“Cliffhanger vs. Closure” | Discussing Series Types in Romance

Need a single book HEA guaranteed? Looking to draw out the delicious tension of your favorite couple? Want to spend more time with a side character as they find their true love? 

In this episode of Blush & Bindings, hosts Lauren, Kacy, and Lindsey discuss series types in romance. From the difference between interconnected standalones and interconnected series, to satisfying genre conventions in extended series, they tackle all the tiny details in true topic take over fashion.

Books Mentioned in the Episode

Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward

Bonded by Thorns by Elizabeth Helen

Forbidden Love Series by LJ Shen

Mercenaries and Magic by Alessa Thorn

Mercury Pack by Suzanne Wright

Wildfire by Hannah Grace

For a full list of books mentioned  in the episode check out our website!

This episode contains mature themes and explicit content recommended for those who are 18+. Listener discretion is advised.

About Us

We’re a couple of friends and sisters who bonded over a love of romance novels. After countless book discussions and shared book hangovers, we decided to create Blush & Bindings, a space to break down stigmas, lift up love stories and get cozy with the pages that bind us together.💕

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Legal Disclaimer: The views expressed in this episode are solely those of the hosts and not necessarily those of any affiliated authors, publishers, or platforms, and all content is for entertainment and informational purposes only—not professional or legal advice—and Blush & Bindings and its hosts are not liable for any decisions made based on this podcast’s content.

Transcript

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Lindsey 0:05

Welcome back to Blush and Bindings. In this podcast, we crack open the sensual, the swoonworthy, and the spicy world of romance novels. We hold nothing back, discussing everything that happens between the sheets of our favorite genre. Whether you're popping your first spicy chapter cherry, a habitual HEA seeker, or a cross-genre goddess, you're in the right place. So get cozy and settle in as we lift up the love stories that bind us together. It's a topic takeover of romantic proportions. I'm Lauren and here with my terrific co-hosts, Casey and Lindsay. In today's episode, we're discussing series types in romance. So whether you love it, hate it, or love to hate it, we're breaking it down, sharing our takes, and probably going off on a few tangents along the way. Or like all the tangents.

Kacy 1:00

So I I guess maybe we should start with what do we mean by series type?

Lindsey 1:05

So you know you're like standard, oh, it's a series. We're just gonna follow along on one story from A to Z. There's multiple books, whether it's a duology, a trilogy, a seven plus part 21 book, I don't fucking know. Season destroyer. I mean a season of your life is dedicated to that one series. But there's what I think is unique to romance is by definition, the romance genre, there's two components for a book to fall into Capital R romance genre category. One, the love story has got to be central to the story overall. So without the love story, you don't have a plot to stand on. The stool falls over. And then you need that kind of emotionally satisfying or optimistic ending for the love story itself. That could be a HEA, which is happy ever after. It can be a happy for now, which is kind of that building block. There can be cliffhangers, but it can't necessarily be like, oh my god, they're in a horrible place. Like, we don't know if they're gonna be happy together or not. Yeah. Yeah, especially in like an ongoing series. Exactly. Because of these like genre conventions, I think we end up with a couple of different types of series, which is your romance series, your interconnected series, and the interconnected standalone. What's the difference between romance series and interconnected series? I I said romance series, but I just meant like series in general. Okay. Yeah. I'm a little confused.

Kacy 2:43

Okay. Because the way you're explaining it makes it seem like there's three different types of series. Yeah.

