469. Awakened by the CEO’s Kiss, with Morgan and Isabeau from Whoa!Mance

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 469 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and today my guests are Morgan and Isabeau from the Whoa!mance podcast! They are celebrating three years of podcasting, which is awesome, and their latest exploration of romance has been to look at category, so I thought it would be fun for us to take a deep dive into a brand-new category romance, so we all read Awakened by the CEO’s Kiss by Therese Beharrie.

Now, this episode is a mostly low-spoiler discussion of the book, but we talk a lot about all the interesting and subversive things that it does. We cover kiss tension, books that give you chest tingles, and a lot more. Now, you can listen if you haven’t read the book or if you have, but you might really like it if you haven’t tried it yet, so we recommend this book either way.

I want to thank Isabeau and Morgan for recording this episode with me. Congrats again on three years of podcasting! And I also want to thank our Patreon community. The Smart Podcast Patreon community makes sure that every episode has a transcript and is accessible to everyone and keeps the show going each and every week, so thank you to the Patreon community for making this transcript and every transcript possible. [Thank you from me too! – gk] If you would like to have a look, go to patreon.com/SmartBitches.

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I love doing an episode where I get to talk to podcasters about a book in depth, so let’s get started. On with my conversation with Morgan and Isabeau about Awakened by the CEO’s Kiss.

[music]

Morgan: I’m Morgan! I am one of two co-hosts for the podcast Whoa!mance, where each week we take apart a different romance novel. I’m based in Chicago. I don’t know if there’s any other fun facts. I feel like that’s the whole of my identity.

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, I mean, this is going to be audio only, but you do have an absolutely fabulous – first of all, your glasses are fabulous; second of all, you have an incredible collection of full-on mass-market romance classics behind you, and I’m kind of, I’m, like, kind of peeking over your shoulder like, I know that one, I know that one – you’ve got a really good collection going on back there!

Morgan: I, yeah, I do. I, I love to collect them, love a good clinch cover, so I tend to buy books that I don’t even read; I just like to possess the, like, object itself.

Sarah: Oh, I get it! I used to go to used bookstores and look at the romances and look for particular authors because they had the most off-the-wall covers. Like Rebecca Brandewyne –

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: – had a whole series wear she would dress as the cover model on the front for her author photo on the back?

Isabeau: Oh my God, that’s amazing. That –

Morgan: I have a Rebecca Brandewyne, but I don’t think she did that.

Sarah: There’s a bunch of them; I think there’s like five or six of them? She would dress as the heroine on the cover for her author photo.

Morgan: Incredible.

Sarah: If you think about the logistical coordination for that? Like, first of all, you have to be –

Morgan: Wow.

Sarah: – of a certain level in the publishing house where they’re willing to put up with that from you.

Morgan: [Laughs]

Isabeau: Or that you’re able to demand that. I also love the confidence that that suggested, though. That’s –

Sarah: Yes!

Isabeau: – and, like, everything about this is, like, goals.

Sarah: Yeah! Rebecca Brandewyne was like, I am dressing as the heroine. You’re going to tell me what to wear, and I’m going to go get it, and then we’re going to do a photo shoot, and I’m going to look like the heroine on the back of my book. Never mind the incredible amount of, of unpacking that you could do with the author dressing as the heroine –

Isabeau: Hmm.

Sarah: – that she created –

Morgan: Oh whoa!

Sarah: – on the front cover on the back cover! Like, there’s a whole, there’s a whole lot to unpack there? But it’s so amazing!

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: That’s so good.

I am Isabeau. I too am based in Chicago. I’m the other half of Whoa!mance. I recently rescued an alley cat and have been reading romance since I was thirteen.

Sarah: Ooh! Congratulations on your cat!

Isabeau: Thank you! It was, it was tough. She went into heat about ten days after we got her, and I’d never experienced a cat in heat before, but now I understand, in romance novels, when people talk about, like, wanting to crawl out of your skin, you’re so horny? I experienced that in the feline form for weeks on end before I could get her fixed, because everybody got a cat in Chicago at the same time and, like, the vets were all booked doing spays and neuters, and so it was like –

Sarah: Yep. It’s loud, right?

Isabeau: Oh my God. [Laughs]

Sarah: So congratulations on three years of your podcast, y’all!

Isabeau: Thank you!

Morgan: Oh, thank you so much!

Sarah: Can you believe that it’s been three years?

Isabeau: No. [Laughs]

Morgan: No.

Sarah: Does it feel like you’ve just been doing this forever?

Morgan: It feels like I’ve been doing it for five minutes.

Sarah: Yeah.

Isabeau: Yeah.

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: I had that feeling too. Like, I’ll look at, look at a back episode and be like, when did I talk to – oh my God, I talked to that person in like 2016? I don’t even remember 2016!

Isabeau: Whoa.

Sarah: What?!

Morgan: Yeah. [Laughs]

Isabeau: It’s a foreign shore at this point. Yeah, it feels very short, and, like, romance has changed so much in the time that we’ve been active in this community. It’s been wild!

Morgan: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Listen, if you were going to pick a three-year span to be like, let’s do a romance podcast, you picked the three years with the most stuff.

Morgan: Goodness gracious.

Isabeau: Dude, it was kismet, I guess!

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: It was a lot, right?

Isabeau: It was so much! [Laughs]

Sarah: In your three years of podcasting, do you have, like, favorite parts of podcasting? Do you have things that you’re like, this is my favorite element of this?

Isabeau: That’s a great question. Honestly, my favorite part is talking to Morgan?

Morgan: [Laughs] Yeah!

Isabeau: After three years, like, that’s such a good space to be, that we still, still much enjoy one another and are learning from each other and, like, push each other in such a particular way. I like interacting with communities; I think one of the nicest things about podcasting is when you’ll get, like, a fan email. A person in the Netherlands recently emailed us and told us how our podcast had changed the way that they’re consuming media, and I’m like –

[Laughter]

Isabeau: – there’s nothing else! Like, that’s it!

Sarah: That’s incredible!

Isabeau: It was.

Morgan: Yeah. It’s overwhelming to think – for me it’s the same thing: my favorite part is still just talking about books with Isabeau.

Sarah: I love getting email from people who tell me what they’re doing while they listen? Like, I just love –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – like, I, I clean my house. One person emailed me and said, I save your podcast for the weekend when I’m cleaning, and I’m always like, aw! I’m really happy to keep you company!

Morgan: Right?

Sarah: And I think that one thing people who don’t necessarily do podcasting don’t recognize is how intimate voice is?

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Especially because, I mean, when I’m listening, I’m wearing earbuds, so it’s just me hearing this. It’s very intimate, so those people’s voices are going right into my brain, so if you think about it – or don’t think about it, ‘cause it’ll make you, like, make your head explode – your voice is going into so many people’s heads, but it’s also a tremendously generous thing that you do, because you’re sharing your friendship with so many people, and that’s such a lovely thing to do.

Morgan: Aw! That’s such a nice idea!

