Amanda Cinelli joins me to discuss representation of autistic characters in romance novels. Amanda shares how reading Helen Hoang’s "The Kiss Quotient" played a big part in her realizing that she was autistic, and talks about some other romances with autism representation that she loved. We also discuss why representing autistic love is important to Amanda as an author and her writing journey pre and post diagnosis. - Shelf Love: NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter |...
May 08, 2023•43 min•Ep. 139
"Somebody’s Trying To Kill Me and I think it’s my husband" by Joanna Russ is a brilliant bit of 50 year old scholarship about modern gothics, but I say it applies just as well to romance novels of today. In part one, I explore the theme of passive protagonists in adventure stories. Part 2, the personal is the problematic. In all parts: unpacking heteropatriarchy. Discussed: Adventure Stories with Passive Protagonists: https://shelflovepodcast.substack.com/p/adventure-stories-with-passive-protago...
Apr 05, 2023•26 min•Ep. 138
Part 2 of the conversation about North and South with Helena Greer. AI generated these action items from the transcript of this episode. AI responses can be inaccurate or misleading. [ ] Schedule a kiss scene between the main characters for modern audiences [ ] Make the male protagonist more sympathetic by toning down his violent behavior [ ] Make the female protagonist more likable and relatable to modern romance audiences [ ] Follow a beat sheet to hit expected pacing and plot points for roman...
Mar 07, 2023•39 min•Ep. 137
Trains! Fruit! Allusions to Hell abound! Victorian industrialist city mortality rates! Writer, sex educator, and librarian Helena Greer is here to discuss North and South. Did the 2004 BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1854 serialized novel make the heroine more likable and everyone else less nuanced? This conversation is serialized just like the original text. We compare and contrast the romantic moments in the book and adaptation, highlighting how the adaptation focuses more on negative em...
Mar 01, 2023•52 min•Ep. 136
Dame Jodie Slaughter, Feather Fetish Understander, and I recently discussed how The Savage and The Swan speaks the unspoken, what a winged wolf looks like, and whether this book is a metaphor for toxic masculinity and healing generational trauma. This summary below was written by AI using my episode transcript: The Savage and the Swan by Ella Fields is a groundbreaking work of Enemies to Lover literature that combines elements of dark fairytale retellings, a possessive anti-hero, and spicy fae r...
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 135
Starting the year off with some cozy re-reads, comfort reads, and short reads to combat the wintery weather and get through winter cold season. I share thoughts on all the books I read in January 2023, including Alice Coldbreath’s Victorian Prizefighter series, A Holiday by Gaslight by Mimi Matthews, His Majesty by Shon, Better Off Wed by Susanna Craig, Hero by Claire Kent, and the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove S...
Feb 01, 2023•25 min•Ep. 134
We need to talk about Anais Nin and her erotic short story collection Delta of Venus. Did Anais Nin write "female erotica"? Is there such a thing? Have Things™️ changed much since 1941? Noted smut writer Dame Jodie Slaughter is Shelf Love's international smut history correspondent. She schools us on the long history of smut, French people, Choice Feminism, why she doesn't believe in the female gaze, how her work is contributing to the demise of "our value system," and more! We unpack Anais's ass...
Jan 17, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 133
Arranged marriage trope in contemporary Indian American diaspora romance novels with cognitive psychologist and author Sri Savita. Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Patreon | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com Discussed: Running Away With the Bride by Sophia Singh Sasson Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma Marriage Game by Sara Desai The Trouble with Hating You by Sajni Patel ...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 132
A billionaire romance novel that name drops Citizen’s United only comes along every so often. Carter Sherman, Senior reporter for VICE News, joins me to discuss Preferential Treatment by Heather Guerre. We talk about power exchange, heterosexual marriage as a transaction, and subverting the single script of the hegemonic BDSM billionaire romance to focus on the fantasy as care & safety as opposed to letting go of control. Romancelandia Holiday Fairies: https://shelflovepodcast.com/blog-posts...
Dec 23, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 131
Are men in romance novels granted agency & subjectivity, and do readers have the same expectations for male consent as they do for female characters in M/F romance? Lynell from Weekend Reader has some thoughts on mutual consent in romance, especially as she’s binging dark mafia romance with kidnapping plots. What happens when your real life values conflict with your fantasy world values, and how do ideas about happily ever after change as our culture changes? Romancelandia Holiday Fairies 20...