Lindsey 2:50

So you have your series, which follows the same couple throughout the book, like throughout the books with an overarching storyline. And they have in each book some sort of happy for now. So it could be that in book one they had their first kiss, or um, in a reverse harem, the first love interest is happy. Like they find they realize, okay, we're in a good place. Then you have, you know, books two and three and four, you're still following that central main character with her lovers or love in the world. Would it that just be a series? Yeah, that's a series. And so then you have an interconnected series, which each book focuses on a new couple, but you have an overarching plot line where you can't necessarily like you're gonna miss a lot of that overarching plot. But you can still enjoy the book. I mean, you can still enjoy the book, but it's it's one of those things that's like this isn't a interconnected standalone. So, like in Black Dagger Brotherhood, you have different couples with each of the books, but if you jump in at book five, you're gonna be like, what the fuck is going on? Maybe not to that couple's love story, but to like the overarching plot. Where is if you jump into Anna Huang's Twisted series, you jump into the third book, there might be some like mentions, and you're like, okay, I don't really know who these people are, but you're not so fucking you're not missing out. You're not missing anything. Yeah, and the author does a good job of maybe reintroducing those characters that were maybe the main couple in book one that are still in the book. Maybe they're living their H E A in the third book, but the author continues on as if somebody picking up this book fresh gets a little bit reintroduction of those characters, like, oh, my friend X, they do this, we've known each other for years. Which, if you read the first book, you already know that, but you don't have to have read the first book. You know, that's that's an example of an interconnected series with different couples is Mercenaries and Magic series by Alissa Thorne. You have kind of a different focus of couples throughout the books, but there is a very important pivotal storyline where all the characters are battling this kind of bad guy or working towards this thing, where if you were to just pick up book three, you wouldn't know what was going on. You couldn't just pick it up as a standalone. Even though each of the books kind of focuses on a different couple. Okay, that makes so much more sense. And that's where I think you get it unique in romance, and I'm sure it's out there in other ones, but because you have that couple love story, it kind of adds that third one. Like so, all interconnected standalones could be seen as a series. If you it's very important that um you know, because okay, like Lindsay mentioned Anna Wong's.

Kacy 5:31

Yeah, right, and series, series won't be always interconnected.

Lindsey 5:36

Yeah, so in Anna Wong's My Brain Connected series, like you can read them all out of order. I mistakenly did. I read the fourth book before I read the first three, and there was actually a reveal of a plot point that I actually didn't even realize was a plot point until I read books one, two, and three, and I saw mentions of this plot point that was resolved in the fourth book that, you know, were little breadcrumb drops of this kind of underlying thing. It could be as simple as this big secret, you know, that they're working towards in this interconnected standalone, and then in the final one, it's revealed. Where not really pivotal to the romance, to the couple story story, but maybe like a kind of a behind-the-scenes underlying thing throughout the series. It's kind of like you probably should read these in order versus like you absolutely have to fucking read these in order. Yeah.

Kacy 6:32

Right. Like, I mean, like I'm I'm kind of a stickler for reading things in order no matter what, uh, just because I don't like not knowing people that are in the stories that technically you should have a little background on. I think sometimes you you miss out on some things.

Lindsey 6:49

Oh for sure. And you get something spoiled for you, right? Like the how the couple got back to where they couple in book one, what they went through, and also what maybe the couple in book three, maybe they're in book one and they're not together yet, and you get to see their interaction, you get a little prequel to their love story in the previous books.

Kacy 7:08

You know what I think of is our friend Shelby. She read Crescent City before she read Aquitar. And I was like, you can't do that when she told me. I was like, You you can't do that. Yeah. And she was like, Well, I'm already on book two. And I was like, No, stop. Stop book three. Go back to Avatar. And she was like, it'll be fine. And I'm like, no, you're gonna ruin what I know is in there. Like, you're not gonna get the full bang for your book, basically. And uh, she was like, it's fine. And then now I just I've never felt such rage.

unknown 7:48

I don't know.

Lindsey 7:50

Well, we talk about like the breadcrumb dropping that a lot of authors do when they're writing interconnected standalones, those side character interactions that have you guessing who's gonna be the the couple in book two or three, who's gonna be the right main love interest, and you miss out on those, you know, those breadcrumbs that an author will drop in the previous books too. I also really love interconnected standalones. Yes, it's my favorite type of series. It's my favorite type because you're not you're not committing to a full series to get the end of a story. And sometimes that can feel a like a lot, especially when you have an interconnected standalone series that's maybe or a series itself that's maybe a Sarah J. Mas seven or eight book, you know, thing that you're gonna be left wanting and needing the resolution to that story, it can be a lot to undertake.

