653. RT Rewind: February 2000 Reviews!

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Sarah Wendell: Hello there. Welcome to episode number 653 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, Amanda is with me, and we are going back to February 2000. That’s right, RT Rewind is back, and in this issue we’ve got the OG original monster-shtupping book, we have a guy whose arm appears to end in a ham, and we have some incredible covers. There’s a series where the focus of every color illustration is somebody’s backside. I know I’m going to tell you not to miss the visual aids, but, like, I really mean it. These, these covers are wild.

I will have links to everything we talk about, all of the books and all of the tea and all of the reviews for books called Who’s the Daddy? in the show notes, and you know where that is: smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast under episode 653.

I will also have visual aids with all of these covers in a post at Smart Bitches, so you can follow along and enjoy whatever that is.

And speaking of enjoy, I have a compliment.

To Laura B.: You make your friends laugh so often, so hard, and so much that their smartwatches have all assigned time spent hanging out with you as “a perfect day.”

If you would like a compliment of your very own or you’d like to support this show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Every pledge helps keep me going, helps me make sure that we have a transcript from garlicknitter – howdy, garlicknitter! – [howdy! – gk] – and as benefits for being a member, you get bonus episodes, a wonderful Discord where we do fun things, and you get the complete scan of RT. This one is a truly special issue, so if you’re interested, have a look: patreon.com/SmartBitches.

Are you ready to go back to February 2000? I am. Amanda’s here. Let’s do into the time machine where we head back to February 2000.

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Amanda: I don’t know what kind of tea that you like, but I just became obsessed with Tazo’s iced lemon loaf tea.

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: It’s caffeine-free –

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: – but it tastes like one of those iced, like, lemon loaves that you get at Starbucks? It is so good.

Sarah: Oh!

Amanda: I don’t know how they do it.

Sarah: I, my favorite tea is what I call Blogger’s Favorite? It is called Constant Comment?

Amanda: [Giggles]

Sarah: I drink decaf. It’s, it’s mostly like a black tea with a little bit of orange to it? I also love the Orange Spice from Bigelow.

So we are looking at the reviews in the October 2000 issue, which has a pretty great cover.

Amanda: There’s something about the eyeball –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Amanda: …this man.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: I, I feel like if you took out the long hair and you made him super pale –

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Amanda: – he looks like Nicholas Hoult in the eyeballs and the eyebrows.

Sarah: Oh, you’re totally right! Like, I’m using my hands to sort of block it off, and I totally see that.

Amanda: ‘Cause he’s got, like, the winged brow and this –

Sarah: Oh yeah. Thick winged brows and really piercing eyes.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Okay, so when we get to the cover in the ads and features, I’ve got a whole bunch of gossip about this guy.

Amanda: Ooh, would love it.

Sarah: There’s a history.

So, if you’re first joining us, you’ve never done this before, we’re going to recap Romantic Times’ October issue from 2000. It was their two-hundredth issue, and Amanda said we should celebrate their two-hundredth while we’re celebrating our twentieth.

Amanda: Yeah!

Sarah: And the six-hundred-and-fiftieth episode of the podcast. Got a lot of big numbers going on right now.

Amanda: Big round numbers.

Sarah: So this was their two-hundredth issue, and as a historical document of them looking back on their own history it is – [laughs] – fucking fascinating, oh my gosh!

Amanda: I made a note that it feels like a yearbook.

Sarah: It really does feel like a yearbook, and I really wonder if this, if all – so there’s a lot of little auth-, they call them cameos? Like, we’ll, we’ll probably skip over most of them because they’re not actually that interesting when we get to the ads and features, but there’s all these little, like, little messages and little paragraphs from different authors, and I’m like, Is this like when your parents just buy a quarter ad in the yearbook? Like, we just did that for our younger child, for our younger child for the yearbook? So for, for our older child, who plays the trombone, on Senior Night we took a really unattractive picture of him and put it on a giant banner and then carried the banner on the football field? So I have a picture of him making the same face while holding the banner of his face, and that was the ad, and the only thing it said on there was Bone.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, everyone was like, We’re so proud of you! We can’t wait to see – we were like, Bone. So for my younger child’s, we took a picture of what is basically their cat, Katie, the little tabby one, the tiny little one? I had a picture of her on her stomach with her legs out and her tongue is out, and so I, I isolated it, I flipped it upside down, and it says Grab Life by the Claws.

Amanda: Aw!

Sarah: So we’re doing the most bizarro yearbook ads. This, this does look like when you buy like a little quarter-pa- – I’m really curious if authors paid to be in the two-hundredth issue; it’s going to be so – how much did they pay? How much did they pay for those spaces?

Amanda: I don’t know, and the stuff that they wrote, yeah, it’s not like promoting themselves necessarily –

Sarah: Hmm.

Amanda: – or an upcoming book or anything. It’s just them writing good things about the magazine.

Sarah: Yeah! Like, it’s all tribute to the magazine. It’s very interesting.

So we’re going to start with Historical Romance, because that is always the first section. It’s often the most robust in terms of, like –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – actual critical reviews, you know?

Amanda: This one is no exception. This, this went for so many pages, and I kept scrolling. I’m like, Where is the end? [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, this one is a long – I mean, these issues, there’s always a point where I’m like, We’re not done yet? I’m only two-thirds through? But basically what you’ve got in these magazines usually – correct me if I’m wrong – is, like, the cover and the front matter, and then a bunch of big features; then reviews, and Historical always goes first, and then sometimes there are features in between the reviews and sometimes it’s just like Historical, Contemporary, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, bu-bu-bu-bu-buh; and then at the end there’s like another whole third of magazine where they talk about the conference, they got Classifieds, and they do ads for different things, and they talk about eBooks. So this is very much a big magazine of thirds, and I’d wanted to do three episodes for these magazines, I easily could.

So which book did you pick to discuss today? I’m so excited to be back doing this, by the way.

Amanda: [Laughs] So on page 40 I picked a book called Starlight by Miranda Jarrett. It got four and a half stars; it’s a, it’s a TP; it’s a Top Pick. The setting is London 1847. The people I don’t care about in this review. I do care about one starring character, and it is not a person, and you will, you will see what I’m talking about.

>> Another Fairbourne steals readers’ hearts when Alexander Fairbourne escorts his sister to England to find a husband. When he, what he finds is a seven-toed black kitten and a strange turn of luck. Suspected of being a Jacobite traitor to the English crown, Cora MacGillivray –

Sarah: Gillivray.

Amanda: Gillivray; thank you, Sarah.

Sarah: No worries.

Amanda: >> – cannot return home to the Highlands. Her only solace is her kitten Starlight, and when he disappears she searches for him and finds him in Alex’s hands.

Sarah: Put my cat down, asshole! [Laughs]

Amanda: I know! Leave him alone!

>> Alex is fascinated by the young woman and determines to learn more about her. Cora is not immune to the dashing American, but is he her savior or trouble?

>> The quick pace, touch of magic, and absolutely endearing characters – I’d take Starlight home – bring readers that warm glow and wonderful feeling, so special about a romance.

That makes no sense…wonderful feeling so special about a romance. That sentence make no sense to me, Sarah. Am I reading it wrong?

Sarah: No, that, that is, that is clunky. That’s a little clunky.

Amanda: Okay. [Laughs]

>> Miranda Jarrett continues to reign as queen of the American Colonial romance. Sensual.

But it takes place in London, not America, first of all. But there’s a seven-toed cat.

Sarah: Perfect!

Amanda: Unfortunately, I looked at the cover. There is no cat.

Sarah: I am looking at the covers right now, and there is no cat, and I want to go back in time and have some conversations with people. How do you have a seven-toed magical cat in a book and not put it on the cover?

