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Small Batch Edition: On Loving Romance With Sarah Wendell

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Sarah Wendell is the wrangler and editor and general mischief-maker at the site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, which reviews and discusses romance novels and serves as a home for many devoted romance fans. She's also a fascinating speaker and writer, so when she was in town recently, we had her into the studio. First up is this Small Batch, in which Sarah and I talk about romance readers, e-reading, rating sexy books with numbers of hot peppers, and why there's an optimism at the heart of reading romance.

Sarah also makes a few book recommendations, all of which I will now list.

Just One Of The Guys by Kristan Higgins (rated a couple peppers)

A Gentleman In The Street by Alisha Rai (rated all the peppers)

Silent In The Grave by Deanna Raybourn (mystery)

In The Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming (mystery)

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.
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