07.46: Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.9 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're back with a deep dive episode on one of our favorite Susan Elizabeth Phillips books, Natural Born Charmer. Jen thinks this one marks SEP's Imperial Period, and Sarah looks askance at the term romcom to describe romance novels. We're back on our bullsh*t, is what we're saying. We're talking plot, character, risk-taking, and how romances can feel wildly expansive.

This is our last deep dive of Season 7 -- more in Season 8, which begins in September. If you want to talk in depth about specific books, though, maybe you'd enjoy being a member of our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Notes

You can get Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Natural Born Charmer at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
In season 2, we did a deep dive of an earlier Chicago Stars book, Nobody’s Baby But Mine. We also did an episode with Susan in season 3. It’s the interview that made us realize we should keep interviewing romance trailblazers. Jen was on Learning the Tropes to talk about another SEP book, Kiss an Angel.
In 2003, the song Hey Ya by Outkast was number 1 for 9 weeks at the end of that year and into early 2004. In 2018, Rolling Stone ranked the song #4 in the top 100 songs of the 21st Century So Far.
This article from Spin describes what it means when an artist is in their imperial period.
Sleazy Burt Reynolds guy.
Almost Famous (2000) is amazing movie about the rise and fall of a 70s rock band.
A great thing happened during the baby races halftime show last week at a Las Vegas Aces game last week. Also at the Indiana Fever game.

The Rest

For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/8/4/0746-natural-born-charmer-by-susan-elizabeth-phillips
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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jen, I think I'm giving myself brain damage.
0:04.2	What an opening, Sarah.
0:05.8	Tell me more.
0:07.0	Okay, so there are so many mosquitoes in my back.
0:09.6	Oh, that seems terrible.
0:11.2	And I, like, refuse to, like, I like to sit at my back.
0:15.3	I have, like, a picnic table back there, and I like to sit there, and I've been reading a book.
0:19.7	Seems nice.
0:20.5	For today. And I have been working reading a book. Seems nice. For today and I have been
0:22.5	working on a book and I like, you know, in New York City, you get like 10 days a year where the
0:29.2	weather is like sunny and perfect and you can sit at your picnic table and work on your book.
0:34.3	Sure. And so I've been like really working. I've been doing this. Except there are so many mosquitoes back there.
0:39.4	And I think it's because my neighbors.
0:42.2	They have like standing water back there.
0:44.0	What are they doing?
0:44.4	They have like a kitty pool back there.
0:47.7	Breeding ground.
0:48.3	You're just like you're just breeding West Nile virus back here.
0:52.7	Like I don't know what's going on here. But and so there are so many mosquitoes. So I have these like green coil things. You know the things I mean? Yeah, sure. Some of the mosquito abatement situation. In Ohio, they had them when you were small. Sure. Like light them on fire and they smoke and they actually according to wirecutter are
1:11.3	like the thing that works so i have one of them and it's been sitting like three feet from my
1:17.0	head for a couple days and now i have like a headache and i'm pretty sure i'm like fumigating my brain
1:22.1	which you know maybe that's a good thing who can say say? Who can say? You know, wire cutter, I, we had to get a new, or washer died last week. And, you know, the tariffs are coming. So I was kind of like, all right. Well, get it now. Get it now. And just do like washer and dryer, right? And so I, it, I was home. My husband, it was a very stressful long, you know, my husband had a lot going on at work last week, Mr. Reed's romance. And so I was kind of like, all right, I'm just going to, you know, I told you, we texted and I was kind of like, I think we should just get new ones. Because, you know, by the time you get someone out to look at it, you're paying, you know what I mean? Like, you're paying a couple hundred bucks for that. And then they're like, okay, it's, you know, you're just like, whatever. I'm already, let's just go for the new ones. And then he's like, well, do you just order the same ones? And I was like, no, I just ordered whatever wirecutter or something.
	...

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