The Phoenix Bride
Show Notes
The Phoenix Bride is set in 1666 and Cecilia Thorowgood and David Mendes have both recently lost their great loves to the plague. David has thrown himself into his work as a doctor, taking on more clients outside his small Jewish community and Cecilia has fallen into a depression, staying at her sister’s London house and refusing to see company. Her sister employs David as a last resort. considering his medicine practice close to paganism. David seeks to heal Cecilia’s emotions as much as her health and they fall into a tenuous friendship that they both know has an expiration date. Siegel writes an incredibly romantic love story the definitionally is a romance novel, but with an unconventional happily-ever-after.
Books Referenced
Bed of Spices by Barbara Samuel
Delicious by Sherry Thomas
Solomon’s Crown by Natasha Siegel
Works Cited
Samuel Pepys’ Diary Entries from September 1666
1666: How A Catastrophic Inferno Engulfed London | The Great Fire: In Real Time | Timeline
The Great Plague: Royal Museums Greenwich
Transcript
[00:00:00.000] - Emma
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that would walk into fire to see you to safety. I'm Emma, a law librarian writing about justice and romance at the Substack Restorative Romance.
[00:00:08.930] - Beth
My name is Beth, and I'm a grad student, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.
[00:00:13.240] - Emma
And today we're discussing one of my most anticipated reads of the last few years, The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel. This book came out last March, which maybe reveals how much of a mood reader that I am that I just not read it, but it did not disappoint. Natasha Siegel earned her MA in Early Modern Studies from University College London and specialized her research in Anglo-Jewish and colonial history. She's published two novels, and a third, As Many Souls As Stars, will be released in October 2025. Her writing interweaves magic and history to tell stories of queer, Jewish, or otherwise marginalized people. All of Siegel's books so far have a romantic of it, but she does not seem beholden to predictability or genre consistency. Her first book, Solomon's Crown, is reimagining of the relationship between Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France, which runs far afield of historical accuracy, while The Phoenix Bride is inlaid with so much historical detail for a time period that nearly never appears in romantic fiction. And her new book is a magical lesbian retelling of the Faustus narrative. I think she's a really exciting author who swings big while also writing incredibly romantic prose and story lines.
[00:01:13.470] - Emma
The Phoenix Bride is set in 1666, and Cecilia Thorowgood and David Mendez have both recently lost their great loves to the plague. David has thrown himself into his work as a doctor, taking on more clients outside of his small Jewish community, and Cecilia has fallen into a depression, staying at her sister's London house and refusing to see company. She's been working on a long time since she was 17. Her sister employs David as a last resort, considering her as his medicine practice close to paganism. David seeks to heal Cecilia's emotions as much as her health, and they fall into a tenuous friendship that they both know has an expiration date. As Cecilia regains her will and strength, she seeks further connection with David, despite her sister's restrictions on her movement in London and David's religious identity. David is dealing with the loss of his best friend, Manuel, and unspoken romantic feelings he harbored for the man, as well as pressure to marry within the small community of Jewish-Portuguese immigrants in London. The great fire London in 1666 as acts as a grounding centerpiece to the book, Siegel manages to write an incredibly romantic love story that is definitionally a romance novel, but with a happily ever after unlike anything I've ever read.
[00:02:10.470] - Emma
Simultaneously honoring historical accuracy, her character's queer and religious identities, and delivering major emotional punches. Okay, so usually this is when we ask, what's your relationship to this author? But this is a first read for both of us, new to this author. I just knew when this book, I heard about this book, I was like, I'm going to like that book, and I just trusted that I was going to like it. And then I did like it.
[00:02:52.560] - Beth
Honestly, I'm a little blown away that we both trusted that.
[00:02:56.880] - Emma
Yeah, we were deciding it was going to be an episode before we started the first page, I think.
[00:03:01.250] - Beth
I think I read it fairly quickly, and I was like, Hey, I think this is good. This will be good. After we decided we were going to do it, I texted you and I was like, It was good.
[00:03:09.980] - Emma
I love Natasha Siegel's covers. I think they're so beautiful. They don't look like genre romance covers, and we're going to talk about her relationship to genre romance a little bit later. But they're just beautiful, intricate patterns, and I like that all three of them look like they could be the same author, but they're still feel different from each other. I think they're representative of the books that's within them. I've only read The Phoenix Bride, but I think all of them are evocative. I'm really excited for the Faustus book because I think a lesbian Faustian tale sounds great. When I saw this cover, I was like, Oh, I think I'm going to like that book. And I did. So it was nice at the playing out my predictions. They went well.
[00:03:48.990] - Beth
How did you even hear about this book? Because it was on your TBR for...
[00:03:53.070] - Emma
I think I saw it on Twitter. She used to be active on Twitter. Now I think she just has a Bookstagram or a book Instagram. And not that many people follow her. I don't know if she's particularly well, or she's not particularly well read, how often her books are read, particularly by genre fiction or genre romance readers. But she's on Instagram now, and I think I just saw the cover on Twitter, or maybe I had heard of Solomon's Crown. Because I think Solomon's Crown... One of these books got a shout from Olivia Waite in the New York Times. I think it was Solomon's Crown, which actually is the book that is the less like a romance novel of the two. But I thought this was great. But I mean, what was the cover A picture of the cover on our Instagram, but I just think it's really delightful and cute and it looks different than a lot of romance novel covers.
[00:04:37.540] - Beth
Yeah, it does. And kudos to her for getting off Twitter and scaling down social media presence. I always think that's a good move for anyone.
[00:04:47.130] - Emma
Yes, that's true. God wish it were me. But also, I think what piqued my interest, too, was the 1666 setting, which obviously we're going to talk about. Anyone who's writing a romance novel now that's not set in the Regency, gets a big swing for me. I'm like, I will read that. I want to try it out because I'm just... I will also read new Regencies, but something other than Regency, the fact that you got that published, I feel like, is a good sign because we know that people A lot of the publishers are only publishing regencies, if that.
[00:05:18.930] - Beth
Yes. No, I agree. We'll do a quick plot summary. We're trying to be better about these, by the way. And by better, I mean...
[00:05:27.140] - Emma
Shorter.
[00:05:27.140] - Beth
we need to shorten them (laughter). Anyway, please enjoy. We will tell you what happens in this book.
[00:05:37.770] - Emma
Cecilia Thorowgood lost her husband to the black death and has been staying at her sister's house in London since. She spends all of her time either in her room or a walled courtyard, melancholy and depressed, nearly unable to eat. Her twin sister, Margaret, has continually sought doctors for her, although she has an ulterior motive in her sister coming out of her depression. Margaret and her husband, Robert, who's a baron, want Cecilia to get married as soon as possible to Robert's heir, his nephew. Robert and Margaret are having fertility issues and worry about Robert's lands going back to the state.
[00:06:06.160] - Emma
Cecilia is unaware of her sister's plan to marry her off, but she's still very reticent to any treatment and resents her sister's hiring of doctors that poke and prod her. As a last resort, Margaret hires David Mendez, a Jewish doctor. David lives in a small community of Portuguese Jewish refugees in London. Jewish people in Portugal had been forcibly converted, so when the opportunity to live in England came, David and his father moved, though his mother stayed behind, breaking the relationship of his parents. Jewish people had been expelled from England in 1290 during the reign of Edward I, after a period of increasingly violent anti-Semitism. During the interregnum under Oliver Cromwell, Jewish people were invited to resettle in England in 1655 and allowed to openly practice their religion.
[00:06:44.480] - Emma
David treats both Jews and Christians, but is aware of the dangerous position he's in when he takes on high paying Christian clients. If something goes wrong, his identity could still be criminalized. He feels disconnected from his religion, in part because of how he was raised in Portugal under forced conversion, but also because he's warning the loss of his best friend and unrequited love, Manuel. He takes the job for Margaret to treat Cecilia because he needs the money. He's half-heartedly considering marrying Sara, Manuel's sister, who has a crush on him and has inherited her father's mercantile business.
