Rake Recommends

Show Notes

What exactly do the Reformed Rakes read when they don’t read historical romance? Okay, so half these books are historicals, BUT we recommended to each other what we want the other rake to read. Chels and Beth finally got Emma to read contemporary romance. Emma wanted Beth to try Mary Balogh again and Camille from Someone to Hold is important to both of them now. Emma and Beth recommended historicals to Chels lmao because they wanted Chels’ opinion on those books okay. It’s a good time.

Books Referenced

Ruined by Rumor by Alyssa Everett

Sunshine and Shadow by Laura London

Someone to Hold by Mary Balogh

Tall, Dark, and Wicked by Madeline Hunter

Fire Season by K.D. Casey

Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie

Transcript

[00:00:00.000] - Beth

Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance novel podcast that trusts it's own judgment.

[00:00:00.000] - Beth

I'm Beth, and I'm on BookTok under the name BethHaymondsReads.

[00:00:09.680] - Emma

I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the Substack, Restorative Romance.

[00:00:14.750] - Chels

My name is Chels. I'm the writer of the romance substack, the Loose Cravat, a romance book collector and booktoker under the username chels_ebooks.

[00:00:23.740] - Beth

Today we're doing our episode a little differently. Each rake has recommended a book for the other rake to read. So we're going to cover six books that are not really related to each other, but only based on our recommendations, I guess. Then we'll discuss each of them afterwards. We'll start with Ruined by Rumor by Alyssa Everett. I recommended this to Chels. I actually really wanted both Chels and Emma to read this book, and it actually [00:00:53.950] ended up turning out that way. Mostly because we love miscommunication and this is definitely a book where a lot of plot advances as people misunderstand each other and then as they clarify, this also moves the relationship forward step by step. Also, I think we're all on the defensive with how people talk about heroine sometimes, but Chels is probably on the defensive the most. Roxana is young and naive and I love that. I saw a review that called her a princess, and I was [00:01:24.360] like, Where?

[00:01:25.470] - Chels

What does that mean?

[00:01:27.130] - Emma

Especially after what happens to her in the book.

[00:01:29.490] - Chels

Like, how.

[00:01:29.900] - Beth

Yes, yes.

[00:01:30.500] - Chels

It's like, have a heart.

[00:01:33.270] - Beth

Yeah. Anyway, so if you want to give a bit of a plot summary, Chels?

[00:01:38.600] - Chels

Yeah. This is Ruined by Rumor by Alyssa Everett. In 1814, Roxana Langley's fiancé, George Wyatt, has just returned from the war. They got engaged before he left, and now, five years later, she can finally get married, and she's elated. Around the same time, Alex Winslow, the Earl of Ayersley, her neighbor and older brother's best friend, returns to the neighborhood to take care of his ailing mother. When Alex and Roxana meet again, we learn [00:02:08.600] that Alex has been in love with Roxana for years, and he believes that she thinks he's awkward and abhor. This isn't entirely incorrect. From Roxana's point of view, we see that she thinks he's rich, good looking, and painfully dull. Roxana's fiancé, George, seems to have it out for Alex, going out of his way to point out flaws and insinuating to Roxana that Alex thinks he's better than her and the rest of the provincials. George is also notably absent on his return, dedicating very little time [00:02:39.170] to corresponding with and visiting Roxana, assuring her that she'll get more than enough of him when they marry. Once Roxana's engagement ball rolls around, George gets her alone and breaks off the engagement, refusing to tell her why he's had a change of heart.

[00:02:54.340] - Chels

A distraught Roxana runs to the library where she's comforted by Alex. They kiss when they're alone, but quickly come to their senses. Soon after, Roxana gets the cut direct from an acquaintance, and realizes that a rumor has spread that she was sequestered alone with Alex. To save her reputation, Alex proposes a marriage of convenience, which distresses Roxana further. She eventually agrees and they marry. Alex and Roxana struggle in their marriage. Alex thinks that Roxana [00:03:24.340] doesn't want him around and thinks he's a bore, so he leaves her alone so she won't have to suffer his company. Meanwhile, Roxana wants to make the best of her marriage, but doesn't understand why she can't get her husband to spend time with her. As she and Alex are getting closer, George inserts himself into their lives and tries to create a wedge between Alex and Roxana, telling Roxana that Alex was in love with another woman. Later, after George has already caused tension, the married couple is in bed, and Roxana asks Alex if he's ever wished he was with [00:03:54.780] another woman. But Alex thinks she's telling him that she wishes she was with George. In his anger, he confesses all his misgivings, that he thinks she's embarrassed by him and laughing at him, and that she's cuckolding him with George.

[00:04:08.790] - Speaker 1

He angerly leaves her not listening to her protestations. Roxana chases after him, but they miss each other as Alex has had misgivings and turns back. They finally meet up later at a ball, but Roxana has the misfortune of being accosted by George beforehand. So that's who Alex sees her with. Alex and Roxana confess their love to each other in front of an incredibly George, but not before Alex punches him for being insufferable.

[00:04:35.400] - Beth

The best part of that book.

[00:04:39.050] - Emma

It's such a good punch. We get so few punches.

[00:04:41.240] - Beth

I know.

[00:04:42.220] - Chels

Yeah, it was really a truly earned too, because I don't think Alex was ever like, I'm going to punch George. But George just would not give up.

[00:04:50.660] - Emma

George, you've got to stop.

[00:04:52.210] - Chels

Yeah, it was just like, it was like, enough already. Yeah, I really did like this, and I definitely see why Beth liked it. I think I remember you were kind of talking about this before a miscommunication episode. I think maybe it was one that you were, like, considering adding in. But I can also see why you didn't because there are all sorts of different types of miscommunication in this book. So it would be kind of tricky to pick just one, wouldn't it?

[00:05:16.790] - Beth

Yeah, I think so. You have miscommunication before they get married and just, like, how they perceive each other. They don't know each other that well. And then afterwards, each person is too afraid to put themselves out there and be the one to be like, hey, I actually kind of have some real feelings here. Or, I actually want to make a go of, like, I don't think we talk enough about how scary it is to make the leap.

[00:05:38.950] - Chels

Yeah. And their initial miscommunication is, like, something it reminded me a lot of Forever and Ever by Patricia Gaffney, the way that there's kind of, like a kernel of truth in kind of, like, their misgivings about each other. Because Alex thinks that Roxana sees him as a bore, and she kind of does maybe not in as uncharitable of a like, she doesn't think he's obnoxious, and she doesn't hate being around him. And part of her thinking that he's a bore is rooted in the fact that she [00:06:09.030] thinks he doesn't like her. So there is a little bit of truth to it, but it's kind of, like, amplified by the fact that they're kind of, like, not giving themselves any credit. I think instead of kind of, like, thinking poorly of the other person, they're like, oh, you must think poorly of me.

[00:06:26.650] - Beth

I think it also because their interests on the surface don't seem like they really align that much. Like, Alex is really interested in politics and talking policy and just kind of the person he is. He's very hardworking and methodical. So he's giving it 110%. And it's not like I don't think Roxana isn't interested in those things, but she's interested in them eventually because that's something he cares about and she has been listening to him. There's, like, this part, I think, where she recites some information back to [00:06:56.730] him and he's kind of startled to realize, like, oh, she has actually been listening to me when I've been talking.

[00:07:04.790] - Chels

Yeah, that section in the middle of the book. And this is kind of like another thing, too, because I was thinking after I read this, I thought about this a lot. Is that how many marriage of convenience in historical romance novels end up being, like, huge miscommunication books? Because that's kind of, like, where a lot of the conflict comes from because you're already married, but you haven't necessarily come to each other with this understanding of each other as people that you would necessarily might have in a relationship where [00:07:35.570] it's a marriage of love or it's a marriage of other reasons. So I think that it kind of like sets itself up for that in a lot of ways.

[00:07:43.620] - Beth

Yeah, I think it's a good internal conflict set up because by all appearances they look like they're together, but they actually haven't come together yet emotionally.

[00:07:55.330] - Emma

And so many mismarriage of convenience like this one, someone already has feelings. There's very rarely, like a true marriage of convenience where the only motive is based on the convenient reason. Usually someone is obfuscating in some way. Like Alex is hiding his feelings from Roxana and he deals with that, this book, in a way, I think a lot of one sided romances don't, where he thinks about am I wishing on her downfall? Am I benefiting from this bad thing that had happened to her? Is that bad like he sort [00:08:25.360] of grapples with that through the morality of that because it's like Roxana's gone through this crisis. Am I taking advantage of her by suggesting this? Like, what's my duty to her because I "compromised" her air quotes, but also what's my obligation to her by not taking advantage of her? Yeah, but I think that would obviously lead to miscommunication if you're embarrassed to share your feelings.

[00:08:48.880] - Chels

The best miscommunication is also when they are married, I think just because Roxana is putting in so much effort into trying to make the marriage work and that Alex does not really recognize as her putting in effort. He sees it as avoidance and he sees it as her being polite out of necessity. And so it was kind of tough to read because you're just like at certain points because it was just like, oh, I know they're so close and you just felt so much for them [00:09:18.930] both. But yeah, that was definitely my favorite. And the bedroom scenes pretty so when they sleep together for the first time, I think Roxana is about to have an orgasm and she doesn't end up orgasming, but she kind of felt like something was coming on. And so she asks like, is that it? And what she meant is like, it felt like something else is going to happen. Is there more? And then what Alex heard was, can [00:09:49.630] we stop?

[00:09:51.290] - Emma

Is it over?