Amanda: I also wonder, like, is there a stepback? I couldn’t find, like, there’s no eBook version, so you can’t really look inside, so I, I didn’t find any sort of clue of like maybe there’s a stepback that has a, a cat on it, but –

Sarah: There are, okay, this is, this is so funny. There are so many, like, old pictures of the cover, but every now and again I will find an eBay or a resale vendor with some of these old copies, and they photograph them, and I can tell it’s the same ones ‘cause they always use the same tablecloth? So there’s like three different tablecloths that I’m looking for here. I do not see any sign of a stepback, tablecloth or not.

Amanda: Missed oppor-, missed opportunity. [Laughs]

Sarah: Honest to God, absolute bush-league decisions going on here.

So the book that I picked was on page 44, and it is Meet Me at Midnight by Suzanne Enoch, and they gave this three stars, which is kind of scandalous ‘cause Suzanne Enoch is great. There’s a lot happening here, and I just, I just really loved how much was going on and how much they didn’t like it. So the setting is Early 19th-century England, and then there’s also – I think this is a good feature – Previous titles: Taming Rafe and By Love Undone, so you know if it’s part of a series or what books this author has had before? Like, that’s a very smart thing to do with reviews.

>> Victoria “Vixen” Fontaine is an English Scarlett O’Hara.

Not great.

>> She has men jumping through hoops to be near her. Within the first chapter, however, she is compromised with Sinclair Grafton and must marry posthaste to save her reputation. As it turns out, Sinclair was a spy for the War Office during the, the recent Napoleonic Wars, and now he’s home seeking the man who murdered his brother two years earlier, and he needs Victoria’s entrée into society to observe his brother’s old associates.

>> The hero and heroine are likable characters. Victoria is far more clever than her friends believe her, and Sinclair is far more noble than the rake he presents to society. However, the plot is a cliché, and while such plots often are, it means the presentation of the story has to be either that much more believable or imaginative. Sensual!

Amanda: I also misread, the reviewer’s name is Michell Phifer.

Sarah: I mean, it, it’s close, right?

Amanda: Yeah, pretty close.

Sarah: So this is what I come, I think of as Not Like Other Girls reviews? There’s a certain strand of romance reviews where people want to differentiate the book by putting down the rest of the genre, which (a) is not it and (2) is very lazy?

>> The plot is a cliché, and while such plots often are –

Okay, but why?

>> – it means the presentation has to be more believable or imaginative.

This is all saying what the book is not? And I find that very annoying.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I find that very bothersome. Like, if this were being handed to me, I would be like, Okay, I need you to explain exactly what’s in the book; what’s not, rather than what’s not in the book that you wanted.

Amanda: The, the phrasing is really vague. It’s so vague, where it’s like, Yeah, there’s something wrong with it.

Sarah: There’s something wrong with it; I don’t know; it’ll be fine. But I just, I’m going to share with you the cover, because the cover is, something’s, something’s wrong with her! It’s from the With This Ring series, and there is a man with absolutely enormous pectoral muscles. Like, his pectoral muscles are the size of a couch cushion. And of course he has no shirt on, and he’s standing in some white roses, and he’s got a, a lady in front of him, and he’s grabbing her arm, and she’s wearing what I would call with extreme confidence a 1994 taffeta prom dress.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: It’s even got a bow belt! Like, look at the little belt! And it’s of course falling off her bosoms.

Amanda: I don’t know if I’d be wading around in this, like, field of roses, because roses have thorns.

Sarah: Oh yes.

Amanda: [Laughs] This seems unpleasant!

Sarah: It, it seems like a recipe for getting stung. And he’s just bopping around shirtless. He does have a mullet; two points for the mullet. But yeah, ‘90s prom dress, hundred percent. This was a time of taffeta.

Amanda: In a time of taffeta!

Sarah: Then we move on to Science Fiction; we go right from Historical to Science Fiction. The categories for books in here are pretty weird, aren’t they?

Amanda: I’m so excited. So for those of you who don’t know, Sarah and I keep a running document of what we’re picking to review, so I can see sort of what Sarah has picked –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – and add my own. And so Sarah makes a little note of, I assume you want to talk about fairy-fucking. And then I see what book has been reviewed, and I, my world lit up!

[Laughter]

Amanda: I was like, You know it. Sarah has my number; of course I want to talk about this book.

Sarah: You, you can’t not talk about the fairy-fucking book. Like, I don’t even bother remembering the titles! It’s the fairy-fucking book!

Amanda: So yeah, the fairy-fucking book in question, which was reviewed on page 77, is A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton. I have such a soft spot for this book and the series, which I never finished because it kind of went off the rails for me. My mother was a huge Laurell K. Hamilton fan, and when I started really getting into romance – I’ve mentioned this before – these are the books that I led with.

Sarah: These were in a tub in your garage, right?

Amanda: We had a shed, yeah, an outdoor shed, and my lovely father built my mom a set of built-ins, built-in bookshelves that spanned wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, beautiful, and my mom filled them up quickly, so anytime she had to shift things out, they would go in a giant Rubbermaid tub, and we would put them in the shed. And so she pretty much let me, like, root through the Rubbermaid tubs. Lots of Sherrilyn Kenyon – oh my gosh, I’m blanking – the Carpathian series was in there.

Sarah: Christine Feehan.

Amanda: So lots of early 2000s paranormal romances were – which are a certain vintage of – [laughs]

Sarah: Yes. It’s, it’s interesting in the current era of everyone talking about romantasy, because we could easily point to these books, but they are not the same as what people are calling romantasy now. Even though they have some genre similarities, structurally and narratively they’re very different.

How old were you while you were dug, digging through those barrels of books, by the way? Like twelve?

Amanda: So in year 2000, no, well, I graduated in 20-, or 2007, so eighteen – like thirteen or fourteen.

Sarah: Yeah! Okay!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Sure! I mean, if you’re going to come of age during a time of romance, horny paranormal is a good time.

Amanda: Yeah. And, but the Laurell K. Hamiltons never, never got binned. Never, never were relegated to the bin. They always had a spot on my mom’s shelf. This was pre Goodreads, so I remember her having, like, a spreadsheet of what books were coming out when. Was it a hardcover release? Like, she was in it. But I have this, like, memory of, I had moved my bed around, and I just remember that sort of like mess that I’ve created in my room and just sitting there and reading these books, and at first, like, I’m scandalized of, like, Oh my God, my mom’s reading this stuff and now I’m reading it? But you kind of like lean into it. I preferred the, the Merry Gentry series over the Anita Blake series.

Sarah: Same.

Amanda: Yeah. Merry Gentry, I, I, Frost, loved Frost and Sholto, the guy with the tentacles in his stomach. Those were my fav- – [laughs]

Sarah: I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to fuck him! Like, she’d be like, I can’t; I can’t get past the tentacles. And I’m like, But why not?

Amanda: Come on!

Sarah: Come on now; get with the program.

Amanda: So seeing this book reviewed, I was like, Oh my God. This takes me back –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: – to – [laughs] – I mean, this was like what I was consuming as my entry into romance, and now, like, monster-fucking, fairy-fucking is all –

Sarah: Tentacles, not a problem. Yeah.

Amanda: – over the place.

Sarah: Tentacles all the way down.

Amanda: So yeah, this was the review for the first book in the series. I think I tapped out around book four or five…

Sarah: That’s where I tapped out, because I was like, This isn’t actually going anywhere. This is just – it becomes like a Round Robin of fucking, and I’m like, This is very boring? I mean, Eileen, Anita Blake – I have to look up who this was in the comments, but someone called Anita Blake in the comments of Smart Bitches ages ago, maybe fifteen years ago, she became, she lost being a character and became a glistening orifice.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: And that’s so disgusting but accurate of what happened to Anita Blake as a character. She used to be so dorky. Like, she would match her polo shirt and her socks; she wore a fanny pack. Those books scared the shit out of me, and then like by about five or six I was like, Eh, this is boring. I don’t care.

