S07.41: Audiobooks with Julia Whelan

S07.41: Audiobooks with Julia Whelan

Author: Fated Mates July 2, 2025 Duration: 2:18:10

We're thrilled to have audiobook queen and Voice of the Summer (USA Today), Julia Whelan with us today! Aside from being the voice of Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, VE Schwab and Kristen Hannah, she's also an author of her own delicious books and the founder of Audiobrary, an audio book company that pays narrators on a royalty structure. She's here to talk about her journey to writing and to narrating, about the way she thinks about her work, her advocacy, and the world of audiobooks. We are so incredibly thrilled to have her!

Julia is also the narrator for Sarah's book, These Summer Storms, available next week wherever books are sold. The audiobook is perfection, and you can read it on Audible, LibroFM or Apple Music...or wherever you get your audiobooks.

There are still tickets to see Sarah on tour in NYC, Chicago, Winston-Salem, NC, Newport, RI, Cambridge, MA, Decatur, GA, or Franklin, IN. There are a handful of tickets still available for Fated Mates Live in St. Louis, MO on July 8th! Join us!

If you can't make the tour, you can preorder These Summer Storms signed with a special romance dust jacket from The Ripped Bodice.

If you want more Fated Mates in your life, please join our Patreon, which comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.

Notes


Books


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The Rest

  • For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/7/1/0741-a-conversation-with-audiobook-narrator-julia-whelan
  • If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
  • Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
  • If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.


Co-hosted by bestselling author Sarah MacLean and critic Jen Prokop, Fated Mates-Romance Books for Novel People digs into the genre with a blend of scholarly enthusiasm and pure fandom. This isn't just a book club; it's a deep, weekly examination of why romance novels work, how they mirror and challenge our world, and why they are often dismissed despite their massive cultural impact. The conversation is always grounded in the text itself, often through structured read-alongs of seminal works, where Sarah and Jen unpack character motivations, tropes, and narrative structure with the detail they deserve. You'll hear lively discussions that treat the genre seriously-analyzing its function as a subversive force and a powerful tool against patriarchal norms-while never losing the joy and sheer fun of a good love story. The tone is inclusive, insightful, and famously without kink-shaming, creating a space where appreciation and critical analysis coexist. Tune into this podcast for a dialogue that celebrates complexity, champions the reader's experience, and consistently argues for the intellectual and emotional heft of romance fiction.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People
Podcast Episodes
New York Public Library Best New Romance List [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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Jen had a great time chatting with the New York Public Library's Best New Romance List Committee Co-Chairs Kate Fais and Grace Loiacono this week. They talk about the list and how they built it, about the power of librar…
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We'll be honest, we don't know what the heck is going on, either. If we could find someone or something to make all this chaos make sense, we'd be very very happy. And so, we're reading books this week about people and t…
S07:19 Back in Time with Harlequin Blaze [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:43:48
We're getting into the romance time machine and setting the course for 2001, when Harlequin decided that those Temptations could get scorching hot and become a Blaze. We scoured ebay for boxes and boxes of old Blazes, du…
S07:18 Winter 2025 New Releases: The Quarterly Edging Episode [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:44:02
We're toppling TBR piles and preorder lists today with our quarterly "Books we're excited to read" list! We're name-checking more than 50 romance novels we're looking forward to, and looking forward to hearing about the…
S07.17: The Proposition by Judith Ivory [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:44:06
Happy New Year, Magnificent Firebirds! We don’t know what 2025 is going to bring, so we’re starting with a bang—the long awaited deep-dive of Judith Ivory's The Proposition, featuring that rakish rat catcher, that ferret…
S07.16: Hear Me Out: New Year's Eve 2024 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:07:25
It's New Year's Eve, and we're ringing it in with our standard silliness, this year with brilliantly funny duo Adriana Herrera and Nikki Payne, playing the current internet sensation game, Hear Me Out, where we share the…
07.15: Holiday Romances for 2024: Put It in the Lilly Library [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:50:36
It's the holiday season, which means holiday romance! This year, we're talking about Princes of Christmas falling for heirs to Halloween, Hanukkah treats, retellings ofThe Holiday, sexy cabins in the woods, second chance…
S07:14 Excellent 2024 Debut Romance Novels [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:35:48
We're so excited to be talking about some of the bright new voices in romance this week -- every book we talk about in this episode is a debut romance from 2024. We're introducing you to eighteen new authors, all of whom…