Break out your graphing calculators for this one y’all. Celebrated for its depiction of a non-neurotypical heroine, econometrician Stella Lane is on a quest to become a more competent lover when family pressure nudges her back onto the dating field. Enter Michael Larsen, a Vietnamese/Swedish sex worker and breadwinner for a large family and ailing mother: who better to help Stella spend her audacious salary on a trial run at intimacy? But despite the cutesy cover and inclusive narratives, there’s a kernel of Romance’s dark foundation lurking in this reverse Pretty Woman.
Well if it isn’t another twofer. This week, Morgan and Isabeau are taking a trip to the flower shoppe with the first installment of Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series, a novel set in the world of Baroness Orczy’s notable 1905 work The Scarlet Pimpernel. In Willig’s novel, graduate student Eloise is finishing her dissertation when she stumbles upon a communique of the notorious and as-of-yet unmasked Napoleonic-Era British spy, the Pink Carnation. Subterfuge. Disguise. Intrigue. And a hand job in a boat that gives Madame Bovary’s famous carriage ride a turn for its garter. Plus, donation tips to help realign the pain of Quasimodo’s recent furlough.
It’s a Whoa!mance double whammy this week y’all! Not only are Morgan and Isabeau joined by the brilliant and talented Melonie Johnson, but we’re getting a guided tour of Melonie’s all time favorite romance novel: Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale. Imagine if Flowers for Algernon and A Beautiful Mind were study buddies with benefits, with the bulk of the sadness exchanged for more divide and multiply. Additional ingredients include: dukes, Quakers, and at the lord’s behest, openings. Plus, we get the scoop on Melonie’s upcoming trio of novels from the source herself. Summer 2K19 can’t come soon enough.
This week’s a little bit of everything y’all. We got murder. We got Las Vegas. We got snakes. Morgan and Isabeau are joined by friend and OG Las Vegan Marie to talk about the first installment of Deborah Coonts’ Lucky O’Toole series. Did we mention the swingers? Did we mention the porn stars; and oddly, the prudishness? It’s a tour de force of repressed desires with a hard on for justice. A very, conservative hard on. Recommended for those who’ve never seen their own selves naked.
We’re going hard this Pisces season with some more fresh caught fish fuckery y’all. Have you ever wanted to fuck Ariel, but also Tinkerbell? Does repackaging sex as “joining magic” help or hurt one’s chances of getting a little fin? How old were you when you gave or received your first body job? This week, Morgan and Isabeau are going off the deep end for this mermaid/angel sexcapade cum theological smorgasbord that defies explanation, genre classification, and its own internal machinery. We promise you’ll never think of waterbeds the same way.
If The Shape of Water tickled your sashimi, Melissa Broder’s New York Times dubbed “romance novel for intellectuals” The Pisces will either turn you pescatarian for life or give you full blown mercury poisoning. This week, Morgan and Isabeau plunge romance’s murky depths through the depressive eyes of Lucy, a newly single academic, as she navigates the choppy surfs of Tinder, group therapy, pet care, and the dexterous tongue of a merman. Can you smell that fresh salt air? Catch of the Day: MP.