If you want to have a little extra fun, be a little more yourself, and be part of keeping the site open for everyone in the future, we can’t wait to see you in our new subscription-based section with exclusive content and events.
Everything you’re used to seeing at the Hot Pink Palace that is Smart Bitches Trashy Books will remain free as always, because we remain committed to fostering community among brilliant readers who love romance.
Book Beat aims to highlight other books that we may hear about through friends, social media, or other sources. We could see a gorgeous ad! Or find a new-to-us author on a list of underrated romances! Think of Book Beat as Teen Beat or Tiger Beat, but for books. And no staples to open to get the fold-out poster.
Pickleball rivalry? Sure. Falling for your fake boyfriend? Now that’s a surprise.
Bex Martin’s racquet club is her entire world. But the business she inherited from her mother has started to feel more like a sinking ship. That is, until Nikolaus Karras—a former tennis bad-boy with an ego as big as his serve—makes himself at home on her courts.
Niko has something to prove, and a high-stakes pickleball tournament is just what he needs to get back in the game after a career-ending injury. When he is finally able to set his ego aside to ask for Bex’s help, everyone assumes that they are a couple—on and off the court.
But she needs the prize money to save the club, and he needs a win to restore his reputation. So now they have a fake relationship as well as a doubles partner that they can’t seem to resist. Game on!
I’m honestly confounded by the pickleball craze, but this book would work for SBTB Summer Bingo if you’re looking for a sport that isn’t hockey, American football, or baseball.
Radio young gun Alex York is used to knowing – and getting – exactly what she wants.
But when she blows up her glamorous career and retreats to a tropical island, for the first time in her life she has no plan, no prospects and, increasingly, no money.
Lured back to the real world by the breakfast radio gig of a lifetime, she promises herself she’ll never let anyone throw her off course again – not her patronisingly old-school CEO, her network arch-nemesis or even her unexpectedly attractive new boss …
Laugh-out-loud funny and bursting with heart, Love on the Air is a deliciously escapist rom-com set in the dazzling world of commercial radio and celebrity musicians.
‘Funny and fresh and feisty and fierce and simply fabulous. I couldn’t put it down.’ Kate Langbroek
‘Ash has delivered not only an exceptional story of love but also an intriguing and addictive insight into all the intricate nuances of the media and radio scene … this first novel will blow you away. It’s beautifully (and accurately) written. Congratulations Ash – you’ve nailed it.’ Fifi Box
Another Bingo rec! If you need a “character working in audio” book for the SBTB Summer Romance Bingo, this would fit the bill.
Author: The Melanin Library Released: February 18, 2025 by Written in Melanin Publishing Genre:Science Fiction/Fantasy
In this anthology, everybody is Black.
Filled with epic battles, complicated families, soft kisses, and sharpened blades, Magic in the Melanin is an adult fantasy anthology that showcases Black authors who write magical stories of all kinds. Featuring full-page artwork to accompany your adventure through the pages, this anthology is what fantasy looks like when Blackness is centered and the imaginations of Black creators are unhindered. Dive into these stories and discover countless worlds where magic is truly in the melanin.
The proceeds from this anthology will go to supporting the Melanin Library, an online database of books written by Black authors. Share and support to ensure the library remains a free resource for everyone.
A whole fantasy anthology with Black characters written by Black authors. Saw this one on L. Penelope’s website.
“Direct but not too heavy, bright with color and gentle in tone, Neus’s graphic novel is an absolute dream of an afternoon read.” —The New York Times
A swoonworthy queer romance set against a riveting story of social change in the 1880s, this historical graphic novel reimagines the life of America’s first stunt girl—a young undercover reporter—and her whirlwind summer of romance and fighting injustice.
Seventeen-year-old Helena “Nell” Cusack came to New York this summer looking for a story—a real story. She dreams of one day writing hard-hitting articles for the New York Chronicle, but so far she’s only managed to land a job as a lowly society reporter. That is, until Alice Austen strolls into her life, an audacious street photographer who encourages Nell to shake up polite society…and maybe also take a chance on love.
