S03.33: Age Gap Romance Interstitial

Published: April 7, 2021, 4 a.m.

Silver foxes, May/December, older heroines/younger heroes, look, Sarah\u2019s buttons were installed young, ok? We\u2019re talking age gap romances, how they played out in the early days of the genre, how they remain popular today, and what has happen (or not!) in the books to make them viable romance in 2021. We try to keep this one taboo but not dark, sexy but not erotic\u2026but by the end, we\u2019re not making any real promises.

Check all your Content Warnings before you begin with these books!

Whether you're new to Fated Mates this month or have been with us for all three seasons, we adore you, and we're so grateful to have you. We hope you\u2019re reading the best books this week.

Next week, we\u2019re reading Kresley Cole\u2019s debut, The Captain of All Pleasures. Neither of us have read it, so we\u2019re all jumping into the deep end without a mask on this one! Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Apple Books. Or find it from your local indie via bookshop.org.

Show Notes

You can buy Iris Johansen\u2019s mansion in Cartersville, GA for a cool 8 million. 

Maybe Chaotic Evil isn\u2019t the best writing plan.

Here\u2019s some pop psychology about the May December romance. By the way, the phrase May-December romance apparently dates back to Chaucer. In The Merchant\u2019s Tale, a young woman named May marries a much older man and a confusing idiom was born. 

As it turns out the \u201chalf your age plus 7\u201d rule is not something Jen made up, because once you google it, you get charts and graphs and articles and everything

Sarah\u2019s reference to \u201cEvery terrifying post on that reddit board\u201d is r/relationships, although r/amitheasshole is always available with some new tale of terrifying bad behavior. 

This problems presented from lack of sex ed are pervasive though historical romance, but how much better are we doing by our kids? 

Jen was talking about Marvin Gaye when she mentioned "Everybody wants their own piece of clay" shit.

Diana Palmer has a long, storied romance career, and none of it involves that kind of DP. The first book in the Long Tall Texans series, Calhoun, was published in 1988, and the latest one is #57 in the series, Texas Proud, and was published in October of 2020. 

All joking about the Pioneer Woman aside, she does have some great recipes. 

It turns out that the \u201cboiling frog\u201d analogy is just a myth, so keep on reading! 

The movie Carol is based on Patricia Highsmith\u2019s The Price of Salt. 

The Jessa Kane book with the dirty version of the talk is called His Prize Pupil, in case you want to read it yourself. For science

Our next read-along episode will be The Captain of All Pleasures by Kresley Cole. If you want more Kresley, all of Season One is for you. 

Music

Pee Wee Crayton - Long Tall Texan, Standard Fare - Older Woman, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg - Nuthin' But A "G" Thang, Cibo Matto - Know Your Chicken, Dr. Octagon - Waiting List