S07.45: Reading Down Under: Australian Romance Novelists
Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People
Fated Mates
4.9 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2025
⏱️ 99 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
By request (and because Sarah needed books for her upcoming trip), we're talking about romance novels by Australian authors this week, with a nod to some New Zealanders as well. We discuss how historical romance has much maligned Australia, recommend some absolutely terrific books, many of which we've actually done deep dives on, and we talk about why so many Australian romances hit the spot with American readers.
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Our next read along (next week!) is Susan Elizabeth Phillips's Natural Born Charmer. You can get it at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
Notes
- French Kiss is not available on streamers and it's very upsetting for those of us who know the deep magic of Kevin Kline & Meg Ryan.
- Australia is not the nation of criminals historical romance novels would like you to believe, but a lot of criminals did get sent there over an 80 year period from 1788-1868.
- Sarah is going to talk to the Romance Writers of Australia and the Romance Writers of New Zealand next month. Yes, she'll be going to Port Arthur in Tasmania to check out the place where all those criminals were sent.
- Victor Gadino illustrated the stepback for Dream Fever by Katherine Sutcliffe
- Mills & Boon is a British romance imprint, in North America these books are published under the name Harlequin.
- When Sarah talked about The Australians in the early years of Mills & Boon, she was wrong, and likely thinking of Diana Palmer's 1985 The Australian. The Australians series was a 12 book series in the early 2010s from Harlequin Presents.
- The book Raising the Stakes by Jess Dee is no longer available in Kindle, but maybe it is in other countries or maybe you downloaded it in the past? Check out her available titles here.
Books
- Dream Fever by Katherine Sutcliffe
- The Sydney Smoke Series by Amy Andrews
- Claiming the Courtesan by Anna Campbell
- Devil’s Bride and the Cynster family by Stephanie Laurens (listen to the deep dive)
- Wildflowers, Lies, and It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time by Kylie Scott (listen to the deep dive of Kylie's Stage Dive series)
- Captivated and Act Your Age by Eve Dangerfield
- Office Affair by Jess Dee
- The Milvus Files by NR Walker
- The Last Binding Series by Freya Marske
- A Baby in his In-Tray by Michelle Douglas
- The Autumn Bride by Anne Gracie
- The Return of Her Billionaire Husband by Melanie Milburne
- Fugitive Bride by Miranda Lee
- Home by Jezz De Silva
- Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh (listen to the deep dive)
- The Devil’s Submission by Nicola Davidson
Sponsors
- World Gone Wrong: A fictional chat show about friendship at the end of the world, available at audaciousmachinecreative.com and wherever you listen to podcasts.
- Sophie Morgan, author of Season of the Witch, available at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
- Louisa Darling, author of Scoundrel Take Me Away, available at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, or Apple Books.
The Rest
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jen, I have a bone to pick with the universe. |
| 0:03.4 | That's how you're to say with me. And I was like, usually you text me and say, Jennifer. |
| 0:07.0 | I do sometimes text you with all caps, Jennifer. And you always reply, what did I do? |
| 0:14.0 | What I do? And often it's nothing about me. |
| 0:17.2 | No, sometimes it's just like, holy shit, I got to tell Jen. |
| 0:20.9 | No, this is like a really general sort of like a thing that's bothering me about the world right now. |
| 0:27.2 | Might be better to list the things that are not bothering me about the world. |
| 0:31.3 | But here we are. |
| 0:32.6 | And this is, everybody, don't worry about it. |
| 0:34.4 | You don't have to fall word if you're like hate it when we're big mad. |
| 0:37.8 | I'm very upset, though, that you can't find the movie French Kiss in streaming. That's been the case for a long time, isn't it? I know. I know. I'm really mad about it. I mean, like, I'm mad about it again. How about that? There you go. Because there are some great moments in that movie. |
| 0:37.9 | For those of you who don't know, French Kiss is a movie where Kevin Klein and Meg Ryan fall in love. Yes. And it's a freaking delight. I wonder why. I wonder if it was like a weird production company or okay. You know people in Hollywood. Would you please find out why this is not, listen, I don't want it remade. |
| 1:17.7 | Don't like put that in the universe, everybody. |
| 1:21.3 | I just want, you know, there are just many quotes that I quote from that movie. |
| 1:26.6 | And fewer and fewer people understand the reference. |
| 1:30.6 | I sound crazier and crazier is what I'm saying. You're like, everybody needs to see this |
| 1:35.4 | movies who can catch up with my references. Because it's delightful. I remember really |
| 1:39.8 | loving it, but I haven't seen it in however long. Yeah. It's Meg Ryan before she got weird. |
| 1:46.3 | And like, it's great. |
| 1:45.5 | Meg Ryan, I love you. I love you. The world is terrible to women. Sure. And I love you. There you go. And I wish that it was on streaming. But actually now I'm sort of like, as I'm thinking about this, I'm like, maybe I can just get it on Blu-ray and we could dust off the old. |
| 2:20.4 | Now it's the time for physical, physical media, everybody. Exactly. So here's the thing. I have a PlayStation because I think we've talked about this on the podcast before, but I am a secret video game player. Yes. And so I have one video, I have multiple video games systems, but the PlayStation is actually plugged in and you can watch videos, watch Blu-ray. The reason I know this is because I think at one point, |
| 2:27.5 | Mystery's Romance told me to watch a Blu-ray. And I was like, how? You were like, what do I do? I can't, |
... |
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