Reformed Rakes is a historical romance novel podcast steeped in dissipation. Hosted by Beth, Emma, and Sawyer, this podcast is perfect for every pirate, second son, bluestocking, and viking who wants to hear more about the kissing books we love. We update every other Tuesday.
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Set in 1865 during the Second French Empire, Moonrise by Roberta Gayle tells the story of Pascale de Ravenault, the daughter of an acclaimed artist. Pascale is an artist in her own right, though she has abandoned painting in favor of aiding her father in the business side of art. At a salon, she meets British sea captain Jack Devlin. Pascale and Jack butt heads as she fights her attraction to him, forming in spite of his cageyness about his actions that led to the danger and he worries about the gap in their stations and lifestyles. Though Moonrise starts with the promise of political intrigue
Warrior’s Woman by Johanna Lindsey is a futuristic romance set in the year 2139 and follows Tedra de Arr, a highly skilled Security Agent who is too bodacious to lose her virginity to the puny men on her home planet of Kystran. When a failed presidential candidate launches a coup, Tedra, along with her annoying sex pest personal computer, Martha and sensual sentient robot, Corth, flee to outer space. To Tedra’s surprise, she ends up on Sha-Ka’ar, a planet chock full of big beefy blond warriors. Published in 1990, reviews, at the time, were mixed, calling it a successful romance, but a woefully
Published in 1991, the The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez starts in 1850 where we open on an unnamed enslaved girl as she kills a bounty hunter trying to capture her. We meet the first Gilda, who takes the girl in and raises her along with her partner Bird. Both Gilda and Bird are vampires with certain rules they’ve constructed to live by, including to not kill humans and aim for some sort of exchange when drawing blood from them. Gilda wearies of the world’s cyclical violence and chooses to take the true death, but not before turning the girl into a vampire. The girl, now grown up, takes on t
What makes something a romance novel? Most readers probably have an intuition of where their definitional lines are, and what are the make or break points, pushing something out of “romance” and into a neighboring genre. Critics and professional organizations of authors and publishers might provide a definition, for analysis or award purposes, to create parameters around what is the in and out group. Today’s episode is less about answering the question “what is a romance novel” and more a historiography of that question. When do we start asking it? How have the answers changed in the long arc
Today we’re discussing Barbara Pym’s second novel, Excellent Women, published in 1952. Pym wrote mid-century comedies of manners and experienced some success in the first decade of her career and then struggled to publish new novels. Excellent Women certainly has a Miss Bates style heroine, but uniquely has a romance-style happy ending, if you agree that the match Mildred Lathbury makes has the potential for happiness. Barbara Pym was not a romance novelist and most of her works focus on a generation of gentlewomen just young enough to feel the loss of a vast number of potential marriage partn
One Burning Heart is the latest book in Elizabeth Kingston’s 13th century medieval series, Welsh Blades, and it is a Reformed Rakes favorite. The book opens on a perfunctory sex scene that could be the stuff of nightmares. Margaret has been married to William for six years, and he's decided to tamper down his ill-concealed loathing for his wife in order to beget an heir. While William married Margaret for strategy, what he doesn’t know is that Margaret also married him for strategy. One Burning Heart is an achingly romantic tale that tackles ancestry, loyalty, and doubt, and Margaret is one of
Just Like Heaven was published in 2011 as the first in the Smyth-Smith quartet and follows a family set in the Bridgerton world. Quinn’s most successful series is the Bridgerton series, even before the adaptation, features a large, tight-knit family that run around Regency London acting anachronistically and telling jokes that we’re told are hilarious and finding true love. A lot of romance time and effort has been spent on the Bridgerton series, book and television show, along with Quinn’s place as an outsized representation of romance to the non-romance world and this is mostly outside what
We spoke about Mills & Boon last week and now we're onto Harlequin. While we go through the history of Harlequin, we continue with the lens of how gatekeepers influence the romance genre. While writing this script, I was influenced by John Markert’s book Publishing Romance where he argues that gatekeepers often use their own tastes as a barometer for what readers want. Markert argues another driver for gatekeepers is what they perceive market conditions to be. This often results in gatekeepers acting conservatively as they try and find a product that is similar to yet slightly different from w