[00:09:52.200] - Chels

Yeah. And I thought that was so clever because I can absolutely see Alex being so insecure and the fact that he thinks that he's like a burden to Roxana and that she doesn't want anything to do with him and that he's inflicting himself on her. I can see why he would interpret that because it was worded in an ambiguous way. But also you can see like, Roxana doesn't know really what an orgasm is, so she's not going to know what to ask. Kind of gets us into talking about Roxana [00:10:22.470] and how you kind of alluded to people saying that she's a princess.

[00:10:26.790] - Beth

It was just like one of the top reviews. I don't know if a ton of people were really coming for Roxana but that one review has fueled enough anger in me. But sorry, keep going. So Roxana?

[00:10:38.030] - Speaker 1

No, I think well, I don't even remember if I read that review, but I had written in the notes for this episode that I felt like people might be critical of Roxana. And I wanted to defend her because I think people are very critical of heroines when they make a choice that they think they wouldn't make themselves, but they also kind of are being incredibly ungenerous. Like, okay, Roxana is with George, who's [00:11:08.280] obviously a cad. He's, like, ignoring her. He's clearly brushing her off. He's not treating her the way that he should treat a woman that he loves and has been separated with for five years. And that's something that a reader who has had multiple relationships and is reading a romance novel where George is not the main character knows that he's like, yeah, it's obvious to us. But for Roxana, who's never been in a relationship before and George is kind of like a little [00:11:38.690] bit of a smooth operator. How many of us have met people like that and known them when they were younger and maybe less well equipped to deal with people who aren't sincere but play at it?

[00:11:51.460] - Beth

Yeah, she's young. Their engagement takes from when she's 18 to 23 and he's gone for most of that time too. So he can kind of curate his image through the letters he sends her. I think maybe she might have picked up on some stuff if he had been around for most of their engagement, at least. Yeah, I chalk it up to her youth and inexperience for why she and I think, yeah, she genuinely is infatuated with him and doesn't have the experience necessary to be like, [00:12:22.020] oh, these are kind of shallow feelings, actually. And she repeats throughout the book. And this leads to another miscommunication later with Alex where she just thinks she's cold. She doesn't know that you're not supposed to feel that way when you kiss somebody. She doesn't like when George tries to kiss her, she's kind of blinded by her infatuation with him. And then later she tries to communicate that to Alex. She tries to be like, hey, by the way, I'm really cold. But it doesn't come off great. And it's just another thing that is a misunderstanding between them also because [00:12:52.390] she doesn't feel like that when she's kissing Alex.

[00:12:54.970] - Emma

I think this would be a great book for people to read if they are like, I hate miscommunication because it's kind of over the top, the level of miscommunication that happens. But when I was reading it, it's like, it all makes so much sense, its ambiguous! Sometimes you'll read something I think misinterpretation is a type of miscommunication that people struggle with the most where one line, it's like, well, why didn't you read it the other way? That makes so much more sense. Or have the good faith, like there are a lot of those in here. Ambiguous meaning leads to misinterpretation, but there's all [00:13:25.030] this character work to support why Alex thinks this way about himself, why Roxana thinks this way about herself. It works so well. Either you're going to hate this book if you hate miscommunication, or you're going to be turned around and be like, oh, actually, miscommunication could be fun because there's so much of it in this book. But I feel like all of it's so justified and

[00:13:44.170] - Chels

The relationship is so cute. When I was kind of, like, doing like a one sentence pitch on this, kind of like when I was putting it up on Instagram, I was like, this is my favorite type of miscommunication. One party is like, he thinks I'm annoying. The other party is, I've loved you for years. That's like my absolute favorite thing. And so I think when you think about it like that, that is a miscommunication. But that's also kind of like a really popular concept. Yeah, it was just [00:14:14.210] adorable. I really liked it. And I'm so glad you put both me and Emma onto this book.

[00:14:19.830] - Emma

Yes, I'm definitely gonna to read more. Alyssa Everett I was really delighted. This one I'm glad I stole it from Chels.

[00:14:27.210] - Beth

I'm sorry I introduced this author because we'll add another author who still isn't like writing anymore. But hopefully, fingers crossed she comes back so we can jump to our next book.

[00:14:42.700] - Emma

Chels recommended me Sunshine and Shadow by Tom and Sharon Curtis, publishing under the pseudonym Laura London.

[00:14:50.110] - Chels

So I love Tom and Sharon Curtis. I know them from The Windflower. And so I read a bunch of their books after that. They kind of have like a really clever, kind of zany, over the top humor. And Sunshine and Shadow is a lot more tempered than the other books of them that I've read. But I loved this one so much, I immediately compared it to Flowers from the Storm after I read it, which at first I wonder if that was because of superficial reasons. Like, you've got a Quaker character in one and an Amish character in another. [00:15:20.870] But I think there is a surprising gentleness mixed with something a little bitter about religion in both books that I think puts them in communications with each other. So I thought Emma would enjoy this and I also thought that picking Sunshine and Shadow for an episode of Reformed Rakes would be the only way I could get her to read a contemporary romance.

[00:15:40.270] - Emma

I did have to read two contemporary romance novels for this episode with something new for me, yes, but I enjoyed both. Sunshine and Shadow is a contemporary novel, but it was written in 1986. So that's the setting that we're dealing with here. Alan Wilde is a movie director filming on location in Wisconsin. He's grown up in the industry, starting off as a successful child actor. He'd even won an Oscar as an early tween. As a director, he makes pulpy horror films, lauded, if [00:16:10.310] not totally high art. His latest is a love story with a monster element. His inner thoughts about this film are constantly reminding us that he's not "trying to be Bergman." During the filming of a scene with the monster costume, so the stuntman in the monster costume, a woman, comes out of a nearby forest and attacks the actor in the costume. Once she calms down, Alan speaks to her and realizes that she's a local Amish woman, Susan Peachy. They both feel immediately compelled by each other. Alan combines the directorial command of a room and [00:16:40.690] movie star good looks, and Susan is both beautiful and otherworldly to Alan. Susan returns to her village, but Alan keeps thinking about her afterwards.

[00:16:48.710] - Emma

He has the whole incident as filmed, printed for the film dailies like an impromptu screen test. When Alan's starlet for the film is hospitalized and he needs to recast the lead, he goes rogue and insists on offering the role to Susan, offering to pay her $30,000. Susan is a devout Amish widow and knows that taking the role is worthy of ostracization, though she doesn't understand many of the mechanics of movie making. She doesn't understand that people outside of Hollywood might even see the film. But she agrees because she wants to help her already ostracized sister [00:17:18.960] Rachel financially. Rachel has moved to Chicago to go to school and to be a writer.

[00:17:23.950] - Emma

Alan's casting of Susan is pretty specifically because he wants to sleep with her. His attraction is immediate, and this is sort of in his inner thoughts. He initially has little qualms about the consequences that any of this could bring to Susan, sleeping with her or casting her in the movie. Susan's earnestness, at experiences of the outside world could be treated really tweely by the novel. Alan and the reader both have to confront any attempts of looking at her life as simple, because Susan is written with such steel, especially as her relationships with her family are more explicated.

[00:17:53.370] - Emma

When Alan and Susan do start a romance, it's incredibly romantic, like completely over the top dialogue that made my jaw drop. But this is immediately contrasted with Susan's fall, driven by male community members who discover both her role in the film and her relationship with Alan. Alan struggles to understand that marriage to Susan does not solve the affair in the eyes of her community. Sleeping with him is something she could show contrition for, but marrying him would need a full break.

[00:18:18.050] - Emma

Susan chooses to make an attempt at contrition, but in front of her congregation she speaks her truth, primarily that she does not regret her actions, and the bishop finds her confession wanting. This spurs her to sever her relationship with her community and go with Alan to Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles. Alan and Susan marry. But after the marriage, she starts to turn inward, struggling with all the newness and her lack of community. Alan remains an incredibly sweet husband, but he isn't sure what the solution could be for a middle ground. They both visit Chicago to see Rachel, Susan's sister, and [00:18:48.090] a conversation with Rachel illuminates to Alan the stakes for Susan in leaving and what a return could even look like.

[00:18:53.930] - Emma

Rachel herself left to pursue her career as a writer, but also after being sexually and physically assaulted by a group of non Amish men as a young girl. Alan and Susan return to Amish life, but not the conservative community that ostracized her. Instead, they move to a more liberal community that does not ostracize over interfaith marriage and also move her parents and siblings to this new community as well. Rachel visits the family as well and there hints to a more substantial reconciliation on her part.

[00:19:19.590] - Emma

I did love this book. Chels was right. It did remind me of Flowers from the Storm, which I've also read on Chels's recommendation and is one of my top romances of all time. A lot of reviews of this sort of sum up my feelings about this, and I think even Chels put this in their review. This book has no business being this good for what it is. Even the first couple of chapters, I was like, I don't really know why Chels recommended this. It's a little awkward. It's like reading a book that's contemporary in the 1980s. There's [00:19:49.620] some very on the nose filmmaking, sort of inside baseball jokes about Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Spielberg that was like a little dated.

[00:19:58.710] - Emma

I was like, how does this hold up? Why do so many people like this book? But basically, once Alan and Susan start spending time together, it's like you become obsessed with them. They're so sweet together in the most believable while being over the top way. The things that they say to each other are so intense. It really does read like a historical. You could take some of their dialogue and make like, Alan a duke and Susan like a wallflower and it would totally work. It felt like reading a historical.

[00:20:29.110] - Chels

It's so romantic. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was not expecting that. Maybe because of what I had read from Tom and Sharon Curtis before this, I wasn't quite expecting to get slugged so hard in the third act.

