Unsuccessful Book Club on A Beginner's Guide to Historical Romance

What makes historical romance more than just bodice-ripping stories? Historical romance is a genre far more complex and diverse than many readers realize. Far from being limited to Regency-era England and stereotypical duke narratives, this genre offers rich storytelling that explores complex social dynamics, personal growth, and diverse experiences across different time periods and cultures.

Clare from @UnsuccessfulBookClub is a life-long bookworm with a penchant for science fiction, fantasy, and romance. She has recently developed a deep interest in historical romance. When she isn't reading, she enjoys cooking, eating, and taking her children to soccer games, often while neglecting her laundry.

In this episode, we're discussing:

• How historical romance spans multiple eras, from medieval times to the 1970s
• Ways the genre has evolved to include diverse representation, including LGBTQ+ and characters of color
• How modern historical romances tackle important themes like consent, social justice, and personal empowerment
• How some authors like Beverly Jenkins and Alyssa Cole are transforming the genre with nuanced, inclusive storytelling
• Ways that tropes like marriage of convenience and forbidden love add depth and tension to historical narratives

Join the "Queering Historical Romance" challenge in June and discover the incredible diversity of historical romance. Follow @UnsuccessfulBookClub on Instagram for recommendations and start your journey into this dynamic genre today!

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BOOKS/AUTHORS MENTIONED:

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Morning Glory Milking Farm by C.M. Nascosta (Amazon)

Lisa Kleypas (Amazon)

Jilie Anne Long (Amazon)

The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss (Amazon)

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall (Amazon)

Spindle Cove Series by Tessa Dare (Amazon)

Desperate Duchesses by Eloisa James (Amazon)

The Brothers Sinister by Courtney Milan (Amazon)

Worth Saga by Courtney Milan (Amazon)

A Notorious Vow by Joanna Shupe (Amazon)

A Shore Thing by Joanna Lowell (Amazon)

A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera (Amazon)

Desire by Amanda Quick (Amazon)

Surrender My Love by Johanna Lindsey (Amazon)

Hold Fast by Eliza MacArthur (Amazon)

Running list of books mentioned (Doc)

Transcript

Intro: What is Historical Romance?

Alesia Galati 0:00

I know that historical romance is its own thing. And I do not personally read a lot of it. So of the books that I have read so far this year, only less than 1% of it was historical romance. So I knew that I had to have my friend Claron, also known as Unsuccessful Book Club, to chat about all things historical romance, debunk some things that I actually had no idea about, and give a slew of recommendations, including some spicy ones. Listener discretion is advised. This podcast contains mature content intended for adult audiences only. Claire, I am so excited to have you on the podcast today. If you could start by telling everyone a bit about your adult reading journey.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Hello, Alicia. It's so good to be here. Okay, so I'm a lifelong reader. I never really stopped. But as a grown-up, after college, after grad school, I was extremely into horror. So I've read a lot of Stephen King and Chuck Polaniak. I really like post-apocalyptic and like science fiction books. So I read a lot of that. I still do. But sometime around 2010, I accidentally started reading romance and I didn't even really realize it. But it and I think it started for me like it did with a lot of people with Twilight. Although I was like grown when I was reading Twilight obsessively. So it's a little bit more embarrassing for me. And then I read Outlander and loved it also. So I still didn't categorize that as romance for myself. Like still thought of myself as just like a fiction reader, like definitely still into horror, thriller, science fiction fantasy, but I didn't really realize that was what that's what it was. Like I read, I've read Lord of the Rings like four times. So yeah, that for me, I just never stopped reading. I got into romance specifically, knowing it was romance in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, like a lot of people did, and started to put connect some dots for myself. Oh, you've been reading books like this for a while. You just weren't admitting it to yourself. And then eventually found historical romance around 2021. And that's become my genre of choice.

Alesia Galati 2:21

I love that so much that you were just like, denial. And I totally understand that. It's like my whole adult reading journey is like forcing myself to read these books because I thought I had to do it to be a better person. And then being like, you know what? Actually, I read 150 romance books this year, and I still made money and I still had a great life. And my libido is great after second kid. This is wonderful. Have I discovered a secret? It's the secret. You're welcome. Read smut. And so, yeah, just being like, wait, no, I'm gonna own this. And like even having discussions with my mother-in-law's boyfriend and him being like, oh god, it's just smut. And then my husband being like, doesn't matter. I benefit. And then me being like, oh my God, your mom's in this room. Shut up. And so just owning this, I read romance, I think is such an empowering story for so many of us that I don't think 10 years ago us would be like, I read romance.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Yeah. Oh man, the like internalized misogyny that I had around it. I was absolutely, I'm of an age where it was very much like girl boss, high heels, sex in the city, all the chicklet had pink covers. It was everything was about like dieting and being thin. And so yeah,

Breaking Down Genre Misconceptions

SPEAKER_00 3:45

I had a lot of work to do to unpack the way I felt about romance and like the shame I had around it and the sort of like, oh no, I'm like too smart for that. But I was absolutely reading romance the whole time and loving it. The thing I loved the most about Outlander was the relationship between Claire and Jamie because it's a romance.

Alesia Galati 4:05

And I don't think that people who are outside of this romance community really understand the level of understanding of ourselves, the level of empathy, consent, what a really healthy relationship looks like. And like, we're not talking about dark book talk here. We're not talking about that. They're in a corner all by themselves. We're talking about like books that are just like they actually move your soul, and then you leave it thinking, wow, I did not know. Like I came here for the smut, and then I left with some life lessons. Did not anticipate that happening.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

I talk about the book Morning Glory Milking Farm all the time. It's not historical romance, okay? That is Minotaur erotica. But it has extremely deep themes about like student debt and diversity in society and like our relationships with our parents and what it means to have a job and then what that job means to you as who you are. There's like incredible on-the-job training and benefits that this main female main character has. And like, you know, there's a lot of like minotaur sex, which is, you know, a thing. But yeah, there's like books like that really show you how much thought and feeling can go into a book that just seems like a silly little, oh yeah, that's just smut. It's actually got a lot going on there if you start to peel back the layers. And romance provides us a format to explore those things in a safe way because you know there's gonna be a happy ending, that the characters are gonna be protected in that way. Nobody's gonna die at the end. I think for me, knowing that the characters are gonna live to the end, even if like they go through it to get there, makes it much easier for me to approach topics that are harder for me to read in other genres where you don't have that promise.