Isabeau: So nice!

Morgan: Thank you!

Sarah: It’s so true! It really is: you’re letting people be part of your friendship. It’s so great!

Morgan: Well, we’re happy to have more people on the good ship Friend with us.

Sarah: Yeah!

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Can I ask you a question?

Sarah: Always!

Morgan: You’ve, I feel like you’ve done it all, like, media-wise, talking about romance, and I’m curious: what are, like, the differences between the different mediums? Like writing the blog and writing reviews and talking about them and having conversations be in a podcast and all of the other big work you do in romance. Writing a book? [Laughs] What are kind of like the differences, and, like, what’s the, what do you think is, like, the meaningful part of each of those whenever it comes to discussing romance specifically?

Sarah: The weird thing about the books is that the first book was, I’m bad at years, but I want to say it was 2007. So the website started in 2005, and the first book came out in 2007.

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And me, being the most naïve person, didn’t realize that our publishing a book made the website more legitimate, even though the website was two years old and if you printed it out it would be taller than me at that point? The book is what made it legit, and I was like –

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: – wait, really? That’s how that works? Writing the book was like writing a blog post that I couldn’t publish for a year and a half.

[Laughter]

Sarah: It was really hard. ‘Cause I’m real quick with a blog post, but the book was like, I can’t finish this thing! Oh my God, it’s not done! So the, the books are, are almost like things that I see as next to the website. The website and the community are the main focus of what I do. The website has a, has a mission statement, which I made up like after it was ten years old? ‘Cause I realized I needed one, and then I figured out what it was that I’d been doing for ten years? Mission statements are really easy to come up with retroactively, first of all; I learned that.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: But the, the mission of the site is to unite romance readers with one another and with the books they want to read. So if anything –

Isabeau: So good.

Sarah: – that I want to do fits into that mission statement, then okay. And there’s so many different ways that you can make that happen. What I mostly want, and what I wanted from the beginning, was to have a place for romance readers to come and talk about books, because, you know, back in 2005 –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – it was a completely different online community. It was a completely different world of blogging. I mean, blogging software was still new, and there was more than one kind of blogging software; it was kind of amazing. That was a time when you still didn’t necessarily feel comfortable being like, yeah, I read romance and I want to talk about it! There weren’t that many –

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – there weren’t that many places. Everything that I’m doing fits into that mission statement, and it is built on the foundation of the, of the site. So the podcast is part of the site, and the books are part of the site, but the site is sort of the centerpiece of it.

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: That’s probably the part that I find the most meaningful, that there are still people coming to the website. There are still people finding us and going, oh my gosh, this is so great! I have books to read; thank you!

Isabeau and Morgan: Mm-hmm!

Sarah: ‘Cause like you said, having someone say, you, you changed what I consume?

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, that’s so incredible and also, like, a really big responsibility. [Laughs]

Isabeau: Yeah.

Morgan: But we’re just like, that’s a fluke; moving – [laughs]

Isabeau: It happened one time.

Sarah: No, it’ll keep happening though. It’ll keep happening, because if you’re willing to talk honestly and, and constructively about the things that you love, especially if they’re things that people don’t take seriously outside of your community –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – there’s always going to be more people who are like, oh, someone who thinks about this like I do! Which is enormously comforting, right?

Morgan: Yeah, yeah. That’s true.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: So I hope that answers your question.

Morgan: It does. And I, I really – yeah. I think the sense of community around any kind of genre is both incredibly, like, buoying, right, to find people –

Sarah: Yeah!

Morgan: – who feel the same way you do?

Sarah: Yeah!

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: I have this theory that everything’s language? And when you speak the language of a genre –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – like, if I come up to you and I talk about tropes, you’re going to know what I’m talking about. When you have that language in common with someone else, it’s fantastic!

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Which is part of what podcasting is, right? Like, we get to develop this language about what we’re doing.

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: Right.

Sarah: Okay, so we read a book.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yes!

Sarah: I cannot wait to talk about this book with y’all. How would you best describe this book? If you had to summarize it creatively –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – how would you summarize this book?

Isabeau: Memory loss, South Africa, and two beautiful dummies working their way towards one another.

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s a good one!

Morgan: [Laughs] Oh my gosh!

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Morgan: I – [sputters] – okay, it’s like Heartbeat Braves –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: – meets Office Hours. So it’s like two niche – [laughs] – books that we’ve read. It, like – so Office Hours by Kat Jackson and Heartbeat Braves by Pamela Sanderson, and it’s like Heartbeat Braves because it’s, like, semi-workplace. It’s kind of toying with the idea of a professional hierarchy and a personal hierarchy? And then it’s like Office Hours because of those same things.

Sarah: Good one!

Morgan: There we go!

Sarah: So I would overlap a little bit with you, Isabeau. I would say South Africa; personal and professional affluence –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and power structures, Morgan; and holy crap, people, use your words.

[Laughter]

Sarah: People, use your words. [Laughs]

Isabeau: I too found myself in that position, where I was like, if you guys could just talk about it, though? Like – [laughs] – this would be so – two gooses.

Sarah: [Laughs] And yet, even though I was getting very frustrated with each of these characters, I still wanted them to get together. Like, come on, come on, just, just kiss!

Isabeau: Yes. Oh, man, the kiss tension! I, like, I was waiting for the beat to drop on that one for so long.

Sarah: There’s significant kiss tension. Might have to add that to the description: kiss tension forever.

Isabeau: Forever. For days.

Sarah: And, and, and no, no sexytimes!

Isabeau: Mm-mm.

Sarah: I didn’t expect them – I mean, I was like, all right, at some point maybe they’ll go to Bone Town, and the longer it went on I’m like, I don’t think these people are going to go to Bone Town on the page, and that’s okay!

Morgan: Yeah! So we’ve been doing a series on old category romances –

Sarah: Yes, that’s one of the reasons I picked this, too, too sort of adjacent your, your, your older category, ‘cause this is a brand-new category.

Morgan: – and, like, if you would have asked me prior to this – and also, this is, like, kind of a, a personal hang-up of mine; like, I’m still trying to understand myself and forgive myself, but also we read an Amish romance, and it also made me have this realization where, like, steam isn’t actually that important to me? And I would have been like, oh, I’m only interested in sex on page in my romances, thank you very much, but I’ve actually, like, looked back on what I’ve really enjoyed, and I think steam has very little to do with it for me. And this category series that we’ve been doing, and reading this book, especially at the end of that kind of journey, has solidified for me that, like, what I’m actually looking for isn’t, you know, the steam of sex on page; it’s that, like, tingly feeling of will-they-won’t-they.

Sarah: Good book tingles!

Morgan: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah: Yeah, some books, like, when it hits you right in the chest, like right here?

Isabeau: Yep.

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: Oh yeah. I can hear, hear the logo of my shirt, yes.

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh!

Morgan: That’s exactly what it feels like.