[00:07:12.600] - Emma
When David and Cecilia meet, he takes her lead on her treatment, not insisting on methods that she's skeptical of. Cecilia resents when people assume her despondency is physical illness. She sees herself as in grief over her husband. David's intake of her focuses on her reportage of her symptoms, and his visits to her seem more akin to therapy than a physical exam. David discusses this new client with his friend Jan, who's Dutch. David and Jan have similar interests, including coffee and hiring male sex workers.
[00:07:36.440] - Emma
But David is clearly fascinated by Cecilia, both her resistance to treatment and the dynamic of her staying in her sister's house seemingly permanently. Margaret reveals to David the deadline of Cecilia's impending marriage, and he feels tensioned with knowing a secret about his patient that she herself does not know, but he chooses not to tell her, instead continuing to treat her as if the goal is eventually leaving her sister's care.
[00:07:55.730] - Emma
As Cecilia starts to feel better talking about her feelings with David, she begins to play piano again. After he finds her at the piano during their last scheduled consult, he says, “Then this is my final prescription to you, Cecilia: freedom, in as large a dose as you can manage. Leave this awful house and go into the city. Find somewhere you enjoy being. Drink coffee, make friends, visit theaters. Live.” They bond over their shared losses and share an intimate electric moment over the musical instrument before David leaves, supposedly never to see Cecilia again. Right before he leaves, he prays in Hebrew for her, sharing something intimate of himself. David makes it clear to Sara that he can't marry her, though he doesn't tell her about Manuel or Cecilia.
[00:08:30.170] - Emma
He receives a letter from Cecilia directly thanking her for his service and imagines the wedding he knows is coming for her. When Margaret makes it clear that Robert's nephew, Sir Samuel Gray, has come to court her, Cecilia panics the thought of seeing him, dreading the social niceties. She leaves out of her window and experiences minimal injuries and then wanders through London. She ends up at Regent's Park and runs into David, and he tends her wounds. They meet Jan and hang out at a coffee house, and Cecilia starts to come out of her melancholy. She wants to continue being friends with David, though he sees it as impossible because of their genders and religions. She assures David that she would take the blame for being out and about with him, though he knows he will bear the brunt of any punishment if they are caught together.
[00:09:06.000] - Emma
When Cecilia returns to her sister's home, her sister is angry, but during the conversation, Cecilia puts together that her suitor is her brother-in-law's heir, and her sister has masterminded an arranged marriage. Cecilia and David have agreed to meet one final time. They sneak away to the park and have sex.
[00:09:20.130] - Emma
When they return to Cecilia's home, Margaret is there waiting for them, and her cruel words since Cecilia reveals that David knew she was to be married when he started treating her, and Cecilia feels betrayed by his keeping Margaret's secret. She does begin to consider marriage to Samuel Gray. He's nice enough and clearly uninterested in her sexually, and Cecilia believes that he would let her live a much more independent life than if she continued to live with her sister, so she accepts his proposal. She still thinks of David reading Jewish wedding vows and pining for him.
[00:09:46.740] - Emma
David considers going to Molly Houses with Jan, but she says not to. That night, there's a raid and Jan is arrested. David thinks anxiously of how if Jan had been caught in Portugal, he would have been executed. David then has a crisis of faith after his father falls ill and dies.
[00:10:00.210] - Emma
When Cecilia is at a salon at court, she plays Piano for the king, and her sister gives her a longer leash after the social triumph, which allows Cecilia to sneak away to the coffee house and find Jan. Jan encourages her to continue to look for a way to see David, even though it seems currently impossible.
[00:10:13.070] - Emma
After another dinner party, David is called to tend to a nobleman who was passed out, and Cecilia sneaks away from that party to see him. She was the one who recommended David as a doctor when the host passed out. David begins to kiss Cecilia, but then realizes she's wearing an engagement ring. David understands her choice, but it observes him to see her marry someone she does love, and he leaves the party.
[00:10:31.790] - Emma
While David's contemplating these events at the graves of his father and Manuel, he sees that London was on fire. The fire begins the day of Cecilia and Sam's wedding. They're not in immediate danger, but Cecilia is able to put off the wedding by convincing Sam to take a barge to check on David and Jan. Jan immediately takes a liking to Sam, and Cecilia and Sam are able to help David and an injured Jan escape from the conflux. David and Jan stay the night at Sam's townhouse, and David and Cecilia are able to spend the night together. Sam and David have a conversation the next morning, and Sam has understanding of David's love of his future wife and elements how unfair it is that Cecilia and Sam have to marry, but they do have to marry.
[00:11:04.960] - Emma
Sam and Cecilia go to the country estate in Kent, and David believes that Cecilia will forget him when she goes, and it isn't proper for them to write each other. Sam and Jan have a correspondence, so the main couple does hear pieces of information about how each other's lives are going through these letters. Sam and Cecilia bond and form a platonic relationship in their marriage. In the spring, the couple returns to London, and Cecilia writes to David, though he doesn't open it immediately out of fear of what the letter contains. When Jan finally gets him to talk about his feelings what he's going through, he decides to read the letter, and it's arranging a meeting for their reunion.
[00:11:34.410] - Emma
Cecilia and Sam are going to business with Jan to start rebuilding coffee houses in London. Margaret and Cecilia have tried to repair their relationship, and Margaret is now pregnant, though the sisters still don't see eye to eye. Cecilia and David do meet up at the park and agreed to commit to their relationship, even though they can never marry since he is Jewish and she is married. And Cecilia says, “All things end. I have lost things before, David, and I will do so again. If I didn’t think love was worth the risk, I would have buried myself with Will and spared myself the struggle.” They make their happily ever after out of the pieces of life they have.
[00:12:03.930] - Emma
Yeah. I wanted to talk about 1666 as a setting because I think whenever we do a book set in a new setting, we feel like we should explain the setting, like some history behind it, because we are a historical romance podcast. But also how the setting works in the book, because I think either we're covering books that are Regency books, and the people are trying to use the Regency in a new way, or they're not, and it's boring, or it's set in a new context. It's like, what does it mean to set this book in this year? There's two major events that really happened that are centerpieces to this book, The Plague of 1665 and the 1666 Great Fire of London. And we talked about this before when we were just talking about the book together catching up. Like the book, this fire is not nearly as central as either of us thought it was going to be to what happens in the plot. Maybe it's emotionally grounding?
[00:12:53.510] - Beth
Yeah, you say the year 1666. I'm like, Oh, the fire. And then also the title, The Phoenix Bride. I think that also feels like, okay, you're rising from the ashes. But the fire seems a bit disconnected from the rest of the plot, which I think we both agreed on. You could remove the fire, and the trajectory of the plot would not change that much. Cecilia still gets married to Sam. You talked about this. You thought it would be like, Oh, David and Cecilia can use the fire as a way to, like Evangeline Jones.
[00:13:31.610] - Emma
Right. I thought they were going to fake their death.
[00:13:32.850] - Beth
Start over. Yeah, fake your death, go and live a new life. But that's not what happens.
[00:13:39.880] - Emma
Yeah. And so as I was talking about this, I did come to a thought about the fire. But I think the thing that is plot-wise, the catalyst of the book is the plague, which I knew a lot less about. So I'll have some info dump about the great plague of 1665. So the one reason it's called the Great Plague is because, what it was really, really bad, but also because it was the last endemic instance in England of the Black Death. And so this is the same Black Death from the 1300s. And this is, I guess, just medieval history. If you were allowed to take AP European history in high school, you may know this already.
[00:14:14.340] - Beth
Emma wasn't. She's not upset about it.
[00:14:16.020] - Beth
I wasn't, famously. It's my great high school wound. So the last endemic incident. So the Black Death has been going on for 300 years. It was a pandemic in the 1300s, and then we have endemic instances in different parts of Europe throughout then. So something between 15% and 25% of the city's population died in 18 months. It's bad. Mostly poor people died because rich people could go to the suburbs. So this is also a foundational period of the creation of London suburbs, which is interesting because they have better sanitation. T
[00:14:51.300] - Beth
his is famously when John Milton finishes Paradise Lost, is that he goes to Milton's cottage and finishes the book there. So very bad. We talk a a little bit about sanitation of London in the Newgate episode. I think reading about this, it's hard to imagine how disgusting the streets are in London. They're so narrow, like schlop is coming up on you while you're walking, and there's no sanitation. So all these people die, and then it is petering out by the beginning of the book, really. But people are still experiencing Black Death. It's not totally over yet. So that's the Black Death.
