Seventeen years ago, Smart Bitches began.
Smart Bitches launched on 31 January 2005 with a review for Angel-Seeker by Sharon Shinn and for The Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockmann.
We’re still here.
This honestly blows my mind a little. Still here, talking about books, never running out of things to say about romance.
Woohoo! Thank you! I’m so honored you’re part of SBTB!
Our community is still welcoming, and warm and wonderful. None of that would be possible without you.
So thank you for hanging out with us each day, for sending us so many great covers for snarking, for telling me bad jokes, for telling us about books you loved, sending Amanda links, reporting hot sales prices, and for being part of our community.
As usual, I took a peek at the traditional and modern anniversary gifts for the 17th year, and what did I find?
Furniture. Both modern and traditional? Yup. Furniture.
I’ll be honest with you: that stumped me for a minute. How the F am I going to give away Furniture?
Until I remembered, hang on, I can buy a bunch of pieces of furniture and send them out to winners.
If I use dollhouse furniture!
Thanks to the lovely folks at Dollhouse Junction in Pittsburgh, PA, I am indeed giving away furniture to celebrate our 17th anniversary.
Specifically, I’m giving away furniture that is suitable for reading. Reading furniture, in miniature dollhouse sizes! It’s both tempting, and cute! Have a look!
We have five reading-focused pieces of furniture:
A light blue floral sofa with carved wooden legs! Perfect for tea, a quilt or afghan, and many books.
A miniature wing chair with gorgeous stripes – you know you’d be cozy in that chair.
For the midcentury modern enthusiast, a resin Eames chair and footrest, ready for reclining, reading, and relaxing.
Look at this miniature easy chair, in the perfect shade of pink! (Pen is for scale purposes so you have an idea how teeny we’re talking here.) Comes complete with adorable cushion in matching fabric.
My jaw dropped a bit when I saw this and I was so excited to grab the very last one available: a Victorian chaise in a gorgeous rose pink, complete with decorative carving, just waiting for miniature you, your favorite beverage, and some very graceful, stylish reclining. (Seriously, I love this so much.)
My hope is that the winners will be able to put their furniture prizes in a place that will remind them that they deserve time to read and relax in comfort.
Want to enter to win? I hope so!
Just comment below and share one of your favorite Smart Bitches memories.
A book you discovered here?
A cover snark that made you snort laugh?
A HaBO you solved?
The high incidences of random silliness?
What post or moment do you think of when you think of Smart Bitches? Tell us one of your favorite Smart Bitches moments and you’re entered to win.
Standard disclaimers apply: We are not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and ready to miniaturize for maximum furniture enjoyment. If miniaturization of self is not possible in your location, imaginary de-biggening will suffice. Not responsible for sudden desire to start collecting miniatures. Comments will close at noon ET on Sunday 6 February 2022 and winners will be announced shortly afterward.
Thank you for being part of Smart Bitches, and thank you for celebrating with us. Happy Anniversary!!
Winner update: Here are the five winners! Please check your inboxes and spam folders shortly.
I do not want any dollhouse furniture but will comment without entering to share the love. This site was my way in to romance reading. Nearly 17 years ago I read some Jennifer Crusie novels and was like, if this is romance I want MOAR — but I didn’t know where to find it. My first thought was to pick up a handful of random Harlequins and I wound up disliking them all. My first post on this site was a blundering thing where I griped about the regressive gender relations in all the romances I’d read recently and had people saying “why are you here if you don’t like romance?” Well, I was here because of the eloquent, feminist, funny, loving, involved appreciation of a genre I wanted to find a way into. And the hilarity–I can still quote some lines from F+ reviews. Reading through the archives I finally started to understand how the genre worked, and what might be MY corner of it and where to find that. I don’t actually remember what the first book was that I read after learning about it here. But it speaks for itself that I’m still around.
Happy Anniversary! SBTB introduced me to some wonderful writers of Historical Romance, and I ended up having online conversations with them, in particular Rose Lerner, Sherry Thomas, and Meredith Duran (please come back someday, Mer!).The pandemic has slowed my reading to an indifferent crawl, but I can still turn to these authors’ books to feel better.
Wow! 17 years is an impressive run! So Happy Anniversary to the whole team. I was not acquainted with all that is awesome in the Smart Bitches universe until a few years ago, but now I look forward to your insightful and funny reviews every day. I must admit, however that my favorite part is the Bachelor/Bachelorette recaps. It never fails to leave me truly laughing out loud.