Kacy 8:43

Book one just came out.

Lindsey 8:44

Yeah, and you've gotta wait.

Kacy 8:46

The worst. And you don't even know if it's a duology, a trilogy, or more, and you're like, oh god, no.

Lindsey 8:57

JK. Like I'm like, oh, yeah. But no. But we're sweet. Interconnected standalones are nice because you get your happily ever after for that couple, right? And then you know you don't have to say goodbye to the world right away if you have a couple other books. But it just all depends on what you want to go into. I love small town romances as interconnected standalones because honestly, I might get tired of the couple after one book. Like, yeah, you know, especially if it's not like a big fantasy world building romance. Right, there's not a lot of world building in small towns maybe I don't want to read two, three books about one particular couple, especially in like a contemporary. Yeah, no. Well, and that's really interesting because you mentioned fantasy romance, and obviously we've all heard the term romanticy, and really it's not just like putting fantasy in your romance, it is like taking two genres and blending them together like halfsies, because you might not even get a H E A or H FN in that first book. You might not even know who the character that they're gonna get they're happy for now in. But it can't stand alone as just a fantasy. Like if you take away that romance element, yeah, it just comes dull. It's not there, but there's so much world building and that true like fantasy genre, epic hero journey, that it does. It's almost like it has to be its own genre because it's not fully satisfying either one. And so, you know, people are like, oh, you're just saying like romantic. And I'm like, no, there's a very interesting element to it because it can't stand in one or the other. Um, but I do think you have to go into it like letting your readers know that if you're picking up like a true romanticy and not just a fantasy romance or one of those, you might not get that HEA in the first place.

Kacy 10:48

You know, thinking about it now, I don't really know any romanticy that's one book. It's because there's so much. Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah.

Lindsey 10:57

Well, and that's why I get really kind of angry when people write books like Avatar or even Fourth Wing off as like just fairy smut or dragon smut. And I'm like, it's really pisses me off because it's really just sliding a incredibly well-written book and series and worldbit and all that stuff. It's just like writing it off into something that it isn't, and I think it's very much described that way by people who haven't read it.

Kacy 11:25

Well, and I also think that has part to do with the fact that there is a stigma around romance, right?

Lindsey 11:31

So people want to take Like it can't be a good series if it's romance.

Kacy 11:34

Right. The amount of times that I have been talking to people and they're like, What are what are you reading? And I'll be like, Oh, I'm reading this Beauty and the Beast retelling, right? And they'll be like, Oh Do you read any actual books? Yeah. Like, are are you sure you don't like could you do without the spice or whatever? And I'm like, there are plenty of romance without spice. Yeah, yeah.

unknown 11:54

Yeah.

Lindsey 11:55

Well, and it spice hasn't even been popular until until recently.

Kacy 11:59

Yeah. And so it just, it's very frustrating.

Lindsey 12:01

Yeah, and people elevate like the Brandon Sanderson over, you know, the Throne of Glass series. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, but just because it's got some romance in it does not make it less than. Like the fantastic work that these authors are doing, just because they add romance in, even add in spice, does not diminish the quality of their writing. And I just wish people who outside of reading this genre got that. Well, and it almost I think it elevates it. Oh yeah.

Kacy 12:34

Good romance is hard to write.

Lindsey 12:36

It is incredibly hard to write.

Kacy 12:37

Really hard to write. It can be so awkward.

Lindsey 12:39

Yeah, so easily. It's also an incredibly safe space for women who don't have the platform or the experience in their actual lives to see things like consent and getting prioritized for orgasms. Yeah, they're pleasure prioritized, yeah.

Kacy 12:58

That doesn't tell you how society is right now. I don't know what will.

Lindsey 13:02

Right? And like it really pisses me off because it's kind of like the sibling thing. Like, I can be angry at you and call you names, Lauren, but no one else can.