[00:15:24.670] - Emma
And then it doesn't come back. And so partially because of better sanitation, this is one of the reasons that the Black Death And one of the reasons London starts having better sanitation is because the fire starts. So just for context of the fire. So this happens in 1966. The fire starts on Pudding Street, which I think is a funny name for a street. And famously, it's like a foible of civil servants not knowing how to make decisions without by committee.
[00:15:49.360] - Emma
So the Lord Mayor of London, who's supposed to have jurisdiction over London, the King is not supposed to make these decisions, hesitates about making fire breaks, which is the main way to stop a fire before you have running water like that, is that when a building is on fire, you destroy all the buildings around it so it doesn't jump between building into building. But the Lord Mayor at the time was very afraid of doing this because the people who lived in the houses that were next to where the fire started were all renters, so they couldn't find the owners. And he's like, Well, I don't want to destroy property without telling the owners.
[00:16:19.370] - Emma
And there's a difference about being a scapegoat or not, whether this was what anyone would have done at the time. But then Bloodworth, Bloodworth is his name, and he's really interested in maintaining authority over the monarch. This is Charles II, who's just been restored, so post Oliver Cromwell. And so he's very afraid of Charles II coming in and taking over municipal power. So for example, he refuses help from the Duke of York, the King's brother, who has his own militia who's ready to help the fire. And eventually, Charles II does have to override the municipal authority to pull down the buildings in different parts of the neighborhoods. And this actually did affect rich neighborhoods a lot.
[00:16:53.550] - Emma
And so we see this in major changes in social structure of London. And this happens in Regency novels. So basically, the fire is happening mostly in East London, where a lot of people lived. And then when those neighborhoods are destroyed, a lot of the rich people move to the neighborhoods that we're familiar with in Regency novels, like Marylebone, Hyde Park, Soho, Kensington, Mayfair. That all develops, and all that Georgian regency architecture is able to be built out in the west part of London.
[00:17:19.020] - Emma
And then I thought it was really interesting that the layout of the city didn't really change. London still has this spiral organization that's medieval, because despite proposals by architects like Christopher who designed the new Saint Paul's to modernize the street layout. They basically just built on top of the same layout. And it's like the housingization project of Paris in the 19th century. London neglects to do this. And so there's all these what ifs and city planning. It's like, what would have happened if London had been the Paris of the 1600s or the Paris of the 19th century in the 1900s because of these widened avenues that Christopher Wren wanted?
[00:17:54.470] - Beth
But they didn't do.
[00:17:55.590] - Emma
But they didn't do it. It's like Paris becomes this center of learning and the enlightenment and all these things. It also gets the revolution faster. What would have happened if urbanism had taken roots in London? It's a city planning question. The other thing I thought was interesting because I was thinking a lot about the book Bed of Spices, which I had Chels read in one of our Rake Recommends episodes. Just it's like a bookend for this historical period because I thought... Because that book starts with the... It's basically said at the beginning of the second pandemic of the bubonic plague, so the 1300s, and this one's at the end of it. That book is a lot about the development of extreme anti-Semitism that's happening during these 300 years because it ends with the terrible, terrible pogrom in Strasbourg on St. Valentine's Day. It's these two books that are about interreligious relationships. One from the '80s is about the beginning of this period of Jewish history in Europe, and this is at the end of this period of anti-Semitism when Jewish people are invited back to live in and practice the religion freely, that we still see anti-Semitism affecting David in the world that is in the book.
[00:19:08.770] - Beth
Yeah, that was good. I love a good info dump. You mentioned Pepys in your... Samuel Pepys earlier? Yeah. Not when you were talking in the script, but then you didn't mention him.
[00:19:21.990] - Emma
I skipped it.
[00:19:22.530] - Beth
So I wanted to talk about him. Just because I think if you are an author looking to draw on primary sources. Of course, you're going to go to Pepys because he was... Well, he was a politician and a civil servant, but famously, he kept a diary from 1660 to 1669. So that's where we get a lot of this firsthand account. It's from him where he talks about what happened. He talks about the barges that they take in the book. He does that. And he's actually a good writer. Yeah.
[00:19:54.830] - Emma
It's considered one of the best diaries to read as a third party.
[00:20:00.030] - Beth
Yeah. So there's one little part of an entry I wanted to read just to give a feel of this fire. So this is on September 2, 1666. We keep saying that year like people are going to forget it. I think the fire also lasts over four days. To keep that in mind, I don't remember when it started, the first to the fourth or second to the sixth.
[00:20:26.220] - Emma
It definitely was like, there's a breakdown of the day by day on Wikipedia, and I think it's four days.
[00:20:31.850] - Beth
Yeah, I think it starts on the first. So this is Pepys talking: “We staid till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruins.” So, yeah. And I think the book, Siegel does a good job, I think, of placing you in it and the machinations of these characters actually moving within the fire.
[00:21:14.610] - Emma
It's hard to imagine. But also, Pepys has this firsthand account of it. But it's hard to imagine these people going into the fire. But people did it for journalistic reasons, like Pepys. Or he's going... Pepys is one of the people who's communicating with Charles II on the day of the fire. What do people need to be doing? And so the people are taking barges on the Thames past the fire, which I think it's hard for me to conceptualize what a city on fire looks like, but I think Siegel paints it really well.
[00:21:42.170] - Beth
And then we wanted to talk a bit about the plague, which I agree with you. This informs the plot and the characters much more than the fire does. So we go over this in the plot summary. But Cecilia's husband, William, dies right at the beginning. And I loved how Siegel talked about their relationship, a story that could have been its own book, where William is first engaged to Margaret, but then Margaret finds someone else that she wants to marry. She's very practical. And so this is what Cecilia tells the reader, “I loved him, and still love him, as a swallow loves the wind.” then she says of William, "He had always lived a life unflinching; his love for me was not diminished by the promise of its permanency.” I always love these kinds of portrayals of grief. Sometimes in fiction, we act as if a similar... When a similar relationship replaces an old one, your husband dies and then you find a new partner, like narratively, it feels like you've made up for something when that's just not how it is in life. And so I find this depiction of their unconditional love for each other—it's not conditioned on the presence of the other person—much more true. And really, you just you get a new relationship. It's just added to your group of existing relationships. And you're still giving energy and love to the person who has gone.
[00:23:14.520] - Emma
Yeah, I appreciated that both of them had a love loss, but also that... I mean, it's only true for Cecilia, but that we see Cecilia with William before he dies, because I think a lot of authors are afraid to do that because it's maybe like, well, if we You see her in love with someone else, what's going to happen later? I think that's a very modern author fear. In David, we don't see with Manuel because he's passed away before we meet David. But we do see him with Sara, Manuel's sister. I think that community aspect and that tension between him and Sara, both being Jewish and being the small Portuguese community. But then also he feels this absence of Manuel. He's like, Sara is this shadow of Manuel because they're so similar, but not the relationship that I want to have. And so we get different perspectives on what is it like to go through this grief. Cecilia, we see it happening actively while David is a little bit more distant from it. But also because he's more distant from it, he can give her a little bit, maybe more advice on the grieving process.
[00:24:17.070] - Beth
No, I really like that. I think it also shows how grief is manifested differently. I think also because Cecilia is allowed to more openly grieve, like it was her husband. And David and Manuel, it was his best friend, and he didn't know that David was in love with him. And then another side of David's grief is the fact that he was a doctor. So I think the image of the plague doctor is so striking. We can all imagine.
[00:24:49.470] - Emma
Yeah, he talks about wearing his mask. And I was like, oh, yeah, they did that.