Alesia Galati 6:02

I cannot express how important the characters not dying at the end is, because I had a friend recommend a high fantasy book, meaning that it's for the uninitiated. It means that it is a world created on its own. So Lord of the Rings in Middle-earth. And I fell in love with these main characters. There's a love story, there's incredible world building. And then at the end, both of the characters die. And I was deep sobbing. My husband's, what the heck is going on? Because I I'm not an emotional person. I'm usually like, ew, emotions bad. And he's just like, What is happening? And I'm just like, hide. And he's just like, what is it? And then I texted my friend who told me to read the book. I was like, I hate you. I am never taking a book recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

First of all, how dare you? I have questions.

Alesia Galati 7:04

It was so good, but also I am traumatized. And so I'm always a little iffy. Yeah. When I get into these this author's books, I have not read any more of her high fantasy series. I've read a bunch of her other stuff because there's happy the ever afters. This series is just not. And so that's a really important part because you go into it knowing that you're gonna have something exciting at the end. And that a whole other side tangent, we need to have an episode on this in season two. The happily ever after versus the happy for now, and how kids in marriage don't have to be in the ending. Like a lot of authors need to hear that. That we don't ex always want kids ever.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Yep. Some people don't want that. Yeah. It's not a standard. You don't have to have that.

Alesia Galati 7:58

But that is a whole other scientific. We'll get into that in season two for sure. But historical romance. When people say historical romance, you think pride and prejudice, weathering heights, maybe Jane Eyre, things like that. But we're not talking about those at all. What are some kind of misconceptions that people tend to have when they think about historical romance?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, and this is again a generational thing, but I immediately think about Fabio. So I think about a shirtless man with long hair, like embracing a woman, a clin, a classic, what's called a clinch cover, like a script font. And it's always about a duke. So I think first and foremost, the number one misconception or like narrow point of view that happens with historical romance is people hear historical romance and they immediately think England. And they think England in the 1800s, and they think aristocrats. And there are some reasons for that. Number one being Jane Austen is essentially the mother of the modern romance novel, and she was writing in England about English aristocrats in the Regency era. So Pride and Prejudice, um, the other sense and sensibility. Yeah, sense and sensibility. Those are all set during that time. So when authors in the modern era started writing romance novels, there's an author named Georgia Heyer, and she's very problematic. But what she did was create this scare quotes Regency England, and she wrote like hundreds of novels set in this Regency England that I think Harlequin published. So you've got this major author churning out books in this kind of made-up Regency world, and that's established Regency England as like the setting for historical romance. But if you think about what historical romance is, it's just romance set any time more than 50 years ago. So today it's actually anything earlier than 1970s, which is like horrifying. So it spans us a long time. It could be like medieval England, it could be Imperial China, it could be the American West. It could be Scotland during the Jacobite Rebellion. Hello, Outlander. Like you can do anything that's set before 1970 is gonna classify in that historical romance. We have there are authors today that are writing historical romance set in like the 50s and 60s in the US, and they're like incredible stories. So it's when thinking about historical romance to try to open up your mind a little bit in terms of this, the eras. The other thing that's interesting to me is that people will say Regency romance, and they mean historical romance, and often a lot of the really popular authors, like Lisa Clay Pass, who's written, she's written so many books, she's super, super popular, and she has some really popular series, and they're actually set in the Victorian era. They're not Regency Romance, but people will refer to them as Regency Romance. And a lot of like Courtney Milan writes a lot of Victorian, Julianne Long writes a lot of Victorian. So there's a lot more even diversity within that small area of England with Dukes beyond Regency era, although Regency is a popular time period that people still use because of the Jane Austen Georgia Hire rewriting inputs.

Alesia Galati 11:11

That is so interesting because in my head, literally before you said that sentence, Regency equals Victorian. Like, I don't study history. I

Diverse Representation in Historical Romance

Alesia Galati 11:20

am terrible at No, me neither. Give me math. I will do that. But like history, no.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Especially like English history. Who cares? I don't care who was king. Like, I don't, we fought a whole war about that. Like, I'm good. I don't need to know. Except for when I'm actually reading a book that's set in a particular time. I think the other thing that I like completely gloss over in this whole conversation is bodice ribbage. So like historical romance classically has this extremely pernicious stereotype based on some based on reasons. Like there's there's reasons for this, but in the 70s and 80s, when historical romance was becoming popular and open-door historical romance in particular was becoming popular, there's this book called The Flame and the Flower. And it was like the first sort of open-door romance. And because of the social structures, even in the 80s, to allow an unmarried woman to enjoy sex, there had to be this uh setup where she was being forced into it. So you end up with this uh forcible sexual activity from the main male character. You have these very dominant men who are like kidnapping women and like forcing them to have sex with them, and then the women are enjoying it, but it's like they can maintain this persona of I didn't pursue this, so I'm still a good girl, a good woman. I'm not a slut, but I can have a good time on page, and you have that like veil of respectability, yeah. So that was the style of writing for a long time. And I again, like I'm a little older, so when I was coming of age, like in my early 20s and the early 2000s, the way we think about consent now is still very different than what even I was dealing with in my 20s in college. The way writers write about consent and the way we think about consent has changed drastically. So there are these like standards of the subgenre that are problematic for today's readers to read that. And they were problematic at the time, but we weren't talking about consent and we weren't thinking about it the same way we are today. Since 2015, probably the books are a lot more modern in their sensibility around consent and the way the authors are writing that consent. And then the other thing that's happened is because readers want more diversity in their books, we demand that we get a lot more representation in both race and ethnicity. The stories that we're getting told, we're not only focused on like dukes and aristocratic people. We've got like working class stories. We also have stories not said in England, we have stories about queer characters, we have stories about characters of color, we have stories in non-traditional relationships, we have stories with non-traditional HEAs, like no babies, no no marriage, we have stuff like that happening because modern readers want that. And we have to assume there's this conversation in historical romance that's like, is it historically accurate? No, and it doesn't matter, really, it doesn't matter.