Sarah: Chest tingles! I love that. I know exactly what you mean: I often feel the same way. I think it was author Carly Bloom who, who was, I was asking her about writing comedic sex scenes. Like, she has a scene where the hero and heroine are, are, are climbing up into a loft; and the hero bangs his head on the roof of the loft because she’s really short and lives in this little loft thing; and he’s this really big, tall guy; and he almost concusses himself as they’re trying to go to Bone Town; and it’s really funny! And she said, well, I kind of have to go for funny because it’s not like I’m going to invent a new sex.

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s not like there’s –

Morgan: That’s so true.

Sarah: – a new sex that someone is waiting to invent in the course of a book. Like, there’s not a new sex, so having read as many sex scenes as I have, I completely understand that what you want is that emotional tension and intimacy, not necessarily the physical intimacy. But if the physical intimacy comes with the chest tingles, I’m so excited!

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: Me too, and I think one of the things that this project has also thrown in sharp relief is, like, the book tingle’s really important, and if you are really good at writing a sex scene, by all means do it, but if you aren’t and you’re not comfortable writing a corporeal person boning another corporeal person, like, if I have to spend too much time figuring out where someone else’s leg is in relation to, like –

Morgan: [Laughs]

Isabeau: – the setting that you’ve put them in, like, if I have to be thinking about the physics of it –

Morgan: Oh man!

Isabeau: – I’m so thrown out, and I’m just like, no, thank you! No, thank you! It would’ve been better if it had been fade to black!

Morgan: Thinking about tingly takes me back to your guys’ point of, like, can these kids get it together? I think that’s where so much of my tingles come from, because I’m like, that little bit of, like, anxiety and, like, frustration?

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: It’s a really great way to turn up the volume on, like, cute stuff.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Internal conflict like that is, is, for me, a great source of the, the chest tingles that I love so much? With this book, if you, like, if I sit down and I write the issues on either side, like Tyler’s issues and Brooke’s issues, it’s a list! It’s a significant list. Amnesia is on the list!

Morgan: Short-term amnesia.

Isabeau: Love it.

Sarah: Yeah! Doesn’t come with any of the yucky other side effects of full amnesia, like loss of bladder control and, and inability to speak and long, long, long periods of occupational therapy, relearning how to tie your shoes, like all that other part; we’re not going to worry about that. It’s just this –

Isabeau: Mm-mm.

Sarah: – little period of time that she doesn’t remember because of trauma, which is a totally understandable, normal trauma response.

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: Side note: I loved the very, very casual acceptance of therapy in this book?

Isabeau: Yes.

Sarah: I loved that part.

Morgan: She’s got great jokes. She’s like, I’m a widow; going to therapy is like going to the spa.

Isabeau: Yeah.

Sarah: I highlighted the fuck out of that. Yes!

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: I have a whole list of favorite things that she said. I think Brooke was my favorite character in this book.

Isabeau: Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan: She has a, a real sense of, she adds a real sense of levity through her dialogue to these, like, very heavy issues –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – because she’s so self-accepting of what she’s going through –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – even though – and even self-accepting of the part that, like, she’s not self-accepting totally – [laughs] –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – that it, yeah, it was, it was, it was a way more cathartic read than I was expecting?

Sarah: This was very emotionally cathartic. This was, this was a cathartic sort of semi-ugly cry book.

Isabeau: Yeah!

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: So in the set-up – just to recap for the people who will be listening – Brooke is a widow, and Tyler is taking on housekeeping of her home when she had hired his sister, whose child has chickenpox, and then they all found out that they weren’t vaccinated, so they all had to get their chickenpox vaccine, and she has to stay home to take care of her kid, so he agrees to be her, be the heroine Brooke’s temporary housekeeper. And he shows up and realizes that he met her, was it five years before?

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yes.

Sarah: And either she is pretending like she doesn’t remember him, or she doesn’t remember him, and he cannot figure out what’s going on, but he apparently has been carrying a, you know, a yea big torch for her. Little torch, not like, like a Lego torch.

Isabeau: [Laughs] Yeah, like, seeing this mystery woman he spent a week of dinners with – they never exchanged last names – is the woman that he’s comparing every woman he dates to –

Sarah: Yep.

Isabeau: – in the interim five years. So, like –

Sarah: Little torch.

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: Little Lego torch. Yeah.

Isabeau: Great angst.

Sarah: It’s not angst that’s rooted in the actual tragedy?

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Because Brooke is a widow, and I won’t spoil the, the set-up of their initial meeting, but the book could very easily have been structured around him at the end of that week going, I must know who she is –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and the angst could be all the immediate of the, I’ve been having this wonderful dinner week with this woman, and I must know who she is. And what actually happens is she disappears, and then five years later she ends up with him as her housekeeper and pseudo-dog-trainer.

Morgan: I want to talk about the dog stuff. I, one of the things I really like is that the time frame that they don’t see each other is between ages twenty-five and thirty –

Sarah: Yeah!

Morgan: – and I think giving people time and giving people space to be ready for something is such a theme in this story that is –

Sarah: Oh, you’re so right!

Morgan: But I love the fact that there’s like this five-year gap, and I think from twenty-five to thirty is such a significant time in any person’s –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Morgan: – life as far as, like, I think that’s when you actually grow up?

Sarah: Oh, for sure.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sarah: I mean, if you think about the amount of pressure that you’re on between twenty and thirty with the expectations – you’re going to graduate college; you’re going to get your job; you’re going to figure out your career; you’re going to figure out your partnerships; you’re going to, you know, be married or possibly partnered and possibly have offspring by the time you’re thirty; and it’s like –

Morgan: That’s so right! Like, between twenty and thirty, you’re under all this pressure to have things figured out and to be like –

Sarah: Yeah!

Morgan: – this is the rest of my life, and then I think, once you kind of get to thirty – I just turned thirty, so I can speak with a lot of authority on this – [laughs] – I think, like, once you get to your thirties, you kind of are able to accept what you don’t know?

Sarah: Oh yeah. Brooke and Tyler both have to level up –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and let go of a lot of the baggage of their past ten years. She has to let herself move on from her, from the end of her marriage, brought about by her husband’s death.

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And he has to move on from the expectations that he’s placed on himself to, to care for his sister –

Isabeau and Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and to take responsibility for all of her problems.

Isabeau: One of the other things about this moment that they’re meeting is that they’re both, like, have professional opportunities?

Sarah: Yes!

Isabeau: And she’s launching this really important app; it’s her third app in five years. He has just been approached by a British company to expand his own, because of course Tyler is our titular CEO –

Sarah: Yes.

Isabeau: – from the title? [Laughs] And he’s got this awesome company that is geared towards older students who are needing to learn online at their own pace, and, like, this British company’s been like, hey, come to London; like, let’s talk about expansion; and he has this real fear of leaving and –

Sarah: Yeah!

Isabeau: Both of them are at this, like, amazing moment of churn. It’s, like, an exciting time to meet somebody, but also, like, everything feels kind of up in the air –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: – for both of them in ways that make them very vulnerable and defensive, which is great for emotional tension.

