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Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green and I'm here with my co hosts Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper.
Michael: Hello.
Jacqueline: Hello everyone.
Carrie: So today we are talking about romances, one of the squares on the Books and Bites bingo reading challenge.
And we were chatting a little bit before we started recording about all of the preconceptions that people often have about romances. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is like Fabio on the cover with these ripped abs and that's not really how romance covers look anymore. I mean, some of them do, but not all of them.
There's a lot of variety. There's
Michael: Yeah. What do they call them? Bodice Rippers?
Carrie: Bodice [00:01:00] Rippers, yes.
Jacqueline: Wow. Those were my grandmother's books. She always had those. Like, those were the ones we would read. Like, that's what was around. So, I kind of grew up reading romance books.
Carrie: Uh huh. Uh huh.
Jacqueline: But the covers really have changed, like the YA covers for a while, they were always putting these girls in ball gowns and now they've come to more of a, I guess, like they've got maybe like a broken heart on one.
Actually, the one I'm reading has a broken heart on it or like vines and different things where they're getting away from the ball gown.
Michael: Yeah, I've noticed or I read about, there's a sports romance, in particular hockey romance has been a thing recently.
Carrie: Interesting.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah. I mean, that's a good point.
There is kind of a category of romance for everybody. There's like, I mean, as you have [00:02:00] learned paranormal romance and scary romance, there's I remember someone wanting from Interlibrary Loan, like, romantic suspense a lot. So there's romantic suspense, there's, you know, the traditional thing, and it's also gotten a lot more diverse.
I think there's a lot more romances with LGBTQ characters, and way more racially and ethnically diverse. And we were also talking about how romance is actually the most popular genre of books. Which is interesting to think about.
Jacqueline: That is interesting.
Michael: Yeah. Makes sense.
Jacqueline: And, like, the LGBTQ plus books are, they used to be, the covers used to not be they were more hidden.
And the books were actually in the bookstores, they were kind of put in a separate corner, but now the covers reflect that it is [00:03:00] an LGBTQ plus romance. And it seems to be, they're quite popular according to the New York Times.
Carrie: Yeah. So there's a romance book for everyone, so if you haven't read one in a while, wherever this is your chance to explore that genre.
Jacqueline: My choice for this month's prompt is Once Upon a Broken Heart. This novel is a fantasy young adult novel by Stephanie Garber. Throughout this novel, she uses doorways and windows as a plot device to transition the reader into various places or points of view. As a reader, I felt like I was entering magical places through these doorways, arches, and windows.
The author sets a tone in the beginning epilogue with the bell's third person narration. [00:04:00] The little bell outside the curiosity shop tells the reader it is ringing a warning to the shop girl. The bell tries to tell the shop girl that the young man about to enter the shop will be her ruin. The shop girl is the main character, seventeen year old Evangeline Fox.
Evangeline had loving parents who raised her on tales of magic, fates, and fairy tales. Like her parents, she knows about magic and that bells have a sixth sense. Her mother comes from the Magnificent North, where fairy tales and history are one in the same. Evangeline is aware that the bell is ringing for her, but she misinterprets the bell's ring.
So instead of seeing the ringing as a warning sign, she believes the meeting to be a serendipitous sign. Evangeline has worked in her father's shop, Maximilian's Curiosities, Whimsey's, and other oddities since she was 12. She lost her mother a few seasons ago, but she is devastated when [00:05:00] her father also passes away.
She is lost and lonely, but she finds solace in the arms of Luke Navarro. Luke promises his heart to her, and she believes that he is her true love. Angelina believes in hope true love and happily ever after, until she learns the boy that she loves is going to marry someone else. On the day they were going to tell their families, they were in love
her stepsister, Marisol, announces that she and Luke are marrying. Evangeline is heartbroken. She is certain that Luke loves her. She believes that someone has placed a curse on him. So when she learns that Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, an immortal fate, door has disappeared she believes it is a sign telling her to find the door and save her love.
Jacks is a fate whose kiss is deadly to all but his one true love. Whom he will periodically spend eternity searching for. Evangeline believes that since Jack's [00:06:00] the prince of heart represents unrequited love, he will be more sympathetic to her predicament. When she finds the door to the church, she makes a last minute appeal to Jacks to stop the wedding of her sister and fiance.