Alesia Galati 14:16

That is really fascinating, and even as someone I told you before we hit record, I read two historical romances this year. Both had trans rep and non-binary authors, and that's I think what I was more so going for than actually reading historical romance because it's just not a genre that I tend to gravitate toward. And also I've been really focusing on reading a lot of black authors this year, and there aren't a ton of black authors in the historical romance space. Right. So I think that it's really interesting, like getting all this history and backstory of what was happening back then versus what we're getting now. And I have a friend, she is in her 50s, I want to say, and she talks a lot about sneaking her mom's romances and like into getting introduced to certain romances, and how that was very different and very problematic to like the books that she reads now and the books that we talk about now, and how it is very different. Even thinking about the discussion that we had with Curvy Girls Read Romance a few episodes ago, where we talked about even a book from like 2010 to 2015 time frame. Yeah. Have it like saying it had curvy rep, but it literally being all about dieting and fads. And it was like, yeah, oh, wait, no, I don't want to read that, and I don't want to recommend that to people. So let's put that one off to the side and read something else. And so I love that we're shifting our perspective to have more inclusive representation and this idea that oh, there weren't queer people back then. Please hilarious. Please. Like have you looked at Roman structures or painting?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

My favorite are the one-star Goodreads reviews who will rate a either a queer romance or a romance with characters of color and say it's not historical accurate. It's do you have eyes? Do you think that people that are like darker than a paper bag didn't exist before 1965? Like, what who what come on? And that's why like it's it's wild to think about Beverly Jenkins, who is a titan of the historical romance genre. Um, and she her first book she shopped around multiple times, and she had multiple publishing houses tell her that no one wanted to read that story. And like she was writing black characters who were not enslaved, who had happy endings. She was writing black characters who were taking control of their own destiny, and like they're all successful. All of her characters are like professionals and like very good at their jobs, and like our women are very like independent and headstrong, and her men are extremely emotionally available, but also like very masculine. And she does just this wonderful job of portraying people living very normal lives, but outside of the dominant narrative of people immediately after the end of the Civil War, just like suffering. So she's showing all these communities that are like in New Orleans. She has the Leves and they have this like dynasty, they own a hotel. They're like doing all this stuff. And then her side characters are really diverse too. Her westerns have Chinese characters and Native American characters, and it looks like the real world because Wyoming wasn't only white people. Surprised. It's just it's wild to me. People who get like upset when the characters aren't all white because it's set in England in the 1800s. What do you England colonized entire parts of the world full of people who were not white? Why do you think Indian people speak English? Why do you think the English were in China? Dude, come on. You know, where did all that tea come from? So anyway, I could go on about that for a while. It's really funny to me because it's just another word for saying, I don't want to read about these people because they're not white, which is just absolutely ridiculous. What are you doing with your life?

Alesia Galati 18:31

Yeah, lots of feelings on that. Yeah, and like I I understand because I went through this too when I first got into the reading space as an adult of being like reading what was served me. Yeah. And then having to be like, wait a minute, why are all these authors white? Like, I'm Afro-Latina. Where are the other people?

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Right? Yeah. Like, where are the people that look like me? Where are the people that that have experiences I know people in my life have? Or like, where are the people that your ancestors are out there too? They're also living lives in the 1800s and the 1700s and the 1900s. They're there too. So where are they in these stories? And who gets to tell those stories and get them published and put on shelves and like in libraries and on book talk and Instagram?

unknown 19:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

That's where it really makes me upset because you have to, you do have to work a little bit harder to find them. And because if you're if you just read what's served to you, you're like living in the world of Emily Henry and Lisa Claypas. Everyone is white and straight and thin and living in Ohio, you know?

Alesia Galati 19:43

Boring. Just saying.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Boring.

Alesia Galati 19:47

I need more. I need more diversity in my books. Yeah. So we talked about Regency versus Victorian. Let's go through some of these other ones. Because when we were going back and forth, you had some really good information that I'm like, I kind of want to know more. So let's go ahead and go through each of these things. What people think England, they think, all right, this is historical romance, but that's not actually accurate. Let's go through each of these.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Okay. So fun time. So let's get it out there. Regency is actually a very specific time period. There's a period of time in the early 1800s immediately following the Napoleonic Wars where there was a regent king and he was one a George, one of the Georges. And he wasn't, it's called the Regency Period because he wasn't technically the king. He was like managing the throne in between real kings. So Regency era is going to be that Jane Austen era, the high-waisted gown. There's lots of like falls and like seasons in a lot of the aristocratic-focused English Regency romance novels. Again, due to that Jane Austen George had higher influence. You've got the kind of curly front hairdo, like updo hair. And then there's no running water or gaslights or trains yet in the regency.

Alesia Galati 21:02

Not in steampunk yet.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Not not no, not in steampunk yet. So that's Regency. And it's a very specific period of time. What you'll get in a lot of those books is you'll have a lot, you have a lot of main male characters or main characters who were affected by the Napoleonic Wars. So there's a lot of disability representation in these books where you have people who have come back from war and they're injured and they maybe use a cane or they have PTSD or they have an injury like burns or wounds of some kind. That's a very common theme in the Regency era. Like A Lady for a Duke depends on the Battle of Waterloo for like a main plot point for one of the main characters. And then Tessa Dare. Oh yeah, it's so good.

Alesia Galati 21:41

I love that one.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

It is so good. And then Tessa Dare has a series called Spindle Cove, and it m the main male characters all fought in the Napoleonic Wars, and they all have different injuries and things going on with them because of it. The Georgian era is a fun one. It's the late 1700s. So like the George, King George that America was fighting in the revolution, that's the George of Georgian era. The thing about that era is that the men are all wearing like powdered wigs. And

Tropes and Themes Explained

SPEAKER_00 22:15

so like some authors will like lean into that and it's like, oh.

Alesia Galati 22:21

It's not a kink, guys.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Yeah. Um and then some authors just like gloss over and you can start forget about it. Eloisa James has a series called Desperate Duchesses set during that time. She has this character named the Duke of VA, and he's like very fashionable, and she'll describe his clothes, and he's wearing like he'll be wearing like a bright pink silk brocade jacket and like knee-length breeches with silk stockings and like lace cuffs and his wig, and you're just like, and he's got on like red heels, and you're like, whoa! Like I don't know how I feel about this guy. But he was like the height of fashion.