Sarah: Oh, it really is. You’re so right.

Morgan: They both have these stories they’re telling themselves –

Isabeau: Yes.

Morgan: – about themselves, and they have to let that go in order to have a life, basically.

Isabeau: Yeah.

Sarah: Yes.

Morgan: Because our, our heroine thinks of herself as, like, an aloof widow.

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Morgan: Like an emotionally controlled – and he thinks of himself as, like, the good guy who’s not, like –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: – everything he does is in opposition to his father and what his father did, and so he has to come to terms with the fact that by being oppositional to his dad, he’s in fact letting his dad control his life from, like, the distance of time and space.

Isabeau: Yeah.

Sarah: And the minute that anything is similar to a circumstance that his dad was in, he must reject it, even though it’s something he really wants.

Isabeau and Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Because if it’s what his dad did, then he can’t do that, because obviously that was the worst choice ever, because it harmed everyone he loved.

Morgan: Your dad made his choices for his reasons –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – and it’s not so, so superficial.

Sarah: And just because the opportunity looks similar doesn’t mean that you and he are the same, because you and he –

Morgan: Right.

Sarah: – are already very different. You just, like you said, because you’re living your life in opposition, you don’t see how different you are.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: There was a lot of ruminating on the part of both characters. They were in their heads a lot.

Isabeau: They’re both very deep thinkers.

Sarah: They had so much that – they had thinky thoughts.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Lots of thinky thoughts going on here.

Isabeau: Lots of thinky thoughts.

Sarah: Lots of thinky thoughts and not enough using their words with their mouths, but lots of using their words in their heads.

Isabeau: And also, like, ascribing thinky thoughts to others? Like, there are so many –

Morgan: Yes.

Isabeau: – times where he’s like, I saw the thought in her eye, and then, like, we, we hop into her head, and she’s thinking something similar, but not exactly what he was thinking, and so then you have this, like, slight misalignment –

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: – that only gets bigger as, like, the chapter goes on, and then it’s like, this is what comes from ascribing feelings and thoughts that haven’t been articulated to someone else –

Sarah: Yep!

Isabeau: – that you don’t live inside of.

Sarah: Yep! And it, and that echoes what you said earlier about the stories that they’re telling about themselves?

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: They start telling stories about the other person –

Isabeau: Yes.

Sarah: – they come up with a narrative about that other person based on what they witness of their behavior. So Brooke will come up with a whole narrative about Tyler that may be anchored in a tiny amount of truth, but then she just spins it into a direction, and he’s like, what are you even talking about? That is not what I meant.

Isabeau: Yeah.

Sarah: But they don’t ever have the clarity conversations until the very end.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: That was very frustrating for me, because I was like, you are both incredibly smart people; you have clearly done a lot of interior work; Brooke talks about her therapy and her, and her psychotherapist after being widowed, and the line about being a widow and having therapy like going to the spa was, was just chef’s kiss.

[Laughter]

Sarah: They, you have all of this internal work. What – [laughs] – what part of dialogue did you guys miss? Come on now!

Isabeau: Yeah.

Sarah: The dog served a lot of dialogue purpose in this book.

Morgan: Yeah!

Isabeau: Absolutely.

Morgan: Yes! Brooke has taken on this dog, I think from her brother –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: – who couldn’t keep –

Isabeau: Her brother gifted her Mochi.

Sarah: Yep.

Morgan: – Mochi, a dog, but she has this idea that, like, the dog doesn’t like her –

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Sarah: And the dog is like, I adore everything about you; you are the most wonderful human. Like, the dog’s behavior is so clearly utter adoration.

Morgan: I know, and, like, talk about projecting. Like, she’s emotionally aloof, so she’s like, this dog is emotionally aloof to me! It’s like, it’s a, it’s a dog! It’s really not! [Laughs]

Sarah: No, that’s a cat. What you’re thinking of there is a cat?

[Laughter]

Morgan: Yeah!

Sarah: They are emotionally aloof.

Morgan: Yeah. A cat, you’re really got to earn it –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – but a dog?

Sarah: No.

Morgan: Free-, freewheeling with affection, and she, and her experience with the hero, he shows up in her life. He too is a dog owner, and he –

Sarah: And like a dog whisperer, too, right?

Morgan: Oh, wow. Very Cesar Milan vibes.

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah. He just, he –

Morgan: Be the pack leader.

Sarah: He understands dogs.

Morgan: Right, it’s because he has such command and such authority, and he doesn’t ask –

Isabeau: He’s alpha –

Morgan: – he tells.

Isabeau: Right.

Morgan: And I think, like, through the dog, like, if you’re looking for, like, a CEO book as I think we understand it today, all of that’s going to come through in his interaction with dogs, as opposed to, like, his actual professional life, because –

Sarah: And I could take it there! If you’re an overbearing shit-being –

Morgan: Yeah!

Sarah: – to the people you work with, I’m not interested; you’re a butt! But if you’re, if you’re going to be in command of dogs, that’s kind of sometimes what dogs need. They need to know who’s the boss. ‘Cause if they’re not –

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: – then they feel insecure!

Isabeau and Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: And they act out.

Sarah: Yeah!

Morgan: That is, yeah. It is, like, so much more acceptable for me to see this kind of like overbearing behavior.

Sarah: So right.

Isabeau: So I was truly surprised by – like, the title of this book set me up for something, and then, like, it, you know, exceeded my expectations by a ton, and I was like, oh, this is so great!

Sarah: Yep. I love how –

Morgan: Yes.

Sarah: – the concept of when you say, like, a CEO contemporary romance, a lot of that is subverted.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yes!

Sarah: A lot of that is, is completely subverted and served up in a reverse, almost.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: What, so, can I ask you a question with your institutional knowledge, Sarah, because I’ve –

Sarah: Sure!

Morgan: – been trying to ask – so this book, I think you’re exactly right, subverts the title, and I wonder, is that because, is that, like, an intentional move on the author’s part? Or did someone assign this kind of title to the author? Because we are in the category –

Sarah: Yes.

Morgan: – category –

Sarah: Okay.

Morgan: – so I’m not –

Sarah: It’s hard to know unless the author says? Like, sometimes you’ll talk to an author and they’ll be like, and I kept my title! That’s very rare. A lot of times books get re-titled, and Harlequin in particular, of course, uses hook words, so if you, you know, you see CEO, billionaire – tycoon is another big one.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm

Sarah: All of these hook words –

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: – are telling you at a glance, especially if you’re very fluent in category language, they’re telling you at a glance what kind of story this is. So I don’t know if the title is something that the author came up with, or if it’s something that Harlequin came up with, but it’s a pretty good fit. It still sends the signal of, this is a CEO contemporary with business people who have money.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: And that’s all, that’s all true! But related to the part about the CEO and the signals that are sent by the CEO, one thing I appreciated so much about this book was the way that affluence was expressed?