Kacy 13:12

Wait, what about me? What about me?

Lindsey 13:14

In case you might be looking at you. You've heard that a lot of it's of like, yeah. But it's it's one of those things, it's like we can call it smut because we respect it. And we understand what it really is, too. Right. Nothing will ignite my feminine rage faster than someone being like, Oh, you're reading smut.

Kacy 13:29

Yeah, that's all she reads is smut. Oh, you're just a horn dog buddy who watches porn three times a day. Yeah.

Lindsey 13:36

Like Well, and you know what? Have you read a Brandon Sanderson? Have you read some of those other books? Where the man, there's some things that are so freaking dry. I mean, high fantasy can be really hard to absorb. It's really hard to absorb. And you know what? I feel like if you're not writing a romantic arc, I feel like some of those authors don't try as hard to develop their character interactions as well. Yeah, and their relationships. In their relationships. Because yeah, a friendship's pretty easy to write, but an epic love story is hard to fucking write. It's one of the most complex relationships ever. And I'm sorry, writers are getting put down because they're including that, including a very, very difficult thing to write in their overarching story. We went up on a rage tangent, and I'm here for it. Alors it's all fired up now for the rest of our episode. But I do I do want to say, like, I don't want to diminish fantasy or other authors because you know, we are here lifting up all the genres, and if you like that, like we're not bashing you with that. We want to lift those romance authors up to that level.

Kacy 14:43

Oh yeah. Right. Because they're not there, which is silly.

Lindsey 14:47

You hear that? You hear that? Unfortunately, our listeners are probably not those who need to hear that.

Kacy 14:52

Right. Share. Well, you know, getting back to the subject, you know, I would say when it comes down to it, I love both an interconnected standalone as well as an interconnected series and just a series. I love them all, but I have to be in a different mood for every single one of them.

Lindsey 15:10

Oh, for sure.

Kacy 15:11

Right? Do I want to dedicate the time to a series? That's the first and foremost question in my mind. Or do I just want, you know, an afternoon read where I will get my whole story complete. I will have closure, I will be good to go. I really like those when I'm in a pinch, but I do love series.

Lindsey 15:28

You're kind of like mid, you're like, okay, I want this couple's story wrapped up, but I also want some overarching plot line. You're like, maybe, maybe I want to be more little C. Like, I don't know.

Kacy 15:38

Yeah, I mean, like, if I think about it, most of the books that I read are interconnected standalones. Yeah. They are in the same world. You see the same couples later on. There's maybe a slight overarching backstory to the series, but is it that important? Maybe not until the last book, you know?

Lindsey 15:58

Yeah. Yeah. I like to read the series when they are part of a reverse harem, like Lindsay mentioned earlier. That's where I was gonna go with the like reverse harem for a series, is typically you get at least one love interest has an HEA in each book and you're like building on it. I mean, I know it's not like exact science for that, but you're gonna get those little like building blocks for a series and it's the same couple. Or like a really good slow burn. Yes. And so they're like first book, they're like, oh yes, we've made it to the kissing part, or the they're like, we accept that we're not enemies anymore, but if I like really just wanna be just I don't even know how to describe it, but sometimes I need that tension to just be flipped.

Kacy 16:41

You saw the slow burn though, not collect butter. Like, you know, the Cruel Shifters series, right? That is the slowest burn series. I mean, Jasmine Maths, she knows how to write tension. It's one thing for sure. And I'm okay with that. If I'm gonna have a slow burn series where I'm like, okay, I'm I'm gonna read three books to get through this whole story. I better have some goddamn tension in there. Especially if it's a reverse harem. My god. I don't wanna wait till the last book.

Lindsey 17:13

Like or you gotta have like if the boyfriends or boyfriends have a little bit of the edge taken off, even if she doesn't get it, they're at least getting it. I think Yes, yes, yes, that happened!