[00:20:44.910] - Emma

Yeah, I don't know if it was because I read Chels' review beforehand, but I texted them while I was reading it. I was just, you have this pit in your stomach where you're like, something terrible is going to happen to Susan. There's no solution, basically. And that's kind of what she keeps saying throughout the book, is as she learns more about the movie making process, because I think at the beginning when she agrees to it, she really thinks she can get away with it, maybe.

[00:21:08.430] - Emma

But then it becomes very clear, basically, people are going to find out the nature of the film. Her community is not so isolated that they never interact with non Amish people. And also, this movie is going to be a big movie. Like, Alan is a real movie director. People are going to know she still moves forward. And there's also this kind of part reminded me a little bit of bodice rippers. Even though Alan is very sweet to like, she signs this contract to be in the movie. And [00:21:38.560] her sort of lack of legal knowledge makes her feel like she's like, I don't really know how I can get out of this.

[00:21:43.980] - Emma

And her brother and sort of people around her, like, maybe you could get out of it. And Alan sort of acknowledges that he's like, if she talked to a lawyer, a lawyer would be able to say she did not know what she was doing signing this contract, but she keeps moving forward. But that part made me think of Bodice Rippers because he's sort of coercing her in this legal way, even though he's being sweet to her. But you just have this pit in your stomach, like, how bad is it going to be for Susan? And then it's terrible for her. She just loses everything for this relationship. But [00:22:14.060] it's worth it for her because she's sort of questioning the community because of what happened with her sister earlier in her life. And the way that they talk about Rachel, the sister, is like this amazing through thread of like, you don't really know what happened to Rachel because Susan doesn't disclose it to Alan for a long time and so the reader doesn't know. And that's like a really compelling mystery of what happened to like, I think even at the beginning I thought maybe she was dead.

[00:22:41.690] - Emma

They talk about her like she's died and then it's like, oh, she's not oh, she didn't leave sort of on good terms. She left on terrible terms, both on her terms and her parents' terms. So that made the book feel very historical in the sort of through threads.

[00:22:58.170] - Chels

Yeah, I loved Rachel's character and I think she was also, like the most heartbreaking kind of Rachel is actually kind of, I think, what made this feel a lot more like Flowers from the Storm, even though there's not like a sister character in Flowers from the Storm, but Rachel is kind of like, hits home the consequences.

[00:23:21.790] - Chels

As you were saying, there's a lot about it that could feel very twee. The way that you look at Susan and her interacting with the world and kind of like contrasting that with her family and their sister who's already left who's had some pretty terrible experiences trying to explain to her family how she feels and what she wants out of life and just her kind of being on her own and not quite and not quite being [00:23:52.010] there yet. Like, Rachel still feels like she's really raw when we meet her. Like the several times that we do in the book. Yeah, I just loved that character so much. And I know that you put in the discussion notes Rachel's forgiveness quote, and that's definitely something.

[00:24:09.250] - Emma

It's what she says to Alan in their meeting in Chicago. So Alan meets Rachel in Chicago before Susan because Susan and Rachel have not also not spoken, because Susan would have been ostracized for reaching out to Rachel, even though she wants to support her financially. So this is what Rachel says to Alan in their meeting. She says, "I don't despise forgiveness anymore, even when it's not linked to justice. In fact, I can see there's all too little of it in the world."

[00:24:36.310] - Emma

So Rachel is saying this in the context of the men who assaulted her as a child or like, young teen. She learns about the world that these men who are not Amish would have no obligation in their community to admit what they've done. And this fills her with anger. And this is one of the sort of precipitating factors in her leaving that both her sort of lack of support because her family doesn't really know what to do and also realizing that these men are not going to be demanded like contrition, the same way that Susan was demanded in the Amish [00:25:06.540] community, where they have to confess their sins in public.

[00:25:09.120] - Emma

But she sort of realizes that she can give them forgiveness on her own terms completely. It doesn't have to be attached to justice. And this is really important for both Susan and Alan. So something I didn't talk about in the plot description is that Alan, his child star-ness, is really directly linked to child abuse. They don't necessarily call it those terms in the book, though it is pretty explicit that he was endangered by his parents. And then he becomes emancipated as a child star. And that's sort of his tragic backstory. [00:25:39.140] And so he's also sort of thinking about his career in terms of forgiveness. Like, what is he trying to resurrect? What is he trying to forgive himself and his parents and the community that he's been raised in. So those sort of themes of forgiveness and the importance of forgiveness are really important for both characters. But Rachel is the fulcrum that sort of explains it to both of them.

[00:25:59.010] - Chels

And then Rachel seeing her ostracism as kind of like her family not extending her any forgiveness, any grace, and seeing that when she said that there's not enough of it, like it felt very personal in that way that she had seen that it hadn't been extended to her.

[00:26:15.820] - Emma

Yeah. And Susan's sort of demand and also the financial support, I think Alan basically supports Susan's parents leaving. And that's so impactful thinking about people leaving these more conservative communities. It's like so often it's like you just can't leave. Like, Susan's parents wouldn't have been able to leave. They wouldn't have been able to relocate to a more liberal community and that's there is sort of hints throughout the book that her parents sort of are questioning aspects of [00:26:45.910] the rigidness of the community they're in. But how are they supposed to move unless this millionaire from California supports them moving to a new farm. And then so they're able to retain this Amish identity and community in this new place while having relationship with Susan and that also allows them to welcome Rachel back in, even though it's more tenuous at the end between Rachel and her parents. Trying to think of anything else we want to talk about. I mean, I listed other things out, but I guess other things about Tom and Sharon. Did they write other contemporaries or were they mostly historicals and this was like the weird [00:27:16.260] one?

[00:27:17.210] - Chels

Yeah, so they did write other contemporary books, some of them under the pen name Robin James. They actually had two Robin James and Lauren London. They wrote Lightning that Lingers under their own names. Tom and Sharon Curtis. And they did that because Loveswept's whole thing was that you can't use a pen name and Lightning That Lingers is like a really kind of zany category romance with, I think, like a very prudish woman with a Dorothy Hamill haircut and The [00:27:47.290] Cougar Club star attraction. That one was quite fun.

[00:27:51.720] - Chels

But yeah, they wrote ten books over the span of ten years and then stopped writing. Their biographies are kind of fascinating. They had all sorts of different jobs, lived all sorts of different places. They seemed like folks that were really in love and just really liked doing things and meeting people and trying new experiences. When they had this book reissued, like a little less than a decade ago, a lot [00:28:21.740] of their books got republished and reissued as ebooks. They did an interview with All About Romance where they kind of talked about writing another book, like maybe like a sequel or a series book for the Windflower because there's a fan favorite character in The Windflower named Kat that everybody wants to get his own book.

[00:28:40.360] - Chels

But we found out in researching this episode that Sharon passed away last year. So unfortunately that's just really sad. But it sounds like she had like a really amazing life. And their books are just so good. Most people don't write this many good books.

[00:28:58.730] - Emma

This book was so good and just the couple was so to compare something to Flowers for me and Chels both to compare something to Flowers from the Storm is like high, high praise. But it's just that couple where it's like they're coming from totally different worlds. They do not share the same language, but they have this immediate interest in finding a shared language. It's also great if you don't want to deal with someone being mean to a heroine. Alan's never really mean to Susan. He has to reckon with the consequences of his actions for her. But there's not [00:29:28.730] really a third act breakup if you hate third act breakups, which I will defend, but there's not really one in this book. They just sort of fall into this immediate trust and connection with each other and the outside world is all the factors of why they can't be together. But also, they're never really not together. They just are together and confront the whole world together. And it's very romantic. So, yes, I'm converted between both the books that I read for this. I'm converted on some contemporary, very [00:29:59.220] specific circumstances. If they read, like, historicals and they're about baseball,

[00:30:03.100] - Beth

yeah, that's the line.

[00:30:07.890] - Emma

The next one is going to be a book that I recommended. So I'm recommending someone to hold by Mary Balogh to Beth. And I recommend this, Beth, because I do recommend this book to everybody. To be fair, I'm always in people's comments on TikTok, like, have you read Someone to Hold? Especially when they're complaining about Mary Balogh. Chels already has their favorite. Mary Balogh. So Slightly Dangerous. So I was going to try and convince Beth to enjoy a Balgoh by reading this one. I find Balogh really fascinating as an author, nobody hits as high comfort reads [00:30:38.190] for me while also writing so many books that I think after I finish them, that was a waste of my time. She really has, like, a 50/50 hit rate with me, and it's either like, favorites that I read all the time or ones I never want to revisit. Also, Beth likes thorny women characters, and Camille Westcott is one of the thorniest heroines ever. She's so spindly and spiky. We've also talked, all three of us, about sort of growing weary of Regency books with the wallflower and rake format, where the setting is ballrooms and assignations.

[00:31:08.600] - Emma

This is a real working class romance. Both hero and heroine are employed at the beginning of the book, and money anxiety is a big theme of the book. It's on the edges of aristocracy. It does have sort of the classic Balogh, here's some money at the end of the book that solves some of your problems. But it's substantially less neat than a lot of her reconciliation plots, which is one of the reasons that I love it so much. So I thought Beth would have more comfort in that than some of the sort of tidy inheritance that Balgoh does sometimes.

[00:31:36.100] - Beth

Yes, and I will do a quick plot summary. So, Camille Westcott has lost her title and fortune through the ascension of her previously unknown halfsister, Anna Snow. Her father married Camille's mother while still married to Anna's. At the reading of her father's will, the situation comes to light, and Camille and her two siblings and mother are now unfit in society and illegitimate Anna. Someone desperate for family, attempts to share the family fortune. Camille says no and heads to Bath to work [00:32:06.110] at the orphanage where Anna grew up.