Alesia Galati 22:57

Sounds like he was just colorblind.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

I mean he was a fashion plate. Tom V. He said he has six children out of wedlock that sort of escape his knowledge, and he like has to go track them down all over England. Yeah. Over the course of like a nine-book series. You should read that one. It's good. And then Eloisa James is actually an English professor. She lives in England. She married a night. She's like living her own romance novel, but she's her books are very literary. If you like Shakespeare, you enjoy Eloisa James. She makes lots of references. And then another Georgian era series is Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane series, which is an absolutely banana pants series. It's it's absolutely bonkers, but she has one character that she talks about his wig a lot. It's just weird. Like, oh, stop talking about this guy's wigs. Grossing me out. Yeah. And then, okay, so then we have, and we're still in England and we talk about Victorian era. So this is Victorian era, is like what a lot of people think about when they think about like antique. For me, I'm thinking about antique, I think immediately Victorian era. So it's like bustles on the skirt, actual corsets, like corsetry, where you're like pinching the waist in fashion. And then you, this is Queen Victoria's rules. We've got gas lights, we've got trains, we've got bicycles, we've got coal, and coal mining is like a really big deal. London becomes extremely dirty because the industrial revolution is happening. You also have like plagues going on here at Scarlet Fever and Typhus, and all those things are happening because of the water situation in the city of London. And the aristocrats during this time are broke because it's unfashionable to work. And unless they made good investments, industrialists are making all the money now. So you have a lot of themes in that time have to do with like new money versus old money, marriage of convenience across classes because the aristocrat needs money and the industrialist needs a title and to be accepted by society. And so you have this sort of upheaval in societal roles that's happening during the Victorian era, plus a lot of scientific advances are happening. So lots of great series set in Victorian era. Courtney Milan is one of my all-time favorite historical romance authors, so I'll talk about her a lot. But she's a series called The Brothers Sinister that's set during that time period. It's amazing. And then the Worth saga is also really good. Lots of very diverse rep in that, in both of those series, actually. Great Victorian era series, and then Joanna Shoop actually has Gilded Age series, which is the comparable time period in the U.S. So we when we're talking about America, we don't refer to American time periods based on the English monarch because who cares? The Gilded Age is very similar. Trains, industrialists, like there's 400 people in New York City who basically have all the money in the United States. Sounds familiar. And Joanna Schup's series deals with that. But just in America. And then my favorite one of Joanna Schuop's series that she has in that time period is called A Notorious Bow. It has a male main character who is deaf. He's also an inventor. It's very interesting. And the way he has to deal with being deaf and the way it's treated at that time, the ableism inherent in society at that time is like horrifying. He has like a pretty scary story arc, but it's a really good book. And then Joanna Lowell, a shore thing, has a trans masculine main character and a female main character. And that one revolves around bicycles. It's really good. It's like a road trip. And then you've got Adriana Herrera, an Afro-Latina author, writing Caribbean Heiress in Paris, who we have an Afro-Latina female main character and a Scottish male main character. And that is set in the World Exposition, which happened in 1890. So they're like going up in the Eiffel Tower as it's being built and like experiencing Paris during that time period. He's a distiller and she is trying to get a contract to make her family's rum. So she has her family essentially bought out a plantation and the workers own it. And so they make rum in the Caribbean. I don't remember which island. So yeah, so that's Victorian. I really like Victorians. I've read a lot of them, so I have a lot of a lot of recommendations there. And then you have medieval, so that's like medieval times, knights, ladies. You've got a lot of changing political landscapes. So it might be set on the island that becomes England, but that might not be England yet. A lot of medievals are not necessarily tightly tethered to the time that they're in. Some are. They'll mention King James or they'll mention something happening with the Normans or whatever. But a lot of times it's just, okay, there's castles and clans, but you don't really know what year it is. Amanda Quick is an author. It's she writes in her multiple pen names. She writes as Jane Ann Krentz in like science fiction. And then she has Amanda Quick and she has one more pen name. But she has a book called Desire. That's like an older book, but it's set in the mid in the medieval era. It's really good. It's cute. It's funny. And then Surrender My Love, which is a Joanna Lindsay from the 90s, is set in medieval. And it's that one's really interesting because it has a lot of details around language and then the multiple languages that people would have to speak and the ways that the different groups of folks that were living in what became England and the UK were like rubbing up against each other and like kidnapping. There's a lot of kidnapping happening in medievals. And then Holdfast by Eliza MacArthur, who is a fellow content creator on Instagram, is an incredible Scottish medieval that is has a lot of interesting representation around anxiety. So the male main character in Holdfast has anxiety. It's like what would it be like to be in the 1100s and you have you're dealing with anxiety and you're like a dude. That was really interesting. So then we have Scottish. So Scottish is like anything said in Scotland. It's a like a long time. You could have medieval Scottish, which is Holdfaster, you could have Lindsay Sands writes these Scottish Highlander romances that are just a long time ago. There's no years involved, really. They're just like vibes only Scottish Highlander romances funny. Yeah. Then on like on the flip side, you have this author named Marsha Cannum, who was writing in the 90s and late 80s. And she has there's a book called Pride of Lions. It's a three-book series, but the first book is Pride of Lions, and it's extremely historically detailed. And she's talking about the first Jacobite rebellion, and there's lots of political maneuvering. It feels like high fantasy almost, because you're there's like lots of army movement and politics and spies and stuff like that, and romance. So that's the Scottish bucket I have here. Then you have we have other countries, right? So we have America and specifically the American West. So a lot of people don't think about Westerns when they're thinking about historicals, but Westerns are set in 1800 and the 19th century. I can't talk about Westerns and not talk about Beverly Jenkins. She has an incredible series called the All West series. She has a standalone book called Nighthawk that's amazing and has a half Scottish, half American maleman character. He's so cool. He goes by this, not he called he calls himself the preacher. He like quotes Bible quotes to people and then he like stares them down with his revolver. There's like gunfights and horses and trains and all that stuff. And then, yeah, it's cowboy books. But there's so but Beverly Jenkins cowboy books are so good because they're like actual historical representations of what was going on in the Wyoming territory in the 1870s. Like people went there because they could be free, they could be by themselves, they could own land, they could like rant raise horses, they could live these lives that they weren't really going to get if they stayed in the south or on the east coast. So Wyoming was truly, and women got the vote in Wyoming in the late 1800s. So the women in the Wyoming territories are extremely independent and self-determined. I think that's why Jenkins chose that area for one reason. And then honorable mention in the American West, there's an author named MB Duell, and they have a book called They Ain't Proper, and it has a non-binary main character and a female main character. And it's like the most western western. There's like a fake death and like whiskey and a saloon and saloon girls. It's she's a male order bride. It's just like very western, but it was a really fun time. Really fun read. Imperial China. So I have not read a ton of books set in Imperial China, but G. Lin writes in that era a lot. And she has an incredible book called Butterfly Swords. And if you are a if you're a fantasy reader, if you like romanticy, if you like heroines who like really know how to fight, that is a book for you. That is a like an epic journey. The heroine has these titular butterfly swords, and she can starts with a poisoning. Like it's real good. Nice, real good. And then you've got back in the US, you've got Civil War and Post-Civil War US. So Alyssa Cole has this series called The Loyal League, and it's three books, and it's all union operatives during the Civil War. So those books are heavy, but they're romances. So you're able to like approach this topic from a perspective where you know that the characters are gonna live through the story and you know they're gonna get happy ever after. But it is like heavy, like very violent, very fraught, like wartime kind of stuff. But Alyssa Cole's authorhood's notes are really great in that where she talks about the first one, it is based on real people. And she talks about like how she found out about these people and like how she imagined what their life might be like. And so the first two books are black women and white men, and the third book is a black man and like an Afro-Latina woman. And the third book is the most stressful romance I've ever read in my life. But it's really good. Um, and then Beverly Jenkins has a lot that are set like immediately during Reconstruction. So she has a lot that are set in like New Orleans during the reconstruction time. Through the Storm is actually set during the Civil War at the beginning, and then it they picks back up afterwards. It's just a really tough time to write about, I think. And I appreciate that Cole and Jenkins and these authors are doing it because I think we need the counterpoint to Gone with the Wind, which is needs to go in the trash room of history, but like it exists and it was very popular, and it's like a very popular romance set during Civil War. And I think we need the counterpoint of the realities of that war and what was happening in the genre in order to stand up to it and say, you know what, like this is trash. Like this is actually what's going on. These are the people that are affected. These are the people that were like fighting against the Confederacy for good reason for many years, as a matter of course. And yeah, these are their stories. They're the ones that get the happy ending, not stupid Rhett Butler. Yes. Liz Hira.

