S02.29: Health Care Workers in Romance Novels

We are very pro health care workers these days — we love all of you…doctors, nurses, EMTs, home health aides…if you know how to work a stethoscope, we’re into you. This week, we’re taking about some of our favorite medical romances. Listen for Jen getting thoughtful, and Sarah getting wildly inappropriate. We’re all just doing our best.

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Next week, we’re reading Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Nobody’s Baby But Mine, and we cannot WAIT. We know it’s tough to get it in print, but find it in e at your local library or at: Amazon (free in Kindle Unlimited!), Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, or in print, mailed from your local indie (which is probably still shipping!).

Show Notes

As we all shelter in place, romance twitter has been very entertaining. Julia Kelly posted a thread where she posed her pets as romance novel covers, and everyone had fun with it. Sarah also loved this one about a dog who howls along with the Law and Order theme song.

We forgot to tell you last week when we talked about Devil's Bride that Stephanie Laurens has a new book out, The Inevitable Fall of Christopher Cynster. We also have added information about how to pronounce Honoria and details about peach silk.

Now is the time to get the BookBub daily romance email. Here's Sarah's Bookbub page.

The nurse and doctor books were the backbone of early Mills and Boon romances, and the forerunner of the modern Harlequin Medical Romance; whereas Americans often find big, soapy hospital dramas on TV.

Budleigh Salterton looks like a very nice place to hang out unless you are a bored American 12 year old.

The roots of American and British romance are different, as proven by this absolutely WRONG LitHub romance essay. (They're wrong about romance a lot.)

Sarah has talked about Radclyffe and the origin of Bold Strokes Books, but many of her romances are about doctors or set in hospitals.

Jen doesn't really care too much about job details. Sorry not sorry.

No one likes a Bloodletter. We want our historical doctors to be foreward thinking. Or as Eloisa James does in When Beauty Tamed the Beast, use a modern TV character like House as model for a hero.

In Tempest, Jen spoke out inequities in acess to medical care for black patients, and that's still true today.

If you're looking to see some "don't fuck your doctor" romances that definitely fall somewhere on the Simone Scale. Wrong by Jana Aston and Medicine Man by Saffron Kent.

Jurgen Klopp wants you to put your hands away, and this amazing thread by comedian Laura Lexx and support all the Liverpool fans out there (especially Jen's brother).

Jen's cool TikTok project is up and running, she's interviewing YA authors and hoping to get kids to read while they are sheltering in place.

You can order buttons from Kelly and t-shirts from Jordandene.

Next time, we'll be reading Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.