Although she knows that dealing with a fate often leads to a person into more trouble than helping evangeline is desperate to stop the wedding, so against her better judgment, she makes a bargain with Jacks. He will stop the wedding if she promises him three kisses, for which he will choose the time and the person.
After the deal is complete, Jacks stops the wedding by turning the entire wedding reception into statues. The only way to turn them back is to take their place by drinking the magical potion. Jack tries to convince Evangeline not to drink the magical potion to free the wedding guests, but Evangeline is overcome with guilt.
She drinks the poison that turns her into a stone. When she's finally back to normal, she realizes that her chance at love with Luke is [00:07:00] gone, but she is still hopeful that she might find her happily ever after when she is given the opportunity to travel to the place her mother was from. She will represent her kingdom at a ball for a prince looking for a wife.
She believes that she might find true love and her happily ever after there. But Jacks has other plans for Evangeline. He is demanding that she fulfill her part of the bargain. Fulfilling her debts leads her into dangerous adventures with Jacks. Evangeline and Jacks are often at odds with each other, but they are after the same thing, true love.
The difference is that unlike Jax, she is not willing to sacrifice someone else for her happiness. Like many books based on the quintessential Cinderella stories, the author gives new life to this age old story. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a romantic adventure. I think Once Upon a Time might qualify for last month's prompt, a book you can read in one setting, because once you start reading, you are not [00:08:00] going to stop.
Garber uses apples as a simile for temptation throughout the book, so I chose a tempting French apple cake recipe from allrecipes. com. This cake has the appeal of apple pie or apple tart, but in a decadent custard like cake.
Michael: Yum. Did you bring any?
Jacqueline: I'm afraid not, but I want to make it.
Michael: Sounds really good.
Carrie: Yeah, it does sound good. , that sounds like a, has a nice blend of fantasy in it too, with the magic and doorways and everything.
Jacqueline: Yeah, it was. It was really well done. She did, she brought in so many things from fairy tales into the story. So it was, it kept you wanting to read.
Michael: Is it part of a series or is it just a,
Jacqueline: yes.
So this is the, so she wrote, actually wrote the series called Caraval, which was three, a trilogy, [00:09:00] but then and Jack's character was in the last book. But this is actually a new series, and you don't really necessarily have to read the other series. I think her writing has really improved, though, in this one.
I mean, it was like, Really, it, you got into it, and you just didn't want to quit.
Michael: Okay, gotcha.
The book I had planned on reading for this prompt had been checked out for quite some time, and running out of time, I had to go look for something else. Luckily, I came across an article on BookRiot. com called Nine Horror Books with Romance at Heart, where I discovered Cassandra Caw's The Salt Grows Heavy.
This gorgeously written novella perfectly mashes up horror, fairy tales, and romance. We begin our story with our unnamed mute narrator getting [00:10:00] ready to set off from the kingdom she's been living in since being caught and married by the prince. She's what we would likely referred to as a mermaid, a creature from the deep with sharp teeth.
Her brood of half mermaid, half human children with insatiable appetites have literally devoured the entire kingdom. She's joined by the androgynous plague doctor, the one who has attended to her since her marriage to the prince and the only one who has never been afraid of her. Setting off, the plague doctor leads her out on horseback.
As they make camp that night in a clearing, a group of children explodes out of the woods chasing another that they are attempting to murder. As the plague doctor breaks up this hunt, the children explain what's happening and lead the plague doctor and mermaid hand in hand to their village that's ruled by three so called saints that the plague doctor has crossed paths with before as surgeons.
The mermaid, after essentially being kept captive by the Prince doesn't have the ability or maybe [00:11:00] never had it to form relationships even with her children, but something about the Plague Doctor awakens something inside her. She enjoys their touch when they hold hands, something she was repulsed by when the Prince touched her, even thinks about kissing them.