[00:32:08.120] - Beth

Enter Joel, the art teacher. He draws portraits for work, and Camille's grandmother. Commissions him to paint Camille and her siblings. Joel knows all about Camille's situation, since he grew up in the orphanage with Anna and their best friends. He volunteers at the orphanage twice a week still, and along with doing the portrait, this means he and Camille interact quite a bit. And this is because the style of painting attempts to capture more than beyond a traditional sitting. Joel likes to get to know his subjects, do a few sketches, [00:32:38.600] and then do a portrait from there. So he observes Camille at the orphanage and discovers she's a good teacher, although she doesn't feel this way about herself.

[00:32:47.920] - Beth

One time they chat, and Joel informs her that Camille's brother-in-law bested her former fiancé in a duel. He tells her this to try to coax her into saying how she's allowed to feel something about how her former fiancé jilted her. There are several conversations like this where they become closer and more emotionally supportive of each other. Camille becomes attached to a baby, Sarah, at the orphanage. She holds her regularly and is startled by how positively she feels by this. Joel [00:33:18.100] visits what he thinks is a potential client, Mr. Cox-Phillips, but is actually his great uncle. At the end of his life, Mr. Cox-Phillips wishes to leave his money to Joel, despite his other relations, who only care for him because of his money. Joel, overwhelmed, refuses and leaves. Later, as he relays the experience to Camille, she encourages him to go back and at least learn a few things about his family while he still has the chance. Joel goes back and receives a portrait of his mother. Camille comforts him, and they [00:33:48.910] sleep together. This leads to one of the more major miscommunications. He thinks she slept with him out of kindness, and he apologizes.

[00:33:56.370] - Beth

And Camille liked the experience and can't believe he's apologizing. She slaps him. Mr. Cox-Phillips dies in the conversation where Camille supports him. They clarify where they stand after sleeping together. Camille tells Joel that by apologizing, he had cheapened the experience. From the slap, Joel assumed a seduction had occurred. Camille's family visits. Her mother says she's getting her dowry back, since she and Camille's father were never technically married. She credits Anna with the idea, but she can accept the money because it really is [00:34:26.540] hers. This prompts Camille to consider accepting money from Anna because it would help their relationship. Joel also ends up as the sole inheritor of the Cox-Phillips fortune and estate. A few more things happen, but eventually Joel proposes to Camille, and they adopt baby Sarah and one other older child, and they're all very rich at the end.

[00:34:48.970] - Beth

Okay, so I'm glad I read this book. I did not have a good experience with Mary Balogh before, but like Emma said, you either love it or you hate it, which is so crazy to me that an author can do that. But you did mention the reconciliation plots and I kind of wanted us to talk about it. I feel like family reconciliation is pretty big with Balogh. She wants everyone to be happy and together at the end and not really leave any untidy [00:35:19.100] ends.

[00:35:19.820] - Emma

She loves nothing more than a child apologizing to their parents. She makes them do it all the time. And sometimes you don't need to do that. I'm firm believer if you need to cut someone out of your life, cut them out of your life. That's the graceful thing to do. Mary Balogh does not agree. Children, even if they're not reconciled with their parents in this book, they will be eventually. They always are apologizing to their parents for things that their parents did. But what I [00:35:49.970] like about this book, and makes it easier for me to recommend to people, is that the reconciliation kind of fails for Joel. He gets the money, but he doesn't get the relationship and he is too late to go back to that. He talks to Mr. Cox Phillips and he gets that portrait, but he's too mad to go back. And so when he goes back, the house is already shrouded in the black drapes and he's like, I'm too late. I'm too late to actually talk to this man about my mother. Because Camille's constantly sort of telling him, [00:36:20.490] this is one of the only people, you know who knew your mother.

[00:36:23.230] - Emma

You should ask him questions about her. But that fails. And so because that failed and also Camille has failed at her father has died. It's just she can never confront him about the bigamy. And this is like this anger she holds. Not even they get the money. And it's like, that's very no one ends a Mary Balogh book poor. It's it's a little bit messier and a little bit more it's not as fairy tale ending. And also, no one's apologizing to someone that hurt them, which is [00:36:53.330] nice.

[00:36:53.700] - Beth

I think we've talked about this before, I think, especially in The Ruin of Evangeline Jones by Julia Bennett, that episode where grief isn't neat. Like, you can have these not so great relationships and when that person dies, you still have a lot of complicated feelings and a lot of it is not resolved. And yeah, I definitely see that with Joel and Camille. And I'd say Camille's relationship with her father has really influenced a lot of her thorniness. It's this interesting combination of where she's [00:37:23.780] kind of desperate to be loved, but not willing to be loved at the same time, which I just really loved how Balogh was managed to walk that line with her.

[00:37:33.870] - Emma

And she just has no sense of identity in this book. Everyone else around her is sort of like, we're going to make the best of the situation. She has a younger sister, her mom are like, this is embarrassing, but we are still our own people. Camille is like, I was the perfect lady. I had the engagement that I wanted. I didn't love him, but it was like, we were going to be the society marriage. He didn't stand by me. And she's just, okay, like, I just have no identity. Like, there's no point. That's it. And she's just kind of going through motions, [00:38:04.160] and she's basically depressed and has no interest in forming an identity.

[00:38:08.590] - Emma

So she kind of forms herself as, like, the anti Anna, who she sees as the answer to all the problems. And there's also the aspect that Joel was in love with Anna growing up. So she's like, oh, if I'm going to anti Anna, Joel hates me, and I can't have a relationship with him. And he also sort of thinks that too. He's like, this is the opposite of Anna. I was in love with Anna for so long.

[00:38:28.850] - Emma

Camille, she's not warm. She's not friendly. She's not going to be a good teacher. But Camille becomes a very attentive teacher, which is very sweet, and she loves children. And all of a sudden, she realizes she loves kids. And she's never thought about being a mother before because she was always focused on being, like, a proper lady. She never got to the next step. And in the future Westcott books, Camille and Joel have, like, ten kids.

[00:38:51.580] - Beth

Oh, my God.

[00:38:53.530] - Speaker 3

Every time you read a new book and you go to the family tree at the beginning, it's like, Camille and Joel have new kids.

[00:38:58.970] - Emma

Well they have all this morning! So they keep having children.

[00:39:04.700] - Chels

Well, they adopt too, at the beginning, so it must be I wonder if it's like a mix of kids they have and then they just find another kid at the orphanage, and they're like.

[00:39:12.450] - Emma

Well, I think it is. I think it's like Camille is always pregnant, and they're like, if someone wants to come live at the house with, like, they will be our child. And just very doting parents, whenever there's a Westcott family reunion, they just bound in, and it's like, oh, those are Joel and Camille's children. Who knew that Camille would be such a good mother? All the Westcotts are like, she was kind of mean.

[00:39:33.510] - Beth

Yeah, no, I kind of love the character growth Camille goes through. This title is kind of interesting, Someone to Hold, because there's, like, literal moments throughout the book where it's like, I feel like holding someone is just like, this really intimate experience, I think. I can't remember what is upsetting Camille, but she just asks Joel to hold her. It's just like, right at the beginning of their relationship, and I was like this. I had my hands in front of my mouth as I'm reading the book.

[00:39:59.870] - Emma

Yeah, because they were, like, the only two people around that know each other. It's so good. But this is one of the books that I put in the umbrella of, like, Emma Woodhouse experiences a consequence book.

[00:40:11.570] - Beth

Right.

[00:40:11.880] - Emma

This is like, if Emma Woodhouse was disinherited.

[00:40:13.930] - Beth

Yeah.

[00:40:14.210] - Emma

How she would Emma Woodhouse have to do if she was no longer the fanciest lady in her community? Like she would have this identity crisis and not know what to do if she didn't have access to all these things that were. And it really is like it would be so easy for Bali to write her as heroine who has just lost money and is upset about losing the privileges, but she just doesn't have any sense of self.

[00:40:39.470] - Beth

No, I think you're right. It's much more closer to her losing her identity because she's always relied on the rules for her conduct. And then once she's like, oh, I'm actually not aristocracy, she has to really reevaluate who she is.

[00:40:54.040] - Emma

It's like she identified her dad is like, she was like, I'm doing this to get my dad's approval. And then my dad was bigamous and it's like he ruined everything and now he's dead and I can't even be mad at him. It's so good.

[00:41:07.080] - Beth

It is very good. I didn't know how to phrase this, so I'm just going to word vomit out onto our podcast. But everyone seems to reluctantly inherit a pile of money at the end of this book after going through some character development. This is something I kind of feel like is a thing that happens where it's like when you don't desire wealth, then you're rewarded with it. I feel like it's kind of like a common theme I see in books. I don't just I think it's kind of strange, actually.

[00:41:37.230] - Emma

Yeah, that's definitely a Balogh thing. But also lots of things. We have this anxiety about what these characters are going to do with their living. And it's like, well, Joel and Camille have jobs. They could just keep having their job.

[00:41:49.940] - Beth

Right.

[00:41:50.600] - Emma

But Balogh can't let that lie.

[00:41:53.030] - Beth

Yes. It has to be extraordinary wealth. It can't just be regular living.

[00:41:57.560] - Speaker 3

Right. I think they become almost as well. Maybe Anna marries a duke, so she's the wealthiest Westcott. Yes, but she's much wealthier, Camille's now much wealthier than her siblings.

[00:42:08.710] - Beth

Right.

[00:42:09.370] - Emma

Especially because it's this mercantile money rather than even entailed old money. I just love Camille Westcott.

[00:42:19.070] - Beth

Yes. We love Camille Westcott.

