Last night’s Fated Mates Live was so much fun, but now we’re back in your earholes. It’s time again for our annual Sarah MacLean deep dive (with no spoilers!). As per tradition, Jen asks Sarah a bunch of fun questions and forces Sarah to talk about her book. And it all ends with Julia Whalen reading two chapters of These Summer Storms!

It was a delight to see so many of you in St. Louis yesterday, and to everyone else, we’re just as glad you’re here with us today.

Notes

• It’s finally time for These Summer Storms! And it might not be too late to see Sarah on book tour! Mary Kay Andrews is very fierce on Instagram, and we love her for it. You can also see her with Renee Adiah, author of the forthcoming Park Avenue, which she mentions at the end of the show.
• When the New York Times published their Best Books of the 21st Century so far, Sarah shared her ballot. 
• Rhode Island has a long history of being associated with big money.
• On Inside the Actors Studio, the host James Lipton always ended with the same list of questions, known as the Pivot questions after their originator Bernard Pivot. Similarly, the New York Times column By the Book (Jen called it Get Booked, sorry for any confusion!) has a rotating list of questions, but some are very common. If you are interested in reading some of these columns, check out By The Book: Writers on Literature and the Literary Life, published in 2015. The books on Sarah’s nightstand were: The Second Coming by Carter Sherman, It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan, Can’t Get Enough by Kennedy Ryan, and Full Bloom by Francesca Serritella. 

Sponsors

• Kylie Scott, author of Wildflowers: An End of the World romance, available in print and ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Bookshop.org.
• 1001 Dark Nights, publisher of Midnight Myths and Magic, available in print and ebook from Amazon.
• Mina Brower, author of A God of Moonlight and Stardust, available in print, ebook, and with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
• Avon Books, publisher of Scotch on the Rocks, available in print, ebook, and audio from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, and Bookshop.org.

The Rest

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net
• If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
• Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
• If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.