When her best friend, Lucia, is injured while working in a garment factory, Nell is determined to crack the story wide open. Posing as a seamstress, she reports on the conditions from the inside, making a name for herself as theChronicle’s first ever stunt girl. But as Nell’s reporting gains momentum, so do the objections of those who oppose her. Will Nell continue to seek justice—even if it hurts her in the end?
Based on real-life stunt girl Nell Nelson and photographer Alice Austen, this tenderly drawn narrative is about bringing buried stories to light and the bravery of first love.
Sarah posted this in the SBTB slack! It’s a queer YA historical fiction graphic novel. The graphic novel space for YA and middle grade readers has an abundance of options.
This is a character-focused book and is all about the romance between Jesse and Kerry, as well as the importance of family, friendship, and community. Also there’s a lot of knitting.
When their foster-turned-adoptive mother suddenly dies, four brothers struggle to keep open the doors of her beloved Harlem knitting shop.
Jesse Strong is known for two things: his devotion to his adoptive mom, Mama Joy, and his reputation for breaking hearts. When Mama Joy unexpectedly passes away, he and his brothers have different plans for what to do with Strong Knits, their neighborhood knitting store. Jesse wants to keep the store open. His brothers want to tie off loose ends and close shop….
Part-time shop employee Kerry Fuller has kept her crush on Jesse a secret. When she overhears his impassioned plea to his brothers to keep the knitting shop open, she volunteers to help. Unlike Jesse, Kerry knows the “knitty-gritty” of the business, and together they make plans to reinvent Strong Knits for a new generation.
But the more time they spend together, the stronger the chemistry builds between them. Kerry, knowing Jesse’s history, doesn’t believe their relationship can last longer than she can knit one, purl two. But Jesse is determined to prove to her that he can be the man for her forever and always. After all, real men knit.
Shana: I stayed up late reading Satisfaction Guaranteed because I just couldn’t put it down. This book reminded me why I love contemporary romances—experiencing the heady rush of falling in love through characters that feel so real, they could walk off the page and into one of my dinner parties. Reading this brought me such joy.
Opposites attract in this playful and laugh-out-loud rom-com from Lambda Award finalist Karelia Stetz-Waters.
Cade Elgin has a life and career in New York City, and she’s determined to get back to both as soon as possible after her aunt’s funeral in Portland. However, when she unexpectedly inherits her aunt’s sex toy store — and has to save it from foreclosure — Cade realizes she’s not going anywhere. But making Share the Love profitable won’t be as easy as Cade had hoped. Her new partner has an infuriating lack of business sense, and an infuriating ability to turn Cade on.
Selena Mathis knows that nothing is more important than saving Share the Love. Not her pride, not her inconvenient attraction toward her new business partner. Cade may be more buttoned-up than Selena usually goes for, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how to turn the store around. But the more they work together, the harder it becomes for Selena to ignore her growing feelings for Cade. And she starts to wonder if there is something more important than saving Share the Love.
Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach is $2.99! Catch this one as part of today’s Kindle Daily Deals. This is a scifi novel by the pen name of Rachel Aaron. It has some strong romantic elements and, in the past, I’ve heard it described as Kate Daniels in space.
Devi Morris isn’t your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It’s a combination that’s going to get her killed one day – but not just yet.
That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn’t misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she’s found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle.
If Sigouney Weaver in Alien met Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, you’d get Deviana Morris — a hot new mercenary earning her stripes to join an elite fighting force. Until one alien bite throws her whole future into jeopardy.
Dungeons and Drama by Kristy Boyce is $2.99! This is a YA romance with fake dating between two cute gaming nerds. I also think this cover is really joyful and adorable.
When it comes to romance, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to play games. A fun YA romcom full of fake dating hijinks!
Musical lover Riley has big aspirations to become a director on Broadway. Crucial to this plan is to bring back her high school’s spring musical, but when Riley takes her mom’s car without permission, she’s grounded and stuck with the worst punishment: spending her after-school hours working at her dad’s game shop.
Riley can’t waste her time working when she has a musical to save, so she convinces Nathan—a nerdy teen employee—to cover her shifts and, in exchange, she’ll flirt with him to make his gamer-girl crush jealous.