Amanda: Yeah, I tapped out for, for Merry Gentry when they started being like, Oh, your one baby can have multiple fathers or something like that, where it’s like, who’s going to impregnate her? And it’s actually like, everybody can! And I was like, ‘kay. Okay! [Laughs]

Sarah: But this first book? This first book was actually really fucking good! Like, I was in this one!

Amanda: It slapped! Oh my God!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: Okay, so I looked –

Sarah: They only gave it four stars! Who are these bozos?

Amanda: I mean, on Goodreads I went back; I was like, Did I review this on Goodreads? And I sure did. I didn’t write a review, but I gave it four out of five stars…

Sarah: Well, you agree with RT then!

Amanda: Yeah! I mean, it’s good! I feel like if you don’t know Laurell K. Hamilton, ‘cause I think Anita Blake came out first?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: It’s a little jarring, right? Like, I remember being sort of jarred by how much sexual content was in it? It just wasn’t what I was expecting, being unfamiliar with Hamilton’s books, and I can see people who jumped into it and, you know, early 2000s paranormals can get very sexy, but this is kind of like on another level.

Sarah: The, the whole premise of this book is You Must Fuck.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, you are commanded and required to go to Bone Town a lot, with a lot of people.

Amanda: I’d be very curious with the current era of, like, romantasy and romantasy readers, if they have, if they would pick this up and what they would think about this.

Sarah: Ooh.

Amanda: ‘Cause this is like a precursor, in my opinion, to, like, a Why Choose romance, too, which –

Sarah: Oh, absolutely, this is, this is a predecessor of Why Choose, and it’s a predecessor of monster-fucking!

Amanda: So I’m, yeah, I would be curious to see what a person newer to the genre who likes sort of more erotic, Why Choose, you know, fae/monster sex, like, what they would – [laughs] – pick up A Kiss of Shadows? So if there are any listeners who fit into that mold –

Sarah: Yeah, if you’re a romantasy fan, we want to know if you’ve read A Kiss of Shadows and what you thought. The sad thing about this is that this book sets up so much good stuff, and it doesn’t finish what it starts.

Amanda: I mean, that’s the problem with Anita Blake. [Laughs] Right?

Sarah: Yeah, it’s, it’s a known issue. It’s a –

Amanda: But I’ll read the, I’ll read the review.

Sarah: Yes, please!

Amanda: So it’s A Kiss of Shadows, Laurell K. Hamilton, four stars.

>> This bestselling author wields her imaginative pen to create a suspenseful tale of Meredith Nic Essus –

Is that how you…

Sarah: I always pronounced it Nic Essus? And also that comma after –

Amanda: Nic Essus.

Sarah: – comma after create doesn’t need to be there.

Amanda: No, it doesn’t.

>> – a runaway Seelie princess earning her living as a private detective. After escaping the royal court and successfully hiding her true identity for three years, she’s less than thrilled when she’s recognized during an undercover operation gone unexpectedly awry and, as she had anticipated, her life is immediately endangered. To her surprise, however, her aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness, sends her chief bodyguard to assure her niece’s safe return to the Unseelie Court. Just why has the queen suddenly become her protector instead of her enemy?

>> Ms. Hamilton casts an irresistible erotic sheen over the enduring appeal of mythology and magic and what promises to be another fabulous series.

Sarah: Is it a glistening sheen?

Amanda: It’s a glistening erotic sheen.

Sarah: Yes. I just want to say that if she had started this story at the beginning of those three years where Meredith is a PI and she’s trying to hide that she is fae, and she’s trying not to get found out, and, you know, if you are fae you can usually see all the other fae creatures, like, I would have read a series about this princess hiding as a private investigator and solving mysteries while trying not to get found out. Like, if she had started this during the beginning of those three years of her being a PI, I would have been so into this as well.

Amanda: Also, I wanted to check to see if Anita Blake was still going? And I think it is?

Sarah: No, it is not!

Oh dear God.

Amanda: In 2023. Unless there’s not another one planned, I don’t see, like, an announcement or anything, it, two years ago. Less than two years ago, book thirty came out.

Sarah: The new covers? I mean, I understand that the original Anita Blake covers are very much a product of their time, but the new covers look like contemporary romances.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Like, Laurell K. Hamilton’s Guilty Pleasures, which is book one of the Anita Blake series, it’s just a pair of very red lips, like, that are exhaling smoke, and then Guilty Pleasures is in the part. Like, this is a very slapped-together cover, and it looks like contemporary romance.

Amanda: And this series has been going for thirty years? The first book came out in 1993.

Sarah: I feel so old. I just –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: I feel so old. I’ve told you about reading the early Anita Blakes when they were loaned to me and I worked at a summer camp that was Sabbath-observant? I told you about this, right? Where –

Amanda: I don’t know!

Sarah: Well, it was, it was Sabbath-observant, so I’m not touching light switches, and I can’t do my job, ‘cause my job was on the computer, so, like, Friday night to Saturday night after sundown, I would really have nothing to do but read and eat and nap and try to stay out of everybody’s way, ‘cause I worked in the office, where there was air conditioning. I – so we’re in a pine forest, we’re in upstate New York, it’s dark, and we’re not turning the lights on, because it’s Shabbat, and the way that I would get around this is I would leave my bathroom light on, and then I would open the door to have the light, and then I’d just shut the door again when I was ready to go to bed. I slept with the bathroom door open, ‘cause those books scared the shit out of me. I was in a pine forest, the pine trees that, not only do pine trees spit on you, but they creak and crackle, and I’m, like, sitting outside in the summer with, like, little lightning bugs and creaking trees, and I’m like, I’m so scared right now, oh my God.

[Laughter]

Sarah: What’s in the trees? It’s coming to get me! [Laughs]

So the book that I picked, I just wanted the opportunity to read this aloud, because I’m not ninety percent sure that this was not meant to be read aloud, ever.

But before we move on, I do have a question I forgot to ask: why is the fairy-fucking book in Science Fiction? This is Science Fiction; why is that book in Science Fiction? They know what fantasy is. Why is it in Sci-fi?

Amanda: ‘Cause I don’t think they have a Fantasy section. Like, there’s an Anne Bishop in here, too.

Sarah: I know! The, The Invisible Ring by Anne Bishop is in here. It’s weird! This is very weird.

Amanda: I think it just became like a catch-all? ‘Cause sci-fi only is limited to one page, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: There are only six reviews.

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: So I think if they did, like, split them. Now it looks like The Wings of Love is also fantasy? Why don’t they just call this Fantasy if there’s one sci-fi book?

Sarah: There’s a book reviewed here that we’ll talk about in the ads where the heroine is convinced the hero was abducted by aliens? That’s science fiction. That’s not fantasy.

Amanda: Yeah, it looks like maybe two sci-fi, four fantasy, or three and three. But, I mean, you could have just titled it Sci-Fi/Fantasy Romance. I don’t know. We know that the way they organize things –

Sarah: Very fluid.

Amanda: – in this magazine – yeah – it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Sarah: I also want to point out that of these six reviews, we’ve got Meredith Nic Essus; we’ve got characters named Jared, the Red-Jeweled Warlord; and we’ve got Bobbi Vandenberg and Cody Walker alongside – all right. E-I-V-A-U-N-E-E: Ee-von-ee? I’m going to go with Eye-von-ee Dorlan, and then, okay – [laughs] – Zsat’t’lac? Z-S-A-T-apostrophe-T-apostrophe- – there’s two apostrophes; you know it’s fantasy – [laughs more] – and then we got Sean MacDonagh.