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It wasn’t like, I’m super powerful and I have a staff. I think there are, are like two occasions where they have a car service, and at any other time they’re driving, but the affluence is expressed in very subtle ways. Tyler wants to pay for things for his family –

Isabeau and Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and can’t because his sister won’t let him. Like, he doesn’t, she doesn’t even like it when he tries to buy her groceries.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And Brooke is hiring a housekeeper because she is about to go to launch, and she was really – [laughs] – she was really bothered that the dirty dishes from the weekend were still in the sink on Thursday –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – [laughs] – and I was like, ma’am, I did not, I did not appreciate being called out that way.

Morgan: I know. I was like, oh yeah, it’s so hard for you ‘cause you’re like a really high-powered person. You know, some of us low-powered people –

Sarah: Oh!

Morgan: – can’t get to the dishes either.

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Isabeau: Yeah!

Sarah: But the hero of my house is the dishwasher.

Isabeau: Oh!

Sarah: Like, it’s the, it’s the most important appliance in the house at this point, like, right after the shower and the toilet. And the fridge. I do have teenagers.

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: But she –

Morgan: Let’s go ahead and rank all of our appliances.

Sarah: Right?

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Sarah: Dishwasher’s like top three easily. But she hires a housekeeper temporarily because she’s got this launch and she’s just never home, and then there’s the dog, and she needs help, and she hires help, which I think –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – is a really big thing. It’s her hiring help; it’s not arriving at the story and he’s already got a whole system of people who work for him in place. That’s not even – he doesn’t even have a secretary that I saw!

Isabeau: Mm-mm.

Morgan: Yeah, no.

Sarah: Like, we only, we meet Brooke’s boss, who’s this incredibly supportive woman, but we don’t see any assistants here.

Morgan: Hmm.

Sarah: And then her affluence is the property that she has and the garden that she has, and she has this massive oasis in South Africa, in, in Cape Town. But the wealth is in the, the land and in the garden and in the development of this beautiful out-, out-, outdoor landscape.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It’s not jewelry and cars and travel and food; it’s all related to their homes.

Morgan: And I love how the garden is such a centerpiece and, like, besides the kitchen, the kind of only other part of the house that we see.

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: And it’s then, at the end, towards the end of the book, we discover that her husband was a landscape architect and that, that buying the house was entirely based on the garden and that he created this space for her.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: And so you think about, in terms of, like, her ability to “move on,” and she, and she and the hero are constantly surrounded, not to his knowledge but very much to her knowledge, by the work and the labor and the love of her deceased husband.

Sarah: Yeah.

Isabeau: I think that’s a big –

Morgan: And his passion.

Isabeau: Right, his passion, and in the same way that Tyler creates himself in opposition to his bad dad, that she’s creating her life in relation to her husband’s death, and she carries his dreams that he didn’t get to fulfill forward into her lived life, and so, Morgan, as you point out, like, this garden is the dream that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: – her husband had, and she feels really responsible for it, but it also functions as a stumbling block into, like, moving forward, ‘cause it’s hard to move forward when you’re living in someone else’s dreams that you yourself called into being as a responsibility to this person that you loved very much, and you’re right! Like, you know, Tyler’s just stumbling around that kitchen and that garden into her ghosts.

Morgan: Mm.

Isabeau: And he doesn’t know it, because she doesn’t tell him, and he has to do some sleuthing, and she has to do some deep, internal thoughts about, like, what being okay with moving on is going to look like. And I thought that was a really beautiful way of, again, creating this tension between the two of them. [Rattling sound in background] Would you not, please? That’s unkind. Thank you. No, thank you, though.

Sarah: Hi, cute! Hi, cute kitty!

Isabeau: Just, like, loves to be here when I’m on –

Sarah: Okay, well, wait, what’s the cat’s name?

Isabeau: This is Gina. She’s from the street.

Sarah: Hi, Gina!

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: She’s like, who said my name? How dare you speak to me?

Morgan: She’s so beautiful!

Sarah: How dare you speak to me? I am, I am outraged.

Isabeau: She is quite a handful sometimes, but she’s a good kitty.

Sarah: What a nice girl!

Isabeau: Yeah. What was I saying? Yeah, just, like, he’s bumping around in these ghosts that she’s created and pulled forward from –

Sarah: That’s a really good way of putting it, too, because there’s also the ghost of their former interaction that she doesn’t remember.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yeah. This book really managed to catch me on all of my snark. Like, I was, at first I was like, oh – I was originally like, oh, okay, so she’s the CEO; is this even really, like, subversive if we’re just making the lady the CEO? And then it was like, oh no, he is the CEO. Well, why is he pretending to be a housekeeper? Can’t he take care of his nephew? And then it was like, he didn’t get a chickenpox vaccine, and I was like, oh. It, like, caught me out at every turn.

Sarah: Yep.

Morgan: But one of the turns it caught me out on was, he was describing his memories of the thing, and he was like, I thought we had a true friendship that might develop into something more, and I was like, well, is that a friendship, like, if you’re trying to, like, get it in the whole time you guys are at dinner? I don’t think so! Like, that doesn’t have the other person’s best interests at heart.

Sarah: Nope.

Morgan: Like, you have no way of knowing if that person would enjoy lovemaking with you that much. But the –

Sarah: Especially these two! They don’t really talk good!

[Laughter]

Morgan: Yeah, exactly!

Isabeau: That’s true.

Morgan: Communication is not their forte! And then tow-, when he finally does the reveal, he was like, you know, this was really hard for me, and she’s like, oh, because your, like, ego made you think that you were so important, how could I have forgotten you? And I was like – [gasps] – the book said the thing that I was thinking!

Sarah: [Laughs] Yeah, she calls him on his bullshit to a marvelous degree.

Morgan: But that was the most satisfying point at which this book caught me out on my assumptions and my attempts to be, like, smarter – [laughs] – than the text.

Isabeau: Yeah, this is a book that I felt like I couldn’t anticipate –

Sarah: No.

Isabeau: – even as it, like, begged me to anticipate it, and I think, like, that’s, that was also part of the thing that was incredibly pleasurable about reading this book? Because, Morgan, I had the exact same experience. I was like, oh, you think you’re – oh, oh. Okay. 

[Laughter]

Morgan: Oh!

Isabeau: All right, we can fix that too.

Morgan: Pardon me, pardon me.

Isabeau: Sorry, I spoke too soon; I should have, I should have read it. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep. What did you think of the setting?

Isabeau: I loved it! I want to read way more books about Cape Town and South Africa. I, like, it’s so beautiful, and, like, they have this whole scene in the, like, by the water, and then they have a scene over at the Table Mountain, and you know –

Sarah: And they go to a vineyard. I was like, this is like South Africa Setting Bingo. Vineyard! Mountain!

Isabeau: Yeah.

Sarah: Beach! Done! [Laughs]

Isabeau: I know. I was like, this is great.

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: All the highlights. It’s like, loved it. Like, it really, that – ugh – perfect COVID reading. You know, it felt like a travelogue –

Sarah: Virtual travel, right?

Isabeau: Absolutely.