[00:24:53.160] - Beth
Yeah. They used to put... I googled it. I'm like, why did they wear that mask? So they put herbs in the beak of it. You probably already knew this. I didn't know this.
[00:25:03.190] - Emma
It's one of those things. It's like, did you just do this to scare your patients? Also, I wonder... I don't know if maybe people in the medieval or the 1600s didn't find it scary. To us, it's so other and I don't know. It's spooky to us, but maybe it was comforting to see your doctor. It's like seeing a person in scrubs. You're like, oh, they know what they're doing.
[00:25:23.640] - Beth
I wonder if... I don't know if David feels guilt. I think that's too strong of a word.
[00:25:33.850] - Emma
It's almost like an inadequacy. This is something that... He knows he can't have done anything about it, but also what if he could have?
[00:25:42.900] - Beth
Yeah, he has this dream halfway through the book where he sees... He's dressed up in his coat and his peak, and he looks at the window and he sees Manuel is healthy and whole. And then he's pushing an empty cart that you would... That people were pushing around to collect bodies. And he has this thought in the dream, "I have succeeded this time. All as well." And I think we see, obviously, because we have lived through a modern pandemic, I don't know if we want to talk about the pit, but I did think of the Pit.
[00:26:16.570] - Emma
I was also thinking about the Pitt. Because that's a pretty...
[00:26:20.260] - Beth
Noah Wyle's character, Dr. Robby. It's on the day that's the anniversary of four years prior when his mentor has died, and he's not having a good day for many reasons, but that's one of them.
[00:26:35.420] - Emma
Yeah, I feel like they're probably psychologically in a very similar position, where it's for different reasons, they cannot grieve this properly. But also, I think Robby and David both, though, they couldn't have done anything. They did not have the skillset or the technology or the medicine that could have saved this person. Both with COVID and also the Black Death, systemic things might have been able to save these people. Like better sanitation in London or their better governmental responses to COVID. And so there's this anger that I think both of them have. But also it's like, where does that anger go? And Cecilia's anger over her husband's death, it's definitely turning inwards. She's eating herself alive. And David is bottling up.
[00:27:17.240] - Beth
She's like, I was with him, and I didn't die. Why didn't I die with him?
[00:27:21.650] - Emma
Yeah, like survivor's guilt.
[00:27:22.760] - Beth
Yeah. Yeah, that. So, yeah, I think this was a really interesting year she picked. And I think a well, you could draw on quite a lot. It's not like I think there's going to be a new subgenre.
[00:27:36.100] - Emma
Yeah, I'm going to... Because when I remember that we have these first-hand accounts from Pepys, who's just this iconic chronicler of a year. Because it's also like he didn't know what was going to happen when he started writing his diary. He didn't know he was going to live through the last endemic of the Black Death, and I should say, last endemic in England and the great fire of London. But we have this first-hand account that's both exciting and mundane. I'm surprised that there's not more both romantic fiction that is set during this period, but also historical fiction. I'm not aware of a ton of stuff that's written during the restoration like this. I'm sure it exists, but I've like, iconic I feel like there's certain periods. Regency, Tudor are the periods that get the big swings at historical fiction, even Victorian period more. But I feel like the restoration is a gap in our culture. But we know exactly what like because Pepys is telling us.
[00:28:32.810] - Beth
Yeah, I feel like as far as... There's a lot of Elizabethans. And I just wonder if it's just like, this is how it is in publishing. It's like you break into the market, you make success, and then other people are allowed to do similar things to you. So it's like, how successful does an author have to be to help other authors? Could someone pitch a book and use The Phoenix Bride as a comp? Do you know what I mean? I'm not sure. But yeah, I think this is really fertile ground. At least we have indie publishing. So if someone wanted to follow their bliss, please do that.
[00:29:10.480] - Emma
I think there's so much there. And this is scratches the surface of like, it goes into deep dives of certain communities and certain demographics during this period. But both David and Cecilia are pretty... I mean, they're in different communities and they're different classes against each other. But I feel the sense is that David is... He's, he's well off enough to have a servant. He has a maid that comes and helps him. So they are similar in some ways, class-wise.
[00:29:38.280] - Beth
Yeah. It really is because he's Jewish. And we talked about this. There's a part where... So Samuel shows up to the house, and this is before she's met him. Margaret, the sister, is like, I want you to meet this guy. And this is a potential marriage candidate. So Cecilia hops out the window, and she runs into David. They decide to keep meeting up, and he's like, This is dangerous for me to meet up with you. And Cecilia is like, Don't worry. If we get caught, I will take all the blame. And as the reader, you're just like, That's not good enough, though. He is still in danger. Even if you try and take all the blame, they will still blame him.
[00:30:24.460] - Emma
We were talking about this when we were catching up on the book. This is an interesting flip in a lot of... Again, If you think of the regency standard. We talk about the regency much because that's so often what the setting is. I think a lot of people assume historical romance. Those are the mores and structures that are going to apply everywhere. But in the regency, you assume the woman has more to lose in the romantic relationship. That's often the dynamic that is not only happening, but is named by the characters. It's like, If I sleep with you, I'm going to be the one who's punished for this if we don't get married. The rake doesn't have anything to lose. And this book, I mean, points out that that's a faulty assumption that it's always on that spectrum. It's like, Cecilia loses almost nothing by sleeping with David or even being caught with David. Like, her sister covers it. She doesn't ruin her reputation. It's a different period as far as understanding of a woman's reputation. She still gets this society marriage. David could be killed. And this is not something that even enters Cecilia's mind as he's like, risking this for her.
[00:31:26.190] - Beth
Yeah, I had a similar feeling, and I'm thinking of it because Reni is reading, what's the book with Rhine Fontaine? Forbidden. She's reading Forbidden. And that's how I felt every time Rhine was with Eddy, and he would do things that would put her in danger. And I was like, I. Yeah. This is a realistic thing, and I'm glad it's... I like that it's being depicted. I hope it's not coming off that I think this is a bad thing. I think it's good that I'm angry at Cecilia. I like that. I think it was an interesting choice that she went with.
[00:32:01.710] - Emma
You're going to talk about Margaret?
[00:32:03.570] - Beth
Oh, yeah. Let's talk a little bit about Margaret. I find her so interesting. She is struggling to conceive. And Margaret's always been more focused on security And I think that's how she's defined her role in the family is that she is practical and she's supposed to take care of people. So this is Margaret speaking to Cecilia in the first third of the book. “'You don’t understand…You have never understood, I realize that now. Mother told me to keep you safe, and everything I have ever done has been to that end. Our entire lives, I have done all in my power to ensure you were secure and content. Was it wrong to ask this once—to ask you to be reasonable, just this once—!' She gives a shriek of anger and claws at the windowsill, her nails wailing against the wood. “I told you when you came here that I wanted you to be happy.'” She feels so brittle to me like her life's built on this unsteady foundation. She tells Cecilia she wants her to be happy, but it feels like Margaret's version of happiness is just security, like just she's going to be taken care of.
[00:33:12.210] - Emma
I feel like Cecilia and Margaret, it's like they just... I don't think either of them is coded as neurodivergent necessarily, but it feels like that where a neurodivergent person and a neurotypical person, where it's like they cannot understand each other's worldview, where it's like their brains are shaped differently. That's how distant it feels to them, which I think is really stressful to Cecilia because she thinks at different moments. We lived the same life. They're twins, except for the fact that Margaret was born first. She's the one that has to marry for money. She always has a second son issue for Cecilia, where it's like she's listless and doesn't know what to do after she's lost her love. But Margaret has a purpose, and her purpose is failing because she can't have an heir or she's struggling to have an error. But it's like they cannot understand each other. I don't know if they ever get to really I'd understand.
[00:34:00.760] - Beth
No, because at the end of the book, I think they're trying to reconcile, and Margaret is apologizing, and Cecilia is like, What are you apologizing for? Margaret doesn't come up with a good answer. They're just never on the same wavelength. So yeah, I thought that was an interesting inclusion.