But Riley didn’t realize that meant joining Nathan’s Dungeons & Dragons game…or that role playing would be so fun. Soon, Riley starts to think that flirting with Nathan doesn’t require as much acting as she would’ve thought…
Every now and again, I get to do a crossover episode with the Heaving Bosoms podcast. We pick a truly bonkers sexy book, and recap it across two shows. In this case – it’s three shows.
Hi Heaving Bosoms listeners! I’m so happy you’re here!
This time, Melody asked if I had any suggestions for a title. YES I DID. A Soul to Keep: Duskwalker Brides: Book One by Opal Reyne ( A | BN ) was taking up a LOT of room in my brain and I needed to discuss it with someone. Thank goodness Melody emailed me.
What did you think of today's episode? Got ideas? Suggestions? You can talk to us on the blog entries for the podcast or talk to us on Facebook if that's where you hang out online. You can email us at sbjpodcast@gmail.com or you can call and leave us a message at our Google voice number: 201-371-3272. Please don't forget to give us a name and where you're calling from so we can work your message into an upcoming podcast.
If you want to have a little extra fun, be a little more yourself, and be part of keeping the site open for everyone in the future, we can’t wait to see you in our new subscription-based section with exclusive content and events.
Everything you’re used to seeing at the Hot Pink Palace that is Smart Bitches Trashy Books will remain free as always, because we remain committed to fostering community among brilliant readers who love romance.
An Immense World by Ed Yong is $2.99! I believe Aarya mentioned this on a previous Hide Your Wallet and I’ve heard it’s wonderful on audio. Did any of you pick this one up?
Enter a new dimension—the world as it is truly perceived by other animals—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.
“A stunning achievement, steeped in science but suffused with magic.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene
The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.
In An Immense World, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.
Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.”
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is $1.99! I will warn that this fantasy novel is very graphic; please check triggers. This was Kuang’s debut and it sold really well.
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.
But surprises aren’t always good.
Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.
For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .
Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.
Not in My Book by Katie Holt is $1.99! This came out in December and was mentioned in Hide Your Wallet. This is an enemies to lovers romance with aspiring writers.
**Rosie writes romance novels and listens to Taylor Swift on loop. Aiden is a literary fiction writer who doesn’t believe in happy endings. They’re about to write a book together—what could go wrong?
The Hating Game meets Beach Read in this sexy and hilarious enemies-to-lovers romance from a debut Peruvian-Tennessean voice.**
Rosie, an idealistic and passionate Peruvian American, leaves her Tennessee hometown to pursue her dream of making it in New York as a writer. But her plan is derailed when she ends up in class with her archnemesis and ex-crush, Aiden Huntington—an obnoxious, surly, and gorgeous literary fiction writer who doesn’t have much patience for the romance genre or for Rosie.
Rosie and Aiden regularly go to verbal battle in workshop until their professor reaches her breaking point. She allows them to stay in her class on one condition: they must cowrite a novel that blends their genres.
The reluctant writing duo can’t help but put pieces of themselves into their accidentally steamy novel, and their manuscript-in-progress provides an outlet for them to confess their feelings—and explore their attraction toward each other.
When Rosie and Aiden find themselves competing against each other for a potentially career-changing opportunity, the flames of old rivalry reignite, and their once-in-a-lifetime love story is once again at risk of being shelved—unless they can find a way to end the book on their own terms.
The Starlight Heir by Amalie Howard is $2.99! I believe this is Howard’s first fantasy romance. It released earlier this year. Have any of you read this one?
A bladesmith blessed by the stars. A prince with a dangerous secret. A god bound in shadows. From USA Today bestselling author Amalie Howard comes a scorching new romantasy that will leave you spellbound.
“His Imperial Majesty King Zarek requests your presence as his esteemed guest.”
When the gold-dusted court invitation arrives at Suraya Saab’s forge, she believes it’s a joke. Nobles might seek her skills as a bladesmith—one of few who can imbue her work with precious jadu, the last source of magic in the realm—but she has no qualifications as a potential bride for the crown prince. Still, the invitation is the chance at adventure, and the means to finally visit the capital city her late mother loved.