[00:42:21.870] - Chels

I will say so I recommend this book to everyone. I also recommend it to everyone because the first book in the series, Someone to Love, is not good. That book is not good.

[00:42:30.030] - Beth

Skip that book.

[00:42:30.930] - Emma

Skip that book. Also, if you read that book, you'll hate Camille because it took me like six months to read this book after I read this one, after I read that one, because I was like, oh, Camille's the worst. Then I was eating my own words. Now she's like my favorite heroine ever.

[00:42:43.250] - Beth

Yes. Okay, well, we'll throw it to or I guess back to you, Emma, because you're going to say why you recommended this to Chels.

[00:42:56.570] - Emma

So the other one of my recommendations I recommended to Chels's Tall, Dark and Wicked by Madeline Hunter and I recommended this to Chels's for very selfish reasons. So I like this trilogy by Madeline Hunter. It's called the Wicked Trilogy. There's Wicked is in all three titles and it's about three brothers. The Tall, Dark and Wicked is the second book in the series and my favorite, Hunter really reminded me in ways of Elizabeth Hoyt, who I know Chels likes. Something about the stakes and also the way that the sex scenes relate to the couple's development. [00:43:26.650] But Hunter does something in her narrative voice that I was really unsure of how I want to talk about and I'm still unsure of. So I kind of wanted Chels's romance novel expertise to help guide me so we could have a conversation about it, especially in a modern historical romance, because I felt like Hunter was writing in sort of an older vein. The book is still structured as a dual limited POV, but there seems to be like a narrative distance between what the book thinks about the politics of the book and what the characters think. The arc that's going on in the book is not just between the characters relationship, but how they react to the situation that they're [00:43:57.070] put into.

[00:43:57.850] - Emma

Hunter has also been writing books since the early two thousand s, and even though this one was published in 2015, I think she has sort of a retro bent in her writing that I thought Chels would appreciate.

[00:44:07.390] - Chels

All right, so I'm going to read the summary. Again, this is tall, Dark and Wicked by Madeline Hunter. So Lord Ywain Hemingford, referred to as Yves, is the second legitimate son of Aristocrat, and he's also a barrister who's recently broken with his mistress. He's contemplating her replacement when a young woman appears at his house, a tall woman with striking eyes who is dressed as a servant. Padua Belvoir is a teacher and she's just arrived from Newgate. After visiting her incarcerated father, she's come to plead for Eve's [00:44:37.770] assistance. She's estranged from her father, so much so that when she went to visit, he refused to properly speak with her or let her know what he was accused of. But Padua believes in his innocence. He's a scholar who's a bit absent minded about the nonacademic world and thus, to her mind, wouldn't knowingly engage in criminal activity. When Yves finds out Padua's father's name, he realizes that he had already been asked to prosecute the case. He explains [00:45:09.030] to Padua that she needs to enlist the help of a solicitor before a barrister, but even if she does that, he cannot be of assistance since he's already entangled in the case.

[00:45:18.630] - Chels

Later, Yves finds out that Padua's father has been arrested and held at Newgate for coining or forgery and that he's likely to be hanged or sentenced to a prison hulk. The evidence against him is that they found the counterfeit money in his own rooms while he's at the prison. Yves spots Padua. The jailer says that she first arrived the day before, bringing gifts and that she attests that she's his daughter. Yves backs up this assertion, but takes note that Padua's [00:45:48.850] involvement with her father is putting herself under suspicion as an accomplice in the counterfeit scheme, particularly because Padua's father is refusing to talk to the jailers. Yves finds Padua later and warns her to stay away from her father. Yves begins to have concerns about the Home Office's interest in the Belvoir case, noting that in the past, he sent an innocent man to the gallows and that the easy solution, which in the Belvoir case would be letting Padua's father hang, can lead to mistakes. When her employer [00:46:19.700] learns about her father's situation, Padua is let go and an infatuated Yves arrives to pick her up and take her to his family's London home.

[00:46:28.010] - Chels

After it appears that someone is following Padua in town, Yves takes her to his family's country estate for protection. As Padua gets closer to his family, her relationship with Yves escalates, which is further complicated by the role Yves could potentially play in getting her father sentenced. She wants Yves to stay on the case because she thinks a different prosecutor will be less honorable. There's a lot of plot in the back half of the book, so to simplify it, here's what you mostly need to know. When they return to London, Padua and Eve's find out [00:46:58.230] that her father is the landlord of a brothel. She discovers that her father is involved in the counterfeit scheme, roped into it by some men who threaten to expose his relationship to the brothel. Yves and his brothers set out a trap for the counterfeiters that enlisted Padua's father. And Yves, who has never successfully resigned as a prosecutor, is able to go soft on Padua's father now that the people who blackmailed him are incarcerated. He then asks for Padua's hand in marriage and she accepts. [00:47:28.670] So, yeah, I did really enjoy this and I do kind of see what you're talking about with the Elizabeth Hoyt comparisons.

[00:47:36.070] - Chels

It's kind of hard to put your finger on. So I also kind of know why you're having kind of like it feels different, but it's like a little hard to I don't want to say it's, like, for plot reasons necessarily, although there is kind of like this isn't a ballroom, it's a Regency, but there are no ballrooms.

[00:47:58.650] - Chels

I think it could also be kind of as you mentioned, there's a little bit of a remove from what you think that Hunter believes versus what her characters believe. And I was kind of paying attention to that because you had mentioned that to me before. So there's a big kind of source of shame and the reason why Padua's father doesn't [00:48:29.010] tell her what's happening and why he doesn't try to save himself once he's arrested is that shame that comes from being the landlord of a brothel. Like that would ruin his good name. And Padua kind of has internalized this same kind of mindset. I think some of it might be from being like a proper lady where she works at a fancy school, where any sort of relationship to criminality is reasons [00:48:59.640] for her to be discarded of. And I also think it's maybe just kind of like one of those things where she has a prejudice and it's not like a neat arc there's. No, Padua thinks poorly of sex workers and brothels and then she makes a full 180. It's kind of a little bit more messy, where she's gotten a little bit better about it, but it's not quite to like the place where you would think if you [00:49:29.850] were reading a book, where the book needed to reflect your own morality back to you.

[00:49:35.620] - Speaker 1

And I think that might be something that Hunter is doing in several different ways, where she trusts that you understand that you can make your own conclusions. Like, you don't need to have your politics reflected back from Padua.

[00:49:49.620] - Emma

Yeah, and it's like there's some things that Padua says in the book that would normally be such red flags for me. I'm sort of hyper vigilant about how characters talk about sex work in books because it's so fraught so often across the genre and something about the way that Hunter couches them. I sort of had the sense pretty early on that we were going somewhere with that. And she does. It's like the sex work or characters Padua meets. I keep wanting to call her Padova, which is how you say it in Italian. But [00:50:19.830] Padua, it's like she has to reckon with meeting these characters and they become real people to her. And again, it's not so much of the plot that it's not a book about Padua working through her hang ups about sex work. It's just like this underlying thing that she has to process in order to get her father safe. And I liked that it was sort of like an element of world building. And I also liked that the heroine is the one who sort of has these hang ups. I think [00:50:50.980] that sort of dichotomy of like, oh, talking down to sex workers is sometimes like I think a hero has to process.

[00:50:57.120] - Emma

He'll talk down to sex workers and then reveal the heroine was actually dressed up like a sex worker the whole time. And it's like, oh, my God, she's in a brothel and that process is going on there. But the heroine sort of has this internalized misogyny that's just sort of like, present and she has to work through, but isn't like the main arc of the book. It sort of fleshes out the book, but it was just a weird tension. I'm not sure if I've read another book where it seems like the book is judging the character so acutely so early on for [00:51:27.290] this hang up.

[00:51:28.650] - Chels

No, I definitely I definitely see that. And I also kind of see Yves kind of has a similar thing, which I think is a lot more common when you see a character who is a man and who kind of has this very flippant way of talking about women and thinking about women, and then later, all of a sudden, it's not okay because he has a woman that he's interested in and that he respects because he is interested in [00:51:58.650] them. And I think that is something that you do also kind of see with Yves even though Yves isn't necessarily an unkind person at all throughout the book. But it's kind of funny when he first meets Padua, when she comes to ask for his help, there's like this moment where he's summoned to the room where she is. He opens the door, he sees her crying and and she's wearing a servant's dress. And he's like, what if I just close the door and leave? What if I just [00:52:29.180] get out of here? Which is not a very gallant thing. So there's kind of like that way that he thinks about women and then also kind of like his ideas about justice are kind of fraught and not very neat.

[00:52:46.140] - Chels

And it's kind of like when we were talking about morality Unamasked by the Marquess. It was kind of like that where it's like that you have that hard moral line until someone you care about. And that's kind of like what it felt like for Yves, even though his reticence to go hard on being a prosecutor against her father. A lot of it is for his feelings for Padua. But there's also he has that memory of where he was responsible for an innocent [00:53:16.420] man getting this.

[00:53:19.070] - Emma

I read this book initially for my Newgate project and it's one of the rare ones where the person who was in Newgate definitely did the thing they're accused of. He was involved in this coining scheme. His moral culpability is definitely much lower than the people who were sort of blackmailing him into it. But he did do the thing. Basically, he makes the calculation and decides to go along with it rather than be blackmailed. And so it's like that sort of like what's the difference between a moral harm and a criminal [00:53:49.180] harm? He did do the thing he was accused of. He's not innocent, but should he be punished? Especially the coining at this time is one of those crimes that's a capital punishment. So the stakes are really high for her father. And it's nice that I like ones where someone has actually done the crime rather than is falsely accused because false accusations, that's sort of like one specific plot. But when you have to reckon with someone actually doing the thing they're accused of, it just makes for sometimes more interesting arcs. [00:54:20.060] Especially in the Newgate plots.