Kacy 17:26

Botted by Thorns, it happened! I was very excited. Sorry, I love my boyfriends being boyfriends. I know, even though they're not my boyfriends, but they're my boyfriends for the time I'm reading them. So her boyfriends are boyfriends. Everybody's boyfriends, they're boyfriends. You know.

Lindsey 17:40

We have a that theme a lot in this season.

Kacy 17:43

Yeah, we have a lot of reverse harems this season. We have a lot of boyfriends being boyfriends in this season.

Lindsey 17:49

We have a lot of series in this season. I think that's one of the reasons we decided to have this as one of our episodes early on this season. Is by happenstance too, when we got together and were talking about what books we wanted to do for book club this season, we chose ones that were very much part of a series, the first in the series. And luckily all of them are first in the series. Or most not all of them. There is one interconnected standalone. It's just an interconnected standalone. Yes. You can read it on its own. We will give you enough time though to read the other two if you want to. So when we announce it. I mean it's a real fast read. Oh, super fast.

Kacy 18:27

But when I did read it, I was like, uh, kinda wish I had read the first two, but then I was like, it's fine. But we'll get to that later.

unknown 18:33

Yeah.

Lindsey 18:34

I think Lauren, you you mentioned like when we got together and decided on what we were gonna do. I was like, I feel like we took our masks off, and like the first season was like our first date, and we're like, we're fine, we're normal, we're gonna keep everything in the afterdark episodes. And now we're just like reverse harem, dark romance, throw it everywhere with the butt play. Yeah, but brace kink! Praise kink!

Kacy 18:58

Break me! God probably say that. This is who we really are, and this is what we want to read. Well, I think it's I think it's fun that in the first season we did a lot of interconnected standalones. They were a lot of interconnected standalones, or just standalones, right? We had one in a series, I think, but it was the Deanny and Frost uh ones burned.

Lindsey 19:18

And Zoom. And Fark's grave, right? Isn't that a it's uh uh duology? No.

Kacy 19:24

No, it's three. There's three books in that. Never mind, we have two series. But I like that we're we're kind of going into a series zone with this season because I love standalones. Um, I love them or interconnected standalone series, but there is something really nice about world building where you feel a little bit more connected to the characters and you're a little bit more emotionally invested because you've spent all this time, you know, reading about them and learning about them. And you know you have a good author when they hook you for five books, and there's one in our Season that has five books, I believe. And the fifth book isn't coming out until next year. So I'm like, oh god. But yeah, I'm glad that we are doing a lot of series this time around.

Lindsey 20:12

We do.

Kacy 20:12

Different vibes.

Lindsey 20:13

And I think it's the subgenres we've picked too. Yeah. Yes. Do you guys, as far as like for the interconnected standalones, do you like the characters that are like super close to the central story of the first books? Do you like when they're kind of set in the same world, whether that's our world or another world, and you're there's just like a far-off mention? What's your kind of favorite on that? Are you like, are they best friends of the main couple? Are they mortal enemies? I don't know.

Kacy 20:45

So someone who's continually in the book but isn't the main character?

Lindsey 20:49

Yeah, I mean, like, if you're gonna pick up an interconnected standalone, you read that first book in the second book. Are you hoping it was the roommate? Or are you hoping it was like okay?

Kacy 21:00

Yeah. I kind of like those with interconnected standalones, honestly. I like guessing who the next couple's going to be because they always introduce them. It's pretty rare they don't at least introduce one of the people that's gonna be in the next couple. And sometimes you get really excited about someone and then their story is like book five, and you're like, god damn it.

Lindsey 21:21

What about you, Lauren? I think for contemporary, I definitely favor either like a family member or a teammate or a best friend. And I also like the dynamic of like the main character's best friends then getting together, like her best friend and his best friend. And maybe they start out as like not liking each other, and they secretly then form a relationship. But I guess I think for in a contemporary setting, I really like that. As for like a fantasy, I don't really have a preference unless it's like a found family type aspect, and then I want everybody to get a happy ending within that found family.