And then we have this one, which I isolated because it’s a four-and-a-half-star Top Pick Gold. the Gates of Hell by Susan Sizemore from a public, publisher named Speculation Press? This is an RT Top Pick Gold! It’s a, it’s a TPG. I’m going to screw up all of these names; I’m just telling you now.

Amanda: Yeah. Good luck, Godspeed.

Sarah: Here we – yeah, Godspeed.

>> Captain Pyr Dhakynn Kaddani is one of the People.

Capital P.

>> He is also a pirate and a telepath with extraordinary hearing and strength, none of which prevents his being fatally poisoned with stralisara.

No idea what that is.

>> Physician and wife of Captain Merk-, Merkrates of the United Systems ship Tigris, Roxanne –

[Laughs] Sorry, Roxanne! Sorry, Roxanne.

>> – Roxanne is also a Kaltiri, a telepath who can heal.

I am three sentences in, no, two sent-, three sentences into this review.

>> On their journey to heal a planet overcome by plague, her ship is attacked and captured by slavers, but in a twist of fate, Pyr’s ship attacks the slaver! On board the slaver, he recognizes Roxy for a Kaltiri and claims healing from her, then claims all of her as well.

She’s married, my guy! She’s a wife of a Captain; what’re you doing?

>> Now begins their true adventure, the hunt for the origin of the plague and the fight to save the world!

>> Gates of Hell is science fiction at its best. It is a riveting story of violence, death, and sadness, but also love, romance, and laughter.

That’s a really tall order, all of those things; let’s be real.

Amanda: I just…in the chat.

Sarah: [Laughs] Oh my God, is that –

Amanda: Hat Watch is back, baby! Hat Watch is back!

Sarah: We got a hat. We got a good hat! Oo-hoo! Will you, will you please describe this incredible cover? Oh my goodness.

Amanda: Oh boy. Okay.

Sarah: This is colored pencil, right? This looks like a colored pencil drawing?

Amanda: So – [laughs] – the, the setting? There are these, like, large pillars that have this, like, prism effect; there’s two moons in the sky. There’s a church in the background made of stone, and I can’t tell if it’s red water or red sand, but a man is, like, levitating above it on this sort of disk, a gold disk of some sort, and he has on maybe jeans – I don’t know! – tucked into some boots, and he has this long, black duster coat on; long, brown hair; and he’s got this black hat, kind of fedora-esque, with a wide black brim and a white sort of strip around the middle…

Sarah: And he’s riding a magical Segway. It’s like a magic Segway! However you say that. Oh, and he has a weird – okay, either he’s got a lot of jewelry on his hip, or he’s holding, barely, some weird gun.

Amanda: So, like, the gun is on the outside of the coat.

Sarah: [Laughs] I know! Like he’s trying to put it in his pocket and he keeps missing.

Amanda: Yeah. It looks like there should be, like, a leg holster or a holster somewhere, but no, it just looks, it’s right on the coat! But, yeah, this was not what I – when you read the description, this was certainly not what –

Sarah: This is incredible.

Amanda: – expecting.

Sarah: I could, I could look at this for hours. I could look at this for hours, literally.

Amanda: There’s another Speculation Press title mentioned, and I’m curious if that’s the same cover treatment?

Sarah: Ooooh!

Amanda: Of Honor and Treason is the other book? I can barely see it, it’s so tiny on Goodreads. I don’t know if we can find a better one.

Sarah: Okay.

Amanda: Oh boy, okay. This one’s not as bad? Or weird. It’s just like people in a royal court, court all pointing at each other. [Laughs]

Sarah: Okay, there’s a sequel, though. There is a sequel called Of Duty and Death. I don’t know what’s going on there. But it’s costumed! It’s ver-, a lot of costumes going on here. There’s, like, off the –

Amanda: …costumes.

Sarah: These are, somebody went to the costume shop and then drew this cover. There’s, like, an off-the-shoulder gown with big ruffles on the top and a guy wearing a black wetsuit with a – I don’t even what’s on there – and then somebody’s wearing a really rumpled white shirt and some leather pants, but they look to be an alien, ‘cause they’ve got some sort of bone formation on their forehead, and they’re have a fight to the death with someone who is also muscular, smaller than them, and is wearing a skirt.

Amanda: Very Klingon-esque.

Sarah: It’s very – oh, wow. I, I hadn’t realized what a treasure trove this is. And then Of Honor and Treason, Of Honor and Treason, it looks like John Desalvo is sitting in that chair.

Amanda: They did John Desalvo.

Sarah: They did him dirty! And then –

Amanda: My goodness.

Sarah: – I don’t even know what’s going on. There’s a, somebody standing next to John Desalvo in the throne, and John Desalvo’s wearing a, a leather waistcoat and blue pants and some, like, work shoes. Behind him is a person with also that weird, the, the forehead bone stuff? And the hands – he doesn’t have hands. His arm kind of ends in just like a ham. [Laughs] It just, it’s just a ham.

Amanda: The perspectives look a little weird to me, ‘cause the guy sitting down in this throne, and then there’s like a guy kneeling –

Sarah: Right!

Amanda: – on one knee, but he is the same height kneeling almost as the guy sitting in the throne. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yes. So when they stand up next to each other it’s, someone’s going to feel a little inadequate; it’s going to be a problem.

For six reviews, this section was kind of a gift, I’ll be honest.

Amanda: We had to go hunting for it. Like, if we didn’t look up – [laughs] – these fucking covers –

Sarah: I know.

So moving, moving on to Inspirational, which is on page 81 of the PDF if you’re following along at home. We have a lot of publishers here, but they’re all, all the, instead of just being organized in some sort of order, they’re all listed by publisher, and they, they’re doing that thing where it’s like a paragraph. So what book did you pick?

Amanda: So I found most of these books to be womp-womp… But I picked the first book on the page by Bethany House; it’s called Serenity Bay by Bette Nordberg or Betty Nordberg? It’s four and a half stars.

>> Shy Patricia Koehler never dreamed an old maid of thirty-two would find –

Sarah: I saw that!

[Laughter]

Amanda: >> – find someone as wonderful as Dr. Russell Koehler. That is, until Russell begins controlling her life. Eventually his obsessiveness turns to abuse and he manipulates her into believing she is the one at fault.

>> This story starts with a great hook and delivers to the end. Though the subject matter is a painful one, the author never wavers in penning a moving tale with exceptional characterizations.

I know nothing about this book except this woman has a lot of insecurities about her age in relation to marriage, and then she marries a fucking asshole. That’s it. And this, if I wrote this review, this makes me want to never pick this book up.

Sarah: It is –

Amanda: …like, sliver of hope at the end of, like, oh, she has this controlling, abusive husband, but then she meets so-and-so or whatever. There’s no sort of light at the end of the tunnel in the review to signal Hey, things are going to get better and, you know, here’s a hint why or how.

Sarah: If this is a romance and it has a Romantic Times Top Pick four and a half star, where’s the romance in this review? And if there’s not a romance, if this is not a romance, then what’s it doing here?

Amanda: [Laughs] What’s it doing?

Sarah: What’s it doing here? Why are we looking at this? Yeah, that’s, that’s a lot. I saw that one; it’s like, Ohhh, Amanda’s going to notice that old maid at thirty-two. [Laughs] That’s just so wrong.

Amanda: Rah. But, like, I’m reading the Goodreads review, and on Goodreads they list this as a Christian fiction mystery, where –

Sarah: Well, that’s odd.

Amanda: So the, this is the Goodreads description:

>> Quaint island life in the Puget Sound offers everything Patricia Koehler desires for her husband and children, including the chance to share in the music of her beloved cello. But Patricia harbors a secret she can reveal to no one, until Susan drops into her life with a heart even larger than her love of life and laughter. But neither woman is prepared for the events set in motion when Patricia’s secret is revealed. Can Patricia trust her instincts, or will the sacrifice be too heavy to bear?

