You traveling this holiday? Lizzie Bennet too. Got relatives telling you which highways and byways and coaching inns are best? Yr girl Liz is in the same spot. Turns out time is a flat circle, and some chickens come home to roost sooner than others. Or in this case blindspots about dads. Enjoy your holidays!

In the thrilling conclusion to our Western Civ I, we tackle shame. Shameless or shameful, shame has a utility. Is it worth examining in the context of romance? You betcha buckaroo. Saddle up while we unpack this particular pair of chaps.

Why, it's Andrea Martucci of Shelf Love stopping by the Whoa!mance desk to talk about darling of her childhood, weird uncle of her adulthood - A LADY OF THE WEST by LINDA HOWARD. Victoria leaves Reconstruction behind for The American West, and, its representative, The Major (with her kid sister and cool cousin in tow). The Major got his ranch the old fashioned way. By murdering his boss's enitre family - or so he thinks - and loosing a testicle in the process. His employee, Jake, also wants...

Join us for the what lies the wake of Darcy's thrilling bombshells. While Jane Austen doesn't invent headhopping she does a bang up job of walking us through Lizzie's reaction to Darcy's screed of a letter. Is this what growing up feels like? Who can say? Us. Us can say.

Saddle up the Equimare and/or gas up the Autoduck - this week yr grls pass through the veil of HART AND MERCY by MEGAN BANNEN. Marshall Hart sends a letter looking for a friend into the aether (which is not the strangest thing to do in the strange land of this book) and it lands on the desk of his nemesis - Undertaker Mercy. She also needs an anonymous friend, turns out. Does reading fantasy romance juice your empathy or is it just so much more escapism? What makes a retelling worthwhile?...

Wherein Darcy unburdens himself in an epistle to the girl who won't have him. He's fine--thanks for asking! It's only 8am and he's only been lurking in the park waiting for Lizzie to chance by for a little over an hour. He's fine! What makes a manic pixie dream girl? How did Jane Austen know about them? And what makes declaring yourself punk rock? If anything?

That a creaky stair or a creaky bed? Only one way to find out! Time to bust open the doors on "Jinxed" by Torri Heat. Savannah thinks she's gotten the deal of a lifetime when she buys an abandoned house to open a thrift store. And, indeed, she gets far more than knick-knacks. She gets three hunky...well, not ghosts. But like, frozen-in-time-via-a-curse fellas? I guess you would say? Can these three radically different dudes from different historic eras put their differences aside so they can...

And here it is friends--the moment you've been waiting for--THE PROPOSAL! Darcy unburdens his heart, and offers it trembling and vulnerable with 10,000 a year. He also insults the ever living daylights out of our gal Liz, and she is having none of it. No heart, not money, no ego NO THANK YOU. Mr. Darcy did totally f.ck this up--but did Ms Austen leave him room to wiggle off his own hoisted petard? Listen and find out

Hoist up your bosoms, fill your tankards, and line up for facepaint - this week yr grls are travelling back in time to a general idea of "old" for WELL MET by Jen DeLuca. Simon is an uptight, high school English Teacher by day, and a sexy, flirty pirate by a different time of day. Emily is just trying to be a cool aunt (and make more, if not The Most, of her time in this small town) when she signs up to be a wench in his school's booster club/Renn Fest. Are sparks flying or is it just so many...

Ever find yourself on a country ramble when the object of your ire and distain just happens to also ramble your way? No? Just us? Why is Darcy always around? Why is he asking pertinent and insightful questions? Why is his hot cousin talking about things he can't have? Is it all for Lizzie? Who knows dear reader--but we're about to find out!

Nobody move! There's blood on the floor. And yr grls can't find their hearts. Thanks to whispered romance classic- "To Have and To Hold" by Patricia Gaffney. Sebastian has everyone's fave romance hero first name and a brand new estate in an idyllic country town. Total snoozefest, but then most things are to Sebby. That is, until a captivating former-con with (gasp) SHORT hair named Rachel captures his fancy AND his rather horrid whimsy. Will these two be one another's reckoning in a good way...

You know how sometimes you build a narrative around someone you maybe like, and then they totally mess it up for you? We're not saying that Lizzie is a bit of a small town girl or that Darcy is a city boy--but we are saying that Darcy got some cold reality and it bites.

In light of the recent events around romance and it's fave sport, hockey, including our eppy on THE DEAL, we're rereleasing our discussion of the iconic stick slapper - PUCKED > Last time, yr girls explored the subversive quaintness of Amish romance in our inaugural Entrop[e]y episode. This week, Morgan and Isabeau are back in the game for our first installment on SPORTS romance with Pucked, by Helena Hunting. Here we find Violet, the step-sister of a successful hockey player, linking up...

Is Lizzy a hedging sarcastic wit punching up at her social better while he (meaning Mr. Darcy himself) is meeting her in earnest and vulnerability? Is she just trying to be funny in front of Darcy's hot cousin? Hard to tell, but we try to suss it out for you--because we care.

Is that a hockey stick in your pocket or is your weiner just like super big and bent at the very end? Let's find out while discussing TikTok sensation "THE DEAL" by ELLE KENNEDY! Garrett needs help figuring out how different philosophers would justify genocide so he can pass his midterm and remain the beloved captain of his small liberal arts/Ivy-adjacent/D-1 unverisity's hockey team. Enter singer/songwriter/skinny-big-boobs Hannah. She's got an "A" in the class and a deal to strike. Tutoring...

Happy Belated Birthday Jane Austen--nobody does it better. We're still at Rosings waiting on what Mr. Darcy's gonna do when he finally appears. Join us as we discuss the deification of characters and what happens when we flatten the narrative.

We aren't going to leave these takes flappin' in the wind - join us as we land the conversation with part 2 of our discussion on A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN by Maas. What makes a "good" war text? How can we talk about gender and race in a fantasy-world divorced from our social reality? Or can popular fiction even effectively imagine such a world? Can you still get horny in a "Li-berry"? Spoiler alert: This one split the judges on Whoa v. No. Tune in and decide where you land

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...

Almost half way there y'all and in this chapter we meet the infamous Mrs. De Bourg. She's got opinions, she was once handsome, and remains really rich. Lizzie thinks of jokes that will tickle Wickam and tries real hard not to think about a certain other you-know-who

Chapter 28 opens with a physical journey and closes with an emotional one for yr grls. Once Lizzy's quips were uncomplicated in their high humor, now tho, they hit different. Is it us? Is it Lizzy? Is it the 200ish years between us? Listen and you decide

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?...

Yr grls are taking time this weekend to cough up the worst air in the history of Chicago to make room for cool, clear PBR. So we have enough time for "1776" AND "Independence Day", we are re-releasing this Star-Spangled oldie, but Yankee-Doodle Dandy goodie. We dish on American Revolution meets Ye Olde Show Biz romance MISTRESS FIREBRAND by DONNA THORLAND. Along the way we talk about French Letters and French Kisses...excuse us. FREEDOM Letters and FREEDOM Kisses. Stuck in traffic due to the...

Have you heard April is the cruelest month? Wrong--it's February and boy does Lizzie Bennet know it! Without her best bud, without her best sis, without the sun what is Lizzie but a collection of misanthropic observations? Too harsh--you be the judge in this zippy little chapter

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...

Welp Mr. Collins done married Mz Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Wickham has discovered a new first object and she comes with 10000 pounds. Lizzie feels one way about her bud Charlotte's choices and another about Mr. Wickham's. We begs the question--what does the text think about Lizzie? What do we think of her in this well rounded epistle driven storm of a chapter?