Even though, told to leave the village by the plague doctor, she refuses, vowing to help them and their cause to free the children from the surgeon's control. Towards the bloody, yet beautiful ending, she finally acknowledges her love, quote, that eternity is a worthless babble without their conversation, that I would follow them into the demise of the universe, where every heaven and each hell is shuttered, and there is nothing of us but motings of one light, and there is no bodily apparatus with which to express affection, no recourse safe to glow weakly in worship until at last such things are swallowed too by the dark, that I would love them even then.
As long as a moiety of conscious thought persists, I will love them. I will love them to the death of days, end quote. [00:12:00]
Carrie: That sounds super goth.
Michael: Yeah, it, yeah, it gets pretty gothy. The ending might even pull on those heartstrings a bit and make you shed a tear or two while inspired by Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and the brother Grimm's tale of the three army surgeons,
this is not your typical romance or furry tale. It really leans into elements of horror with some splatter punk thrown in, containing a good amount of blood and viscera. But the heart of the story is the love between the mermaid and her plague doctor. And if you're participating in the Books and Bites Bingo
this year, this would work for a few different squares. The Romance, of course, a book by an Asian American or Pacific Islander author, or a book you can read in one sitting. So I pair this with a glass of Sierra Nevada's Narwhal Imperial Stout. Strong yet velvety smooth, it boasts notes of espresso, roasted grain, cacao, and a hint of smokiness.
A perfect beverage to sip while [00:13:00] reading this tale that's set in snow and ice.
Carrie: So I'm curious Since there's a plague doctor, when was this written? Was it written before the 2020 pandemic or was it written
after?
Michael: After. After. Yeah, this came out last year. Mm hmm. So.
Carrie: Does it kind of fit in with
Michael: No, there, yeah, there's no, there's no disease.
I guess he was just a doctor in this kingdom that was devoured by her merchildren , yeah. And he just, he wears the masks, the, the, the mask with a long beak and the hat and, and all that. But yeah, he just referred to as the plague doctor. There's no plague really mentioned. No.
Jacqueline: Hmm. Mermaids are really getting to be used as more of a, in more [00:14:00] violence.
Like they're not like, I always think of mermaids as like the little mermaid, but these mermaids nowadays are like vicious.
Michael: These are creatures from the deep with sharp teeth and will not hesitate.
Jacqueline: I don't think I would want to kiss her either.
Michael: Yeah, the prince cut her tongue out, so that's why.
Jacqueline: Oh, I'd be mad too.
Michael: I mean, that's not a spoiler. You find that out in the beginning. Yeah, very interesting. Like, you know, I read it. I read the synopsis. I don't know. There's some romance in there. But once you get into it, I mean, the prose gets you and then just it all, it all works.
The fairytale aspects, the horror elements. And then I guess say the romance really, really got me there at the end. Yeah.
Jacqueline: Yeah. So you felt like you couldn't put that one down your book down either, huh? Cool.
Michael: It's such a short book, but like the, the relationship between the [00:15:00] plague doctor and the mermaid were pretty, yeah, it's pretty impressive.
Jacqueline: Interesting. Very creative.
Carrie: Excellent. So you gonna look for that one that was checked out and read it now that you've got a couple romance, romances under your belt?
Michael: Yeah. Yep. Yeah, that one is also on the horror side of stuff, but yeah, that, yeah, I definitely plan on reading that
one.
Carrie: So my book is Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan. Author, professional audiobook narrator, and actor Julia Whelan makes good use of her insider knowledge in this fun romance that audiobook fans will especially enjoy. Main character Sewanee Chester is a former actor turned award winning [00:16:00] audiobook narrator known for performing the most demanding audiobooks out there, the ones with multiple voices and accents.
Sewanee got her start narrating romance novels under the name Sarah Westholm, but she no longer takes romance jobs. After an accident that made her lose an eye as well as her acting career, she doesn't believe in their happily ever after endings. Then Sewanee is offered a job narrating a romance by an author she used to work with, but who has since died.
Unlike most audiobook gigs, this one offers royalties, and it will likely be a bestseller. Sewanee is prepared to turn it down when she learns that her beloved grandmother, also a former actor, will need to move to memory care soon and can't afford it on her own. Romance narrator superstar Brock McKnight will perform the book's male voices.