Kacy 22:02

I feel like that's actually very common in anything outside of contemporary, because when I think of shifters or aliens or monsters or something like that, it's all usually within the found family of the initial character and or really close proximity at least.

Lindsey 22:20

Or uh on the opposite sides, like Dorian and Manon. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Kacy 22:26

Right. True enemies to lovers.

Lindsey 22:27

True enemies to lovers, right? They start out as an enemy and then become a lover. Yeah. The best. A lover. Okay, that also brings me to another question. Do you like when you get a glimpse of the start of their story or their meet cute? Or do you want to be totally surprised in the next book? I think it depends on the book. I think it depends on the book. If it's fantasy, I want to be surprised. If it's contemporary, I know I'm going in for like almost uh, unless it's like a dark romance. I'm going in for almost like a cute small town read. And then I like it. Like you have, I keep going back because I've read a lot of hers, but Anna Wong's Twisted series. I remember there's a part in the book where you know the main character's like, have you seen this character and this character? And you're like, uh, you know, no, I they went off together and I haven't seen them. And then in their book, you actually get to see what they were doing. There's a flash. And oh, when you know she asks what they were doing, they were fucking in the closet, you know? Yeah. Well, and then on the other side of that, Hannah Grace, who we did icebreaker in the first one, in her second book, which I've read, which is Wildfire, they don't meet each other until the events of the first book have essentially ended. Yeah. And I kind of liked that. I kind of liked being surprised because so much of that story, you know where it's going. Like it's forced proximity. Yeah. You know, I feel like I kind of fall on the other side of that with the contemporary, which is totally fine. Like I already know so much of what's gonna happen. I kind of want that fresh meet cue. I want to know, but what you were saying, Lauren, like you don't actually know. You know they went off together, but you don't You don't actually know. You don't get to know. Well, and some of the time, like if it's a sports, you know one of the main characters, like you said. You don't know who their love interest is gonna be. You just know that all the books follow one of the players on the hockey team, right? Yeah. And then it's a wild card of who it's gonna be. It could be somebody that you know you met in book one or two, or it could be somebody you've never met.

Kacy 24:30

Yeah. Like um in Suzanne Wright's series, her shifter series, the Phoenix Pack or the Mercury Pack or the Olympus pack, there's like a nice mixture. You start out with the first book and you might meet the second couple, maybe, or at least one of them. And then there's other ones where you know it's gonna be in the pack, right? You know, they're gonna follow pack members, right? And so in the Mercury pack series, one of the guys ends up meeting this woman who's completely unassociated with them. She's uh technically a lone wolf, yeah. And I like that because it gives you a kind of nice little bit of diversity throughout the series where you're like, I I know who's gonna be involved in the series, but I might sometimes not know who they're gonna be involved with. Yeah, which is sometimes really nice. I also do like knowing, because I know when we read Feral Sins, you were like, Oh, I wanna know what's gonna go on with Dante and Jamie. Yeah, right. And you're like, Yep, that's the second book, you know? But then the one right after that, you don't know who the other person is. You just know it's you know, it's in the pack. That's it.

Lindsey 25:35

Well, and I guess that's true. Like, I like knowing one of them, you know, like you said, Lauren, with the found family, like or the hockey team. Like, you know they're going through the hockey team and you get to know the guys. Through the hockey team, hey, and maybe it's two players on the hockey team. You know the like guys, but you don't know the women, yeah, necessarily. Or you know some of them, but not all of them. When it's everyone is already present in the first book, I'm kind of like, oh sometimes it feels high school TV where everybody, you know, everybody, or or you know, it didn't happen this way in friends, but like mostly everybody got together.

Kacy 26:13

Yeah, right. Like the OC, you know.

Lindsey 26:15

Yeah, the OC, right? Everybody's gotta fit together, and sometimes that happens, but I feel like these days authors are adding in some wild cards where it's like mostly everybody's gonna end up together, but we're gonna have some strangers coming in. Yeah, I like that because it's less formulaic. Yeah and it builds on the world too. Yeah, um, which is really fun. Brings in those outsiders for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Kacy 26:40

Oh man, I feel like we could talk about this all day, but I just love everything romance. Give me a series, give me an interconnected series, give me everything. Yeah, give me interconnected standalones. I want them all.