So this is a little bit more indicative of it’s not a romance, but she’s a woman who has children, terrible husband, loves music, and I think the secret is that she’s living in an abusive marriage, and then she meets this other woman who probably helps her escape that?

Sarah: What a weird book. Why is this here?

Amanda: I don’t know! It’s not, it’s not a romance, as indicated by, like, some of the –

Sarah: By the –

Amanda: – the Goodreads categories.

Sarah: – fundamental definition of the genre, seems not!

Amanda: It just seems unpleasant –

Sarah: Mm.

Amanda: – and maybe yours is a little better? Or maybe equally as unpleasant?

Sarah: So here is a review that is three stars, and I, I feel like this is one of those three-star reviews where they actually hated it, but they’re going to give it three stars and then, like, it’s like that, I keep forgetting her name, the woman who went viral for being a restaurant reviewer in, like, Wisconsin, and so she would talk about, like, the décor at the new Olive Garden and the baskets, and they were like, Okay, but that’s code for the food sucks, because she’s only writing about the décor, and I’m like, I don’t know this code, so I wouldn’t know that. So I think this is like code, but I don’t know the code.

This is later Sarah doing the editing. The reviewer’s name is Marilyn Hagerty. She’s from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and her viral review of the Olive Garden happened in 2012. According to Wikipedia, she is currently ninety-eight years of age. Cheers to you, Marilyn. Now, back to the conversation.

>> The Glorious Prodigal, three stars, by Gilbert Morris is the story of Leah Freeman and Stuart Winslow, a good girl who wants to tame a bad boy.

Again, sentence structure.

>> But after years of suffering Stuart’s infidelity, Leah must endure an even great –

Great, well, it’s supposed to be greater, but the R is missing.

>> – tragedy, one that pulls her from her faith. Stuart also battles his own demons, but his toughest challenge is winning back Leah’s trust and love.

>> Mr. Morris’s story needs to be –

[Laughs] This is so cold.

>> Mr. Morris’s story needs a little more work to be believable for this reviewer. Historical info seems to jolt the reader from the already limited flow of the story. However, fans of this saga will devour the latest in the House of Winslow series.

Like, this book sucked, but fans’ll like it? Okay!

Amanda: Also, I’m so sorry, but I can’t picture anyone named Stuart being a bad boy.

Sarah: That was my, I, thank you. I had a note about that, and I was about to say, Can we just talk about the idea of a bad boy named Stuart Winslow?

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, here comes Stuart! Mm-mm!

Amanda: If you don’t like…or anything, for that matter. I am not – [laughs] – I’m not one of those people who believes it’s better to be nice? So I don’t get sort of being like a mealy-mouthed reviewer about things, and so this drives me nuts. Like, unless RT has a sort of style where, you know, you have to review it positively or at least neutrally, like –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – they won’t really publish an outright scathing review? That’s one thing, but, you know, for example, like, I do some reviews for BookPage, and they only publish good reviews.

Sarah: Yes, you’ve mentioned that. However, if you’re like, I hate this! They’re like, That’s okay!

Amanda: Yeah! And I still get, like, a kill fee for my time, but if I did not like a book and I feel strongly that there’s nothing good I can say about it or, you know, I don’t feel good about giving it a positive review, that’s fine! It’s off the table. I can, I – [laughs] – books on – I had a friend recently say to me, and I thought it was the biggest compliment where she said that the, the biggest thing that she likes about me is how easily I can say no.

Sarah: That is, that is a very big compliment, actually! I, I’m, I am very sorry to have to show you the cover for – I didn’t look it up before this moment. It’s amazing. [Laughs] Okay. So Stuart Winslow, I’m assum-, I mean, you have to assume this is Stuart! All right. Okay. So we got a photograph of a woman in a period gown, and her hair is, like, up, but it looks like the kind of hair up when you’re, like, about to do something really grotty, and you just want to put your hair in like a, an emergency bun.

Amanda: It also looks a little crispy.

Sarah: Yes, it does look a little crispy fried, and below her in her skirt is like a vignette of a bunch of people dancing – [laughs] – and then front and center is a guy with a pencil-thin mustache and a suit playing the violin, looking like the opposite of a bad boy.

Amanda: I’m assuming that’s supposed to be Stuart.

Sarah: I mean, I, I, I hope so? [Laughs] Wow. Storing, outstanding story of faith and forgiveness. Nobody mentioned the violin. Like, I’m, I’m a little mad.

Amanda: Which is interesting: no one mentioned the violin, and in the book that I picked, the main character loves playing the cello, which also –

Sarah: Nope!

Amanda: – was not mentioned. [Laughs]

Sarah: Nah. That’s, that’s what it sounds like: Yeah, you’ve got to give the heroine a hobby. She can’t just be all about the hero; you’ve got to give her a hobby so you get a cello or violin or photography or whatever. Give her, give her something other than the guy, you know. A full life: one hobby.

So next is Mainstream Fiction reviews, which is divided up – this is so weird – it’s divided up into Mainstream Romance and Mainstream Fiction. There are two books in Mainstream Fiction, and they are both look to be from Black publishers. So okay. No explanation of any of this.

Amanda: But they also call out – I think we’ve been through this before that – multicultural –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – if it’s, you know.

Sarah: Yeah, and there’s two sets of multicultural, in case you’re, you’re thinking, Oh, that means Black. No! Because there’s also the Encanto line, and there’s a lot of books that are titled in English and in Spanish.

The book I picked is page 86. It is by Adrianne or Adrianne Byrd – I apologize if I’m saying that wrong. And it is called Love’s Deception. It’s four and a half stars Top Pick; it’s a TP. It’s from the BET/Arabesque line, and it’s a contemporary romance (multicultural). And this review is titled – by me – “Things That Only Happen in Romance Novels and Movies.” Here we go.

>> Driven by the guilt she feels over her failure to make amends with her father before his death, Carissa becomes CJ Cartel, president of Cartel Enterprises. When Travis Edwards, owner of the latest company she is acquiring, has a heart attack during a confrontation in her office, she feels awful. Nathan Edwards was a child when his father Travis Edwards deserted him and his mother. When he learns that his father is in the hospital, it is with mixed emotions that he goes to Atlanta to see him. Carissa, meanwhile, feels responsible for Travis and informs the hospital staff that she is his fiancée. Believing the ruse, Nathan fights the attraction he feels.

So she has told the hospital that this guy whose company she was about to take over, who had a heart attack, is her fiancé, and his son has hot pants for her but is trying not to because that his dad, his comatose dad’s fiancée. Okay.

>> Their romance develops when Carissa admits the truth, but she knows things will never be right until she comes clean about her part in Travis’s condition.

>> Love’s –

Amanda: She didn’t do anything wrong!

Sarah: If he had a massive heart attack, unless she was, like, injecting him with something, then it, it – okay.

>> Love’s Deception is a real page-turner. Amidst the past betrayals and current lies, Nathan and Carissa learn to let the past go and follow their hearts. The characters were so wonderful that I hated for the story to end!

Exclamation point. Those are all things that only happen in romance novels and books.

Amanda: Look at these book prices, huh? Six bucks.

Sarah: Two hundred fifty pages for six dollars. Wow.

Amanda: That’s a bargain! That’s a steal!

I picked the review right below that one –

Sarah: Ah!

Amanda: – on page 86, and it’s three stars. I thought it started out great, and then it went downhill, ‘cause I was on board –

Sarah: This title is a place you would live!

Amanda: …and it’s called Valley of Hemlock by Eden Reed.