Morgan: Yeah. And it was just enough of that. Isabeau and I read a book set in Chicago, and it was like, Chicago, Chicago, Chicago-ing across Chicago, and it became, like, so, like, frustrating, and of course, like, when you put that much detail into something that’s real and lived by other people, you’re going to disappoint them and frustrate them. And, like –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Morgan: – I think –

Sarah: You don’t want to know what the El smells like in a book?

Morgan: [Laughs] No, I never do.

Isabeau: Especially if you get that smell wrong, okay? Like, don’t, don’t come for the El unless you come correct, okay?

[Laughter]

Morgan: We just got new trains; I haven’t ridden on one yet; and I, every time one pull, one of the old, crusty ones pulls into the station I feel –

Sarah: Damn!

Morgan: – personally slighted.

Sarah: You know how Chicago got founded – have you heard this joke?

Morgan: No.

Sarah: A bunch of people in New York were like, wow! I am really enjoying the crowds and the crime, but it is just not cold enough. Let’s go to Chicago.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yeah! ‘Cause it’ll kill you, the cold! [Laughs] And then if you survive the cold, then the summer’ll kill you!

Isabeau: It’s true. A little humid.

Sarah: It is so true. Oh my God.

Morgan: Getting pretty hot.

Isabeau: That’s a good joke. That’s, that is a quality Chicago joke.

Sarah: Isn’t that a quality –

[Crosstalk]

Morgan: – really good one. It’s really good.

Isabeau: But what was great about this book is, like, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the South Africa –

Sarah: No.

Isabeau: – Cape Town-ness of it. It felt like just enough set dressing where I could put my characters into place and see them interact without being, like, burdened by place.

Sarah: Yes. There was no As You Know, Bob –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – South Africa’s known for its wines.

Morgan: That’s exactly it.

Sarah: No! They were going to go to a vineyard ‘cause they’re all over the frigging place!

Isabeau: Right. Absolutely. I loved that. I thought it was great.

Sarah: So did you have a favorite line in this book? I highlighted a couple of lines that I absolutely loved. One of my favorites was early on; she is talking to Tyler – using her words – and she says, it was a fond smile this time, a gooey smile. Ugh, she hated his range.

[Laughter]

Isabeau: That’s great. It’s a great line.

Morgan: That was a really good one. I want to call out a time where he gets her, he’s taking her to this cocktail party for this company that’s courting him –

Sarah: Oh, right, yeah.

Morgan: – to buy out his – yeah. And he picks out her outfit for her; he buys it for her and lays it out, which she had just been thinking very anxiously about what she was going to wear to this event because it had been so long since she’d gone to something like this; and then that’s where, like, the, the, like, wealth is, like, very pleasurable to me, is the idea of someone, like, choosing your outfit for you, so you don’t have to overthink it.

Sarah: Don’t stress about this; all you got to do is your hair. Shoes and dress done. Yeah.

Morgan: That’s, yeah. This book really does that so well, thinking about, like, the true benefit of money, which is like, if you have a problem, you can just buy it away. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yep. And lasagna. Don’t forget this guy makes her lasagna, too. Lasagna –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

[Crosstalk]

Sarah: – and wardrobe and shoes and dog training!

Morgan: And cleans the house.

Sarah: And cleans the house! Oh yeah!

Morgan: At one point I commented, this must be how men feel in strip clubs –

[Laughter]

Morgan: – where she’s, like, describing him, like, being really good at his job and, like, drying her dishes? I was like, this must be it.

Sarah: God, dial back the porn there!

Morgan: Yeah!

Isabeau: I know, right?

Morgan: ‘Scuse me! But I really love, she gets kind of bashful and she’s not doing a great job of complimenting him, and so she’s like, you look like you work out a lot, and he’s like, what does that mean? And she’s like, well, I just mean you look good, and he’s like, well, in that case I would say you also look like you work out a lot. She’s like, I obviously don’t; this gold dress doesn’t hide a lot; and he said, it didn’t, did it? He gave her a sly look. It’s almost as if someone bought that, bought it with that very thing in mind. And I think sometimes when we have, like, a voluptuous, a curvier heroine, everything has to be like, you’re beautiful and you’re fat. Like, it has to be like, they have to make a thing about the weight, and what I like is that he doesn’t. He just makes a little joke about it, and then makes it clear that it’s like something, he likes her body –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – and doesn’t give it, like, any, like, special caveat or extra description –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – that I think would, like, weigh it down and, like, oh, so you, you’re doing me a favor, or something like that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s, it’s almost like he’s neutral about – there’s no value assigned.

Morgan: Yes!

Sarah: It’s very neutral. It’s like, I like the way you look, full stop.

Morgan: Yeah! And, like, I’m not hung up on it, so I can make jokes about it as well –

Sarah: No.

Morgan: – and be like, oh, you look like you also work out a lot. You know, and, like, it doesn’t have to become this, like, really fraught experience –

Sarah: No!

Morgan: – between the two of them.

Sarah: He’s super neutral about it. Like, this is how you look, and it works for me. Awesome! 

Morgan: Yeah. It works so well that I bought you a skimpy dress.

Sarah: Although, let’s be real, the fantasy of a man being able to navigate dress sizes for women when every company has different –

Morgan: Oh my gosh.

Sarah: That right there is fantasy. That and the –

Morgan: That’s so true.

Sarah: That is just utter, utter fantasy. I mean, I’m fine with it. I’m totally here for it.

Isabeau: The thing about romance is that it’s completely unrealistic. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes, ‘cause this guy picked out a dress in the right size. That’s, that’s your unrealistic expectations right there.

Morgan: [Laughs] That exactly. Oh no, they caught us! It’s true!

Isabeau: [Laughs] I love that exchange because she is being quite literal, and she, like, calls him out when he says, you know, you must work out too, and she’s like, you know my schedule; I don’t.

Sarah: Yeah! I hired a housekeeper; what makes you think there’s time for Peloton in there?

Isabeau: Exactly! And I love how, like, lived-in this book then feels, right, like, ‘cause, that’s one of those details where it’s like, I know that, and then it’s like a deadpan joke between the two of them, and you’re so right to say, like, he’s, he’s value neutral on her body. It works for him, and, like, that’s all he needs to say about it or think about it, and that’s basically it.

Morgan and Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: But, like, it’s those moments where she’s like, no, and you know that, and it’s like all of these weird, like, tabletop moments that feel, yeah, just, like, incredibly lived-in.

Morgan: Yeah. One, I work too much for “a lot.” Two, that gold dress didn’t hide much. I just love it.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Morgan: I love his reaction. It’s just beautiful.

Sarah: Like you said, it feels very lived-in. These characters are not introducing themselves to the reader –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – they are existing in the book, and you, you, you go along and you catch up very quickly.

Isabeau and Morgan: Yes.

Sarah: The other description I loved was the, at the end when she’s going through the emotional deconstruction of her own narrative, confronting that she has feelings for him and that it’s a really awkward time because he has been courted to go to the UK, which, I looked up, is like an eleven-hour direct flight. It’s, he, like, you can visit!