When we look at the history of romance novels, often people pin the start of modern romance history to the 1972 publication of The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss. By doing this, people erase a key evolution and influence in romance, which is the category romance. If you’re from the UK then you already know that the category publisher there is Mills & Boon, and they’ve been a publisher for a little over a century. First starting out as a general publisher in 1908, over the decades Mills & Boon gradually specialized in romance novels. Harlequin, first seeking to re-print their medica
Pamela Morsi’s books were different than the typical historical romance of the time. Writing stories set in rural America, with poor or working class characters, Morsi was hailed as the “the Garrison Keillor of romance fiction,” by Publishers Weekly. When demand for the Americana subgenre waned after 2000, Morsi switched over to contemporary romance and women’s fiction with 2002’s Doing Good. She continued to write through 2014, publishing 29 books in her long career. She died this past December. Garters, published in 1993, is one of Morsi’s most beloved books. Following Esme Crab, a poor hill
Chasing Cassandra by Lisa Kleypas is the sixth book in the Ravenel series. The Ravenels are the most recent series in Kleypas’ extended universe—going back to the Gamblers of Craven. The Ravenels are a family made up of two sets of cousins: Devon, Earl of Trenear and West Ravenel, then Helen Ravenel and her twin sisters Pandora and Cassandra. Cassandra’s main goal is to have a family and she feels particularly lonely on the day of her twin’s wedding. Tom Severin, an industrialist and sometimes friend to Devon and West and Ravenel, offers to marry her after he overhears her express her anxietie
Emma uses her lawyer powers to teach Chels and Beth about the history of obscenity law in the United States. The impetus for this episode came about because sometimes well-meaning people misapply these laws or standards to current book banning resistance. Emma shows us how "but what about the children" has been there from the very beginning. How people in the past have talked about sex in books is Very Familiar unfortunately. (Even in current bookish spaces!) And, most importantly, how often suppressing sex in books is really hiding political motivations.
In Bed with the Devil by Lorraine Heath is the first in the Scoundrels of St. James series. The series is Oliver Twist fanfiction, as it follows Fagin’s crew of child thieves as grown ups. The first book features Lucian Langdon, referred to as the devil earl as it’s common knowledge he murdered his supposed uncle. I say supposed, because Luke was adopted by the Earl of Clayborne. This earl is the father of the man who Luke killed. Because of Luke’s silver eyes, the earl believes him to be his long lost grandson who disappeared as a child. Luke struggles to believe he’s really his grandson, but
Murmur of Rain is a Gothic-tinged historical romance set in France and Haiti in the 1890s by Patricia Vaughn. Lauren Dufort is the daughter of a descendent of enslaved people in French Guiana and a white Frenchman. Her parents were deeply in love, but their marriage estranged them from society, so when Lauren is orphaned as a teen, she is raised by her paternal aunt, Claude, who runs a gentleman’s club, knowing that her mixed-race identity may keep her from ever making a love match in 19th century France. But when handsome Haitian Roget de Martier arrives at Claude’s club, Lauren is immediatel
The Rakes discuss The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randall. In response to the question what inspires or interests Dai Randall about a time period, she said: “To me, the period of time is not as important as the historical figure or the event itself.” This focus is evident in her the book that imagines the early years of Empress Wu. Known as Mei, she enters the palace as a teenager in 639 and becomes a concubine to Emperor Taizong. She falls in love with one of his son’s Li Zhi. As their lives are dictated by the emperor, they hide their relationship. Join our discussion about how we should
Previously released as a bonus episode on Patreon, Emma and Beth discuss the books they loved and hated from 2024: Raves The Hidden Moon by Jeannie Lin One Burning Heart by Elizabeth Kingston The Secret Pearl by Mary Balogh (related article by Emma “why now? why this duke?”) A Splendid Defiance by Stella Riley Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie Medievals series by Madeline Hunter Rants Reading the Romance by Janice Radway (Longer rant by Beth “Is this 1984 romance scholarship the root of all the arguments I hate?”) Don’t Forget to Smile by Kathleen Gilles Seidel The Earl Takes All by Lorraine Heath