>> Eden Reed has written a Gothic suspense wonderfully reminiscent of a Charlotte Bronte novel. Valley of Hemlock will keep you guessing until the last page is turned.

>> Meredith Barlow is out of step with the rest of society. A successful romance writer, she travels the countryside alone in a motorcar named Lucille and has no interest in settling down to marry.

Beautiful.

Sarah: With you!

Amanda: Love this for her.

Sarah: Love this for her. Valley of Hemlock sounds like a great place.

Amanda: >> Until her latest adventure takes her to Boothe House, she fully expects to spend her life alone and in peace penning her stories. At the rundown –

What? Oh –

>> At the rundown, supposedly haunted mansion, she meets Eric, the handsome but moody lord of the house and his amiable brother Graham Ferguson.

>> Meredith certainly finds plenty to pique her interest, but Meredith would do well to remember that curiosity killed the cat. Join her on her journey into love and danger, but beware, you may be unable to put this book down until it is finished.

Why is this three stars? Why did you only rate this three stars?

Sarah: That’s so different from the other three-star review that I read that was like, This, this was very boring and I didn’t like it, but if you’re a fan of the series you’ll like it a lot. Like, that was the violin bad boy named Stuart. Like, what? This isn’t a three-star –

Amanda: …The cool Meredith who’s just living her best single life with a sweet car is roped into matrimony with a real loser? Like, what is the problem?

Sarah: I don’t know.

Amanda: So…need more.

Sarah: Definitely. Definitely needs more. These, a lot of these read like, I’m going to mention this book, but I’m not going to say anything about it. I’m just going to summarize it and move on. Like, it’s very minimal. I don’t get it.

Amanda: Yeah. Three stars; trust me, bro. It’s okay.

Sarah: All right! Next up is Mystery/Suspense! Mystery and Suspense, new books for October. I also want to point out that we have a grading rubric here. If you look at PDF page 96, five stars: extraordinary, rare, groundbreaking books that transcend the genre, which, for the record, is one of my least favorite phrases, because you’re not actually saying anything. Again, that’s a Not Like Other Girls phrase; you are insulting everything else by saying it transcends the genre. Way, in what way does it transcend the genre? Like, what are you trying to say? Hate that phrase.

Four and a half stars Gold Medal with Special Mention. Four and a half stars: exceptional. Four stars: excellent. That’s way too many; that’s just too many. Three stars: very good. Two stars: good. One star: Acceptable. So there’s not even like a, No, this book kind of stinks. Not even.

Amanda: No.

Sarah: Okay.

Amanda: …like a book I just talked about, Valley of Hemlock, was Gothic suspense, but that one got shelved in Mainstream Fiction, and now we’re moving on to Mystery and Thriller!

Sarah: Why wasn’t it there?

Amanda: Which has a lot of books that are labeled suspense!

Sarah: Yeah. Oh yeah. So what did you pick in the mysteries?

Amanda: So I picked, on page 96, a book called Film Strip by Nancy Bartholomew.

Sarah: Right next to it is a book called Drag Strip about a stripper and a new girl. So we got Drag Strip, Film Strip –

Amanda: Turkey, Turkey Day Murder!

Sarah: And Christmas Cookie Murder. So we’ve got the –

Amanda: Same author.

Sarah: Okay! Sure!

Amanda: Oh wait! They’re two books in the same series; Film Strip and Drag Strip are in the same series, and then Turkey Day Murder and Christmas Cookie Murder are both in the same series.

Sarah: I’m sorry to say, authors, you thought that your career was sustainable by a three-, four-book ser- – I’m sorry; we’re going to need two books a month now. [Laughs] And this is 2000, before you could use AI to do that!

Amanda: What a weird thing to do. [Laughs]

Sarah: Ooh.

Amanda: I just realized that. Okay, so Film Strip by Nancy Bartholomew is four and a half stars. It’s listed as an amateur sleuth series, romantic.

>> The murder of visiting porn star Venus Lovemotion is –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: >> – literally a pain in exotic dancer Sierra Lavotini’s butt. The shot that kills Venus winds up hitting Sierra in her derriere. One murder is bad, but two is worse when Frosty Licks, a second visiting “movie star” –

In quotes.

>> – is also killed.

Sarah: [Squeaks]

Amanda: >> Sierra becomes worried about both the remaining girls and the fate of the Tiffany Club.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Amanda: >> Panama City Homicide Detective John Nailor –

Sarah: Nailor! No!

[Laughter]

Amanda: >> …in this case.

Oh, I bet.

>> For months, John and Sierra have been dancing their way towards consummating their burgeoning relationship. All the evidence seems to point towards Sierra’s usual nemesis Marla as the killer, but Sierra doubts it. Marla doesn’t have the requisite brain.

Sarah: Jesus Christ!

[Laughter]

Amanda: >> Mob types were also hanging around the dead girls and, and the club. Is this all part of some kind of mob racket?

Sarah: I’m crying.

Amanda: >> With John –

[Laughs]

>> With, with John focused on Marla as the quarry, Sierra knows it is up to her and her unorthodox “war council” to get to the truth. Considering Sierra’s council consists of two elderly women, one with serious psychotic issues and a hairless Chihuahua, things are bound to get a little sticky.

>> Warning: uncontrollable laughter is a surefire side effect of reading one of Nancy Bartholomew’s books. The Sierra Lavotini series is original, highly amusing, and definitely not to be missed.

Sarah: [Laughs] Do you think, do you think Sierra Lavotini knows Bubbles Yablonsky?

Amanda: I was just thinking about Bubbles!

Sarah: [Laughs] I’m sorry! Venus Lovemotion and Frosty Licks! Oh God!

Amanda: Frosty Licks, Venus Lovemotion, and then John Nailor.

Sarah: Oh God, I’m crying. I need to wipe my eyes. That was incredible. Thank you for that. Wow.

Amanda: Yes, but it looks like there’s four books in the series, and she’s, like, a stripper-slash –

Sarah: Sleuth.

Amanda: – sleuth.

Sarah: Fuck yeah! I love it! That’s great!

Amanda: [Laughs] In book four, called Strip Poker – this all takes place in Florida, which is not a surprise.

Sarah: No. No, no, least surprising thing I’ve heard today.

Amanda: There’s a locale in book four called Big Mike’s House of Booty.

Sarah: I should have swallowed my tea before –

[Laughter]

Sarah: – you finished that sentence! I almost just choked! Big Mike’s House of Booty! I – wow. I’m impressed! Oh my God, I’m crying. Okay.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you for that. That has given me such joy.

Amanda: You’re welcome.

Sarah: Okay.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Whoo!

So the book that I chose is not going to live up to that. It’s Dead, Dead in the Pumpkin Patch on page, PDF page 97. It is by Connie Feddersen. Now, I went to look up the cover, and I’ve, I’m going to put this in the, I’ll put this in the visual aids, but I found this instead. It’s a little Halloween card with five little jack o’lanterns with little green legs and arms like the vines, and they’re all playing poker, and they’re very cute!

Amanda: That is very adorable.

Sarah: So here – woohoo – is the cover for Dead in the Pumpkin Patch. I really think that the central part of this image is her butt.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, there’s this blonde woman in a blue dress and slippers face down in front of a stack of hay bales with a cat and a scarecrow and a crow, but just the way that the whole illustration is framed, the thing that you look at is her butt!

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: This is also from the same author who did – you know, I am sensing a theme –

Amanda: [Indistinct]

Sarah: – yes, this one: Dead in the Cellar, again with an ass. So I think that her whole cover motif is booty, which is fine. You can talk to Big Mike. Very important.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: So this is Dead in the Pumpkin Patch by Connie Feddersen, amateur sleuth, series, humorous, romantic, four stars.