Morgan: Whoa!

Sarah: I was like, bro, it’s, that’s the whole fat side of the Earth that you’re going around, like. You’ve got to go around the equator; there’s no shortcut there. It’s a long flight.

Morgan: Oh my gosh.

Sarah: She describes the idea that she had just been stacking her emotions neatly, and this was an earthquake that brought them all crashing, and I was like, that is a really good way to describe that. Like, you think you’re managing your emotions; you’re just actually putting them in very neat Container Store boxes, and they don’t stay there. They’re –

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: – come back out. Yeah.

Morgan: Yeah. You haven’t actually done the work to, like, stabilize what’s going on.

Sarah: No, you just packaged them well.

Morgan: You just contained it.

Sarah: Yeah, you packaged them very well, but, you know, the problem with feelings is you push them into a drawer, they go in the drawer and they do push-ups, and then they come back out!

[Laughter]

Morgan: That’s exactly right.

Isabeau: Exactly. Oh my gosh, yes. And, like, that both of them were doing that, like –

Morgan: Yeah!

Isabeau: – she did such a good job of explaining that for her, but the fact that he’s like, you should come with me! You should visit! And it’s like, whoa! We’ve literally kissed twice. We’ve –

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: – I’ve got a lot of stuff going on here, not the least of which is my profession. You’re asking me to start over in a new country with you, and what happens when you’re done there? Like, anything that I set up there, I would have to leave again, and I, I loved her for saying that. And I was like, there is no HEA with her not doing her job. There is no HEA without her being fulfilled in this way too –

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: – and the fact that he would ask so quickly and, like, kind of blasé, where he was like, if we can’t be together physically, then, like, we’re not going to be together at all. I’m so scared because I don’t know how to make this choice because my dad was a bad dad, and then she’s like –

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: – whoa! No!

Sarah: That right there, sir, is a You problem.

Isabeau and Morgan: Exactly!

Sarah: That is not a Me problem. [Laughs]

Isabeau: Ohhh! I’m, like –

Morgan: Well –

Isabeau: – ugh! So – mm!

Morgan: That kind of shook loose for me this idea that our hero is very much living in the, like an archetypal idea of what a romance is, right? He’s like, we saw each other for five years, and now we’re seeing each other again. Is this fate? She doesn’t remember me. Does it mean she doesn’t love me? And, like, he’s like, we’re together now; we’ve only kissed twice, but let’s go to England together. And then our heroine is very much, like, living in the real world –

Sarah: She’s so practical.

Morgan: – and having – yeah, so prac-, and thoughtful and has this really – like, this feels trite, but very relatable perspective on what’s going on in their relationship and, like, really grounds the story, and is kind of serving almost as, like, a critique of this idea. Like, there’s something about this book that feels meta, because it is catching us out on every assumption we make and, and surprising us, and I think because there is something as melodramatic as short-term memory loss as a plot point, that I al-, it almost feels, and it, like commentary. Is it, is it commentary, or is it just, like, an evolution in, like, very good storytelling? It, is it both?

Sarah: Could be both.

Morgan: I don’t know.

Sarah: Both works!

Isabeau: Could be both.

Sarah: Why not both?

Morgan: It’s a real pleasure to read, though.

Isabeau: It was! It was such a pleasure, and, like, even in that, like, moment, ‘cause I would call that, like, the whiff of death moment when he’s like, come to England, and she’s like, I can’t, and he’s like, all right, I’m leaving. And because there is no, like, whiff of death where, like, the heroine or the hero is in mortal danger, which, like, totally fine, ‘cause we do have the amnesia –

[Laughter]

Isabeau: – and then it’s like we fast forward two months, and he’s in dreary old London, moping around, like, being sad, and just, like, I loved that? And I think you’re so right: he’s like this strung-out romance hero who has been, like, titular good guy.

Morgan: Bad dad, even.

Isabeau: He has a bad dad. He loves his sister. He’s a good father figure to his nephew. Like –

Morgan: He’s an alpha with the dogs.

Isabeau: Right, but not in the boardroom, because he cares about his employees and, like, being a good person, and he thinks about what being a good person is in action. Like, he’s just checking all the boxes, and his fear and his, like, sentimentality and his, like, blown-up romance hero thing really, like, shits the bed. [Laughs] Like, he goes to England without her, which is the thing, the only thing that could have happened in this book.

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: [Laughs] And is just, like, sad in London, and I was like, that’s great. This is, this is exactly what I wanted from that peak of this, like, storyline, and, like, I love that this is the denouement that I now have to work through.

Sarah: And there’s a certain degree of craniorectal impaction –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – that he has to, to deal with?

Isabeau: Oh yeah!

Sarah: But every woman in his life is like, would you please get your head out of your ass?

Isabeau: Yes!

Sarah: Like, his sister doesn’t want him to manage her life, and so –

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and so she sets these very firm boundaries, but even when – so this is a slight SPOILER – he’s afraid to tell his sister about this opportunity because it would mean that he would be leaving and abandoning her, which –

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – my dude –

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – you’re not, like, leaving in the middle of the night and not telling her!

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And she has to tell him, and then Brooke has to tell him, please remove the rest of your head from your bum.

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Morgan: Yeah. Yeah, and I love that Brooke is willing to point out, like, he will do these, like, effusive, emotional, like, this is how I feel with my sister, because my father left and I have to be this person, right. Our classic hero kind of monologue –

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: – and then Brooke is like, all right, well, that’s just what you’re saying. Like, do you think your sister – what, how would your sister describe this relationship? [Laughs]

Sarah: There are so many conversations in this book that are that GIF from, with, with Chris Hemsworth going, really, though? Really?

[Laughter]

Sarah: Are you sure?

Morgan: Yeah. Exactly.

Sarah: And I like that one of the major conflicts is that they’re basically interrupting each other’s narratives about themselves.

Isabeau: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: Yeah! Her idea of what it means to grieve and, like, to be, like, a good wife, and, like, she’s still hung up on that idea –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Morgan: – of how to properly grieve and how to properly move on, and that there’s a single narrative there, and that she needs to follow that line to the bitter end.

Sarah: Yeah.

Morgan: Her pragmatism and his, like, romance are, are very at odds.

Sarah: Yeah. And it causes a lot of the very essential conflicts between them.

Isabeau and Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Isabeau: And I think, Sarah, when you said that they’re interrupting each other’s narratives, that’s such exactly what’s happening in this book and such a good way of describing that interaction? Because I think one of the things that’s so pleasurable about romance in general and what this book is doing really well is that our hero and heroine function as spotlights for one another, where it’s like, I see you. But instead of, like, I see you, Wallflower, and, like, I see all your value, it’s like, I see the way in which you’re telling the story, which maybe, like, doesn’t have all the important details, and, like, I see that you’ve said this thing, but, like, I wonder how true it is, and so the fact that they function as, like, kind of accounting for one another in this way –

Morgan: Mm.