Alesia Galati 33:51

And I love that you're mentioning like black authors who are paying tribute to the histories of the people that have gone before them. And these are authors that have done these stories justice in such a beautiful way. I think even I told you I saw Kennedy Ryan recently for her book Real Release, Re-Release. My dad's oh my gosh, yeah. So if you've read the book Real, you understand that so much of it is about Jim Crow post reconstruction, all that stuff, and how there were moments in that book where as someone who like I have a black dad having black family members, yeah, like was like, oh god, my chest. I can't I can't. This feels so heavy, but it's such a beautiful tribute to the creators of that time and the people who introduced so much of the arts of what we know it is today, like music and dance, who were honored in Europe and France, but then came back and tried to put things together with the collective and that whole book is just like I feel like Kennedy just did such a fantastic job. And in her author notes, you can hear where she's like, this is what the like I collectively pulls from other people's real stories to create this character and telling her story. And oh my goodness, chills. It's just so good. So I can imagine that Elisa Cole and Beverly Jenkins do the same justice to their stories as well. So I'm definitely gonna have to check them out.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Yeah. So the

Spicy Historical Romance: More Than Just Bodice-Ripping

SPEAKER_00 35:40

vibe from Beverly Jenkins is she's gonna give you homework. I think that's what people call her Auntie Beth. She's like not playing around. And a lot of according to Milan does the same thing. They'll give you like these footnotes that are like, I base this on and you should read this text, and it's like something from 1867. And you're like, I'm not good, I'm not gonna read that. But the thought and like additional work that a lot of the authors of color are putting into their and the black authors are putting into their footnotes, I don't know. Like, I feel conflicted about it sometimes because I feel like we don't demand that of white authors. I don't expect Lisa Claypos to tell me, like, oh, look, her, I cite your sources. Her stuff's completely like fictitious, but we just assume that it's fine because it's like about these aristocrats who are like having house parties and stuff. But we like expect Courtney Milan and Beverly Jenkins to give us these extensive footnotes. Like, Beverly Jenkson's a researcher librarian. She knows what she's doing. She's citing her, but why do we need that? Can it not stand on its own? As yeah, of course this happened. Harriet Tubman is literally in through the storm. She's like, like she exists, she was real. We know about her. So I feel conflicted in that I do want that. Like I want that, I want to know, and I want to know that it's like, oh, this was a real thing that happened. But I also don't want to have that expectation all the time for characters who are not white aristocrats in England. I know they existed. They had to have because we're here today. So yeah, I like it, but I wish it wasn't something that we demanded from certain authors, but not others. I guess is the best way to put it.

Alesia Galati 37:20

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it was for me really interesting to hear the author's note and then say, I just took it as face value of like when so the scene that I'm thinking of specifically is when they're creating a movie based on this woman's life, and she's a singer in New York City with a jazz band and has to put blackface on. She's lighter skin and they didn't want the patrons, the white patrons of that jazz club to cause a riot because they thought that a white woman was up there with a bunch of black musicians. And I took it as face value of I could see that happening. Someone who's Afro-Latina and also a little lighter. Like, I could see that happening. Like it's certain light. Yes, I look very white. And so, like, just thinking about that, and then hearing the author note of, hey, I based this off of a real experience gut-wrenching that someone actually had where they had to go through this, was just like, oh my gosh, like it really just it it really brings it to life. Yeah. And it's like, yes, this is a romance story, and there's smut in it, and there's all these other things, but like, this was real.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Yeah. I think it allows us to approach history from a very personalized angle. I was having a conversation with uh book group the other day, and we were talking about one thing I think about a lot is with women's stories and with stories from other marginalized groups, often there's not recorded history of that group for many reasons. Maybe it wasn't legal to be married to someone that's the same sex as you. Maybe it wasn't legal to be married to someone who's not the same race as you. So by just fact of life, you're not going to write that down. You're not going to have a lot of records. And so historians generally are not going to officially know that it existed. The other thing that historians don't generally know a lot about are like home life and like women's lives and interrelationship dynamics, because that's not stuff that's getting written down and studied. So I think romance allows us a lens to personalize these historical narratives and understand them on a person-by-person basis. Like what you just said, that story in Reel allowed you to put yourself into that person's shoes in the 1930s and 40s and like truly relate to that experience on a level that you're not gonna get from just reading about some person. If it were like, oh, here's a jazz, here's a story about a jazz singer that you've never heard of, you've never heard their music, you don't know what they sound like, you have no emotional relationship, and this thing happened, you'd be like, oh, that sucks. And of course it sucks because it was back in the day and like things were bad, versus like actually experiencing it through their eyes or through the eyes of someone close to them that you can do in a romance novel. Like that level of relationship to the main characters is just not something that you get in like most other genres because you're not focused on the relationships. Like they're not they're focused on like plot and whatever else. So I think historical romance in particular allows us that like very personal point of view to put ourselves in these very famous situations, things we all know happened, but like we don't really know it. Like you've not experienced it. You don't know anybody that experienced it. So you don't really get that personal lens of what it would be like. So maybe I hit the same way.