I found this site my senior year of college, I think, 2008. I’ve been reading the site on and off ever since, more on since 2016.
Congrats! Pregnesia is the first crazisauce book I can remember reading because I read about it here. My favorite feature is Rec League- almost every one I end up adding tons of books to my TBR.
Happy Anniversary! I read you guys every day. You’ve introduced me to more books than I can count, but you’ve also helped raise my awareness of issues surrounding representation in romance. I also love the smart and witty community of SB commenters. Favorite moment: The review of “Someone to Cuttle” holds a special place in my heart.
Happy Anniversary, Smart Bitches! I can’t believe that it has been this long. I started reading in fall of 2007 when a romance reading friend shared your site. One of my favorite memories and terminology that I use now when discussing just this occurrence in a romance is the concept of: PLOT MOPPETS! Yay sharing romance with the world!
Everything, just everything. Listing all the ways I love, am grateful for and learned from this site would take hours. Thank you.
Happy Anniversary, Smart Bitches! I think I discovered the Bitchery through an article about the book Beyond Heaving Bosoms and about romance novels in general and how those new-fangled E-readers were giving romance novels a new push – because nobody could see what you’re reading. Having been a regular reader of Regency romances for years at that point (since my teens), I had to check out SBTB of course!
My first memory is probably at laughing my head off about a review of some crazy-sauce Old Skool romance and learning about TSTL, potato rage, plot moppets, mighty wangs and so on. Oh, and I bought your books too!
I was a mostly sporadic reader here I admit, coming every so often for a funny review or to find a book. I’d read Cover Snark (still a favourite), HABOs (and posted one myself and found it, so thanks!), I remember the review of The Playboy Sheikh’s Virgin Stable Girl (and I did buy that later when I gave my best friend a gag gift of “terrible” romances… yes, we do that!) and I read here about Fifty Shades of Grey for the first time – and decided it was something I did not need to read.
Since the pandemic, my romance reading has geared up like crazy, though I had been in a bit of a “been there done that” rut until I discovered m/m romances and I’m still madly enjoying those right now. I’ve also been coming here pretty regularly since (anything to keep me sane and laughing!) – and have gotten great recommendations through reviews, daily sales posts and comments!
So, way to go, keep the good work up, ladies – to the next 17 years at least!
Happy Anniversary! I discovered The Bitchery several years ago. My favorite is cover snark, and best memory is I solved (along with others) a HABO! I always look for suggestions and reviews.
Off topic, I would love to see more SBTB merchandise, specifically desk accessories! Thanks!!
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!! I cannot believe it’s been 17 years that I’ve been reading this blog. Actually, it may be more like 15-16 for me but when I discovered you, I went back to the first post and over the course of a few weeks, read everything that had previously been posted, so I feel like an original (or almost original) reader. I check your postings every evening and get my fix.
You (especially Sarah since she’s in charge and has been for all these years) do a wonderful job of making this a welcoming and amusing and educational space. I’ve even discovered some non-romance reads from you.
Happy Anniversary and thanks to all of you! (P.S. I don’t need to be entered in the giveaway–I just wanted to extend my congratulations.)
Happy 17th anniversary and best wishes for many more wonderful years!
I have enjoyed many books that I’ve read about here. I did once solve a HABO, but I no longer remember which one. It’s tough to pick a favorite feature, but [today] I’ll say WAYR.
Because of you, SBSarah, I discovered one of my favorite podcasts, Hit Parade, when you ran a series of posts on podcast recommendations and recommended the George Michael and Elton John episode so highly. I’m still listening, and I just tweeted the host, telling him that that was my first episode I listened to. I think my favorite posts are the recommendation ones, whether they are Whatcha Reading, Rec League, or the aforementioned short-lived podcast column. I think I discovered this site in 2014, when I was looking for book recommendations and have followed intermittently ever since. Happy anniversary!
Happy anniversary! I have discovered so many things on the site, and it has educated me greatly on the issues with RWA, and DEI in romance.
