't let the weird jokes about popular culture fool you, this book packs some high stakes trauma. Why is the US University a Utopia in romance fiction? Was 2015 in general politically unaware? Why hockey? We get timely and historical in this one, suit up and tune in.

Happy Belated Birthday Jane Austen--nobody does it better. We're still at Rosings waiting on what Mr. Darcy's gonna do when he finally appears. Join us as we discuss the deification of characters and what happens when we flatten the narrative.

We aren't going to leave these takes flappin' in the wind - join us as we land the conversation with part 2 of our discussion on A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN by Maas. What makes a "good" war text? How can we talk about gender and race in a fantasy-world divorced from our social reality? Or can popular fiction even effectively imagine such a world? Can you still get horny in a "Li-berry"? Spoiler alert: This one split the judges on Whoa v. No. Tune in and decide where you land

War! UH! Good gosh y'all! What is it good for? 699 pages! SAY IT AGAIN! That's right, we're back in Prythy-town to discuss the third (and obviously originally meant to be final) book in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series - A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN by Sarah J. Maas. Feyre and Rhysand and their found family (plus Feyre's two kidney donors a.k.a. sisters) do a lot of stuff. They spy, they murder, they go through the arduous process of setting an executive-level meeting, they smooch, they knock boots, and they WAR, goodness how they war! All in the name of saving Prythian and the humans who happen to be there. Are these books more reliably a fantasy or a romance series? Are these books even reliable to each other? What is laid bare by how you consume the text (Graphic Audio, anyone???) ? And what order do you think the Inner Circle sits in for a massage train? Send a vulgar gesture down the bond and settle in, we're cruisin' for a Hybern bruisin'.

Almost half way there y'all and in this chapter we meet the infamous Mrs. De Bourg. She's got opinions, she was once handsome, and remains really rich. Lizzie thinks of jokes that will tickle Wickam and tries real hard not to think about a certain other you-know-who

Chapter 28 opens with a physical journey and closes with an emotional one for yr grls. Once Lizzy's quips were uncomplicated in their high humor, now tho, they hit different. Is it us? Is it Lizzy? Is it the 200ish years between us? Listen and you decide

This episode we return to space! Or rather the Arizona mock-up of space - with THE ASTRONAUT AND THE STAR by JEN COMFORT. Reggie is a mean astronaut who wants to go the moon and Jon is a nice star who wants to win an Oscar. Maybe they can help each other become successful even moreso than their parents did? Or maybe they can fall in love? Or maybe those things aren't mutually exclusive? What makes a contempo-romcom a bestseller? When is off-branding a conspiracy theory in romance problematic? Are you turned on by "having a loud cum"? Tune in and blast-off!

Yr grls are taking time this weekend to cough up the worst air in the history of Chicago to make room for cool, clear PBR. So we have enough time for "1776" AND "Independence Day", we are re-releasing this Star-Spangled oldie, but Yankee-Doodle Dandy goodie. We dish on American Revolution meets Ye Olde Show Biz romance MISTRESS FIREBRAND by DONNA THORLAND. Along the way we talk about French Letters and French Kisses...excuse us. FREEDOM Letters and FREEDOM Kisses. Stuck in traffic due to the NASCAR racetrack in downtown Chicago? Why not make it a double-feature and check out Isabeau's interview with the author as well - in this very feed!

Have you heard April is the cruelest month? Wrong--it's February and boy does Lizzie Bennet know it! Without her best bud, without her best sis, without the sun what is Lizzie but a collection of misanthropic observations? Too harsh--you be the judge in this zippy little chapter

Can we get vulnerable for a bit? Hope so, because we did. Along with Jodie Slaughter and Andrea of Shelf Love Podcast, we come together - not unlike a certain Derek and Sarah - to reflect of what DREAMING OF YOU by LISA KLEYPAS. has to say about feminine identity, romance readers, and, as ever, ourselves. Why Derek Craven and why not Joyce? Why does Romance seek the approval of systems that do not serve it and indeed don’t even get it? Are we not all always already overidentifying with main characters? Does DoY have problems or is it all cunning craftwork? Be sure to listen to the separate Whoa!mance and Shelf Love discussions before diving into the meta-ness and meta-mess of this text.

Welp Mr. Collins done married Mz Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Wickham has discovered a new first object and she comes with 10000 pounds. Lizzie feels one way about her bud Charlotte's choices and another about Mr. Wickham's. We begs the question--what does the text think about Lizzie? What do we think of her in this well rounded epistle driven storm of a chapter?

This week, yr grls at long last encounter Derek Craven in "DREAMING OF YOU" by Miss Massachu herself LISA KLEYPAS. It is time for Morgan and Isabeau to wade into this collaboration with Shelf Love. You probably already know this - but Sarah is a regency country mouse who is secretly a best-selling novelist. Facing the dreaded sophomore slump, she seeks out a real Gambling Hell to research her next novel and instead finds Derek Craven. Derek's a gutter baby cum Cockney made good by establishing the most luxurious gambling den in London. But, it turns out, his personal tastes skew a bit more bucolic if you catch our drift (they fall in love!). What makes a character captivating and why doesn't Derek Craven have any of it? Is the sentimental version of the Culture Wars any more forgivable? It's 10 p.m. - is your child a Perry? Take our "lump of ice" and tune in as we give this "weep and wail" it's "early hours".

This episode we embark on a Duologoy, a duet of sorts with Shelf Love. In an attempt to highlight the manifold approaches one can have to a single text, we are each, discretely, discussing DREAMING OF YOU by Lisa Kleypas. We have not listened to one another's discussions prior to recording/editing our own episodes, so there might be cross-over, but that will be as interesting as the unique points we each explore. Because, as our Vice President so aptly observed, who doesn't love Venn Diagrams? Shelf Love is kicking things off, and the next round is on us. __________________________________________________________ Let’s talk about Joyce Ashby from Lisa Kleypas's novel Dreaming of You. We delve into the dichotomous portrayal of Joyce as an irredeemable villainess alongside her foil, the redeemable “hero” Derek Craven. We explore the parallel themes of violence, possessiveness, and animalistic sexuality resulting in problematically differing fates and treatment by the text. Belched from the underworld, Defender

Can you ever experience a thing for the first time when it's so permeated the culture? What would that analog be? Could it be Hugh Grant from the early aughts?? As per usual Ms Austen remains an astute observer of the human condition. Critical question: When is Hugh Grant at his hottest?

Blast-off baby! This eppy yr grls are moon walking across some big topics in YA romance with THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE US by ELIOT SCHREFER. Ambrose is fulfilling his lifelong training of space travel, and he is fulfilling it to rescue his beloved sister. And so is soviet-adjacent Kodiak (without the sister part). Will the two be able to put aside their ideological differences, and the creeping feeling the mommy-voiced Operating System is not on their team, to fall in LOVE?! What are the ethics of consuming YA romance when you have a full-developed frontal lobe? Did the Cold War break our ability to think expansively? Do you HAVE to fall in love with the one other cadet on your space ship? Houston, we have another romance-reader existential crisis!