Alesia Galati 40:56

Yeah. Now I'm just like, I need to go talk to my grandma. My black grandma.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Like a lot of a lot of people who actually did live through that won't talk about it or they'll downplay it a little bit. So it it can it uh still can be hard to really get someone to talk about it because who wants to talk about their trauma, you know, that much. But yeah, you should talk to your grandma. I should.

Alesia Galati 41:23

My grandma Christy for every anyone who's like, wait, Grandma, who grandma Christie. Yeah. Oh my goodness, love any time I get to talk to her is always a good time. And somehow that side of the family lives very long. I think her dad was like recently passed away, he was a hundred and something. Like, wow. Live a very long life. That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Always very interesting. Let's hit tropes and then we can get into the subgenres if you want.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

Okay, so tropes and themes. Historical romance is a romance. So the tropes are still there. Only when bad happens, like friends to lovers, forbidden love, forced proximity, marriage of convenience, all that stuff still happens. I think for me, one thing about historical romance is that the stakes are higher. It just hits differently to have a miscommunication trope in historical romance when there's no cell phone, there's no Facebook or Instagram or like Google. If someone walks away from you and you don't know how to find them, guess what? They're gone. You're not finding that person. So there this the stakes of the relationships are higher. And generally, like forbidden love, and we talked about this a little bit already, but okay, it's one thing in a contemporary to be like, oh, my parents don't like you, or like you're my boss. It's a completely different story. If you are a black woman undercover as an enslaved person in a confederate general's house, and you're a union spy, and this other union spy approaches you who happens to be a white man, but he's undercover with as a confederate. Like that is high stakes. And that is there's forbidden love, and then there's we will get killed if people find out we're together. It just makes it so much more fraught. For me, I think also the structure of society in certain genres, and even in the American West, even in Gilded Age, when society is changing a little bit and women are getting more autonomy and power over their own lives, there's still pretty stringent structures around how people are supposed to interact and not only around gender, but also around class that can make it really interesting and it brings tension to the relationship that's not necessarily there in a contemporary romance where we're not perfect, if there's definitely class structure, but it's not to the level of if you're an aristocrat and you're interested in somebody in the working class, like you're gonna get disowned and shunned, which happens sometimes. And then I think marriage of convenience is really more fun in historicals because there are more reasons to get married, especially when you're talking about things with aristocrats and inheritance and things like that, that marriage of convenience. Becomes a lot more intense and needed. I've read a few contemporary marriages of convenience and they never make sense to me. I'm like, but you don't actually have to get married. And if you did, you could just get divorced real quick. It's fine. You're fine. Yeah. But yeah, in back in the day, no, you really did have to get married, and you really did have to make sure that you had an heir. And there was stuff that really did have to happen. And there were so many marriages that were purely business that either made for good breeding grounds for adultery or maybe love and time. So those tropes just work a little bit more for me in historical romance. I think historical romance opens up, it's a bit of a fantasy. Alexis Hall writes about this in their author's note in A Lady for a Duke. They say basically historical romance authors have all agreed on this particular world that they've built together collectively, and you can play with that. So there's definitely like a fantasy element to it where you are not in like everyday life. And I think that makes certain parts of the fiction work better for me in ways that I really can't read in contemporary romance. Like I really cannot deal with a big age gap in a contemporary romance, especially if the female main character is really young. But in historical romance, I'm reading like 19 and 20-year-old female main characters and like 30-year-old male main characters all the time, and I have no problem. So like I a lot of it is just like the time was different. The expectations of people were different, and it becomes easier to approach those scenarios. I also am able to read much more intense themes in historical romance than I am in contemporary. It's just not as close to me. I have a little bit, I have a little bit more emotional distance, and I know not only is it romance and I'm gonna get it happy ever after, but I also know that it's history and I know how it ends. Like I know it's the Civil War and it's really bad, but I know that the Union wins. Like I know that the Confederates lose. But if it's Waterloo, like I know Napoleon loses, like, and I know that those characters, if they're in this book, live through that trauma some way. So it becomes easier to approach for me than like a random, like a dark like I can't really read dark romance. I just can't deal with those topics in a contemporary. It's too like real. So for me, that's a little bit easier to manage also. And then you've got like the social justice aspect of it. Like people talk a lot about misogyny in historical romance, and I think the thing I like about it is not the misogyny, but it's like the overtness of it. Like it's very clear what's going on, and it's very clear that there are certain restraints put on the women's lives in the books. We're talking about women, if we're talking about queer characters, it's like very clear. Even in Cat Sebastian's Week Could Be So Good, which is said in 1958, being gay is still illegal. And so this these two characters are navigating a happy ever after in an environment that is extremely hostile to them. And you try not to think that one's hard because you know that the AIDS epidemic is coming and you're just like trying not to think about it. You're like, please let these two characters make it. So that there, there's always some touch and go. And like you just you know that there are these things and the characters are fighting against them together. And it sometimes provides opportunities for the characters to talk about them more overtly than you have in contemporary, where contemporaries, oh yeah, we're past that. We're good now. It's like post-racial America, that kind of stuff. Whereas in a in a historical, the characters like will broach

Queering Historical Romance Challenge

SPEAKER_00 47:30

the topic, especially class difference ones, which I really love, where like the working class character will be like, you don't know what we're you don't know what it's like to nearly starve to death because you didn't make enough socks in the factory. What do you know, you idiot? And the aristocrat will be like, you're a terrible person because you're poor, you know? And they like hash it out, you know. So for me, that's a little bit I like to digest the themes that way. And it gives me hope too, because I was talking to Tori, Tori loves HEAs a while ago, and talking about like how reading romance novels with diverse representation, especially historical ones, gives me a lot of hope because it reminds me that people have always been here. We've always been here, we've always been fighting against these systems of oppression, the way that we've been fighting them has changed over time, but we're not new. What we're going through today in our time is not new, and people have persisted and existed and fought against these powers that be forever.