Dec 07, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 130
Hear Elysabeth Grace & Katrina Jackson in conversation: a recording from Black Romance and Historical Spaces presentation put on by the Center for Black Diaspora at DePaul University on November 5th, 2022. This episode is a co-release with Black Romance Podcast, hosted by Dr. Julie Moody-Freeman. Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove NEW! $1 Patreon tier “Here for the Discourse” - for those of you bummed by the decline of Twitter Sign up for the emai...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 129
Breaking News! Harlequin Associate Editor John Jacobson is here to give the scoop on Harlequin’s newest, currently unnamed line of sexy new contemporary romances. We talk about Harlequin’s intentions, hopes, and dreams for the line, and also talk about the unfulfilled… gaps in the market, especially for younger readers who want to imagine their own unique, personalized, non-normative happily ever afters. Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for ...
Oct 21, 2022•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 128
Classic fairy tales Cinderella & Beauty and the Beast may have gotten their Disney-fication, but there are many ways to slide your feet into these glass (or are they fur?) slippers, and romance novels love to play with these tropes. Writer Renee Dahlia and podcaster Philippa Borland join the podcast to discuss fairytale retellings, reversions, and subversions in romance novels. - Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter ...
Oct 04, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 127
What is beastliness? Little Red Riding Hood stories used to be tales of warning for young women to manage their sexuality in the face of the dangerous beasts of court, who were smooth on the outside, but hairy on the inside. In the 21st century, paranormal teen romances use enchantment to transform the beasts into objects of desire. Dr. Nicola Welsh-Burke, a scholar of fairy tales and romance, is here to discuss hot wolf boys, brooding Byronic figures, pseudomarriage and pseudovirginity, hot vil...
Aug 30, 2022•51 min•Ep. 126
Junior novels were early romances for young readers, published in the 1940s-1960s. Learn from expert guest Dr. Amanda K. Allen how the didactic and heteronormative messages in these novels make a lot of sense when you consider that they were created to respond to demand from librarians and schools for “bibliotherapy” texts to “teach teenage girls how to be women,” which included winning that class ring and becoming besties with the popular girl who you’re not sure if you want to be or date. Gues...
Jul 22, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 125
Funmi’s Beverly Jenkins collection is complete, and of course it includes the queen of Black historical romance’s young adult romances that were originally published in the short-lived Avon True Romance line in the early 2000s. We discuss Belle and the Beau and Josephine and the Soldier. Did these romances hit the spot for early aughts tweens? And why do we feel like the parental gaze is peering over our shoulder while we read it? - Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patre...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 124
Jess joins Shelf Love to discuss the Sunfire romance that shares her name: Jessica by Mary Francis Shura. This historical teen romance from 1984 centers on a highly-competent, independent Kansas teen in 1873 and her many suitors: is the mad man who wins her heart the right guy or is he just the one who gets along best with her bad dad? - Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Patreon | Twitter | Instagram ...
Jun 29, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 123
Sunfire, a historical romance series for young adults, debuted in 1982 with two books by Candice Ransom. 40 years later, Candice pulls back the curtain on her process and how Scholastic editor Ann Reit shaped the series, which was many young readers’ first taste of romance packaged in a girl’s adventure story. Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Patreon | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Email: Andrea@shel...
Jun 22, 2022•38 min•Ep. 122
A brief overview of romance for young adult readers throughout time, with a focus on the romance series boom of the 1980s and the reverberations into the early 2000s. Wildfire, Sunfire, Sweet Dreams, Oh My! But some people haven’t always been on board with young people consuming age-appropriate romance. - Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Patreon | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Email: Andrea@shelflove...
Jun 15, 2022•32 min•Ep. 121
Lucy Hargrave shares her research into the history of queer romance. While Lucy dates published narratives of fictional happy endings for queer characters back to 1906, she charts the evolution since then in 5 significant time periods with different political, cultural, and technological climates. Plus, Lucy shares some results from her quantitative research into modern readers and writers of queer romance books. Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sig...
Jun 07, 2022•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 120
Fangirl Jeanne answers the question: Why might people, and women in particular, find serial killers to be romantic figures in dark romance in a hetero patriarchal capitalist, racist, etc. society? We discuss the Darkly, Madly Duology by Trisha Wolfe, a dark romance with 2 serial killer main character antagonists. - Guest: Fangirl Jeanne Website | Twitter Jeanne’s tweet thread on the power fantasy of being the singular focus of a powerful man present in Romantic literature and fan fiction: https:...