[00:34:18.850] - Emma
We've done a lot of sibling books this year. I feel like we've talked about... I feel like we've had a lot of interesting sibling relationships in the books we read this season. But I like that it's not all... Margaret ends being able to conceive a child, and so she settles... And that's one of the precipitating factors in her apology is that she now feels like she can reach out to Cecilia because she solved her problem. But it's like, they're not like, Okay, let's kiss and make up, or everything's sunny and roses. It's like, Cecilia feels very betrayed by Margaret's actions. Also, I feel like Margaret probably also feels very betrayed by Cecilia's actions. They do not understand why the other one did what they did, and I don't know if they're ever going to, which sometimes happens.
[00:35:01.880] - Beth
The fact that they're twins, like you said, and her mom is the one being like, You need to take care of your sister. I'm like, You guys are minutes apart in age. It's not like an older sister in the sense of, I'm 10 years older than you. I need to take care of you. They're the same age.
[00:35:16.750] - Emma
This is another thing that made me think. I could not find anything with Natasha Siegel talking about Bed of Spices, but I would like, this is the book that I would have to talk to her about because they're also twins in Bed of Spices. But it's the Christian sisters are twins. Oh wait, they're also the Christian sisters in this book, but they're twins, and they have a similar relationship. The one that's the romantic lead in Bed of Spices is the older protective sister. But something about the twinness, I was like, I feel like there's a connection here, but I couldn't find anything about her. I could not find her speaking about that book. I just wonder if she's aware of it, because I feel like it's such an interesting book end to this one.
[00:35:51.730] - Beth
Yeah, I agree. Well, speaking of Bed of Spices, we can talk about Jewish identity. I found Siegel's exploration of Jewish identity quite poignant, as David considers what makes him truly Jewish. He's from Portugal, and when they were there, they couldn't practice anything. They couldn't be Jewish. It was under threat of death. So I think a narrative question that Siegel explores, is it the act of practice of your identity, or is it something more innate that makes you, in this case, Jewish? So Manuel's sister, Sara, wishes to marry David; in fact, she's the one who proposes to him. And David does care for her. And I actually love as a little side note that they still, after he refuses her, they still have a relationship. And he like, doesn't he deliver her baby? Am I making that up? I think that's true.
[00:36:45.340] - Emma
I feel like I... It sounds right.
[00:36:48.330] - Beth
Yeah. He's still in her life, which I really like. And so David doesn't want to marry her. And David and his dad have this conversation about it, which is a little long, but if you will indulge me. So this is David speaking first:
[00:38:13.460] - Beth
“Do you ever feel as if we are not Jews, not truly?” I asked him, and he looks utterly astonished…“What do you mean? He says.“When we were in Portugal, we did not practice. We did not go to synagogue, we couldn’t hang a mezuzah.” “Because we had to hide. We were still Jews, of course.”“Yes, but—but we were not Jews as we are here. As you have become.”“We wore a mask; we had to,” he says.“But I was born a Jew beneath it.” I say. I was raised wearing it. Now I can’t take it off. I don’t know how.”He sighs…”It will take time…time to adjust.”“It has been years.“You must be patient.”“I am finished with patience. I despise the chimera I have become. IF I marry Sara, will I become a real Jew, finally? We make sacrifices for this, for the sake of our blood, our faith, but will they ever be worth it? If I marry her, if we have a family, will it be worth it then?”
[00:38:15.050] - Beth
So I find this arc of his identity crisis. I don't know. I guess I get where he's coming from. What makes you who you are? And it was just, there's no easy answer. I see both sides of what they're saying.
[00:38:33.860] - Emma
Yeah. The history of this. And again, this is Siegel, I think a testament to her. Picking this moment is so smart for the story, with the fire and the plague. And so the The reestablishment of Jewish communities in England happens. They had been expelled from England under Edward I, from this anti-Semitism that's stemming from plague anxiety, but also just general anti-Semitism. You don't want to be like, It's It's just plague anxiety. It's really anti-Semitism dressed up like plague anxiety in the 1300s under Edward I. They've been exiled to the continent, but then the Spanish Inquisition, the Portuguese Inquisition happens, and that's when... They use the word converso in the book. It's people who've been forcibly conversed. I think there's also the word Marranos, specifically for Sephardic Jews. I don't think Siegel uses it in the book. I didn't see it in there. But that's another word that describes this community of forced conversion in Spain and Portugal. In the 1600s, there's a movement by Puritans for religious freedom, partially with Judaism, because the Puritans, some sex of puritanism believe that if Jews are let back into England, the Messiah will come back. It's a little conspiratorial.
[00:39:47.440] - Emma
But they laid the rhetorical groundwork for Jewish people coming back. Then during the Interregnum, Oliver Cromwell tacitly invites Jews to come back, partially for trade interest. And so that's what's happening here is that David and his father choose to go to England, even though they leave David's mother behind. His mother chooses to stay in Portugal, and this is a wound for both of them. His father doesn't really seem to accept that his mother's ever coming, and David misses his mother.
[00:40:16.820] - Beth
Yeah. I guess it's this idea of all the suffering they go through. If he goes through with this marriage to Sara, will it make it worth it? All the sacrifices they made?
[00:40:29.740] - Beth
He also points out that there are not that many people. I think the number this Portuguese Jewish community is very small. This is one of the reasons why he's taking Christian clients, even though it increases his danger to him. This is the other thing that he talks about increasing his danger. He's constantly worried that one of his patients is going to die, and they're going to blame the Jewish doctor, and he's not going to have any recourse. This is this person who's first generation to this new country, and also lived in a place that there was an Inquisition. He remembers the Inquisition. So he's very aware that his identity could be criminalized at any moment. But yeah, so Sara is like, maybe he's the only option. We don't see him with any other women in the Jewish community that he could marry.
[00:41:17.610] - Beth
Yeah. And I feel like this may be... We talked about how the ending is not conventional. They don't get married at the end. And we talked about how we thought maybe they would run together. But David looks Jewish, he's never going to be able to run away and escape that identity. So I guess I like, and I was wondering how you feel about the ending.
[00:41:44.470] - Emma
I like it because, so. In Bed of Spices, the other book that I keep comparing this to, they run away to Northern Africa. And it's like they have to leave. I mean, they have to leave. He has to leave Germany because the pogroms, and then she leaves with him. I guess it's Strasbourg, so it's Germany then, but France now. But they're in Northern Africa at the end of the book. And I like... So I feel like it honors this historical accuracy, because that's sometimes with books that when people get married, and again, this is a regency problem, where the scullery made and the duke get married. It's like, okay, it's nice to think that, but when it happens in every book and we never get the romance of the other option... Sara talked about this, the books that end with the mistress staying the mistress.
[00:42:29.430] - Beth
Yeah, I I feel like we are, what you're talking about, holding up marriage as the ultimate ideal. It's not a happily ever after unless they are solidly together. But I think especially with this book, you have other considerations with David his identity, where it is probably safer and maybe better for their relationship for them not to be married, and they still have a relationship together at the end of the book.
[00:42:56.420] - Emma
Yeah. I just think people are differing opinions about whether optimistic or not. I think some people come to historical romance and they say, they're like, I like that it ends... Anyone can get married to anyone in this genre. And that happily ever after is very important to me. It's very important that things are tied with a bow at the end of the book because that's what I want from this book. But I think people who are like that, they need to acknowledge that that's reader preference, and one reader's preference can't define whether or something is or is not in a genre. And so that's my mini-rant there. That I think it's important for the genre to have diversity of structure like this. I think I'm happy that Siegel wrote an ending that is different. I think even running away together would be a different book. We don't get a lot of that. We get a lot of forcing society to accept something that maybe historically they wouldn't have because we need this like, tied with a bow happy ever after.
[00:43:52.770] - Beth
Yeah. And maybe this segues to our next point where we talk a bit about queer identity. Because also, because she's with Samuel Gray, who is queer too.