Alesia Galati 48:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

They got ha happy ever afters, and we can get one too. Hope.

Alesia Galati 48:39

Oh, please. Uh, yes. I love all of those tropes, and I think it's really interesting, especially for people who are like, no, I I only like to read based off trope. It's like the same way that I approach BIPOC authors is like, oh, you like second chance. Here's 15 authors of color that have second chance romances. And it's like, I feel like the same thing can be said for historical romance. One thing that I also love a good marriage of convenience. And one of my favorite for historical romance, and like I said, I haven't read a lot, but Scarlet, I have something with a P for her last name. Scarlett.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Alesia Galati 49:24

The first book in their series, it's where the Duke is just sick of being matchmade with like other people, and he's like, hey, we should, like, you don't want to get married. I don't want to get married. Let's just do this.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

Just like completely over it. Absolutely loveless and just like fine.

Alesia Galati 49:46

My favorite reason for people to get married is maybe this is because like I'm a romantic. So when people ask me, like, oh, why'd you marry your husband? I'm like, health insurance, and so I could get his last name and have the same last name as my kids. Those aren't valid reasons. Like, I love him. He's the person I'm with today. He's the person I choose to be with today. If that changes tomorrow, it changes tomorrow. I don't know. He was around. He's there. It's fine. He's he's one of the very few people that I can stand to be around 24-7. And even then, I'm like, sometimes you need to go.

SPEAKER_00 50:26

That's a great reason. That's a great reason. Yeah, I agree. I do love the meddling parent. There's like a kind of like meddling mother trope that's very persistent and in historical. And a lot of it has to do with the mothers trying to make sure that their daughters are taken care of, like financially, especially if the dad's not around anymore. So there's a lot of hashing out of feelings that happens with bad moms in historical romance that I really like, where the daughter will be like, I don't you don't even know me. You tried to marry me off to some 80-year-old skeleton. What the hell? And the mom's I'm just trying to take care of you. And the daughter's like, This isn't the way. So yeah.

Alesia Galati 51:07

Yeah. We're looking at Mama Bennett. We're in Pride and Prejudice, but we're looking at Mama Bennett. Are you off to the distant cousin?

SPEAKER_00 51:15

Yeah. It's very common. That's a bad mom. Like just trying to marry you off. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So like we were talking about, we're talking about tropes, but then the other thing with historical romance is that it's a subgenre of romance, but then there's sub-genres. So every genre of contemporary has a counterpart in historical. It's a little harder to find them, to be quite honest. You do need to know the author and like kind of know the vibe of the book. You can read the back matter, or you could go on Reddit, or you can read any of the bookstreamers' posts that like pump out tons of historical romance content at any given time, self-included. But basically, every subgenre has a counterpart in historical. So if you like mafia, for instance, Joanna Schup, who also writes under the pen name Milo Fennelli and has written a mafia series, started to get into that in some of her Gilded Age books. So there's a book called Devil of Downtown, and it's like a crime boss. And he's the same as Jack. He's great. He runs a casino. And then Kerrigan Byrne has a book called The Highwayman, and it's about a criminal doing his thing. And then with mystery, there's a lot of like mystery like romance out there. So Amanda Quick has a title called Dangerous. There's like a ghost or seance situation, and there's a lock-picking male main character, and that one's fun. And then KJ Charles writes a lot of mystery and like suspense, but she writes a lot of kind of anti-aristocratic, like anti-capitalist stories. And the Lily White Boys is all mysteries. And KJ Charles writes exclusively queer rep of all kinds. So the Lily White Boys series has the first book in that series is a trans female main character and two ace leads. So a male main character and a female main character, both ace. And then the second book is male is two guys. And then the third book is a guy and a woman, but the woman is by. And then the fourth book is two guys. So all of KG Charles' books are queer in some way. And she just does a really great job with this eat the rich energy that is really fun to read. Like romantic suspense, you've got Maiden Lane, which is a banana pants like Batman retelling. Set in Georgian England.

unknown 53:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

And then Midnight in Scotland is by an author named Eliza Braden. Elisa Braden. I don't know how to say her name, but it's all Scotland. There's a like magical realism element, and there it is, there's like murders and kidnappings, and it's very, very intensely suspenseful like action. And then in your rom coms, you've got Tessa Dare, who is hilarious. Like literally all of her books are absolutely hilarious. And then Courtney Milan has her most recent series, it's called The Wedgeford Trials, and they are just very lighthearted and so funny. Courtney Milan has gotten funnier over time, and the Wedgeford trials are like a testament to that. Her early books are extremely angsty and like heavy, and Wedgeford trials are like absolutely hilarious. And then if you like fantasy, a lot of some historical dips into that fantastic element. Like you'll have actual magics. A Marvelous Light, which is the first of a three book series by Freya Marsky, which I haven't read yet, but I know is heavy and magic. Making of a Highlander again has these magical

Closing Recommendations and Final

SPEAKER_00 54:20

elements. So that's the first book in Midnight and Scotland series, but they all have magical elements. There's one book in that series where the male main character can walk through dreams to very smuddy effect. It's great. And then there's like a woman in that series who can, she kind of has the sight. She can like see things that are gonna happen. League of Gentlewomen Witches by India Holton is like very fantasy romanticy but historical. And then Letters to Half Moon Street by Sarah Wallace is also set in like a historical magical world. So there's lots of crossover depending on what you're most interested in in contemporary. You can find that in historical also.

Alesia Galati 54:57

I don't think people realize that. And I'm gonna mess up her last name again, but the Scarlet Person. We're gonna have the book of people watching the Peckham. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 55:07

I'm actually I'm looking at a friend of mine sent me. Some friends of mine sent me this. So this is the Ray Cass. I haven't read this one yet, but it's that's why I'm like, oh yeah, Scarlet Peckham. Like looking at the spot.

Alesia Galati 55:20

I actually now I wanna see which one I'm talking about because Is it The Duke, The Duke I Tempted?