[00:54:21.960] - Chels

Yeah. And this in that way, it reminded me so much of The Duke by Galen Foley because the heroine of that book, her father is thrown into Fleet for debt. And it's kind of a similar situation where you find out that her father there's something that he could have said, there's something that he could have done to communicate to his daughter and get himself out. But he's kind of like an absent minded scholar who's too prideful. And so there's kind of like a lot of similarities there. And that one was also published [00:54:52.260] in 2000, so there's kind of like that other.

[00:54:55.040] - Emma

Yeah. I want to read older Hunter books because I wonder where she came from, because this is one of her latest books that she published. I don't know she think she's writing anymore, but she is really prolific. And so much of this book reminds me of older romances that I've read. The brothers are all kind of like bodice rippery. Like, they're sort of cast in this very wicked way. These are not bodice rippers, but they are, like, looming in the interactions with women, though. This is a great series. I love this sort of conceit in a romance novel when there are a bunch of brothers [00:55:25.080] and they each sort of fall in line and get married. The first brother is really wicked and a rake, and then he makes an appearance in the second book, and he's like, come on, you got to treat women better, man. And then by the third book, there are two of them being like, you got to be nicer to your lady, dude. It's like two books ago, you were the wicked one. I just love that. It's like you become a wife guy and you forget that you were ever wicked.

[00:55:47.750] - Chels

It's like you've been married for a week, man.

[00:55:51.950] - Emma

They're always giving advice to each other. Very patronizingly. And there's a good payoff with these three brothers in the third book. But this is my favorite one in the series. But I've read all of them and they're fun. So I would like to read older Hunter books because I think she just has, like, an interesting voice and plotting. She wrote some medieval ones, and I love when people do medieval things and also Regency. I love the way that those skills translate across time periods.

[00:56:19.300] - Chels

Yeah.

Chels: And before we finish with this book, I'm going to talk about something that's completely, really irrelevant to the plot, but I love it anyway. This is such a minor plot point, but we were talking about the brothers, and the eldest brother, Lance, gets into a duel.

Chels: And so something that I'm kind of obsessed with about duels and historical romance is that a lot of times because there's like, the fictional duel is so different from how real duels happen because for a lot of narrative reasons, you need the duel to either occur or the heroine to interrupt the duel quite dramatically. But there's an actual proper duel etiquette that happens in this book that I was like, oh, my God

Chels: So what usually doesn't happen in historical romance books is that the second doesn't do anything. Like, the second they name the second, the second shows up, and they're like, hey, we're meeting tomorrow. And then it just happens. But the second's job, when a duel is called, is the second's main job is to stop the duel from happening at all. And that's, like, what actually happens. Lance, the eldest brother, gets into a duel, and then he calls Yves, and he's like, hey, you got to get me out of this.

[00:57:30.430] - Chels

And so, like, he's like, all right. And then he's like, okay, we've got to negotiate, and blah, blah, blah. And he's a barrister. So it's, like, perfect second material. I think Yves even mentions he's been second many times before. And, yeah, I think this only time I've ever seen this happen in a book is in Unlightened by Joanna Chambers, where they kind of actually negotiate. So, yeah, I just wanted to mention that before.

[00:57:56.630] - Emma

I was convinced after I read this that Madeline Hunter had a JD. I'm always guessing which romance novelists have gone to law school, but because Yves is such, like, a lawyer dude, reading him, I was like, this is like guys I went to law school with. Like, the way that he talks and his certain charm that's also abrasive and argumentative. I was like, she knows lawyers. And I think she doesn't have a JD. But I feel like she knows either she knows someone who's a lawyer, her husband's a lawyer, her sister's a lawyer. She knows someone who's a lawyer because this guy is so lawyerly. [00:58:26.950] The only other one that I've read like a lawyer character is Nick from

[00:58:31.410] - Beth

A Woman Entangled.

[00:58:32.710] - Emma

A woman entangled. Yeah. That he is also very lawyerly in a way. He just reads like a real lawyer, but Yves feels like a real lawyer. Even in his romantic role, he feels very lawyerly.

[00:58:45.870] - Chels

Shout out to Yves.

[00:58:49.930] - Beth

Okay, I will. Jump to Fire Season by KD Casey I recommended this to Emma. Emma has this thing where she'll be like, "blank is a romance novel, and she's a big fan of baseball." And honestly, baseball is a romance novel. I'm convinced. And like Chels said, this is the only way we could get her opinions on some contemporary books we love.

[00:59:18.450] - Beth

Okay.

[00:59:19.110] - Emma

So Fire Season by KD Casey is the second book in the Unwritten Rules series and is a romance between two baseball players, Charlie Braxton and Reed Giordano. Charlie is one of the best starting pitchers in baseball, and Reed is a middle inning relief guy back up in the majors after some personal trouble led to a stint in the minors. Both men are dealing with off the field troubles. Charlie is in the divorce process with his wife, who he is still on friendly, if strained, terms. Reed is a recovering alcoholic. His alcoholism affected both his performance and professionalism on his previous teams.

[00:59:48.470] - Emma

The book begins with Reed being traded to the major league team in Oakland. Reed is charming to other players in media and a little brash to coaches, but quiet, intense. Charlie is taken with him immediately. The combination of Charlie's divorce, which he is slowly disclosing to members of the organization, and Reed's temporary housing being a hotel with easy access to alcohol, leads to Charlie offering Reed a room in his house. Reed is comfortable with his sexuality, out to his family, if not the public, seemingly in part because he isn't famous enough to get that kind of attention. Plus, his destructive [01:00:18.640] behavior during his active addiction takes up any news discourse about him.

[01:00:22.550] - Emma

The in universe level of homophobia of the major leagues was something I wasn't quite sure about in this series, but it seems to be lower than in real life. Charlie is new to thinking about himself as bisexual, but Charlie is really settled in his career. He has a huge contract with a lot of player favorable clauses, where Reed's situation is much more tenuous. One of the best scenes in the book is when they're together, waiting for the trade deadline to pass, which captures the fluidity of these players 'careers that never get locked into something bigger.

[01:00:49.670] - Emma

That unsure nature of his work, both in his contract and his performance, links to Reed's recovery story, which takes up the bulk of his POV. He has a therapist he calls in emergencies, and as he meets new people on the team, he seems to be testing them for safety in his support network, and Charlie becomes a part of that quickly. I should also say that Reed is Jewish, and this is a big part of his identity and his connection to Charlie, since Charlie, though not Jewish, is earnestly interested in how Reed frames his identity around his religion and ethnicity. Charlie's coming to terms with his sexuality is not really marked by anguish, [01:01:19.740] but the timeline of the reckoning with it out loud is accelerated when his soon to be ex wife Christine has to evacuate their previously shared home because of California wildfires and stay with Charlie and Reed. So another person is thrust into their quiet early relationship. And just a note there's a lot of baseball in this book. We get detailed descriptions of both Charlie and Reed's performances. We know how the Elephants do in the playoffs. They make them and then get eliminated in the first round, and those performances have a big impact on the narration.

[01:01:46.060] - Emma

It's not so literal that what is happening on the field is a simulacrum of the relationship arc, but there is a direct connection between the professional lives of these men and how they react to the personal situations that follow. So I really liked this book for a lot of reasons. I do love baseball. I'm always saying that my favorite baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies, are a romance novel. They there's a lot of homosociality in baseball I think because there's a lot of downtime in baseball, I think maybe compared to other sports, like, half the time you're sitting on the bench waiting for [01:02:16.110] your team's turn. So you're sitting there waiting for one of your teammates to hit a ball. So you're, like, goofing off with each other in the dugout. And fans get to see this. And so there's a lot of male-male friendships and sort of intimacy. And I think also they're not wearing any sort of protective gear on their faces. And so you get to see players' personalities a lot. So it's very easy to sort of romanticize and become endeared to these player friendships in real life. So it makes sense that you sort [01:02:46.310] of look at them and you're like, oh, they have a lot of chemistry.

[01:02:49.370] - Emma

You could put them together in a romantic relationship. So I love baseball. Baseball is a romance novel. So Beth and I were talking about this earlier, and we were talking about how sort of the structure of the book feels like a baseball season in certain ways. So there are a few sort of structural things that I notice. I always think about how things are written. What is an author choosing to be the conceit of the book? And so this book is something I've never read before. I don't know if it's more common in contemporary romance novels because, again, I've read about [01:03:19.380] two. It's present tense. And so you're in Charlie and Reed's head in the present tense the whole time. And it really threw me off. It took me a few chapters to get used to.

[01:03:31.300] - Emma

But the way that the function for it as the reader is that you get so much processing in ways that I feel like you don't get in sort of the past tense. Like, this thing happened and then this thing happened. It's like they're all using present tense verbs, and so you're feeling them think, and so much of the plot is inside their minds.

[01:03:49.430] - Emma

So Reed reckoning with his active addiction and dealing with his therapist and calling her and also building out his support network in this new place. And then Charlie thinking about his he he never really thought about his sexuality before he meets Reed. He's sort of realizing that he's bisexual. And so you're getting both of these revelations in real time. And so you get really intimate. I think the reader gets really intimate relationships with both of them and then also that conversations they have with each other. You're like, [01:04:19.440] oh, they're disclosing things that I just found out in their mind with each other. So I don't know, Beth, if you've read other books that take on that or if this is, like, unique to KD Casey for you.