[00:44:01.970] - Emma
Yeah. He's a fop. Which is interesting. Anytime I read a book that's set not in the Regency, whenever they describe the costumes, I cannot imagine them. Like, what are they wearing? It's so hard for me to picture, but he's wearing high heels and he's got all his silks and blush. And even when Cecilia goes to a party, she's wearing a lot of makeup, which is very restoration. And I'm like, A Regency hero would never wear makeup or rouge. It's to a party.
[00:44:31.500] - Beth
Yeah. If you remind me, I was like, I need to reread this book before we do this again. I'm like, Was I picking up on something between Samuel and Jan?
[00:44:40.280] - Emma
Yeah. Yes. That was what I totally...
[00:44:42.900] - Beth
Okay. So I was Because he says, I don't want to marry... So Samuel says he doesn't want to marry a woman because he's basically neurodivergent. He's been diagnosed with restlessness. He's our ADHD friend.
[00:44:56.090] - Emma
He's the first character. If you love Bernie Trent from Lord of Scoundrels. When you read Lord of Scoundrels, then you're like, Bertie Trent is my man, which I'm sure we're legion. I'm sure there's probably a dozen of us in the world. I love Bertie Trent so much. Sam is like that in this book, where he just comes in and he's so affable and distractable. And it's like, Cecilia's primed to hate him, but she's like, he's harmless. If his head wasn't screwed on, he would lose it.
[00:45:26.130] - Beth
Yeah. Like, literally on their wedding day, she's like, Can we go rescue the man I actually love. He's like, Yeah, let's take the barge.
[00:45:33.180] - Emma
Let's go. He's so chill. I mean, he's just like... He just does what his uncle tells him. And then once he marries Cecilia, he does what Cecilia tells him.
[00:45:43.040] - Beth
Yeah. But I guess I saw that their marriage... I guess I see marriage as a protection. If we see marriage for all of its facets and legal protections, this is also extending protection to in my mind. He is a queer man, but he would have a wife. He could also have relationships. He is making everyone happy. I feel like this marriage is beneficial to people, and I like that it's written this way.
[00:46:15.340] - Emma
Yeah, it's not an arranged marriage that is saddling either of them with something that they don't want, because she couldn't marry David. So it's not like she's marrying Sam against her will. It's like, David is not an option. And I think Cecilia knows that. There's never like, Oh, I wish... Let's run away together or let's do something else. It's like, No, this is sad because of the world we live in, but also how can we make the world we live in work for us? It's this lavender marriage. Jan is very attracted to Samuel very quickly, and he's writing letters to him all the time. And it's also interesting how much more openly Jan and Sam are able to have affection for each other. Because they're both men, they can write each other, like very openly. So when Cecilia and David are not talking to each other, they hear about the other one from Jan and Sam.
[00:47:12.990] - Beth
Yeah, that's right. I also, I don't know how to make a good pivot from that, but I also like the inclusion of the Molley Houses. Oh, yeah. That was... I mean, it adds the... Because there's a part when there's a raid and Jan ends up in Newgate, I guess, or just a prison.
[00:47:34.960] - Emma
I think he's in Newgate because I think when I was reading this, I was like, Oh, I could have read this for a Newgate novel. But also, honestly, great Newgate representation. You're there till someone pays for you to get out or someone decides to let you out. Again, Siegel crushing it with the world building as historical accuracy there.
[00:47:51.930] - Beth
I know. He's also thinking about how the... What's it called? The trial has already happened. And he's like, Oh, there's nothing I can do. But he shows up at the Bailey anyway. I guess I also... If we want to talk about Manuel a little bit. We don't know what Manuel's inclination was because it was unrequited love. When he goes to pick up Jan, he has this... Not a flashback, but he describes an instance where a year prior that this had happened, and Manuel had come with him to the, Manuel went with him to the Bailey, and this is David speaking. “We stood in this very spot, him watching me with his amber-brown eyes, lids half lowered. He knew what the molly house was; he had inferred as anyone would, that I had a friend there because I sometimes frequented it myself. I kept waiting for judgment or disgust, but he waited with me in the same, silent placidity he always did, soothing me occasionally with soft smiles and platitudes. It made it worse somehow, that he wasn’t disgusted, that he wasn’t shocked. If he had been, it would have justified my cowardice. If he had been, then I would have been certain he’d never caught on, he’d never realized what I felt.”
[00:49:13.510] - Beth
That was just so painful. I think we talk about often on this podcast, the complexity of grief, where you'll always forever miss your friend. The relationship, the person, nothing would ever change that. But I think there is also the grief of the unexplored relationship, like what could have been. I thought it was interesting that she chose an unrequited love instead of just a true... Like, they had a relationship and then Manuel died. I think that's a thing that people go through in life and it's still worth exploring, I think.
[00:49:51.990] - Emma
Yeah. I think it also just primed. It tells you a lot about David's personality, is that in this relationship, Manuel makes it clear that he's very safe in. I think if David had confessed to Manuel, no matter how Manuel felt, he would not have reacted with disgust or that that's what he's telling the speech. But the David still needs some other person to be the catalyst. And it's like Cecilia does that partially because she's lowered her boundary so much because she's in this crisis, that she is the one pushing this relationship with David. She can do that because she's in this position of privilege, but also because she's become very nihilistic post her husband dying. She's like, What do I have to lose? Because I've already lost so much. And she doesn't realize that David actually has a lot to lose more than she does. But she's the one who starts all the physical affection, all these things, she's pushing this. And David both needs that, I think, in his personality, but also needs to be shaken out of this frozen state he's in post-Manuel, where it's like, I just don't know. He says he's throwing himself into his work, and he's like, I can't imagine doing...
[00:50:55.900] - Emma
I can't imagine being in a relationship with anyone.
[00:50:58.870] - Beth
Yeah, his dad calls him out on that. He's like, You keep running away from things. You have to finally face something.
[00:51:06.080] - Emma
Yeah. Just like, shout out to Siegel. I think, sorry, I mentioned this in our group chat when I was recommending this book as like, I wish more authors did this, where just there's like incidental queerness in the World. I think Siegel has written like one gay romance, her next book is a lesbian book. In this book, it's like David has feelings for a man and then feelings for a woman, and then Jan is there. They go to the Molly house. All these things, it's just like it almost reads to me more like, this is an author who believes in a world with queer people more than books where it's like, it's... I don't know. I don't even know how to explain the difference between this- Explicitly, I'm writing a book for rep, but this is just woven in much more naturally. I think it's telling that she even... Again, because she's writing books about queer... She said she wants to write about queer people and a marginalized identity. Is that even in a book where the couple is a man and a woman. She writes a world where there are queer people. And it's not this call-out rep thing.
[00:52:08.360] - Emma
It's just incidental. And the thing it reminded me of was the Elizabeth Kingston series. There's a trans character in one of her... I can't remember the series name.
[00:52:17.550] - Beth
The Kingsman series? Yeah.
[00:52:20.470] - Emma
And there's a trans character who's in the medieval period, is a trans sex worker, and it just totally works in the period. And is it this It just... Sometimes it feels like everJane's doing putting stars around their rep on there. It's woven into the plot. It doesn't feel like they're asking for brownie points for it to be there. It just is there. And that feels so much more special. I also think it should just incidentally happen in all books because there are queer people around us everywhere. I like the world building that she does with that. I think it's meaningful that she's also not writing She's not writing just one type of relationship in her books. She just writes relationships.
[00:53:07.830] - Beth
Yeah, and different kinds of love, which I think is the point I was trying to make with the unrequited love. I did say The Kingsman, which is a movie. I meant The Welsh Blades series. Welsh Blades, yeah. The book Emma's talking about is One Burning Heart, which is the fourth one.
[00:53:22.900] - Emma
Yes, and phenomenal. Recommend.
[00:53:24.460] - Beth
Very good. Yes. Excellent work, Elizabeth Kingston.
