We wanted to thank you all for another summer of bingo! We had over 150 submissions this year, with many of you getting five bingos. That’s a hell of a lot of reading.
Everyone who achieved a bingo will be receiving a 2025 SBTB Summer Romance Bingo sticker in the mail. We also are giving away three boxes of books. The winners are:
- Felicity
- Jillian B.
- Amy R.
We have plans to do an “unhinged” bingo with silly categories in the winter. I believe the start date is 12/20, so be on the look out for news about that later this year.
If you have suggestions about future categories for next summer or for the winter bingo, please drop them in the comments.
Thanks for playing!
It was a fun challenge! I only started reading romance in the last two years (traditionally published romance, as I’ve read fanfic for prob 2 decades). I really pushed myself to read all 25 books as a personal challenge.
It was great and I loved the mix of easier to hit prompts (that would just happen while mood reading) and ones I had to go out of my way to find. Excited for the next round!
Thank you so much for hosting this, @SB Sarah! I had fun and look forward to receiving the sticker.
Felicity, Jillian B., and Amy R. ~ enjoy your prize books!
It was so fun! Looking forward to the winter one!!
That is a lot of reading! I’m a data person, so I’d love seeing any other stats you’re willing to share, like top 5 most commonly read books, most/least completed square/row, submission number breakdown (percent of 5 completed rows, 4 rows,…), etc. But I understand if that’s a lot more work for little payoff/something you don’t want to share.
I’d be interested in the stats too.
Stats would be interesting but the form wasn’t set up to collect that particular data, which means I’d have to cross reference every book to every square, and some submissions didn’t list which book went to which corresponding square. For future forms, I can add more options like “select which squares you completed.”
That makes sense!
This was so much fun! Thanks for hosting this.
I got a blackout with almost all LGBTQ+ books. I’m extremely happy with my results, although I didn’t manage to submit any of my bingos this year.
I particularly enjoyed the comments on the two posts – and having the midpoint check in was fun and helpful. I loved using the unofficial challenge in StoryGraph to track my reading and see what other people used.
Curious to see the unhinged prompts.
Thanks for hosting bingo, I had a great time with it this summer!
I did spend far too much time thinking about unhinged bingo squares, and what I realized is that a good bingo square is tricky. Like, it needs to be broad enough to capture enough books to be interesting but not so many as to apply to everything. Plus, if it is plot related, it should mostly be something that can be inferred from the cover or summary so that people can choose books based on the topic rather than stumble into spoilers. Anyway, my current list follows.
Metatextual:
* Self-promotion — Contains references to other series by the same author
* Self-insert — Main character is an author
* Bibliography — Contains references to books by other authors by title (This one was mentioned on the podcast) (challenge mode: excluding 50 Shades of Grey in contemporaries or A Vindication of the Rights of Men in historicals)
* Research — Book you read because it was referenced in a book
Social media inspired:
* r/tragedeigh — Main character’s names have strange spellings (e.g., The Black Dagger Brotherhood)
* r/AITA — Someone needs to grovel
* r/BestOfRedditorUpdates — Not the first book of a series
* r/OneOrangeBraincell — Book features a cat
* Instagram-worthy — Vacation destination
Random:
* Judged by the Cover — Book you picked up solely because of the cover art
* Sound Bytes — Book contains a playlist
* Sibling Rivalry — Book from a series where the leads in different books are siblings
* Mawwiage — Guests at a wedding (bridal party OK, but not the bride or groom)
* Career Fair — One of the main characters has an unusual occupation (e.g., treasure hunter, smoke jumper)
* Royal Flush — Main character is royalty
* Dewie, Cheatham, and Howe — Character’s name sounds like a law firm (yes, this one was from the podcast, but I liked my title)
* Be not alarmed, Madam — Contains epistolary elements (The title is from Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, which, if it has to be clarified means it’s too obscure. Alas.)
Some aren’t that unhinged but may spark another idea:
Title:
– Is a song lyric
– Contains “Real”
– Contains “Fake” – same row as real
– Punny
– Contains both “in” and “the”(not including series name)
– Double use of “the” (not including series name)
– Contains a number greater than/equal to one thousand
Cover:
– Hidden faces: characters are turned or obscuring their faces (not just half-bodies or faceless character art)
– Free float: whole characters are (literally) floating, running, hovering, suspended in air, or otherwise defying the laws of physics
– Characters aren’t looking at each other
– Here you go!: character is handing an object to another character
– Lamp or flashlight
Content:
– Someone is a horrible cook
– Want to lick tattoos
– A physical “imperfection” is endearing
– Public banter
– Animal analogy for a person
– Someone doesn’t use/despises social media
– Mentions dreams
– A single word is its own sentence