Do...do you hear that? That-that...throbbing hum? Then adjust your speakers! You're gonna wanna hear us discuss THRUM by MEG SMITHERMAN. Astronaut Ami is the lone survivor of a mysterious accident that killed the rest of her crew. It also means she is the lone Earthling guest of the extra-terrestrial calling himself Dorian Gray. I bet you can see where this is going...(no, you definitely can't, actually) (but it is a Happily Ever After?). What are the contours of the sci-fi or horror romance? Wh...
Jul 13, 2025•53 min
We read the second half and discovered that you can live with a heart murmur, but maybe a romance can't exist well without some critical affection for its main characters. Join us as we investigate the missed opportunities and stumbling blocks holding this "cozy" would be charmer back. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 27, 2025•46 min
It is a renn fest season and Pride month. Perfect time to chat about chapters 1 through 8 of Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland Tam and Lyford get it on like all the time. Much to Tam's chagrin. Not that it is like a non-con situation, just that he hates how much he likes having sex with the Lord. For...reasons. And pretty much everything else. His god/desses, his little village with a cute downtown, himself, maybe all women. In spite of this (fittingly) he is sent on a quest to l...
Jun 21, 2025•51 min
Well we stood and are now delivering to you part 2: This episode covers chapter 15 through the epilogue of THROUGH A DARK MIST by MARSHA CANHAM, book 1 of the Black Wolf Trilogy. To recap we learn that not only is Lucien Wardieu Lord of Bloodmoor Keep, he is also a highwayman, is not dead in the crusades, and gains a whole new identity as Eleanor of Aquataine's most decorated and loyal knight. But rest assured gentle readers, young Servanne learns to love all of these identities and will passion...
Jun 10, 2025•50 min•Ep. 191
What ho! A new challenge faces yr grls as they attempt a new format. An intentional two-parter! This episode covers the prologue through chapter 14 of THROUGH A DARK MIST by MARSHA CANHAM, book 1 of the Black Wolf Trilogy. Lucien Wardieu is Lord of Bloodmoor Keep. Or he is a highwayman. Or he is dead in the crusades. Or he is basically Robin Hood. Or he is basically Satan. In any case, young widow Servanne is headed right toward him - to become his bride and Lady of Bloodmore Keep and/or become ...
May 31, 2025•58 min
On this whoa!nus listen along as Morgan and Isabeau engage with Time magazine's 50 Best Romance Novels to Read right now (August 2024). You can hear in real time (haha) as Isabeau is faced with the dubious metrics of 'acclaim and social impact'. What books did the list get right? What books did they miss? We cover it all and share our opinions on what Romancelandia really needs. As always come to your own conclusions--just maybe don't make it a listicle. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo...
May 24, 2025•48 min
Over one frenzied month Morgan read all five of Emily Henry's original adult romance novels. Along the way, she lost herself. She turns to Isabeau to help her trace her way back, though the work and the public and personal reception. What differentiates a romance novel from everything else? And what can we learn from a breakthrough star? Assumptions are challenged. Late capital is contoured. The word "prophylactic" is uttered. Featuring special guest appearance by a piece of loose leaf notebook ...
May 17, 2025•57 min
Hold your nose and close your eyes - we're jumping feet first into DEEP END by ALI HAZELWOOD. Scarlett Vandermeer attends real-life American University Stanford on a diving scholarship. Tall, blond, Swedish, heavily-siblinged (ring any bells?) Lukas Blomqvist (...sure) attends the same very real school and is swim team captain. Other common interests include attending medical school someday, working in the lab of a previous Hazelwood main character, BDSM, and Scarlett's only friend/Lukas's secre...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 190
It's an Easter Miracle! Christos Anesti--or in this case handsome dead stranger is risen, in more ways than one! Sacrilegious dick jokes aside--this one has it all! Earnestly weird heroine with a mean brother and rambling estate. Hot stranger who doesn't get why the smart and pretty rich lady is in to him, and you know a monster roaming the woods. This Frankenstein retool by Sally Thorne of The Hating Game fame cooks up a hot mystery on a resurrection slab, and revives Isabeau and Morgan from th...