[00:53:29.900] - Emma
So I said this thing to Beth, and I don't know if it was totally clear what I was saying to her. So maybe the listeners will also not understand what I'm saying. I will try to get there. So I thought it was telling that... So Siegel's next book, As Many Souls Have Stars, which is out later this year, is much more explicitly a fantasy novel than her first two books. So the first book, Solomon's Crown, reimagines the historical figures in a romance novel. And then Phoenix Bride is strictly historical romance. I picked this up without any context. I would think that this is a historical romance genre fiction. I I was thinking about ways that the fantasy genre is present even in The Phoenix Bride, even though there are no fantastical elements to it. I was thinking about this in part because I saw comparisons between Siegel and Katherine Arden, the author of The Warm Hands of Ghosts, the book that we read earlier this season with Bayley. So in reviews of this book. So this is not a fantasy novel, but Warm Hands of Ghost does have that a fantasy element to it that this book is lacking.
[00:54:22.560] - Emma
But a lot of people make comparisons between the two. One thought I had is the way that Siegel uses medicine in this book as a system or a worldview, which maybe mirrors how a magic system works in a fantasy novel. And again, this is me projecting genre assumptions onto a genre here because I am not much of a fantasy reader. But I was thinking about the ways David defines himself as a healer, and Cecilia defines herself, and people define her by her illness. Cecilia really holds on to her illness as almost like a safety blanket. She does not want to get better when David comes to see her. And then the boundaries that are socially set up between them are blurred because of her dire need for his power or his medicine. And this feels like the set up to a fantasy story where there's this secret ingredient that someone has that will save Cecilia. And that just says that as the meet cute in the book and the systems. I just felt like, I think you could tell reading this book, even though there are no fantastical elements, that she has an interest in fantasy.
[00:55:26.700] - Emma
And the other things, I thought, all the metaphors. I think she has this high voluten way of writing similies, which I appreciate it because I like flowery language. But again, that is one aspect that I thought read a fantasy novel.
[00:55:40.750] - Beth
Yeah, I think I understand much better what you're saying. I think you're keenly interested in how an author... What is influencing an author? You'll go through their entire body of work. I was thinking of Anne Mallory as well, who started in historical romance and then switched to fantasy. While her historical romance novels, I can see why she switched to fantasy because she very much wants to convey... Like, her world building feels very fantasy-esque. Not that it has fantastical elements at all, but just the literal structure of it. And also how Anne Mallory writes, she just wants the reader to pick up on details. She doesn't want to... I think that's probably something that annoys her in fantasy novels is when a character will info dump, it'd be like, while I am making your dress, let me give you a quick political historical-
[00:56:32.660] - Emma
Famously the thing that annoys me about fantasy novels.
[00:56:35.210] - Beth
Yes. So I feel like that... I can see that. So I think that's what you're saying here. It's like, if this author is writing all these genres, how does this other genre still impact this? How does fantasy still impact historical romance when it's not a fantasy?
[00:56:50.860] - Beth
So I do agree with you about the medicine. It's got a magical feel in this book, and the structure of it I referenced Verity's cooking from Delicious by Sherry Thomas, I guess, is a comparison I can make.
[00:57:07.720] - Emma
Oh, yeah. Something that's quotidian, but that becomes magical to the characters. I feel like the medicine, it's like something is different about David's medicine. And what's different is that he's doing talk therapy with her.
[00:57:19.430] - Beth
Yeah. It's funny. I also mentioned this to you. It was like, how Siegel would talk. I felt very like she's basically telling me what the diagnosis is, but historically But it felt very turned to the office, turned to look at me.
[00:57:34.520] - Emma
Like, By the way, she's having panic attacks.
[00:57:36.900] - Beth
Or we talked about how Sam is ADHD, and this is a quote from the book. This is how we know. So this is him speaking, “The physicians I have spoken with say I am afflicted with permanent restlessness. My thoughts are like bees, swarming in my skull. Sometimes they fly out of my mouth without warning, and sometimes they buzz so loudly I can’t hear anything else at all. I fear afflicting someone with such madness without warning would be cruel.”
[00:58:05.600] - Beth
I was like, Okay, yeah, ADHD. But obviously, people have always had ADHD or have had depression. So it's an interesting approach as an author. It's like, How do you appropriate historical language, convey it to the reader, but also maintain authenticity with what you could actually do or what people did at the time? I did very light googling. I was like, okay, so she has melancholy. What did people do for melancholy? Like blood letting? Did they do other things? It was a lot about the humors in your body, your bile. There's too much bile.
[00:58:48.520] - Emma
Yeah, I think some of that... The talking tree now explains to Feyre what's going on is missing in this book, which I appreciate it. But especially for a book set in 1666, when I was doing the plot I was trying to figure out what park they go to. And I was like, I don't know if she says Regent's Park in the book, but it's like she says the park with a canal in it. And it's like, that's the park in London that has a canal in it. And so it's like, okay, that is both historically accurate. That's a park that people in this period could go to. But instead of being like, now we are going to the Serpentine and Hyde Park and going to like Rotten Row and walking down the street. It's just like people just talk. Cecilia doesn't know it's called Regent's Park. She's like, oh, there's a park with a canal in it. That's the one I'm not going to. I know how to get there. So she doesn't do that proper now name dropping in a historical. Which again, feels like it's smart world building that, again, a smart fantasy author would do.
[00:59:42.320] - Beth
Yes.
[00:59:43.170] - Emma
So I agree with that. Also, I did have a thought about Sam and his ADHD.
[00:59:46.170] - Beth
Yes, please tell me.
[00:59:47.190] - Emma
He is writing the love letters to Jan, who owns a coffee house. And it's like, he's going to start drinking coffee and lock in. He's going to get caffanated and suddenly feel like his brain works.
[00:59:57.990] - Beth
It's the most perfect relationship that you can ever devise.
[01:00:01.180] - Emma
We just need to get him some coffee. He's like, Oh my God, my thoughts make sense now.
[01:00:05.250] - Beth
Actually, this works really well for me. Yeah, I love that. Okay, we're talking about genre. So literally in the script, Emma has not a romance novel, a million question marks, and then rant. So please tell me what's annoying you.
[01:00:21.490] - Emma
This happens on Goodreads most of the time because I need this where I still where I see most of my book reviews. But people questioning, even complementary, they will question whether a book like this is a romance novel. And this drives me crazy. This drives Chels crazy. I think all of us crazy. I guess the narrowing of the genre frustrates me. When something is not published by a romance publisher, or does it come in a mass market paperback or a trade paperback, or doesn't have a woman in a ballgown on the cover. I think there people are often looking at the marketing signals for a book to to determine what its genre is. I get frustrated because I think giving genre over to publishers and marketing companies is dereliction of duty by readers.
[01:01:12.820] - Beth
Okay. I feel better because in my thing, I'm like, I can't tell if this is a dumb question or not, but are people just going off like, this is a romance by the publisher? It's by Harlequin and Avon, so therefore this is a romance. And anything outside of that is historical fiction. Right.
[01:01:30.640] - Emma
And it feels like they want it to be... They want it to feel in their hands like a romance novel in a way that... I'm like, I just... I think we're... It's such a narrowing of the genre definition that I just don't love. It frustrates me because I think it... Sometimes people will say, Well, this reads historical fiction, and they mean it derogatorily. They're like, This doesn't read a romance to me because it doesn't read an Avon historical fiction or historical romance. It's like, because certain publishers do have certain voices, like Harlequin, you're predictable. I feel like I can tell an Avon author book because there are certain editorial choices that are being made about structure and all these things. But even this book... I mean, sometimes there are books that I'm like, Okay, this is not engaging with genre fiction definitions, genre fiction conventions of romance. There are things that are... We were just talking in the group chat about Love in the Time of Cholera, which technically fits the definition of romance novel, but no one would call that genre fiction. But this book, to me, does We're always engaged with the genre conventions of romance.
[01:02:32.970] - Emma
We have the dual POV of David and Cecilia. They are constantly thinking about each other. The only thing I can understand that people would look at this and think that it's not a romance novel is that marketing. To me, again, you're giving up... The thing that readers can add to the discourse of the genre is partially genre genre cataloging and genre considerations, like what counts as a romance novel. I just am always arguing it to be more expansive. I find it particularly frustrating that we have this definition that everyone cites from RWA that I don't think is the one we should cite because RWA is a trash organization that is terrible, but it's a central love story and emotionally satisfactory ending. This book has that. If you're going to be beholden to this definition that is trash or from a trash organization, it fits that. So what are we talking about? That's my rant.