[01:04:29.270] - Beth

Yeah, only KD Casey I think I've read has done the present tense narration. And I think it does lend itself well to what she's trying to accomplish. As we were talking about before even trying to explain the plot. It's just a lot of a slow burn romance and people feeling their feelings and thinking them through and processing them and talking a lot of conversations in this book that takes up your runtime.

[01:04:56.750] - Emma

I read two books that don't really have third act breakups. Like Charlie and Reed just sort of fall into a relationship together. And then the big question is sort of like it's not even, are we going to work as a relationship? It's more like where Reed is going to go.

[01:05:09.940] - Beth

Yeah, it's just like, how do we make this work is the big question.

[01:05:14.470] - Emma

Right? Because it seems like Reed is not going to stay on the Elephants. First they're worried about the trade deadline, and then they're worried about the end of the season and Reed's going to go somewhere else. How are we going to make this work? And it's like Charlie comes out to his family and it's like they sort of have to reckon with that. But it's not like, I'm not going to come out to my family to hide you. It's just sort of a decision he makes. So the stakes in the book are much more about the baseball and Reed's performance because Reed is sort of trying to earn his place on the team and he's [01:05:44.530] just sort of wondering, what's my identity outside of baseball, if I can't do this anymore? Because it's just Charlie. It's hard to emphasize how famous Charlie is in this book. Charlie is like, I couldn't even think. So I talked to my sister about it, and my sister is also a huge baseball fan. We were trying to think of what baseball player is this famous? And we thought maybe Justin Verlander is the one we could think of.

[01:06:09.190] - Emma

Because Charlie his big anxiety is people finding out about his divorce.

[01:06:13.390] - Beth

Yes.

[01:06:13.880] - Emma

Like he's keeping it from the media. He's sort of soft launching it to members of the organization. And they're like, doing a press release. And Julie and I were thinking about which baseball player would national news care if they got divorced. And we thought of one. They're just not that famous because essentially it's not an acrimonious divorce. But Charlie's just really famous. He's very wealthy. And Beth talked about this in her review of the book. Charlie has all this baseball privilege

[01:06:40.170] - Beth

yes.

[01:06:41.010] - Emma

That both Reed and his soon to be ex wife Christine call him out over that. Charlie just doesn't have to think about things at his workplace, not only because he's so talented, but because he has this contract that is so favorable to him. He can't be traded unless he wants to be traded. He has all this guaranteed money that he's sort of forgotten what it's like to have this hustle that Reed has to have. And that's also like a tension in their relationship where Charlie is trying to be empathetic even though they're in the same career. [01:07:11.550] But Charlie just doesn't know how to process these things. And Christine calls him out for covering things up with his money.

[01:07:19.210] - Emma

Like, he buys her things. He buys her a new pottery studio. He buys her a buys he buys Reed things, thinking that that will solve the disparity. But what actually he needs to do is sit and feel his feelings.

[01:07:30.260] - Beth

Yes. I love how Casey writes this, because she makes baseball seem so, like, working class, and I can really see the class structure, like, applying, like, historical romance lens to baseball. I feel like, yeah. How are these people relating to each other? Who is higher up on the team, and what can you get away with? And Reed is someone who's just hanging on by a thread. He does not command the same level of privilege [01:08:00.320] that Charlie has. But I, like, also at the end, Reed, he works on his pitching like he's a relief pitcher, and he works on his pitching on his own. That's, like, something that's important to him. Charlie offers I think they may have a few scenes like that. I don't remember, but I think it.

[01:08:16.620] - Emma

It turns romantic very, like, I'll help you with your pitching, and then they just like kiss.

[01:08:23.310] - Beth

So, yeah, I really like that. Casey makes it feel, like, very working class. In her other books, players get traded all the time, and I feel like in other sports romances, I read people just stay on their teams forever. I don't know if maybe that's more unique to baseball, that you just kind of like, hey, pack your bags.

[01:08:41.840] - Emma

I think it may be a Casey thing. Casey is accurately reflecting the sports nature, where it's just very tenuous. And it's like, in baseball, it really does have this sort of, like, two class system where the disparity between the two classes is astronomical. They're definitely baseball players who make more money than especially they have really long contracts because baseball players can play for a lot longer, pretty at the same level if they don't get injured compared to football players. But it's like they make more money than God. But the minor [01:09:12.060] league teams, yes, they're.

[01:09:13.500] - Beth

They are severely exploited, like, how much they play.

[01:09:16.320] - Emma

They're paid seasonally. They were only recently unionized. This past season, they got unionized. And MLB has this incredible union, and players strike in baseball all the time. But the minor leagues were not union guys. So when Casey was writing this, Reed would be in a union if he was in the majors, but if he gets relegated to the minors, he loses all the union benefits, and he gets seasonal pay. He doesn't get paid in the offseason. He has to pay for training, all the rehab he has to do. [01:09:46.350] If he's not on a team, he has to support himself doing. So that it really does read very historical in that way, where it's like there's, like, the person who cannot understand the sort of class disparity. And I think it's also Charlie's backstory is that he was kind of like a wunderkind. He just was always the best at baseball, which is not always true for starting pitchers because sometimes you have to grow into your body. But he just didn't have to struggle with that aspect of his life. But it also [01:10:16.820] covered up some of his personal issues.

[01:10:19.480] - Emma

Yeah. I was wondering what your thoughts were about the sort of aAU for queer storytelling. I compared it to my sister, to Schitt's Creek, where people ask, like, Schitt's Creek, or maybe I did that. You told me that. Maybe I just borrowed it.

[01:10:31.110] - Beth

No, I don't remember. We did talk about this before. I know what you're saying. Where it's like especially this book. I feel like the other two books, there's like a higher level of homophobia, and the first book, one of the main characters really afraid to come out. But yeah, it's an interesting balance because sometimes I think of Sci-Fi, where people sometimes look to Sci-Fi novels as like, hey, this is like, maybe we can pattern our world after [01:11:01.780] a much more positive future. So I don't know if that's maybe something Casey's trying here, where it's like, yes, homophobia exists. She acknowledges it, but it's not like, at the forefront of the book. It is kind of an alternate universe where you can kind of allow these baseball players to be

[01:11:19.690] - Emma

Charlie and Reed aren't coming to out to the world.

[01:11:22.490] - Beth

No. Yeah.

[01:11:23.050] - Emma

But they also do disclose to people in the like, they're they're members of the team. They're members of the management who know about the relationship and about their queerness. In baseball, I don't think there's ever been an out playing player, or there isn't currently, but they're sometimes in the minor leagues, and it's always, like, huge news. And baseball has this sort of fraught relationship because also, I mean, Casey has tweeted about this before. It's like [01:11:53.090] there's just a volume of players, and they're in this intimate situation where they make these bonds. It's like it's unrealistic to say that there are no queer baseball players, but it does still have this fraught relationship. And if a player came out or was dating another player, it would be really big news. But I liked that it sort of makes for when I was reading it, as I was picking up sort of that dread of sort of the stakes that Casey gives us, I had to get used to the idea that something terrible wasn't going to happen. I was like, oh, they're going to come out and they're going to be [01:12:23.570] kicked off the team or be bullied off the team.

[01:12:25.840] - Emma

And those aren't really the stakes that Casey's interested in exploring. But I liked that that it was sort of more it allowed her to do something different with these characters.

[01:12:34.610] - Beth

Yeah. Or else it's always going to be the fear of coming out or being discovered is always going to be at the forefront, I think it allows it.

[01:12:42.130] - Emma

To be a different story.

[01:12:43.830] - Beth

Yes.

[01:12:45.110] - Chels

Okay. Yeah. So I recommended Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie to Bath because Beth reads the most contemporary romance out of all three of us. So when I found out she hadn't read Bet Me, I was like, I need your take on this right now. So there's this thing in Romancelandia right now where the word "rom com" is hotly contested because people feel as though they're being applied to contemporary romances that aren't funny or general fiction, that's light on the romance and the [01:13:15.250] humor. So Bet Me is a bona fide rom com by one of the titans of the genre, Jennifer Crusie. And when I first read it, it felt like a revelation to me. It reminded me so much of Bridget Jones' Diary which I know that's also a book series but I've only seen the movie and they kind of came out around the same time, like early 2000s. And that's kind of a movie that I dearly, dearly love with almost the exact same caveats that I have for bet me. [01:13:48.950] It's just like a book that I want to talk about, I want to contextualize. And I think when I first read it last year and rereading it now, I think I've kind of changed my approach to talking about and thinking about. The book a little bit fraught. So I'm very excited to get your thoughts on this.

[01:14:07.710] - Beth

Yes. And we will start with a quick plot summary. Min Dobbs's ex boyfriend David bets Calvin Morrissey he can get Min to sleep with him within a month. Several bets are thrown around, and David bets $10,000 that Calvin can't sleep with Min. Cal shoots him down. Although, in a way, David thinks this bet is still on. Min overhears the next bet, which is $10 he can't get Min to go to dinner with him. Even though she finds Cal handsome. Min's understandably put off by this bet. She [01:14:37.850] decides to go through with a dinner to evaluate whether he could be her plus one for her sister's wedding. Now that David's out of the picture, she needs a date. Her overbearing mother had really liked David. Min says yes when he asks for dinner and then proceeds to deflate him a bit when he amps up the charm. They decide to never see each other again, but they keep running into each other. And when Cal's nephew takes a shine to Min, this increases their encounters. Despite their escalating attraction, min [01:15:08.500] holds up the relationship because she wants Cal to bring up the bet. This is very much a rom com. Crusie's characters banter and engage in hijinks, but they're all relatable people doing human things.

