07.49: Season Seven Ends Not With a Bang, but With a Kombucha Girl

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Books, Society & Culture, Arts, Documentary

4.9 • 967 Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’re wrapping up season seven by asking ourselves a simple question. Do we like this stuff? Yes? No? Maybe so?

We’ll be back in two weeks for the start of Season Eight of the podcast. Honestly, we remain amazed that y’all are with us on this journey. In a world full of madness, you bring us calm, joy and purpose, and we couldn’t be more grateful for you. Thank you so much for listening.

While you’re waiting for Season Eight, you’re welcome to join 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

The Komboucha Girl was sick of seeing her face back in 2019, and yet here we are.
Hozier in concert was great, even if his parents were not stars on the NBC soap, Days of Our Lives. That was John and Marlena. The visuals on Eat Your Young and Nina Cried Power were especially moving and inspiring. Someone made a playlist of the Nina Cried power songs, and now is a great time to listen to protest music.
The impact 50 Shades had on the sales of ties (and other things) was real.
An article from MEL about the wet problem, not just in romance, I guess. (that’s a NSFW link based on the headline and content, okay.) Butts tie these two clips together: Miranda on SATC on “are we doing this now?” and Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle thinking “some lady is going to want to do it her.” But overall, spit is important.
Fucking her ass, saving her life is a quote from a Shayla Black book and this amazing review from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Truly a Romancelandia classic.
EM Forester described flat and round characters in Aspects of the Novel (1927).
“The second shift” is a phrase used by author Arlie Russell Hochschild to describe the housework and childrearing responsibilities faced by women after coming home from their day jobs.
Commuting is really bad for your wallet and bad for your health.
Go to a farmer’s market if you must.

Books

Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James
What I Did for Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean
Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover by Sarah MacLean
The Devil of Downtown by Joanna Shupe
Hans by SJ Tilly
The Club by Lauren Rowe
Merrily Ever After by Jenny Holiday
Lothaire by Kresley Cole
Ride Steady by Kristen Ashley
Stuck Up Suit by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward
The Opposite of You by Rachel Higginson

The Rest

For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/8/21/0749-season-seven-ends-with-the-kombucha-gif
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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Sarah, it's end of season seven. Yeah, you believe people have tolerated us for the, I mean,
0:05.8	not all people. Some people are going to be like, what is this episode? And you know what,
0:10.9	this episode is us? It's vibes. It's Fadame's vibes. You know what I think? I think it's really
0:15.4	important to have like community meetings where we just celebrate the things that make romance great.
0:22.9	This I think will be a really fun episode like once we get into it. Yes. In the meantime, part of
0:28.8	the reason we are actually recording this at the end of July because I'm traveling and Sarah's
0:36.5	traveling and so we had to, like, do a bunch
0:39.0	episodes in advance again. So we don't know what the world is like. Probably not great, but this
0:44.3	will be fun for everyone. Welcome to Fated Mitz, everyone. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels,
0:52.0	and I write them. And I'm Jennifer Procop, a romance reader and editor. And today, we're doing something a little different. Like we said, Fated Mates vibes. We're just going to have a fun time. Hopefully leave you all with a little bit of laughter. Headphones. I'm going to say headphones in. I think so. I feel certain that this is going to turn.
1:12.2	But I know that it's probably not for young ears.
1:16.5	Or the ears of your mechanics.
1:19.0	Or the car wash people, whatever it is.
1:21.7	By far my favorite message on social media is when one of our listeners is like, I delivered my car to
1:29.7	Toyota for an oil change. And as they turned on the car to bring it into the garage, I heard
1:38.6	Sarah talking about an abundance of semen.
1:46.0	You're welcome, mechanics of America.
1:49.0	Sure.
1:50.0	Making things fun for everyone.
1:52.0	I feel like everybody's got to have those work stories where they come home and they're like, listen to what happened to me today.
1:58.0	Especially people like car mechanics because some of you all out there are
2:02.6	really doing weird stuff in your car. And so like I am not the weirdest thing that's happening
	...

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