I discovered “Get a Life Chloe Brown”, and by extension Talia Hibbert here. And for that I say THANK YOU ❤️
Welp– I actually won this Anniversary drawing thing a decade ago, and since I’d never actually won anything before (Band Booster Basket Raffle doesn’t count), I was a very excited girl. It was sort of a composite of goodies, most notably a dainty little Hello Kitty vibrator which became the source of much hilarity and which I have tucked away in a dresser drawer in it’s original packaging to this very day.
SBTB has helped me through hard times, my mother dying, my kids moving out, a pandemic. I know I can count out you for a cover snark laugh, a fun link, a review that leads to my next favorite book. Thank you.
Congratulations! I think I started reading around the time of the Black-footed Ferrets saga, and have never stopped. Cover snark is always a joy, but I think the coverage of the RWA smash was the most riveting.
I’m Canadian and in my 60s, so that furniture is giving me memories of The Friendly Giant intro:
“And a big chair, for two to curl up in…”
Happy Anniversary, SBTB! I found you all when Sarah interviewed Deanna Raybourn back in 2016. (Deanna can be in denial about the Veronica Speedwell novels not being romances all she wants. She is wrong!)
I’ve stayed for the podcast, all the Books on Sale, WAYR, and HaBO (I will never solve one—I don’t think my tastes are sufficiently esoteric and my memory for details not good enough), but I love the way the community can solve them!
Happy Anniversary!! May there be many more!
Though I’ve been a faithful reader for the past decade, I truly owe the bitchery for a life changing post…about kdramas!! Six years of pure joy with hundreds of hours of viewing, thousands of hours of OST’s and a 6 week stay in Seoul.
Thank you, Sarah, and everyone else at SBTB, for being here for us day in and day out. Sometimes I find I have little in common with what many are writing or posting about, but there is always something here that even a boring old hetcis white woman can relate to. I love Whatcha Reading so very much, and years ago you helped me find a book via HABO that I thought I would never identify. Happy Anniversary, and here’s to many, many more.
Happy Anniversary! How time flies! I have been with you since 2008 and it seems like it was just last week. I remember getting up at 5 am and having quiet time with the Bitches to start my day. You have been with me through some of the hardest times of my life and you have helped! I am very thankful to be part of your community.
I am not sure that I can point to one book that I found on your blog because there are so many. I found Sarina Bowen, Nalini Singh, Jeannie Lin, Caitln Crews, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ilona Andrews, and so many more through your site, many of them authors I would not otherwise have tried. As well as craft sites and Wild Women!
It’s been a great time. Glad I found you. I hope we stay in touch for a long time.
As a follow-up to my previous comment, I will forever be grateful for my discovery of Beverly Jenkins through your website. I have since contacted her to let her know as well, and hope she saves my messages in her fan correspondence file. I think her podcast episodes are some of my favorites on Smart Podcast Trashy Books, including the one on the aforementioned fan mail.
I first learned about the Murderbot series here. You have no idea how much I’m enjoying this series. I don’t rush the books. I savour them.
And the same with the Judge Dee series by Lavie Tidhar. Who doesn’t love a vampire judge and executioner?
Happy Anniversary to Smart Bitches! I started reading after hearing Sarah talk on npr in 2015. Listening to the bitches talk reminded me of my sisters, who all live half a continent away. For some reason I decided B+ reviews were the best bet, and I worked my way through quite a few. My favorite of many finds is the Liaden books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller on a Rec League.
I have found so many great authors here, but one of the ones that stands out clearest in my memory is being introduced to Loretta Chase through Lord of Scoundrels. I think I also came across Elizabeth Hoyt and Tessa Dare here. Really, the biggest impact this site has had is getting me to focus on specific authors instead of just looking for whatever strikes my fancy at the used bookstore. My romance reading has greatly improved as a result.
Meanwhile, I have been following this site so long I remember the epic Black-Footed Ferret plagiarism scandal. It’s been a long time since those days, but I remember how thorough your investigation was and how big an impact it had!
Congratulations on 17 glorious years! I think I started reading SBTB at least two moves ago, so almost from the beginning. So many great reads and amazing laughs, as well as the critical work to help romancelandia become a better and more inclusive place. I am deeply grateful for all of the hard work you do and for all the wonderful people in the bitchery. My favourite recommended read? Too many to count (and I’ll blame lame memory too) but the best recently: Honey Badgers baby!! It was one of those ‘exactly the thing I needed at the time I needed it’ reads. Here’s to at least 17 MOAR years 😀 Thank you again Smart Bitches.
Happy anniversary!