Notorious Pleasures is the second book in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series. Elizabeth Hoyt came onto the historical romance scene with her 2006 debut The Raven Prince. She writes strong characters who have opposing ideological centers to generate conflict. Lady Hero, the daughter of a duke, is set to marry Lord Mandeville, Thomas, in an advantageous society marriage. They will consolidate lands and interests and Hero can strengthen his parliamentary position . Her desire to marry Thomas comes about mostly so she can appease her brother, the one who arranged the match. Yet, it’s Thomas’ brot
The Phoenix Bride is set in 1666 and Cecilia Thorowgood and David Mendes have both recently lost their great loves to the plague. David has thrown himself into his work as a doctor, taking on more clients outside his small Jewish community and Cecilia has fallen into a depression, staying at her sister’s London house and refusing to see company. Her sister employs David as a last resort, considering his medicine practice close to paganism. David seeks to heal Cecilia’s emotions as much as her health and they fall into a tenuous friendship that they both know has an expiration date. As Cecilia
Honeytrap is a Soviet/American spy romance set in 1959 between Daniel Hawthorne and Gennady Matskevich. Daniel and Gennady are charged with finding who is behind the attempted assassination of Nikita Khrushchev during his 12-day trip to America. As the bullet only hits the side of a train, the attempt is not well-known. What then ensues is basically an American roadtrip as Daniel and Gennady piece together clues. Unknown to Daniel, Gennady’s boss instructs him to try and “honeytrap” him—essentially seducing Daniel for information or blackmail purposes.
Jessica Andover needs money to pay off the mortgage on her estate. Instead of capitulating to her blackmailing neighbor who holds the mortgage and marrying him, Jessica decides to go to London and act on the stage, under an assumed name. In Regency England, this is her way of soliciting a protector. Philp Romney, Earl of Linton is the clear choice for Jessica, though many men vie for her, as she is a sudden sensation on stage. Philip quickly suspects there is more to Jessica’s story, even as she closely guards her past. Unsurprisingly, they fall in love along the way, complicating things. In a
Today, we’re discussing the career of Mary Balogh. Balogh is a Welsh author who now lives in Canada and we’re recording this near the fortieth anniversary of the publication of her first Regency romance, A Masked Deception. A Masked Deception was a Signet Regency Romance published by New American Library in February 1985. Balogh’s most recent publication was Remember When, also a Regency Romance, published by Berkley and published just this January. Emma talks to Beth and Chels about the history of mass-market publishing in the United States, including category romances, and themes of Balogh’s
The Warm Hands of Ghosts opens on Laura receiving her brother’s clothes in the mail in January 1918. Her brother Freddie fights for the Canadian army in Belgium. Something doesn’t add up about his supposed death so Laura, a discharged combat nurse, decides to go to Belgium herself to find Freddie. From there, the book alternates point of view chapters between the Iven siblings and timelines. Laura is the present timeline and Freddie’s timeline follows a few months behind. Freddie wakes in an overturned German pillbox with a wounded German soldier. In this hellish landscape both siblings find l
We would characterize Milan’s works as the best possible combination of historical research and alternative realities that serve her characters’ stories. She doesn’t fudge history out of laziness or received wisdom, but in order to tell a better romance and backs up her creative license with research into aspects of history that might go underdeveloped in a weaker author’s books. She says of her settings: “I try to write books that I say are historically possible, but not historically average.” The Countess Conspiracy is the third book in the Brothers Sinister series, which is linked together
In An Extraordinary Union, published in 2017, is the first in Cole’s The Loyal League series, both main characters are attempting to shape the politics of their time through espionage. Elle Burns is a freedwoman who has been living in New England with her parents after their enslaver died and his son freed them. She has an eidetic memory that has been treated somewhat as a party trick for most of her life, including by well-meaning, but thoughtless white abolitionists in the North. Elle joins the Loyal League, a network of spies aiming to aid the Union in the Civil War, to try and use her gift
Last episode, we covered Fabio’s not-so-humble upbringing, his journey to America, his early romance career, and his rise to fame. In this episode, we’ll start at the height of Fabio Mania in 1994 and end in present day, thirty years later. We’ll be taking you through viking battles, chivalry lessons, an A-list celebrity beef, and, unfortunately, a right wing rabbit hole. As a spokesman, Fabio billed himself as “a gentleman,” but what did he become instead? This episode is dedicated to THE GOOSE. 1999-1999. Some of the Fabio media from this episode will be on our Instagram! Check it out.