Like Sewanee, he uses a pseudonym, [00:17:00] and no one knows his true identity. They begin emailing each other about the book and how they'll perform it, and soon they're sending flirty texts that turn increasingly sexy. Will they try?
Michael: Oooh ...
Carrie: Yeah. Well, of course.
How do you not send flirty texts to someone named Brock McKnight?
Michael: I know, I was like, that is a great romance name.
Carrie: Will they try to have a relationship in real life? And just who is the real Brock McKnight? Thank You for Listening plays with romance tropes and the aforementioned audiobook knowledge to offer a somewhat meta reading experience. The sex scenes are both amusing and spicy, but the real treat is getting to know Sewanee, a flawed and wounded character who you can't help rooting for, even though she makes plenty of mistakes.
Her relationships with her grandmother and her best friend, [00:18:00] a rising acting star, ground the romance in reality, and her love interest provides plenty of mystery. While I thought the book dragged a bit toward the end, I still really enjoyed listening to it on audio and highly recommend that format. It seems to have been written with an audio performance in mind, and Waylon performs the varied voices and accents just as masterfully as her character would.
Pair thank you for listening with Taco Dip, a favorite recipe of one of Sewanee's grandmother's friends who lives at the senior facility with her, and she thinks that this recipe is some sort of family secret. And the ingredients are taco seasoning and sour cream.
Michael: [Laughs.]
Jacqueline: Spicy like the book, right?
Carrie: That's right. And also the kind of thing you can, as you guys were talking [00:19:00] about with your books, you could just eat and as you consumed the book and, or listen to the book and once it, it'd be good to listen because then you would have your hands free for the eating.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that's funny. So does Brock, and did he remind you of the Fabio book covers when you were reading it? ,
Carrie: Just maybe the Description of the books that he was narrating, but not, you know, when they're texting back and forth and talking, emailing and stuff, not so much. Yeah. There are some other, like, twists and turns and characters that I didn't mention because I didn't want to spoil anything, but it was pretty, like, it had a good plot that kind of kept you interested, like you, like you all were talking about, right up until the end.
Then, I felt like it kind of, [00:20:00] like, It was like, okay, it should have ended here, but she kept going, and going, you know? But I still really enjoyed it. And like I said, the audiobook, it was just the perfect format, listening about somebody who was, you know, an audiobook narrator. In an audio book.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that's interesting. I really feel like the audio, like, I like to listen to a lot of my books on audio because I can do other things as well. And I feel like it's, I mean, it's so, they're so well done now. I mean, it's just like, I remember reading an audio book in 2000, like 20 years ago. And, you know, it was just like, one person just talking.
Now they're actually like, Almost like a play or something that you're listening to and bringing in other actors and
Michael: Yeah, yeah, there's a whole cast in some of these
Jacqueline: [00:21:00] yeah, yeah, it's really Really the big especially with the big like Macmillan and Some of the big named publishers. They do a great job.
Carrie: Yeah. Well, I mean audiobooks are a lot more popular now than they used to be as well. So it makes sense that they're You know investing a little bit more in that format
Jacqueline: yeah, the third book that I'm the third book of this once upon a broken heart is like a 14 week wait
Carrie: Oh, wow.
Jacqueline: It's like, and there's like 11 copies too, so.
Carrie: Uh huh. Yeah, yeah, they're, they're popular. Um, I, I, this one, I think I, I can't remember if I got it on Hoopla or Overdrive, but I always prefer to check out my audiobooks on Hoopla because as many people who want to listen to it can, unlike [00:22:00] with Libby or Overdrive where there tends to be a wait.
Jacqueline: Yeah, this one isn't on Hoopla.
The first two were, but the last one's not yet. I don't really, I'm not sure why. But, I always check both places, though. I always check, I usually check Libby first because there's, you get more checkouts than you do with Hoopla. There's a limit of checkouts, but then if I can't find it on Libby, I go straight to Hoopla.
Carrie: Mm-Hmm. . Yep. So plenty of options for streaming audio books.
Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. To learn more about Books and Bites bingo, visit at jesspublib.org/books-bites. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album In Close Quarters with The Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, [00:23:00] AdoorForADesk.Com.