S03.36: Whiteout by Adriana Anders: You and Me Against the World

This week, we’re tackling Romantic Suspense and reading one of our favorite books of 2020, Adriana Anders’s Whiteout! We talk about all the things romantic suspense has to nail (ha!) to knock it out of the park, why we would literally never be characters in a book set in Antarctica, and the wild feeling of reading a romantic suspense about a virus during a pandemic. Also Sarah talks about how much she loves Adriana Anders’s writing and recommends lots of backlist.

Next week, we’re back with an interstitial, and in two weeks, we’re reading Sarah’s favorite Sherry Thomas book —Ravishing the Heiress. Find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, or Kobo.

Thank you, as always, for listening! Please follow us on your favorite podcasting app, and if you are up for leaving a rating or review there, we would be very grateful!

Show Notes

It’s tenterhooks, not tenderhooks. 

Apparently Jen needs more sleep, or else it’s gonna be a real drag on future seasons of Fated Mates. 

Jen tweeted about Whiteout a lot, put it on our Best of 2020 list, and even made a meme about it last week. 

Reading a book about a virus during a pandemic is kind of wild! 

Jen and Sarah are not campers, but we support you. We do like reading books about people doing extremely cold outside things: Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and a new book on Jen’s TBR is The Next Everest by Jim Davidson.

Let Sandra Brown explain romantic suspense to you, and maybe you’d like to read Jack Reacher if you’re into that sort of thing.

We learned some things about Antarctica and staying warm while reading this book: 

How cold did you say it was again?

Why are frostbite and hypothermia so dangerous?

How fast can you get hypothermia?

What would really happen to a penis in super cold weather?

What's the deal with the red puffy jacket?

What was all that other gear Angel and Ford had?

What are fat bombs?

Do people really burn 6000 calories a day there?

Can you really go 300 miles on foot?

What is an ice core and why do scientists study them?

Are ice tunnels real?

Why is flying a plane in Antartica so dangerous?

What about driving vehicles?

Or swimming?

There are mountain ranges in Antartica?

What's the terrain like? Is that cravasee thing real?

Can you really make a heater out of a tealight candle?

Why are there seasons??

What is Polar Night? Was it just a coincidence that you released this episode concurrently with the onset of Polar Night in Antartica?

Outside of murdering people for their ice core samples, are people doing crimes in Antarctica?

How accurate is the movie Arctic with Mads Mikkleson?

How's Antartica doing in global climate change?

Thanks to Amy, one of our listeners, we now know that Antarctica TikTok exists. 

The two ice stations in the book McMurdo and Vostok are real research stations, and actually there are way more of these stations than you’d think. 

Angel calls Ford the Iceman, but not that Iceman. 

If you want to read more about racism and greed in American pharmaceutical companies, you might be interested in Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book about the Sackler family, about Pfizer and Moderna and the COVID vaccine, Henrietta Lacks, the Tuskegee experiments, medical colonialism, and the list goes on and on. 

Big Bad Wolf by Suleikha Snyder isn’t a critique of big pharma, but it is a fierce critique of the American system of justice. 

Chekhov's Gun is an axiom by the playwright about how props on stage must come into the plot. 

You can still order the Fated Mates Best of 2020 pack from Old Town Books. 

Music

Zager & Evans - In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus), Duran Duran - My Antarctica, Deltron 3030 - Virus, ZZ Top - Sleeping Bag

Listen to the full Fated Mates music collection.