S08.05: Governesses with Louisa Darling

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture, Books

4.9 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 15 October 2025

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How is it possible we've never done a governess episode? And how is it possible Louisa Darling hasn't been a guest on the pod yet? We're rectifying both of these injustices this week. We talk about Jane Eyre, The Sound of Music and other primordial governesses, and discuss exactly what kind of buttons these books installed--almost entirely thanks to old school historicals. We also talk about how governess books are some of the only books in which we will suffer a child, and yes, we shout out the nannies, too!

Louisa Darling is the pen name of Louisa Edwards and Lily Everett, and the author of Don’t Let Your Dukes Grow Up to be Scoundrels, Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone, and Scoundrel, Take Me Away.

Our next read along is Gorilla Twins, AKA Lorraine Heath's The Earl Takes All. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.

If you'd like more romance chat in your life, please consider joining our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! There, magnificent firebirds hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

(Apologies for the subpar audio quality.)

Notes

Learn more about The States Project and donate to the Fated States Giving Circle to keep Virginia blue this November.
Welcome historical author Louisa Darling. She’s written contemporary romance as Louisa Edwards and women’s fiction as Lily Everett. She imprinted on Jayne Eyre and worked as an editorial assistant for Leslie Gelbman at Berkley, who edited Nora Roberts and Jayne Ann Krentz.
Maybe all those early governess books were really about The Sound of Music.
We talked about the Molly O’Keefe series that included Wait For It in season 7, and about Vanessa Riley and wet nurses when we had Kennedy Ryan on in season 2.
Finally, our next deep dive will be Gorilla Twins. The actual title, of course, is The Earl Takes All by Lorraine Heath.

The Books

Don’t Let Your Dukes Grow Up to be Scoundrels by Louisa Darling
Where Have All the Scoundrels Gone by Louisa Darling
Scoundrel, Take Me Away by Louisa Darling
Rules for a Proper Governess by Jennifer Ashley
A Duke, the Lady, and a Baby by Vanessa Riley
The Duke Who Ravished Me by Diana Quincy
Deception by Amanda Quick
Snowed In with the Viking by Lucy Morris
Sins of a Wicked Duke by Sophie Jordan
The Game and the Governess By Kate Noble
The Lie and the Lady by Kate Noble
The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale
Married by Morning by Lisa Kleypas
It Takes Two to Tumble by Cat Sebastian
The Nanny is Off Limits by QB Tyler
Rafe by Rebekah Weatherspoon

The Rest

For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/10/14/s0805-governesses-with-louisa-darling
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	Hi, everyone. Well, before we start this week's amazing episode with Louisa Darling,
0:07.2	we just wanted to take a couple of minutes and talk about the state of Virginia.
0:13.1	Who would want to talk about the state of Virginia?
0:14.9	Exactly. As you all know, it is 2025 and it's getting weird out here to, you know, to use a euphemism.
0:25.0	Sarah's going with a dramatic understatement.
0:26.9	Fine. I appreciate it.
0:28.2	It's getting weird out here.
0:29.6	And we still have another year before we can really tackle the midterm elections.
0:34.6	But Virginia is very special.
0:37.1	And the reason why Virginia is special
0:38.7	is because they have an off-year election cycle where right now all the state legislative seats
0:46.8	in the state of Virginia are up for grabs. And the gubernatorial election is happening as well in
0:53.0	Virginia. Now listen, Virginia is a blue state, but we need to keep it blue. And the gubernatorial election is happening as well in Virginia. Now listen, Virginia is a blue state,
0:56.3	but we need to keep it blue. And the way that we are thinking about doing that is working with the
1:02.3	state's project, which many of you know we've been working with for a couple of election cycles.
1:06.8	The way the state's project works is they raise money for down-ticket state-level races.
1:12.6	They support Democratic candidates across the board in states where we believe we can either flip a chamber of state legislative, a state legislative chamber, flip a gubernatorial seat, or hold those chambers for Democratic
1:31.9	candidates. Listen, the truth is that this is the first big statewide referendum available to us,
1:41.1	for us to speak up, speak out, and honestly crush the opposition in terms
1:50.1	of making a strong referendum against the administration, the current administration,
1:55.5	the devastating rules and just abuse of power that's taken over across the country.
2:04.6	Virginia is our first line of defense, and we're working with the state's project to raise
	...

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