[01:03:35.120] - Beth
No, I love your rant. I feel very similarly. I guess I'm always looking to other genres because I'm like, What's going on over there? Are they having the same discussions we are?
[01:03:47.360] - Emma
I don't think they... I mean, I think they are having discussions about genre. I don't know if they're having this genre cop discussion that we have. Yeah.
[01:03:54.830] - Beth
Genre cop is the perfect term, I think. Because I'm I'm literally pulling the last thing I've been reading for class, which I like doing. I'm in an environmental humanities class. So this author, Matt Bell, he writes climate fiction. And he wants, I think as we're arguing for, a more inclusive definition of what should be considered climate fiction. So in the article, he gives two definitions by two other people, and then he adds on, “Both of these definitions are broad enough to admit a great number of novels into the cli-fi ranks, a methodology I’m happy to extend: as a novelist, I’m endlessly suspicious of overly rigid genre boundaries and unnecessary gatekeeping. Therefore, the longer definition that follows is necessarily broad and inclusive, designed to let texts in rather than keep texts out.” And then his definition is like six points, and it is very open. He's like, We're pulling from all these different genres. We're pulling from horror and fantasy and sci-fi and readers and Indigenous traditions and fairy tales. And it should be interdisciplinary. We were pulling from science and history and religion and philosophy. There's so many different ways that you could interpret this genre.
[01:05:07.880] - Beth
So why wouldn't we want to include more stories? So that's how I feel about with romance. I'm like, if the thing is just a central relationship and it can be placed in thousands of different settings or situations, I think it's uncontroversial to say that. I think a lot of people are fine with the sub-genres of romance, but I don't know. I feel It's like, crazy that people are so gatekeep-y about it.
[01:05:34.870] - Emma
Yeah. I think it's part of this is like the romance reader chip on your shoulder. It's like, they're coming for our happily ever after. I don't know. I feel like this fear is maybe unfounded a little bit. It's insofar that I think... It's like when people talk about the death of romance or the death of historical romance now, it's hard to publish any book now. Like, fascism is on the rise. Everything is terrible. I don't know if this is a genre-specific problem. When people assume that something is a genre-specific problem or something so narrow, they look for genre-specific causes for it. I'm like, I don't know if that's true. I don't know if those exist.
[01:06:13.320] - Emma
But a Happily Ever After, to me, I just think that it has to be more expansive than two people engaged or married at the end of a story. To me, that is very important that that is not all happily ever afters. And so this book, and I didn't even see people saying that this wasn't a Happily Ever After because I don't know if it had enough good reads reviews to gather the audience that people would be upset that they are not married at the end of the book.
[01:06:37.520] - Emma
But I think even if you don't like it, I think what you should not do is say that it's not a romance novel. You can just say, It's important for me that these books end with a marriage because I think with the expansive happily ever after, it makes sense for these characters. There's some romance novels that people do get married at the end of the book, and I think they shouldn't get married. Let them together. I'm like, does that make it not a romance level because I was dissatisfied with those characters getting together? I don't think so. I don't think I have the power to cut things off that way.
[01:07:10.840] - Beth
Yeah, I feel like the criticism then should be like, Oh, I I think this couple should have ended up together rather than, or should have gotten married rather than, I don't think this fits genre romance. And I feel like the reason, one reason why I want to push for a more expansive definition is because I think then you can see trends of authors responding each other and like, riffing on each other. Or like, why did someone subvert something that is standard in a genre of romance? Like, what does that say about the story? Like, how does that push on our boundaries? I think there's more interesting conversations we could be having about genre, but we just keep having to fight with the genre cops. Yeah.
[01:07:56.580] - Emma
It's just like, I think in these It's like the Phoenix Bride, where it's like, Natasha Siegel has talked about genre fiction that she's enjoyed before, genre romance. And so it's like, she's definitely influenced by genre romance. But also part of it is that her goal is to write... She states on her author's website, she wants to write about marginalized identities, marginalized characters that she doesn't see in historical fiction. She may have fewer models to pull from. Of course, she's going to be pulling from multiple models, multiple genres. It's like the comp problem that you always talk about when people are pitching things.
[01:08:28.900] - Emma
If you are limited, if you have to comp, it's hard to comp to something that doesn't exist yet. She's going to have fewer... If we're going to get exciting books that are set in 1666 with queer characters and Jewish characters and people of marginalized identities, there are going to be fewer romance novels. It's not going to read something you've read before because it's new. And so it's not going to feel like a romance novel. But you can also read, I don't know, like 100 regencies that all feel the exact same.
[01:08:58.930] - Emma
That exist. And so you're like, this is not romance. It's like, okay, it's not romance that has-
[01:09:05.150] - Beth
You can find what you want. I promise you.
[01:09:07.110] - Emma
It's not romance that's existed before. It's something new. It's something novel that's exciting. Don't we want the genre? I mean, imagine if people in the '70s did that, and then we never got like, wallpaper 2010 romances. Where would we all be now? If we only got bodice rippers for forever.
[01:09:22.920] - Beth
Yeah. I find the use of comp titles. I'm sure it's good. I don't want to say this this whole thing is bad. I think it does lend itself to the publishing industry being conservative. But if you could use comp titles outside of your genre and that people could follow the logic of what you're doing, I think that would make for more interesting books that you're like, okay, I'm pulling influences from over here and over here, and I'm going to create something new. And you can give the publisher something to be like, well, it's like this. Yeah.
[01:09:58.720] - Emma
Well, even this book, it's It's like Samuel Pepys's Diary. It's like that in some ways, where it's this detail. It's like, maybe there's not a comp title for a 1666 romance, but it's like it's like that. I mean, I think one of the worst things that romance authors can do is only read romance because then we get the wallpaper of a wallpaper of a wallpaper that it seems so pervasive in certain time period settings, where it's like, this is not based on Jane Austen anymore. This is based on three generations removed from George and higher. There's a niche for that, but does that need to be everything? Sorry, I'm just really ragging on regencies today.
[01:10:38.200] - Beth
I haven't read a good one in a while. It's funny because I think you and I like regencies.
[01:10:41.780] - Emma
We want them to be better.
[01:10:42.830] - Beth
Charles tolerates them, I think. But you and me, I think sometimes a good regency just hits so nice. It's just you love...
[01:10:50.780] - Emma
I just haven't read a good one in a while, and I'm heated.
[01:10:53.500] - Beth
You should be. It's hard because we've read all the ones that we know we would like, so now it's trying to find. Find outside that. Okay, cool.
[01:11:03.400] - Emma
I love this book. I'm really excited to see what Siegel does. I'm really excited for Faustian lesbians. I'm hoping that the lesbians are mean, because that's all we want, mean lesbians. Again, the pin has gotten me on mean lesbians. Santos.
[01:11:16.270] - Beth
I love Santos. I would ride into battle for her. Yeah, I agree. I hope it's mean lesbians. I feel like, is it lesbian fiction or is it sapphic? That's our distinction now.
[01:11:29.100] - Emma
I think she calls it a a lesbian Faustian tale, and it's like, okay, great. That's...
[01:11:32.680] - Beth
Please, please stick with that. I'm sure some marketer will say sapphic, so I won't hold it against her. But like...
[01:11:37.790] - Emma
Yeah, I want a real...
[01:11:38.420] - Beth
Write a lesbian fiction story, please.
[01:11:40.140] - Emma
A real demon doing nonsense. I'm excited. Yeah, that's coming out in October. Again, I just think she's exciting. And I'm happy that we both liked this book so much. So, thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you’d like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at Patreon.com/ReformedRakes. You can follow us on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram for show updates, the username for both is @ReformedRakes, or email us at reformedrakes@gmail.com, we love to hear from our listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify, it helps a lot! Thank you again, and we’ll see you next time.