Isabeau: – is such a pleasurable commentary or comment on the idea of, like, I See You as the, like, move in romance, and it’s like, often we’re like, oh, you see the thing in me that no one else values that I really value about myself, but here it’s like, I see you and all the ways that, like, you’re holding yourself back.

Sarah: Yeah.

Isabeau: And, like, what an important comment to make about the I See You in romance!

Sarah: Yes!

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: They’re each other’s, uh, acceleration?

Isabeau: Yes!

Sarah: But also each other’s foils.

Isabeau and Morgan: Yes!

Morgan and Sarah: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah, and in, in order to level up, to be ready for the kind of relationship that they’re going to have, they have to, like you said, let go of that narrative and acknowledge that the other person is right about how they’re holding themselves back. Very delicious, isn’t it?

Morgan: [Laughs]

Isabeau: So good.

Sarah: [Squees] So is this a, a Whoa or a No?

Morgan: This’d be a big Whoa for me. I’m actually going to recommend it immediately, well, to everyone who’s listening. [Laughs]

[Crosstalk]

Morgan: Some people in my personal life as well.

Isabeau: Yeah. This is a big Whoa. Thank you for bringing it to our attention, and, like, what a way to cap our Category Is… series. Like, what an enjoyable way.

Sarah: Oh, I’m so glad!

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: I’m so pleased. Especially because this is the kind of book where, if you really want to share with somebody who already has a grounding of what romance does –

Morgan: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – of what more it can do with those established narratives and tropes? Like, we’re going to take these –

Morgan: Yeah.

Sarah: – very familiar things – we’ve got amnesia; we’ve got a CEO; we’ve got some CEO masquerading as a housekeeper for whatever reason; we’ve got a heroine who’s got amnesia and some traumatic memories that she is missing – we’ve got all of these things, and we’re just going to set the table with those, and the real story is going to just blow you away, what happens underneath.

Morgan: Yeah.

Isabeau: Yeah.

Morgan: I think if I could go back and redo my creative summary – although I would absolutely, if you enjoyed this book, I would absolutely still recommend either Office Hours by Kat Jackson or Heartbeat Braves by Pamela Sanderson – but I think it’s like, it is a secret millionaire, but it’s not? And it is a CEO book, but it’s not; and it is, like, an angsty romance, but it’s also not.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Morgan: It’s, I think it would also be an interesting pla- – like, even if you’ve never read romance before, I think it does a great job of showing you that it’s a genre with a great deal of flexibility.

Sarah: Yes. And that internal conflict can create so much tension.

Isabeau: You’re exactly right. Like, set the table, and everything is underneath. It was so good.

Sarah: Yep.

Morgan: This –

Sarah: We’re going to lure you in with amnesia and CEOs and deliver something even better.

Morgan: There’s this –

Isabeau: Defy your expectations.

Morgan: – great moment where his sister comes to visit him in London, and they’re having a conversation, and he says, but I can’t have her because she doesn’t feel the same way, because we have too many obstacles in the way of being happy together. And I was like, look at that perfect thesis for, like, all romance novels ever, and then his sister comes back at him and says, seems to me that if you feel the way you do and she feels that way too, the biggest obstacle is already out of the way. The first and most logical step now would be to figure out if she thinks you’re smart and funny and sweet and all those other things.

Isabeau: [Laughs]

Morgan: Doubtful, but you’ve got to try.

Isabeau: What a good sister.

Morgan: What a good sister! But I, I love that it’s like, like he has this perfect thesis statement of, like, the central problem of all romance novels, and then she comes back at him with, like, and this is, like, the central solution. [Laughs] Like, this is the denouement –

Sarah: Really, though?

Morgan: – in the denouement.

Sarah: Really? Really, you can’t be together? Really?

[Crosstalk]

Sarah: Yeah, have you really checked out that whole story? You sure?

Morgan: Yeah. And as opposed to being like, so obviously the solution is you have to kidnap her and take her on a six-month-long journey on your pirate ship, her solution is, so you should –

Sarah: Obvs.

Morgan: – talk to her!

[Laughter]

Sarah: Yeah.

Isabeau: Use your words.

Morgan: Yeah!

Sarah: Yeah! Use your words, for God’s sake!

Isabeau: Yeah.

Morgan: [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this. I have had the best time.

Isabeau: Thank you for having –

Morgan: It is such a pleasure.

Isabeau: Yeah, this was absolutely wonderful, and thank you for this book and bringing it into our series. Just absolutely top notch from beginning to end.

Morgan: [Laughs] And it’s such an honor to be on, like, your podcast. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is, like –

Sarah: Oh!

Morgan: – the origin of so much for both of us, and I can’t believe we got to be here.

Sarah: Thank you! So would you please talk about what’s coming up on your show so people can go find you?

Isabeau: So we are wrapping up our Category Is…, which was an investigation of Alley Books that I found on Facebook Marketplace, and we did a category from 1960, 1970, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. What can you take from every single decade in category?

Sarah: Shoulder pads.

[Laughter]

Isabeau: Cigarettes

Sarah: Shoulder pads, smoking.

Morgan: Lot of body-skimming jersey.

Isabeau: A lot of body-skimming jersey. We are continuing our Jane Eyre public access Read Along, which is a lot of fun, so if you’ve never read Jane Eyre, if you haven’t read it in a long time, Morgan and I are reading it out loud to one another and then commenting on whether or not the Darcy or the Rochester is the first hero of romance?

Morgan: The central mover.

Isabeau: The central mover.

Sarah: That’s a big debate right there.

Isabeau: Yeah! I mean, we’re, like, we’re going to have a thesis after we’re done reading Jane Eyre, because I think we’re coming to a pretty big conclusion of –

[Laughter]

Isabeau: – spoiler alert.

Morgan: If you haven’t listened to our show before, we try to do a good mix of contemporary and historical. We read a lot of old stuff, especially from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, and we’re, we try to do new stuff every once in a while, so that’s fun.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you to Morgan and Isabeau for recording with me and for taking such a lovely dive into this book. You can find copies of Awakened by the CEO’s Kiss by Therese Beharrie anywhere books are sold, and I will have links in the show notes as well, never fear.

I will also have links to where you can find Whoa!mance, where you can listen, but if you just search Whoa!mance in your podcast app, they will pop right up.

I always end with a terrible joke, and today is no different. This one is really awful. It’s a little longer, but I like it very much. All right, here we go. [Clears throat] Serious podcaster voice:

What is the difference between black-eyed peas and chickpeas?

Give up? What’s the difference between black-eyed peas and chickpeas?

Well, Black Eyed Peas can sing us a song, but chickpeas can only hummus one.

[Laughs] Hum us one! I love a bad food pun so much! Hummus one. That boo- – that book, hmm – that joke is from /meye_usernameistaken, and, yeah, hum us one. [Laughs more]

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you an absolutely fabulous weekend filled with all the best reading. We will be back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

Hummus! [Laughs]

[groovy music]