Lindsey 26:50

You know what's really great too about the interconnected standalones is it's it can be good and bad, actually. And let me tell you why. You get to write a bunch of different characters, and I think sometimes authors just really churn these out, right? You get to write a bunch of different characters while staying in the same world. So you don't have to completely invent a whole new world when you're not writing, right? On the downside of that, I have read some interconnected standalones where the author didn't do well enough to really distinguish the new couple, and you get a lot of recycling of things. I find this a little bit in some of the mafia interconnected standalones because you have this archetype of like the mafia guy, and sometimes I'm like, oh, like Luca in book one, and I don't know, Dominic and Book Three are essentially the same people. Uh with just like a little bit different of a backstory. And I think they can be done really well, or it can be like I'm reading the same book, just different characters, and maybe a slightly different story, but they're kind of the same people. You know, sometimes I like that. And yeah, sometimes I'm like, man, I really loved Luca. Give me Dominic, but like okay, okay. But sometimes it can be, I don't know, a little bit hard. But the good thing about the interconnected standalones is it's not like you're working on a series and you get to like book three and you're like, oh, I have to continue on through this because I want to know I have to get to the end. I'm already three books in. You've kind of already got some resolution in the characters, and if it sucks, I have an easier time DNFing book three on an interconnected standalone than I would on a four-book series. I'm already three books in, I'm gonna finish it because I want to know what's happening.

Kacy 28:36

I feel a lot less uh, I don't I don't know about you guys. I feel bad sometimes stopping a series, right? But I don't feel bad stopping an interconnected standalone series. If I'm just like, I think I'm done with this world, you know, I've read four of the books, like I'm good, I'm not really interested in the next couple, you know, I've got what I wanted out of this series. I feel fine about it. But if it's like an actual series, I will feel bad if I've gone through the majority of the series. Yeah. And I'll just be like, just suck it up. And you like I I don't I don't know about you, but my ADHD tells me to not finish things sometimes, and it's because I don't want things to end. Oh and I do that with series sometimes where like I will refuse to read the last book because I don't know.

Lindsey 29:19

I did that with Throne of Ross for the longest time. It took me forever to read Kingdom of Ash because I didn't want it to end.

Kacy 29:26

Exactly. I I think I waited a solid year to read Kingdom of Ash because I was like, no, I can't have it end. I can't do it.

Lindsey 29:35

I don't know if you guys have noticed this more. Maybe it's just the ones I've been looking at lately. Some of the contemporary interconnected standalones. I like that the authors are getting away from like Lauren, you said, mafia, mafia, mafia, mafia. You have your like, maybe book one's billionaire, maybe book two is mafia, maybe book three is cowboy, but somehow, somehow they get them to connect. Right. They're maybe childhood best friends or something.

Kacy 30:00

Yeah.

Lindsey 30:01

You can be like, ooh, I'm in the mood for mafia right now. I'm gonna start on book three. And then you get a teaser for like someone else in the book, and you're like, okay. They're like, oh, I want to read about a chef. Yeah, I want to read about the chef. And like LJ Shen is a great example of this. They're all interconnected in the world, but they are different flavors. And that's a way to kind of avoid that very repetitive archetype is you're getting different people because they're doing different things, but they're interconnected together. Yeah, you get to write those interactions and write so much of a character throughout several books, even if they're a tiny little side character in the first book, maybe. Yeah. I enjoy it. Yeah. Well, that's our episode for today. If you enjoyed this episode and can't wait for more, please like and subscribe, and maybe even leave a review. It helps other romance lovers find us. Thank you so much for listening, and as always, here at Blush and Bindings, we're breaking down stigmas, lifting up love stories, and getting cozy with the pages that bind us together.