The podcast where you and Jane interviewed Nalini and you talked about extreme couponing is the first thing that jumped to mind for me.
Happy Anniversary! SBTB is a critical part of my end-of-day “me” time. Thank you for being here!
I’ve been a fan and email subscriber of your blog for 7 years. Thanks to you all I discovered so many great romance novels and so many great sci-fi/fantasy ones as well. Thank you so much and happy anniversary!
Happy Anniversary!!! I’ve been reading for years, I can’t even remember how I got to this site, it has been that long.
What makes this place so awesome is just not the posters, but the commenters. I know when there is a Watcha Reading post, I need to settle in with all my library tabs open and a pen and paper-because I will be searching for books. Before coming to SBTB, I only read historical fiction, and this place opened my eyes to contemporaries. Sports books? Rugby, hockey…some of my now favorite authors write in these genres.
I’m so happy I stumbled upon this community-this is the place I check every morning over my cup of coffee.
Happy Anniversary! I don’t remember what brought me here, other than books, but I’ve been a faithful follower ever since.
For some reason, I always remembered this review:
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/summer-is-for-lovers-by-jennifer-mcquiston/
and this one: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2013/10/commentary-on-reviews-negative-reviews-and-readers/
Thank you, @Denise – As others have said so many times, the readers/commenters are a huge part of what makes this site so amazing. Reading Denise’s comment above led me to a McQuiston book I haven’t tried, and to a site (linked inside the second link above) I wasn’t familiar with. THANK YOU to all: to Sarah and her fellow professionals who handle the nuts, bolts, and scripted content, and to the readers who care so much about this community.
I found this through some of your old, historical reviews of “way back when” romances, and the site has been invaluable for both keeping up with new releases and finding stuff that I somehow missed from Old Skool romance-reading days.
I really appreciate that you (“you” as in all the collective reviewers) also review other romance-adjacent genre fiction and the intelligence of your reviews. Sometimes romance reviews can just be “well, this does it for me,” which is important, but I love how you really break things down in terms of plot and character as well as have an honest emotional reaction to the book.
Happy, happy birthday and congrats on this Internet milestone. I no longer have a dollhouse, but I used to have several. Right now, fixing up my own house is enough of a chore. I wish I had a tiny, perfectly controlled beautiful home that never got very dirty.
Happy Anniversary!
Hard to narrow it down, but I have fond memories of the Pregnesia review.
Not really my type of book, but I’ve still considered buying it based on the review and how goofy the whole premise was.
Happy Anniversary! Thanks for all the things that make me laugh — cover snark, Elyse’s Bachelor and Bachelorette recaps, and all the F+ reviews!
Happy Anniversary! I was hear in the Sarah/Candy era (miss you, Candy!), laughed until I cried reading “Red Headed Stepchild’s (?)” reviews, and found so many of my favorite books through the blogs and recommendations (Kiss an Angel for the drama!). Congratulations, and here’s to many, many more anniversaries.
Darn it, I was *here* . . .
Happy Anniversary, SBTB! I will be forever grateful for the idea of a Bad Decisions Book Club. I try so hard *not* to be a regular member of said Club… and it’s always an author I find on this site who pulls me back in 🙂
The “brave space” you’ve all created here has been such a boon for me for about a decade now. Thank you!
Happy Anniversary to you (and us)!!
I can’t recall when I began lurking on the site, but it has been a long time and many book purchases ago. I think my favorite things are the posts and the comments — the Bitchery is awesome at offering recommendations and analysis.
I have no idea how many books I’ve purchased over the years that I’ve found on this site, either from reviews, sales, or Bitchery recommendations, but I have loved knowing that my passion for romance is shared by so many.
Wishing you many happy anniversaries to come!
Happy Anniversary! So many wonderful aspects of this site – I, too, love the inclusiveness and kindness. And I appreciate my introduction to so many authors, several now my faves.
A few favorite moments: The review of Carla Cassidy’s Pregnesia (The best book in the history of Pregnant Amnesiac Romance) and the review of J.R. Ward’s Lover Revealed (by you, Sarah, I believe). Sooo much fun! Obviously, looking at the dates of both, I’ve been visiting the Bitches for quite awhile! (Although it doesn’t feel like that long! :-))
I know that here, I can always find a thoughtful discussion of romance and folks with a sense of fun. Thank you!