[01:15:20.310] - Beth

For example, Cal's ex, Cynthie, is this over the top relationship guru who tries to use psychology to power through her breakup with Cal. What she does is a bit much, but the emotions behind it are trying to rationalize Cal's terrible behavior to her, like, she wants to believe that he still loves her and he just doesn't know it. David is perhaps the most over the top, but I get him. I don't like him, but I've seen people like him before. He goes after men with a mix of Cynthie's insistence. He goes after Min at [01:15:50.660] Cynthie's insistence, and then after watching Cal find value in Min and connect with her, that's when he's like, Wait a minute, I actually want Min back. The heart of this book, though, is Min and Cal coming together. And honestly, I just wanted them to kiss and hang out and show up for each other. A lot of people call this book of its time. It was published in 2004, so that's true. But all books are products of their time, so I just wanted to talk about that aspect of it. And I say that because there is [01:16:21.320] a lot of fat phobia in this book, like Min's counting calories.

[01:16:25.830] - Beth

She's on a diet. Her mother only seems to communicate through diet comments to her daughter. So, yeah, I just wanted to get your perspective on that. Chels.

[01:16:35.490] - Chels

Yeah. So I wonder if people who were like tweens in the early aughts kind of like this really hit something for them. I'm sure for people who were adults, too, but oh, God, for me, I remember so much. I'm like, I remember these people. I remember when people used to talk like this all the time. I remember how everyone was kind of like literally everyone was talking about diets. It's something that we've kind of hidden a lot better [01:17:05.660] now. The obsession with thinness has never really gone away, but it was just like so in your face extreme in the early aughts that it was like and that's kind of also like where the Bridget Jones Diary comparisons come to because that's also a rom com that's kind of like dealing with your body and what matters. And it's kind of in a way that's maybe not necessarily fully comforting, but yeah. So I think that's kind of like what I was talking about, too, when I was talking about my approach [01:17:36.350] to Bet Me, because when I read it last year, I was like, I like this a lot. This is really good. Some of the stuff in here makes me feel weird, and not because Jennifer Cruisie is being fat phobic or that Min loses weight at the end. That's not what's happening. But it's just kind of like the constant reference to diets and carbs.

[01:18:00.510] - Chels

And that's just something that I think maybe is kind of a trigger for me in a little bit of a way, where I'm just like, oh, I don't want to read this, but I adore this book. And so I was trying to contextualize it and kind of trying to talk about it and how good I thought it was and what I liked about it. But I think I just kind of got stuck on that, which makes sense because it's, like, a big theme for the book. So when I took it to TikTok and I was talking about it, I was hedging so much, I was just like, you've got to remember, this is 2004. This is, [01:18:30.630] like, what it was like. And then I think what really changed my perspective, or not necessarily changed my perspective, but changed the way that I'm approaching this book, because I think we should talk about how good of a rom com this is. Because it's amazing and it has really great characters where so many people came into my comments and were just like, this book changed my life.

[01:18:50.920] - Chels

This was the first book with a fat character where it was nice. This book is incredible. And I'm like, yeah, I think kind of like, we all know what Cruisie's doing. We're smart. We don't need to attribute any sort of over. I get the impulse because I had the impulse where you want to hedge and be like, oh, this might not feel the way it would in 2023. Which is so funny that I have that for a contemporary romance because I never have that for historical.

[01:19:21.240] - Beth

I said this in my review of the book and I kind of feel like almost if you add 100 years, then almost this book is, like, way more worthy of study because it is just, like a perfect capsule of 2004 and attitudes and how people talked about bodies and diet culture. So I understand it's not like, fun reading Min's Mom but she's never where she just purposely gets her a bridesmaid's dress that's too small for her daughter and is, like, a terrible person. But we're [01:19:51.310] not supposed to be sympathetic to Min's mom. Like, Cruisie doesn't write her that way, at least.

[01:19:55.950] - Chels

And I think just because it's written in a language that is just maybe kind of tied to rough memories for some people of a certain age that I think maybe that's why. Because there's a Tessa Dare book that has that exact same setup where the mom is it? Say Yes to the Marquess. Where the mom buys the dress that's too small.

[01:20:16.150] - Emma

I think so. That's her plus size heroin. Yeah, it's clunky and it's crunchy to read, but it's also the mom sucks in that book.

[01:20:25.190] - Chels

Yeah, but it's not like I have to watch my carbs or my calories or whatever. And so I think that's kind of like, maybe why in some ways, I didn't notice it as much there where for here, it's kind of like that scene when you find out Bridget Jones weight in the movie and you're like, oh, my God, really? This is what you're worried about? I didn't need to know that. I think this book is so freaking good. I think that [01:20:55.320] if anyone's a little bit nervous about that, I do understand. But I think it's just so great. Honestly, I think it's really good.

[01:21:05.430] - Beth

Yes. And I do want to talk about Cal and Min. I think what really drives the book is their relationship. They're just so fun. Like, their comments back and forth. You really feel the tension. I feel like Crusie is such a good writer that she makes it seem easy, that it's just easy that these two characters come together in the way that they do. And the side characters, there's a pretty large cast of side characters. And I feel like that's maybe I don't know if this is like a hallmark of rom coms, but it feels like they have really [01:21:35.490] fleshed out lives. Each have a group of friends and each have families kind of, like, outside of each other. And that is given even point of view. Like, there's conversations that we have between Cynthia and David that is happening, where they're hatching their plan about trying to get Min and Cal back, which I just found so interesting. I don't know if modern contemporaries are really doing that.

[01:22:02.330] - Chels

Yeah, I have a little bit less insight onto that just because I don't read as many contemporaries as you do.

[01:22:09.770] - Beth

I feel like it's been a minute. I feel like there's often each main has their best friend or family member. That's kind of like the main support. It's not as fleshed out as this, but I don't know, maybe other contemporary readers might be able to offer some.

[01:22:29.230] - Chels

Like, I think of this thing that you say all the time whenever we send you a TikTok that we hate, where Beth will just be like, yeah, it has the cadence of a joke, but they didn't say anything funny. Like, I think that's kind of like, how I feel sometimes reading rom coms where I'm just like, I get that this is supposed to be cute and smart, but I really don't like this. And I kind of chalked it up to like, oh, I like anachronistic dialogue. Like I like historicals. But Crusie [01:22:59.380] is just amazing. Cal and Min, from the minute they meet, they're at odds with each other and in a way that's just, like, playful and funny where they're not quite obsessed with each other yet or they're kind of, like, orbiting each other. There's like this conceit where they keep accidentally and they keep saying goodbye to each other and then they meet again. And so they say goodbye. At one point, Cal's just like, See you tomorrow, or whatever. [01:23:29.970] There's the references. So Cal really likes Elvis Costello. And Min really likes Elvis Presley. And that's like a battle that they have. Which is the better Elvis, which is such a weird discussion that I didn't think that I would care about.

[01:23:47.610] - Chels

And then there's one point where he buys her an Elvis Presley Greatest Hits album which is such a dorky gift because not even like an actual album, just like the greatest hits, but she loves it because she's the type of person who has greatest hits albums. And she's like, oh, I thought you would give me Elvis Costello. And he's like, Why would I give you something that I like, yes.

[01:24:10.000] - Beth

I know. It's so adorable.

[01:24:14.130] - Chels

It's just so freaking cute. It's just like an absolute joy to read.

[01:24:20.800] - Beth

I think I can buy into the hijinks of this book more sometimes when I've read other contemporaries and an author is trying to pull off a scene that I'm like, did you actually picture this in your mind? Like, what this actually looks like? There's one I don't know if I want to, on a public platform, be like, I didn't like this book. I tried to read Dating Dr. Dil. It wasn't for me. If you liked it, that's great. But there was this scene [01:24:51.130] and that's when I stopped reading it, when the two mains are like, chasing each other around an island in a kitchen. And I was like, they're both 30. I couldn't suspend my disbelief. It was just so silly. It was too silly for me. And I'm like, no. So I feel like Crusie is pretty good at like there's still some over the top moments here when everyone shows up at the end. David goes and calls everyone in Min's orbit [01:25:21.520] and it's just like, Cal's a terrible person. He's only going to sleep with her because of this bet. And so everyone shows up at the house at the end. That's over the top and silly.

[01:25:29.600] - Beth

But I could buy it because I knew David by that.

[01:25:32.670] - Chels

So yeah, I liked David. And was her name Cynthie? I like Cynthie's like weird. So she's like a dating expert or relationships expert or something. And her whole shtick is that she's writing a book about being in relationships and she needs that wedding photo with her and Cal.

[01:25:52.720] - Beth

Yeah, she needs to be in a relationship.

[01:25:54.560] - Chels

She needs to be in a relationship with Cal specifically. So she's doing this, you know, this pseudo advice that dating experts give, the four steps to infatuation or whatever. She has this sort of step by step and you just see her slowly have a meltdown as she's like, oh, no. Min and cow have entered the attraction stage. And it's just like such a perfect parody of the way that those type of dating experts talk [01:26:24.990] that I was just like, dying. She was just like, kind of like everything that makes me cringe. About 2004, Crusie made it really funny. It's kind of hard to do because that's not really a time period I like to revisit.

[01:26:42.090] - Beth

I think you clarified something for me. I think it's like when it's an exaggeration or like a parody of a real behavior and it's like shining a light on that. I think that's when it's more funny rather than just being silly for silliness's sake. I feel like if there's an underlying commentary or character trait that's being developed, I can buy it more. So yes.

[01:27:05.450] - Beth

Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed. This unconventional episode structure and maybe you will like the books that we recommended to each other for yourselves. Also, thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you enjoy the podcast, you can find bonus content on our patreon.com/reformedrakes. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram for show updates. The username for both is at reformedrakes. Thank you again and we will see you next time.