War! UH! Good gosh y'all! What is it good for? 699 pages! SAY IT AGAIN!

That's right, we're back in Prythy-town to discuss the third (and obviously originally meant to be final) book in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series - A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN by Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre and Rhysand and their found family (plus Feyre's two kidney donors a.k.a. sisters) do a lot of stuff. They spy, they murder, they go through the arduous process of setting an executive-level meeting, they smooch, they knock boots, and they WAR, goodness how they war! All in the name of saving Prythian and the humans who happen to be there.

Are these books more reliably a fantasy or a romance series? Are these books even reliable to each other? What is laid bare by how you consume the text (Graphic Audio, anyone???) ? And what order do you think the Inner Circle sits in for a massage train?

Send a vulgar gesture down the bond and settle in, we're cruisin' for a Hybern bruisin'.

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This episode we return to space! Or rather the Arizona mock-up of space - with THE ASTRONAUT AND THE STAR by JEN COMFORT.

Reggie is a mean astronaut who wants to go the moon and Jon is a nice star who wants to win an Oscar. Maybe they can help each other become successful even moreso than their parents did? Or maybe they can fall in love? Or maybe those things aren't mutually exclusive?

What makes a contempo-romcom a bestseller? When is off-branding a conspiracy theory in romance problematic? Are you turned on by "having a loud cum"?

Tune in and blast-off!

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Can we get vulnerable for a bit? Hope so, because we did.

Along with Jodie Slaughter and Andrea of Shelf Love Podcast, we come together - not unlike a certain Derek and Sarah - to reflect of what DREAMING OF YOU by LISA KLEYPAS. has to say about feminine identity, romance readers, and, as ever, ourselves.

Why Derek Craven and why not Joyce?

Why does Romance seek the approval of systems that do not serve it and indeed don’t even get it?

Are we not all always already overidentifying with main characters?

Does DoY have problems or is it all cunning craftwork?

Be sure to listen to the separate Whoa!mance and Shelf Love discussions before diving into the meta-ness and meta-mess of this text.

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This episode we embark on a Duologoy, a duet of sorts with Shelf Love. In an attempt to highlight the manifold approaches one can have to a single text, we are each, discretely, discussing DREAMING OF YOU by Lisa Kleypas. We have not listened to one another's discussions prior to recording/editing our own episodes, so there might be cross-over, but that will be as interesting as the unique points we each explore. Because, as our Vice President so aptly observed, who doesn't love Venn Diagrams?

Shelf Love is kicking things off, and the next round is on us.

Let’s talk about Joyce Ashby from Lisa Kleypas's novel Dreaming of You. We delve into the dichotomous portrayal of Joyce as an irredeemable villainess alongside her foil, the redeemable “hero” Derek Craven. We explore the parallel themes of violence, possessiveness, and animalistic sexuality resulting in problematically differing fates and treatment by the text. Belched from the underworld, Defender of Bisexual Villainesses Dame Jodie Slaughter joins Shelf Love in this special cross-over project with Whoa!mance - watch for the next episode, in which Morgan and Isabeau share their conversation about Dreaming of You.

Shelf Love

• NEW! Substack: https://shelflovepodcast.substack.com/

• Website https://shelflovepodcast.com/

• Twitter @shelflovepod

• Instagram @shelflovepodcast

• YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpr5TNh-BTvsp93ECCvpoFQ

• Email: Andrea@shelflovepodcast.com

Guest: Dame Jodie Slaughter, Shelf Love’s Expert on Bisexual Villainesses

• Website https://www.jodieslaughter.com/

• Twitter @JodieSlaughter

• Instagram @jodie_slaughter

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Blast-off baby! This eppy yr grls are moon walking across some big topics in YA romance with THE DARKNESS OUTSIDE US by ELIOT SCHREFER.

Ambrose is fulfilling his lifelong training of space travel, and he is fulfilling it to rescue his beloved sister. And so is soviet-adjacent Kodiak (without the sister part). Will the two be able to put aside their ideological differences, and the creeping feeling the mommy-voiced Operating System is not on their team, to fall in LOVE?!

What are the ethics of consuming YA romance when you have a full-developed frontal lobe? Did the Cold War break our ability to think expansively? Do you HAVE to fall in love with the one other cadet on your space ship?

Houston, we have another romance-reader existential crisis!

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This ep yr grls visit the cultural rupture known as 1995 to (finally) discuss LORD OF SCOUNDRELS by Loretta Chase.

Scoundrel, rake, blight of his family name, Lord Dain has a lot of baggage, the least of which is some dumb guy named Bertie. But gorgeous, brilliant Jessica has accepted her lot as a spinster and developed an actual personality, so her dumb brother, Bertie, happens to be her biggest baggage. Little do Dain and Jessica know they are about the become each other's sexy, sexy baggage. Nothin' slaps like the hits, y'all!

What are the limits of "because it is a romance" as justification? How can novels show instead of tell the work of men deconstructing toxic masculinity? Who even is the main Main Character here?

For fans of romance deconstruction and materiality, this one's for YOU!

Whoa!mance is a part of Frolic Media.

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