May 04, 2022•1 hr 35 min•Ep. 119
Readers weigh in on killers in romance novels (AKA people who un-alive other people) and I challenge myself to see if the distasteful elements in the Darkly, Madly duology (discussed next episode!) showed up in less-egregious ways in texts I did enjoy. Also, more thoughts on power, gender roles, and the desire to conquer a protector. Responses from Antagonist April social media prompts: Books with MCs who kill Killer Poll Why Bad People Do Bad Things Fangirl Jeanne’s tweet thread on the power fa...
Apr 27, 2022•35 min•Ep. 118
Antagonist April: discussing killers in romance. Fangirl Jeanne is back to continue our discussion of Manacled, a dark romance fan fiction story. What is the appeal of enemies to lovers? How do readers wrestle with justification for killing in romantic stories, and how does Manacled explore a romantic relationship, not just a romantic fantasy for an individual? How does creating within communal systems, as opposed to capitalist ones, enable different kinds of stories? This is part 2 of 2 discuss...
Apr 07, 2022•51 min•Ep. 117
Antagonist April: discussing killers in romance. Manacled by SenLinYu is a wildly popular dark romance fanfic with Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger, that remixes alternate universe Harry Potter with Handmaid’s Tale. Fangirl Jeanne joins me to discuss how war is hell, what it means to be a killer in a world where there are fates worse than death, and the appeal of the murderous antagonist hero. What does it help us understand about conceptions of masculinity and emotions as well as feminine desi...
Apr 07, 2022•56 min•Ep. 116
Data scientist Dr. Andrew Piper joins Shelf Love to share how data science can help the romance community answer the big questions that close reading can’t answer. Andrew’s the director of McGill University’s .txtlab, a laboratory that uses machine learning to ask questions like why do people enjoy the work they love? And once we empirically quantify what’s going on here, he asks us to think about what we’d like to do about it. Guest: Dr. Andrew Piper Website | Twitter | Enumerations: Data and L...
Mar 30, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 115
Swan Song (2021) is a movie that forces us to confront the "After" part of Happily Ever After. Shelf Love's Sad Media Correspondent, Dame Jodie Slaughter, is here to discuss lax security at cloning facilities, the ethics of cloning, the aesthetics of the future: pretty much anything that allows us to avoid the banal truth about our own mortality. Content Note: discussion of death and mortality. - Discussed: Swan Song (2021) Guest: Dame Jodie Slaughter, Shelf Love’s Sad Media Correspondent Websit...
Mar 22, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 114
Do our fated lovers smell like ambrosia because of the cosmic love connection? How do romance novels use language to convey romantic love? I propose a spectrum that ranges from "fated sex mates" to "perfectly matched" using examples from 4 romance novels (not all of them recommended). Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Patreon | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com Thanks to...
Mar 16, 2022•39 min•Ep. 113
Have you ever wished you could just escape the anxieties and mundanity of modern life by traveling back to Qing Dynasty China? How does time travel romance create a simulacra of a “glorious and wealthy feudal past” that allows audiences to “effortlessly become a love interest and an admired woman through the male gaze shaped by multiple admirers”? Shelf Love: Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove Sign up for the email newsletter list | Website | Patreon | Twitter | ...
Mar 08, 2022•51 min•Ep. 112
The Hunger Games may have featured a prominent love triangle, but are those the relationships teen girl audiences care most about? Dr. Tina Benigno shares her research about how the teen romance narrative for the extra-ordinary girl in some ways reinforces neoliberal feminist or popular feminist messages around empowerment discourses, on the heels of postfeminism. Discussed: The Hunger Games, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Guest: Dr. Tina Benigno Website | Twitter Shelf Love: Join the Conver...
Mar 01, 2022•49 min•Ep. 111
Romance-Friendly Bookstores with Copper Dog Books (and everything about the supply chain you've never thought to ask)! Copper Dog Books is an independently-owned, genre-inclusive bookstore in Beverly, MA and co-owners Julie Karaganis & Meg Wasmer join Shelf Love to share the joys, challenges, and future possibilities for romance in brick and mortar bookstores. Guests: Copper Dog Books: co-owners Julie Karaganis & Meg Wasmer Twitter | Instagram | Website Shelf Love: Join the Conversation ...
Feb 22, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 110