Apr 18, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 189
Isabeau found a romance from a free library--the cover was gorgeous, the title bananas. The premise: a revolutionary American privateer kidnaps a british artisto named Season and then proceeds to gaslight her and the reader about his varied identities against the backdrop of the American War for Independence. Season, a classically plucky coddled only child with ginormous boobs changes her politics, when love opens her eyes to "freedom" but does the book understand it's own 80s hottakes? What doe...
Mar 29, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 188
Join fan fav and beloved friend of the pod Andrea Martucci from podcast Shelflove as we discuss 2024's 'Your Monster' a love story about female rage and personal growth. This discussion spans personal taste, romance conventions as adapted by other mediums, and of course that great white way: Broadway. As we've said before horror and romance share a wet middle in the venn diagram of genres, but what happens when they're part of the same narrative arc? Hot takes and divergent opinions make pod fri...
Mar 21, 2025•1 hr 1 min
This week, we tackle Charolette Stein's When Grumpy Met Sunshine , a listener request that's keeping us honest! We've reviewed this author previously and concluded then that we would like to read her again later. Listeners we did. When Grumpy Met Sunshine is a romance that pits supposed opposites against each other with mixed results. Mabel is a ghost writer with a predictable penchant for bright clothes, and Alfie is an ex-footballer from the wrong side of the tracks with a wardrobe like Johnny...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 187
A listener held us accountable. A listener reminded us that at the end of this very episode from 2018 we said we'd be curious what this author wrote in the future. And now, ahead of that discussion of a very new book by this very same author coming out next week, we want to give all of you the context you so richly deserve. Original notes below. ____________________ At some point we’ve all felt bullied. But did you ever think, as you stared out through the slits of a locker, your new home, that ...
Feb 28, 2025•53 min
Please, no need to swoon - it's just us, talking about MEET ME AT THE ANVIL by KATE PRIOR. Prior isn't just the author's surname, it also describes when we talked about this author re: LOVE, LAUGH, LICH - look it up in the feed where you found this one! Diane is fine marrying Martin - as long as she has her special drawings and her special horn. That is until it isn't fine after one of her frequent faints (courtesy of staring too long at Martin's ruggedly handsome best man and cousin, Liam) inte...
Feb 21, 2025•43 min•Ep. 186
Trigger warnings abound everyone - sexual assault, dubious consent, Biblical characters of Judas and Satan falling in love, child death and miscarriage, suicide. Tread lightly, be gentle with yourself - it's just a podcast. The Devil is a lie, The Devil is in the details, The Devil is afraid to be vulnerable, The Devil is afraid you can't love him the way he thinks he wants to be loved. The Judas Iscariot (we'll wait while you gather your feelings) and The Devil (yep, horns, tail, etc.) meet in ...
Feb 08, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 185
Morgan and Isabeau are joined by romance author Esme Brett as we discuss In Flight--a romance that took off in the wake of Fifty Shades. In this free wheeling discussion we tackle fanfiction's influence on the genre, the rise of self publishing, and the ethics of depicting BDSM in romance. What are we responsible for? Who are we responsible to? How can we sell more romance novels in New Zealand? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 31, 2025•2 hr•Ep. 184
We were in the books in 2024 and now 2024 is in the books. Hardest and softest no!s and whoa!s, the places we visited the most in literature, what we did great at and where we came up short. All that and more as we look back on the year that was...2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jan 11, 2025•1 hr 40 min
One last round of eggnog, we're talking "MEET ME IN LOS FELIZ" by KELLY REYNOLDS.Nora accidentally barges in on Bowie peeing and catches feels for the (sort of) Short King. Is king a slur if you're a Brit in LA who inherited a house and tea shop(pe)? Amid the hustle of trying to make it as an actress, Nora makes room for a new love.What makes a novella work? Does normalizing rough sex minimize it? How much are CBD lattes going for in your local area?Pick your exit off the 210 carefully, we're pa...
Dec 28, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Ellie from the Butt Out Baby Podcast had the best idea. For all of us to watch Carol (2015) directed by Todd Haynes and then talk about it. Therese gets a funny feeling when she first sees the glamorous Carol, and it isn't just because its Christmastime. But it is the 1950s, and Carol is going through a divorce, and is a devoted mother, and is at least a decade older and a gajillion dollars richer, and it's Christmas! What is it they about the course of true love? Do age gaps matter? Does Christ...