>> With two weeks to go until her due date, Amanda Hazard Thorn isn’t comfortable enough to get into trouble, much to the relief of her hubby, Sheriff Nick Thorn. Amanda has been elected Pumpkin Queen – very fitting since she’s shaped like one –

Ow.

>> – at a festival in Vamoose, and she’s going out to Nettie Jarvis’s place to pick some pumpkins. Nettie also has a little black book that she wants Amanda to hold onto for safekeeping.

That’s good. Give your little black book to the pregnant lady; make her vulnerable; it’s fine.

>> Amanda arrives at Nettie’s only to find her dead in the pumpkin patch. Pregnant or not, Amanda is not about to sit back, so she looks for the little black book and investigates Nettie’s past. It soon becomes a race against time to see if Amanda will solve the crime or give birth first.

>> Catching up with Nick and Amanda and the other residents of Vamoose is like visiting with old friends. The loving, peppery relationship between the two is always a joy to read about.

Now, is this like when that reviewer talks about the décor instead of the food? Because she talks about the marriage but not at all about the mystery. Like, is the mystery just, like, super obvious and not worth your time? Because you’re in the Mystery section; I would think you’d talk about the mystery a little bit. But no, it’s just about their peppery relationship.

Amanda: So I think, What does that mean? What is a peppery relationship mean? It means irritable and sharp-tongued if you’re referring to people, and that sounds miserable.

Sarah: That sounds terrible! We just read a book about a hero like that, and he was not good, and the her-, heroine left his ass. Oy. Oh boy.

Amanda: …relationship.

Sarah: So I, I, next up is Series, and Series is where we usually find the lowest grades, ‘cause there are so many of them. But I honestly, when I’m scrolling, I look at the summary page and I sound like I’m gambling: Give me some ones, give me some ones. I want some ones. Nope! No ones.

Amanda: [Laughs] There’s none, yeah.

Sarah: None! But I didn’t know this – I’m sure someone who is more fluent in the history of a lot of publishing lines than I am – did you notice on the summary page, we’ve got Harlequin, we’ve got Silhouette, and we have Zebra Bouquet! I didn’t either!

Amanda: …Series is pretty minimal.

Sarah: Yeah. Mine too, but wow! That’s cool! So I, I picked a Zebra Bouquet book ‘cause I was curious about it. On page 111. Okay, that’s a title; that’s a title; that’s a title. Where – oh, there it is! It’s one paragraph, and it’s hard to read. My bad. Okay.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Zebra Bouquet published Colleen Faulkner’s Tempting Zack. My comment, before we start this review, is Fuck you, Zack.

>> Colleen Faulkner has penned a cozy read with strong, realistic characters in Tempting Zack, the second installment of her Bachelors Incorporated series. He has an acute dislike of career women since his ex-wife abandoned him and their daughter year, years before. When this bachelor dad begins to fall for the lovely new doctor in town, he puts up quite a struggle before admitting that it is possible for love to overcome even his fears.

That is the review. Fuck you, Zack! That’s the, that’s the thing about romance that I have never understood: men in romances are allowed to judge an entire population of people based on the actions of one. Like, if one woman breaks his heart, he’s allowed to hate all women forever, and, like, no! Absolutely not!

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: What the hell? Yeah, so fuck you, Zack. What did you pick?

Amanda: So I picked, on page 110, so the page above yours, the Silhouette Romance, and the Snowbound Sweetheart by Judy Christenberry, and it got two stars.

Sarah: Scandalous!

Amanda: I know!

>> A night in each other’s arms during a snowstorm has him hoping for a thaw from this snow queen, who reminds him of his ex-wife. Yet somehow he is sure that there’s a blaze of passion underneath all that frosty attitude. Although Judy Christenberry’s heroine in Snowbound Sweetheart is just too hotheaded and rude to create much sympathy, the book has some steamy moments in the imagination of the hero.

Look, I’m sorry. I’m, I’m going to be a girl’s girl here and it’s like, if she’s hotheaded and rude, he probably gave her a reason to be hotheaded and rude.

Sarah: I mean, she could sit with us.

Amanda: Yeah. And the, I don’t know his relationship to his ex-wife, but dating someone or sleeping with someone because they remind you of your ex-wife?

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: I don’t know if that’s a good basis for a relationship either.

Sarah: And he’s got a matched set of luggage, and he’s not unpacking any of it. Nope!

Amanda: I’m Team Snow Queen on this one.

Sarah: Hundred percent. I, whatever her name is –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Wait! There’s no names!

Amanda: No names!

Sarah: There’s no – [laughs] – there’s no names in these reviews; it’s just she and he! Oh my God, there’s no names!

Amanda: Let’s see if the book description has a –

Sarah: Judy Christenberry. Wait a minute, I have read a book by her. Who’s the Daddy? I read a Judy Christenberry called Who’s the Daddy? Oh. My. God. All right, I remember this book. The penny has just dropped; I am sure you heard it. I reviewed this book in 2006; that’s how old this is. Basically, Who – [laughs] – Who’s the Daddy?, the heroine is pregnant, and she has amnesia, so she doesn’t know who the dad of her baby is, and she has a –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: and she – [laughs] – she has a housekeeper who she calls Lambie. It’s very silly. I will, I will, I will link to this incredible review of Who’s the Daddy? Okay, so that’s Judy Christenberry. What does the, what does Snowbound Sweetheart look like?

Amanda: I’m, okay, so I looked up the book description, and this makes me on her side even more. So:

>> Spending the night with a sexy, bossy cowboy had not been Lindsay Crawford’s idea, but when a storm left her snowbound with gruff Gil Daniels, she had to be practical. And though his kisses made her quite warm, nothing happened! Trouble was, Lindsay’s big, strong brothers didn’t believe them. They recognized the look in Lindsay’s eyes and, more important, the one in Gil’s. Luckily, they respected him enough to hold off on the shotgun and let him do the right thing, but Lindsay wouldn’t marry because it was “right.” She wanted true love, because then the walls of Jericho might come crashing down.

Sarah: What?!

Amanda: Her shitty brothers think they slept together. This is a contemporary romance. Her shitty brothers think they slept together and are insisting that they get married because they slept together in a snowstorm, even though they didn’t, and the heroine is like, Fuck you guys; I’m not doing that.

Sarah: And in the review he, he has to, Gil has to melt the ice queen.

Amanda: And she’s rude and hotheaded. I would be rude and hotheaded too.

Sarah: Girl, seriously. She needs to come sit with us ‘cause all those men suck.

Amanda: Fuck those dudes. [Laughs]

Sarah: So then we move into a truly incredible section that we have never encountered before.

Amanda: I didn’t know what to do here.

Sarah: [Laughs] Your comment is so funny! She wrote, Sarah, what the hell are these?

Amanda: [Laughs] I was like, There’s one with a forced bayou wedding? What the Lana Del Rey?

Sarah: [Laughs] So the electronic book reviews – this is 2000 – what are these publishers? We have starpublications.com, awe-struck.net, LTDBooks, and dreams-unlimited.com. Super weird. So I –

Amanda: …still around.

Sarah: – I picked –

Amanda: …so, like –

Sarah: – I picked the one single solitary one-star review in this magazine, I’m pretty sure. Young Adult mystery The Keeper by M. Ford, and the publisher is listed as www.starpublications. This is so silly. Like, it sounds like it would be an outstanding CW drama. Okay, like, someone is –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – if somebody is a CW producer and you’re thinking, Wow, I really want to bring back, you know, Gossip Tree Hill, whatever, you want these.

>> Lindsay Welks knows there is something different about Ethan Carpenter, something mysterious. But she needs his help to become cheerleading captain and gain the popularity and recognition that will allow her to rise above the pain caused by her clueless mother and abusive stepfather.

