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Fated Mates
Podcast · Free

Fated Mates

Sarah MacLean & Jen Prokop

A deep-dive romance-novel podcast: tropes, trends, and the books that make the genre sing.

12 recent episodesFree to stream
RERUN: S06.10: Men in Fur: Aliens, Warlords, and Vikings
Today we're revisiting a 2023 episode. It's a fun one. While the episode is unchanged, we did spend a full hour of our morning updating the Men in Fur Mood Board. (revA)The RestFor even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https
3 Sept 202667:36
S08.49: A Rogue By Any Other Name
It’s the end of Season 8 (what! how!), and we usually celebrate the end of the season with a read along of Sarah’s new book, but since there is no new book, we have no choice but to go back to the beginning of “The Casino Series,” which is what Sarah calls The Rules of Scoundrels
26 Aug 202696:50
S08.48: Long Live Historicals, Volume II
We are once again celebrating a wide swath of historical romances that are recently published and by authors we’ve not talked much about on the podcast! Saddle up, because we’re talking the Titanic, submissive heroes, heroines against the wall, bodily autonomy and even centaurs!
19 Aug 2026113:14
S08.47: Romance Tattoo
We’re talking tattoos and body art this week! You might not have a tattoo, but odds are you’ve read a few thousand of them, as romance novels love a main character with a message…right on their skin. We talk about some of our favorite tattoo romances, about what tattoos represent
12 Aug 202685:45
S08.46: Photographers in Romance
Why is photography so hot? We’re tackling this question this week, talking about why romance novels featuring photographers work so well and push so many sexy buttons. We’re talking about characters who notice, about characters who are patient, and about characters who carry sexy
5 Aug 2026100:24
08.45: Judith McNaught's Perfect: Content Warning, the 90's
We’ve been talking about the end (almost end) of this one since we started the podcast, so it seemed high time we did a deep dive on it! Judith McNaught’s Perfect is the most 90s thing we’ve ever read, so gird your loins for both the best all-is-lost scene in romance, and also Za
29 Jul 2026111:58
S08:43: Romance with Magical Elements
The last few years have brought a wave of romances with magical elements—not really paranormal, not really witches, not really contemporary — books where something is just slightly ✨magic✨. Today, we’re talking about those books, how they work, what they’re saying, and how they w
22 Jul 202683:23
S08.42: Romance Reasons Meet Thriller Reasons with Anders de la Motte
Once upon a time, Sarah went to Sweden and met a thriller writer who likes talking about the rules of writing in genre as much as we do. We’re so excited that to be able to bring Anders de la Motte’s brilliant thoughts about thrillers and mysteries to Fated Mates in this far-reac
15 Jul 202697:22
S08.41: Country House Parties
It’s summer, so we’re talking Country House Parties! We’re skulking around, having scandalous meetings in cupboards, getting caught in the rain near the groundskeeper’s cottage, and generally causing chaos during a summer party at an enormous country house where someone is defini
8 Jul 202699:54
BONUS: Sports Romance Rerun + Jen Chats with Gina Prodan Kelly [FIXED]
F1! WNBA! NY Nicks! World Cup! We swear we're not turning into a sports podcast, but we did feel like it's a great time to rerun our most recent Sports Romance episode with the brilliant Jessica Luther. But first, Jen talks with Cleveland Soccer Group CMO and Cleveland Astra cofo
3 Jul 2026108:09
S08.40: Summer 2026 Preview
We’re filling summer reading lists and making sure that you have plenty of beach reads ready for whatever your plans are! It’s hard to believe it’s July, but we’ve got another quarterly upcoming romance episode here to ease the pain of half the year already passed! Here’s a huge
1 Jul 202698:45
S08.39: Romance Birthday (Do Men Have Them?)
Is it our birthday? It is not! But who says you need to celebrate a birthday in real life to celebrate birthdays in romance novels? Not us! Today we’re talking about books that focus on birthdays — something that you would think would be more common in romance. We talk about birt
24 Jun 202679:26