Dec 20, 2024•1 hr 58 min
If Whoa!mance had a nickel for every time we discussed a novel featuring a werewolf who flies personal aircraft, we would have TWO nickels. Thanks for the hypothetical pay raise, COLD HEARTED by HEATHER GUERRE.Grace has to Teach for America her way away from her terrible ex and terribler Chicago. So she makes her way to the small, insular, warm yet secretive community of Longtooth, Alaska. Even thought Grace really sets local boy Caleb's maybe-metaphorical-maybe-literal tail to wagging, he's bee...
Dec 11, 2024•1 hr 6 min
Here it is, the last chapter. The bow tie. The final thoughts. The Darcy. The Rochester. The end. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Dec 04, 2024•40 min
Ready for some dark romance this holiday season? Sure you are! The days are short anyway. We've got a labrador retriever male main character who makes masked man thirst traps and does some stalking. And we've got a snarky female main character who loves those thirst traps and is looking for a little IRL action.Listen while Morgan and Isabeau untruss this popular bird, get at the juicy bits and carve out what makes this a mega romance audiobook hit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...
Nov 29, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Pride and Prejudice gets PENULTIMATE! In this, the second to last chapter of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, there are lots of sweet nothings and victory laps to be had. And the conversation begins circling the drain that leads to...romance novels? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 22, 2024•16 min
Darcy and Lizzy need to tell the Bennets what's what Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 15, 2024•36 min
What webs we weave, indeed! This episode we attempt to unknot that cross-over of the century - the NINETEENTH century that is - PRIDE AND PROMETHEUS by JOHN KESSEL.Mary Bennet decides to take one last crack at life before resigning herself to spinsterhood and two people wind up dead. That's what happens when you pin your hopes to the saddest Swiss nerd at the ball. Especially when they have the kind of baggage that is super tall, speaks at least three languages, has committed murder in the name ...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 13 min
We're back, and we're going totally medieval on THE FALCON AND THE SWORD by PATRICIA WERNER for the final act of this Ice Wine season.Judith, the most normally named character in this whole book, abandons a convent to find herself in the kingdom of Neustria amongst a bunch of Franks who will never get her as a Visigoth. Along comes handsome-in-a-different-kind-of-white-way, advisor to the King of Austrasia to spark her interest, and then away he goes for the vast majority of the book until he re...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 14 min
A Re!mance for an extremely special ocassion. Plus an update on Ice Wine Deux.<3We did it y'all. Yr girls have arrived at the final stop on this Entrop[e]y tour with one last trope: the secret baby. This week on Whoa!mance, Morgan and Isabeau tackle the culture wars relic, Nobody’s Baby But Mine, Book 3 in the Chicago Stars series by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Jane Darlington, a 34 year old physics professor, wants a baby. But she doesn’t want that baby to be a smarty pants weirdo like their m...
Oct 10, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Naturopathic Practicioner Raven is thrown back into the measured embrace of regular, degular Dr. Jeff when she is accused of poisoning her clients. Because he loves her so darn much, and because it is obviously not her fault, and because it is 1997 and these things just happen, the McSteamy and Holistic Hottie team up to uncover the cause of this mystery illness and get infected with love along the way. Also with the mystery illness.What can a post-AIDS romance novel about disease teach us about...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 11 min
Wherein Darcy and Elizabeth have one conversation and Darcy makes all men, and romance heroes look like fools for the next two hundred odd years. #ThanksJaneAusten Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 13, 2024•40 min
One last time to Nantucket before the cold winds blow!Free-spirited, head-strong Lizzie trades her youthful exuberance for matronly measure and stead-fastness in exchange for the love of one Tavis Mackinoon in 19th Century Nantuckey. Or...maybe "trades" has too much agency?What was America's perspective on history in the halcyon, Laura-Ashley-strewn days of 1994? How do we honestly feel about "blossoming"? How was the shape of women's identity and autonomy fraying against itselt?Try and remember...
Sep 06, 2024•1 hr 8 min