I’m sorry, cheerleading and popularity are not going to help you there, but okay. I mean, maybe they will; I could be wrong.

>> But things keep getting in her way, like her rival, and the fact that every boy she goes out with winds up dead.

Amanda: A shame.

Sarah: Truly. When Ethan steps in to pick up the pieces, Lindsay soon realizes that many of the things she has taken for granted are not what they seemed at all.

>> This story –

This story – spleer – wow.

>> This story explores serious issues: teen rivalry, sex abuse, and murder –

One of these things is not like the other! Are – [laughs] –

>> – and are addressed for young adults. But it’s erroneously rated G by the publisher. While there is a developing talent underlying the text, the book reminds me of a slasher movie.

Well, of course it does! It’s a slasher story! Every boy she dates ends up dead? And no one’s concerned. It’s really, what we’re really focused on here is cheerleading captain. You know how all the time we’re like, You know, if there’s something you’re looking for in romance and you’re not finding it from trad pub, it’s probably with self-pub and with indie authors?

Amanda: Oh, one hundred percent!

Sarah: So what exactly are you going to find with these digital presses here? Like, just completely bonkers shit.

Amanda: Yeah! Well, I mean, when, like, erotica first was popping off –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: – you had, like, Samhain and Ellora’s Cave, which is, like, digital only.

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: But a lot of sort of like experimental romances, especially stuff that’s, like, experimental and sexual content?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: Like, dark romance and monster romance, like that usually gets its start in indie pub, self-pub, that sort of thing. But it’s also wild to, you know, when I went to Lovestruck, for example, they have, like, monster romance right on the shelf face out. There was one with, like, a gargoyle, and I’m like, So interesting –

Sarah: Yep!

Amanda: – how far we’ve come. [Laughs]

Sarah: Just imagine, like back in the day when digital presses started showing up, there was this huge divide among romance writers about, like, But, they’re not real books, and they’re not real authors, and they don’t count, and they can’t be in RWA, and then they can’t be in PAN or whatever special club it was. And if you went back to them and be like, Listen, someday there’s going to be indie pub doing better than trad pub, and it’s going to be in bookstores, and there’s going to be gargoyles getting fucked, so just calm down. The future is a different place.

[Laughter]

Sarah: Please take a chill.

So these were not the most inspiring books that I’ve ever looked at in an issue, but they, what I am very excited to have bumped into, the fairy-fucking book.

Amanda: [Laughs] Yeah, that was such a delight to see that one.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Amanda: See its review and revisit my own nostalgia for Merry Gentry.

Sarah: I really think that there is, this should be a word for when you have read a book and you have so much fondness for it because of nostalgia that you can go back and read it and still be partially of the perspective of who you were then. Whereas if that same book was published now to a contemporary audience you would be like, What the fuck is this? What is this? It’s racist –

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: – it’s reductive; it’s like, what is happening here? But, you know, when you look at it with nostalgia, it’s like, yes! Yes, it is racist; yes, it is reductive; and it was so close to me twenty-five years ago, it meant so much to me at that time. There needs to be like a word for that, like the gloss of nostalgia. Just, it, yes, you can acknowledge all the things that are wrong with it, but there are books like, I will go down defending Silver Angel as a book I love to read, but a book that I don’t recommend! [Laughs]

Amanda: I bet, like, the Germans have a word for it.

Sarah: Yes, they do. JF Hobbit, if you’re listening, can you tell us, tell us what the German word is. I know you’re teaching and learning German. There’s got to be a German word. Could you let us know?

Amanda: Well, we –

Sarah: [Laughs] Thank you!

Amanda: – we’re just having this discussion in the Slack, too, ‘cause we were doing Rec League stuff for, like, feminist fantasy –

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: – and Sneezy suggested, like, Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas series, which I loved at the time.

Sarah: Yes.

Amanda: But I had gone and revisited that, I think in the last five years of, of picking that back up, and then I’m like, Wow, this is kind of horrifying, sort of like the racist subtext involved and, like, just the sheer amount of sexual assault used to control women –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – in that book, and it’s like, you know, I don’t know if I would necessarily reread it with the same sort of like partitioning of –

Sarah: That’s a good word for it.

Amanda: – always enjoy it at this age.

Sarah: Totally a partition; that’s a good word.

Amanda: But yeah, I don’t think I would recommend it now at all.

Sarah: Mm. No.

Amanda: But for when I picked it up at the age that I picked it up and sort of the environment in how I picked it up?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Amanda: Of, like, wanting a certain genre and, you know, my age and plus awareness of the political environment –

Sarah: Yep.

Amanda: – as opposed to the age I am now, awareness of the political environment, obviously being older and wiser. But yeah, I mean, I really loved the book for its time, but that is not something that I would ever put in my recommend category.

Sarah: No. And you didn’t enjoy it when you went back to it. Like, there are books that I loved and I went back, and I was like, Past Sarah, can we have a talk? Why, what, what, what happened here? Like –

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: – there are some that, you know, I can jump that partition, as you said. The thing about The Iron Duke that’s so interesting is that was one of the first steampunk books published by a publisher, and I remember at the time people trying to tell other people what steampunk was.

Amanda: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, everyone was like, What’s steampunk? And there was a cosplay that was steampunk, but what did that mean for books? And people were actually trying to define it, much like they do now with rrromantasy.

Amanda: I think for The Iron Duke in particular, one of the reasons why I did like it so much is it was one of the first heroines that I remember just being, like, angry.

Sarah: Oh, she’s mad.

Amanda: She’s mad. She’s mad at the world, she’s pissed, she doesn’t like anyone, and I really enjoyed that. And I want more, like, like, feral, angry women. Like, I don’t have to be nice to you, and I’m not going to be nice to you –

Sarah: Nope.

Amanda: – and just sort of having that energy, and I was fascinated by it, because, you know, in a lot of that era of paranormal and fantasy, you weren’t getting a lot of angry heroines. It was just like most of the time like a human woman and, like, a powerful hero and sort of that giant power imbalance; like, physically, too. And just in, you know, sexism –

Sarah: Yeah.

Amanda: – like, it was nice to see, you know, a woman who sort of embraced her anger and wasn’t afraid to be rude!

Sarah: Yeah, and wasn’t, didn’t dim her anger out of deference to the hero? It was just like, No, I’m pissed. I’m pissed at you; I’m pissed at them; I’m just pissed. Deal! Fucking deal. That is very refreshing, I agree.

Amanda: Yeah.

Sarah: Well, let’s take a little break. When we come back in two weeks we’ll be talking about the ads and features, and you, really, serious, I say this all the time, but wow. Like, woo-damn. We got, we got gossip; we got, we’ve got, we’ve got Extreme Troy.

Amanda: [Laughs] Honestly, we have Extreme Troy!

Sarah: We have Extreme Troy in two weeks. You don’t want to miss Extreme Troy.

Amanda: Buckle up for Extreme Troy.

Sarah: I cannot wait to show everyone on the internet Extreme Troy.

[outro]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Tune in in two weeks when we’re going through the ads and the features, and trust me, they’re incredible. Like, they are just incredible. I cannot wait to edit this episode.

As I mentioned earlier, I will have links to all of the books and all of the things we talked about, and of course there will be a visual aids post linked in the show notes as well.

I always end with a terrible joke. I would never leave you hanging. This week’s joke is from Nanda. Thank you, Nanda.

What do you do with a sick chemist?

Give up? What do you do with a sick chemist?

Well, if you can’t helium and you can’t curium, then you might as well barium.

I haven’t had a chemistry pun joke in a while! [Laughs] Thank you, Nanda!

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

And in the words of my favorite former long-running podcast, Friendshipping – which is still available; you can find it in your podcast feeds – thank you for listening; you’re welcome for talking.

[end of music]