An Introduction

I started off this newsletter with an entry about Reacher, but for the past six months, I've been kicking around the idea of starting a newsletter where I talk about the art of reading romance—which is, by definition, about the art of writing it, as well. But I’ve been slow to get it off the ground. Partly, I think, this was driven by my own laziness, but also that, in general, it’s always a bit dicey to work outside of the “toxic positivity” norms of the romance genre. The purpose of this site (Blog? Newsletter? Scream into the void?) isn’t to review or recommend. I envision this more like a public journal of my own thinking about romance craft. I’m not an academic or a researcher; I just love thinking about books. My goal is simply to write about how the author’s choices worked on me as a reader.

I know I’ve told this story on the podcast, but many years ago, Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips was at school talking to my students about his job. He introduced them to a set of guiding questions to think about when critiquing a film: 

1. What is the work trying to achieve? 

2. Did it achieve it? 

3. Was it worth achieving? 

These are simple questions but I am a simple woman, and using them as a starting point for thinking about a text has never steered me wrong. I’m particularly interested in the tension that exists in the space between questions: a text that fails to achieve what it was trying to do; a work that brilliantly achieves something small or mean; an attempt to say something profound fails due to messy, incoherent execution. 

One last thought before diving in. Fated Mates is the place where I gush about the romances I love. I envision this as a different space. This is a place for me to talk about books that make interesting choices, which means talking about specific books by specific authors, using specific examples from published texts. I want to talk both about what’s effective and what works but also about what’s ineffective and what doesn’t work. If you think that meaningful critique of the genre and its writing is out of bounds or unseemly…well, that’s an opinion. There are plenty of places to go for cheerleading and listicles, including my own podcast. But critique, too, is a labor of love. 

Remember I said I’ve been kicking around this idea for six months? It was the summer of 2024 and I was looking for something to read. Someone on social media recommended the book Hans by SJ Tilly, the 4th and final book in her Alliance series. I had passively DNFd the first book Nero at some point, but I decided to give Hans a shot. (I’m a chaos reader and have no problem reading the final book in a series first.) I loved it so much that I put it on the Fated Mates Best of 2024 list and then circled back and restarted Nero (which I finished and enjoyed the second time around) before continuing with the rest of the series in order. It was Dom, the third book but the one I read last, that made me think…I should write about the way this book tries to keep a secret. 

IRL, I’m a middle school English teacher and I remembered my idea for this thing a few weeks ago when I started teaching my favorite book, Nancy Farmer’s House of the Scorpion. The book follows the adventures of Matt, a young boy who learns he’s a clone of El Patron, the world’s most powerful drug lord. The book is written in close third, which is essential for storytelling reasons.

When I first explain close third to my kids, it’s to help them understand why there are limits on our knowledge of the world. I tell them: We can only know what Matt knows. If Matt doesn’t know or if Matt isn’t curious about something, there is no way for us to find out. And although this is true, it takes a while for us to discover another reason to write in close third: to keep a secret. Matt has been cloned for spare parts; once he’s old enough, doctors will harvest his heart to prolong El Patron’s life. And because Matt doesn’t know this, the reader can’t know it either. It’s perfectly executed, hugely effective storytelling. 

We do a close read of an event where Matt misread all the signs and signals, and because of the narration, we misread the signs and signals, too. Quickly, my students figure out a vital truth: all the other characters knew what clones were for and kept the secret from Matt. Experienced readers are familiar with how authors can use close third to keep a secret, but it’s a new experience for young readers. I ask the kids to imagine a different version of the book, one with omniscient narration, one where readers were privy to the thoughts and feelings of the secret-keepers. Usually, they conclude that the most likely outcome would have been that readers might have turned on Matt—why wasn’t he smart enough to figure this out!—and judged his friends—if they cared about him, why didn’t they tell him! A different narrative choice would have changed the very nature of the book and our relationship to the characters.

You might wonder why this is relevant. Maybe it’s not, maybe I just love House of the Scorpion and think anyone would have a nice time reading it; but mostly, I like secrets. And I’m interested in how books keep secrets because I’m interested in how people keep secrets. 

The territory of how people lie to themselves is well-traveled ground in the romance genre. The great Sherry Thomas once said that romance conflict is what happens when “characters meet someone who sees through the lies they tell themselves.” As time goes on, I’m sure I’ll keep working through all my dumb little theories. But when it comes to romance, here’s a big one: romance readers will accept characters lying to themselves and we’ll accept characters lying to each other, but we won’t accept characters purposefully lying to us. We believe we should eventually—and sooner rather than later, if we’re being honest—have full access to all the messy truths characters are hiding in their hearts. 

My first real post will come soon, within the next few days, and will explore secret-keeping by looking at Dom.