But what awaits her in Kaldari is nothing she could have imagined—and fraught with danger. It’s not the crown prince, but his impossibly handsome, illegitimate half-brother, Roshan, who captures her interest…and her ire. The invitation isn’t a quest to find a suitable bride, but a veiled hunt for the Starkeeper—a girl rumored to hold the magic of the stars in her blood. And across the city, unrest is brewing between the noble houses and the rebel militia.
When the rebels attack, Suraya and Roshan find themselves on the run, trying to deny their simmering attraction and the knowledge that Suraya herself might be the Starkeeper. But Roshan is guarding secrets of his own. And with no control over the power stirring within her, Suraya has drawn the attention of a dark god, an immortal whose interest might be the biggest threat of all.
Tara: I’m playing Hades again and have also been playing Balatro on my Nintendo Switch for months.
Sarah: Hades! There is a lot of Balatro happening in Casa Wendell amongst my offspring.
Tara: I think I’ve played almost 400 hours of Balatro since December .
It’s a perfect game to play while listening to podcasts!
Sneezy: Pencil crayons!
Original art by Sneezy
Sometimes we collect stuff for hobbies and feel guilty about not using them. And sometimes we really want to make stuff and Past Us is all, “WE GOT YOU SHINIES!!!!” and we say, “YEAH!!!!” and definitely didn’t use misuse our Bad Decisions Book Club card.
This was a prompt from my friend! “A bunny riding on a whale shark, swimming through a river of stars”
Who can resist a prompt like that?
Claudia: I am continuing with my ceramics education (really, I need summer school!! It does not come to me ‘naturally’ or whatever that’s supposed to mean.)
At the behest of a dear friend I am also taking a six-week flower arrangement class this summer!
Shana: Please share what you learn, Claudia! I went to a flowering arranging event recently and discovered it’s not a skill that comes naturally to me.
Claudia: I will! I feel I do not have a “good eye” so I am looking forward to learning more about composition etc
Shana: I’ve been knitting again recently and I love the repetitive math. It’s very relaxing.
Elyse: Every year Westknits does a Yarn a Long Craft Camp. You can buy the kits from Stephen and Penelope and they release three shawl patterns over the course of the summer.
I’m working on the first shawl right now and I’m enjoying all the new techniques I’m learning, but it’s definitely “pay attention knitting” and not TV knitting.
Lara: I desperately want to craft more. I miss it a lot. I have so many projects planned out in my head but finding the time to action them is proving tricky with a baby in the house.
I do have one craft going at the moment. I’m knitting a baby jersey. So much quicker than a jersey for adults!
Amanda: Not crafting, but a lot of mobile games or gaming on handheld systems in bed. It’s what I do as a nighttime wind down routine to help combat doomscrolling. So something a bit mindless and repetitive like the games Tara mentioned have been great. Brian also plays a lot of Balatro as wind down time.
One unexpected treat for me recently is I’ve discovered a mild addiction to Sticker by Number books with vintage imagery.
I’ve been doing these while listening to audiobooks and it’s done a lot to decrease my stress after some really difficult days. Here are two I suggest if you want to give it a try.
Sticker books seem to be a very trendy hobby, which makes my elder heart very happy since I had a sticker scrapbook I adored when I was a kid.
I wanted a closer look and Noelle Brown at S&S sent me some sample images – some of these I want, like, right now, and so does my 8 year old self, despite not knowing what rrrrrrromantasy is.
I typically cross stitch and listen to audiobooks, but I could get into sticker books. I could get into them very easily, she said ominously. What a perfect marriage of low-stakes craft and high-grade nostalgia.
Currently my cross stitch project is this tarot card:
But I also have added shelving to my sewing area in the basement because I wanted to see all of my fabric instead of digging through different storage bins.
That’s a quilt I’m working on right now – I finished the top and am working on piecing the back.
Because of the weirdness of prices, especially on imported goods, I am determined to shop my own stash, given that I have a solid number of fat quarter bundles and yardage I bought on sale. And as we all know: acquiring the supplies and using the supplies are two different hobbies.
What about you? What crafts or hobbies or activities are you spending time with lately?
NB: I’ve enabled images in the comments so you can share pictures if you wish!
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