SPEAKER_00 55:27

I've read that one. I don't think that's what that one is. That one He's like into the sex club and he like likes getting spanked and he can't like accept that about himself, and then he she like goes and gets lessons on like how to do that.

Alesia Galati 55:42

It's very sweet. Yes. Okay. Yeah. All right. So the I have not the one you just held up, I've not read that one, but I did read the okay, so I did read the other ones, Secrets of Charlotte Street, and all of those have BDSM elements to them. Yeah, yeah. And it is so tastefully and wonderfully done that I was like, wait a minute, is this a historical romance or something?

SPEAKER_00 56:12

It's yes, it's yeah. That was I didn't have in the sub-sub genres, but like ironic romance with like Amelie Howard has a few that are very spicy. That Scarlett Peckham series is extremely spicy, like heavy BDSM themes. Adriana Herrera has a couple of novellas that are very, very hot. Miss Your X is set in the same world as Caribbean Eris in Paris. That's set in a sex club. And then there's oh my gosh, so many. But yeah, there's that exists too. There are a lot of like a lot of them are novellas, which is fine with me. Like I like that shorter form sometimes. But Scarlett Peckham series, it starts with the Duke, the Lord I left and this Duke I Tempted, and then there's a third, the third. It's always like some title I something.

Alesia Galati 56:53

The the Earl I ruined and the Lord I left.

SPEAKER_00 56:55

That's right. The Earl I ruined, yes. They were on my library shelves and they were not marked as romance, and they don't have clinch covers. And I I knew what I was getting, and I got home and I was like, somebody is gonna pick this up and be like, what in the world?

Alesia Galati 57:11

Yes. There are some anthologies as well.

SPEAKER_00 57:15

The role Blake, I'd like to F, Duke I'd like to F, Villain. I'd like to F. Yes, yes.

Alesia Galati 57:19

So if you're interested in dabbling in, but like, come on, we we need some smut here. I want to dabble with some spice, those anthologies are fantastic. And I think that's where I was introduced to Joanna Shoop as those. And I was like, okay. I think the guy ended up exchanging the male main character, took the female main character as payment for her brother's.

SPEAKER_00 57:46

Like that is so to the Duke. That is a Duke I'd like to F. That one is so good. That one is so good. That one, and then that book also has my favorite of it's not Eva Lee. It's Nicola Davidson. Similar setup. The female main character gets like sold to this. Oh, it's in the villain one. She gets sold to this like crime boss for a week, and it's very busy week for those two.

SPEAKER_02 58:13

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

Very busy week. Yeah, no, those, and then Sierra Simone has stories in all three, and those are some of my favorite Sierra Simone's that she has this like medieval one set in like the 600s or something, and it's this nun, and she is part of like a sex cult essentially. And this general who happens to be a woman shows up and they have this extremely, extremely well talked about and consented to, like, consensual non-consent situation. And it's just like the way the characters negotiate that relationship is like really well done. And then there's a follow-up to that one called The Last Tale of Tales of Peregrine Hind, I think, and that's two guys, and it's like a pirate and this guy that likes to be tied up. That was really good.

Alesia Galati 59:02

So it's like literally you can find stuff in all of these, even if you're and that's honestly, I think one thing that has historically held me back from getting into these romances and historical romances is the idea of a slow burn, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:21

Like I think historicals are so horny. You just have to find the right author. Like even regular ones are not like Lady Fraduke is a pretty slow burn for lots of reasons, but like Maiden Lane is so spicy and it is like right into it. Like the first book is the male main character is trying to find out who murdered his mistress, and everybody thinks it's him because he's quote depraved. He likes tying people up and blindfolding them. And so at one point during that book, he and the female main character, who's allegedly a virgin, they go to a sex club and watch people have sex through a wall. Like Joanna Schoup's stuff is like hot. Like her Gilded Age ones, not as hot as the novellas, like just for page count alone, but like her devil of downtown is like so hot, and so is uh the other one in that suit, Prince of Broadway. Both of those are like really spicy. So like you just gotta find the right author. We're not talking about like hand grabs, we're talking about like on same.

Alesia Galati 1:00:24

Sex in a garden.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:26

Sex in a sex club. Love sex.

Alesia Galati 1:00:30

So good. So yes, I I think I just need to delve into the right types of authors. Yes, and hopefully you will too as listeners. And this was the goal of this episode was to introduce you to the wide variety that is historical romance, because I know I could not do this topic justice at all. And so if you are someone who's interested in reading more historical romance, Claire, you have a challenge coming up. And if you're listening or watching to this at a later point, you can still probably do the challenge. You'll just do it not with everybody else. And I think that it's a really good way to one, diversify your reading with more diverse representation and queer representation, but also to delve into historical romance in a very fun kind of way. So tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:24

Yeah, so every June, Michaela, who goes by Lady Reverie and I do a very heady challenge called Queering Historical Romance, where we try to encourage people to read historical romance with all the different types of queer representation, but also written by authors of color, written by authors who are part of the LGBTQIA community, and then just really try to like expand what we're reading in historical romance. And every year we'll have a ton of recommendations. Obviously, I read a ton of historical romance, so I will have recommendations, but then the idea is just to do a bingo and you can get some points for every review you're post. And we do a little giveaway at the end of it. It's really easy and fun to participate, should not take a lot of your time. This is not homework or a job. This is reading romance novels. It's just a way to try to expose yourself to more stories from more voices than the ones that we have seen a million times.

Alesia Galati 1:02:19

Yes, which is the whole point. Like follow creators who are putting in a lot of this work to read diversely, and you will find books that are diverse. I promise you. Yeah. So definitely go check that out. Claire, this has been so much fun. Where can people find you, get to know you, hang out with you, all that stuff?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram. My handle is Unsuccessful Book Club. Yes, it is long. It is what it is. I'm pretty active there. I have a pretty big back catalog of posts. But if you ever have any questions or if there's something that you are looking for specifically, I am more than happy to help. If you're looking to get into historical romance, please reach out to me. I would love to talk to you about it. I'd love nothing more than an excited new historical romance reader. I will inundate you with suggestions.

Alesia Galati 1:03:08

Perfect. Yes, go send Claire a message, please. Because don't send me one. I am sorry. I won't be able to help you. Claire can help you for sure. Claire, thank you so much. We'll make sure we have all these recommendations in one spot, as well as your Instagram for people to send you a message. And that way, if people are driving or doing other things, they can also get that as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Yes, thank you.