The Heated Rivalry Hardcover is…Something
Mar. 25th, 2026 03:51 pmTW/CW: I have some startling news. I request that you hold on to your butt and possibly fetch your blood pressure medication if necessary.
Harlequin is releasing a hardcover of Heated Rivalry in September – a special edition of a book that is doing moderately well right now in terms of sales and borrows. LOL.
This is the cover.
Y’all.
Y’all, what is this.
Are those…robots? Robots and some hockey sticks?
I ranted about this on Bluesky because my own blood pressure was about to max out and my Losartan was about to rise up out of the bottle and slap me into next week.
My head is tilted so far my cranium is about to bounce down the hall like a macabre cat toy.
This is embarrassing. The secondhand embarrassment is measurable on multiple scales, including the one in my bathroom. WAHT IS THIS.
Is this an AI textbook? Heated Rivalry: AI vs. Humanity?
Why are they robots? Which one is Ilya?
Why is this the cover image? Why is one of the hottest properties adapted into one of The Hottest Shows Ever being released in hardcover with…line robots?
I cannot get over the TRON of it all.
My nature is of course to question myself: maybe I’m not the intended audience? Maybe this doesn’t appeal to me for reasons I won’t understand.
But for WHOMST is this? To what readership does this appeal?
And, again, how is there not a tie-in cover? You know, just one image featuring those two people who portrayed two random bland ass characters that absolutely no one is writing Tumblr posts and AO3 fic by the metric ton about?
What is happening?!?!?!
If I had to sum up in one image:

So I ask you: what genre do you think this is? If you’d never heard of Heated Rivalry, what kind of book would you think this was?
Nonfiction? Corporate spy thriller? AI textbook?
Non-Fiction, Charlotte Stein, & More
Mar. 25th, 2026 03:30 pmSimply Unforgettable
Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh is $1.99! This is book one in the Simply Quartet. The hero and heroine first meet during a snowstorm while stranded at an inn. I know Balogh’s romances are an auto-buy for many of you.
New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh invites us into an intoxicating world — a select academy for young ladies — and introduces two unlikely lovers: a truly marvelous heroine, music teacher Frances Allard, and the man who seduces her with a passion no woman could possibly forget …
They meet in a ferocious snowstorm. She is a young teacher with a secret past. He is the black-caped stranger who comes to her rescue. Stranded together in a country inn, Lucius Marshall and Frances Allard share a night of glorious, unforgettable passion. But Frances knows her place. Due to begin her teaching position at Miss Martin’s School in Bath, Frances must try to forget that one extraordinary night. But when fate once again throws them together, Lucius’s passionate, single-minded pursuit will force Frances to give up all her secrets — except one — to win the heart of the man she already loves.
My Big Fat Fake Marriage
My Big Fat Fake Marriage by Charlotte Stein is $2.99! This is a standalone contemporary romance with a fake marriage and some forced proximity. I feel like Stein’s recent contemporaries aren’t hitting the same as her spicier, earlier work.
A fake marriage at a writer’s retreat goes awry when two people fall in love for real in Charlotte Stein’s next sexy and laugh out loud novel!
Connie Evans has always distrusted nice guys. In her experience, they’re just waiting to reveal some horrible secret. And then she meets big, adorable, Henry Samuel Beckett—lover of bow ties, sweet as a superhero who wears his underpants over his tights, and so cheery she struggles to believe he’s real.
Until Henry Samuel Beckett—or Beck, as he’s known to most—tells her what truly lurks underneath his sunny surface. He’s been single all his life. But somehow seems to have told everyone he works with that he’s married. And when Connie can’t help defending him, she ends up being the wife he doesn’t have.
And now they’re on a writing retreat together, surrounded by people convinced this can’t be real, both of them sure that those people are right. Until they have to share their first kiss, their first touch, their first time in only one bed. Side by side, every night, as the simmering tension builds…something has to give.
The only question for Connie is—could it be her heart?
Murder on Sex Island
Murder on Sex Island by Jo Firestone is $1.99! This is book one in the Luella van Horn Mysteries. It was recommended in the comments and I was honestly really tickled by the title.
A sexy reality show. A missing contestant. A one-of-a-kind detective.
“Bless Jo Firestone’s quiet, mad genius. . . . Hilarious and completely brilliant, [a] bloodstained love-letter to reality-dating television.”—Vulture
When a cast member goes missing from the hit reality show Sex Island, producers hire detective Luella van Horn to go undercover as a contestant and solve the case. What the producers don’t know is that the enigmatic Luella van Horn is actually a woman named Marie Jones, a divorced ex–social worker from Staten Island attempting to lead a double life as a private eye. The local press couldn’t get enough of Luella . . . until she horribly bungled her last case and a murderer went free.
Unable to resist the opportunity to be a part of her favorite trashy TV show, travel to a remote island, and embark on a journey for redemption, Marie-as-Luella takes the case. But the more she learns about Sex Island’s dark underbelly, the harder it gets to make it out alive. She encounters shady producers, sleazy directors, contestants willing to do whatever it takes to win the $100,000 grand prize—and the dead body of the show’s missing fan-favorite in her bathtub.
Will she find the killer? Will she find herself? Will she find . . . love?
Find out now, in Sex Island’s most dramatic season yet.
Lab Girl
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren is $1.99! Many readers loved this memoir, though wouldn’t recommend it on audio. Have you read this one?
An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world
Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more.
Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.
Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.
Jahren’s probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her acute insights on nature enliven every page of this extraordinary book. Lab Girl opens your eyes to the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal. Here is an eloquent demonstration of what can happen when you find the stamina, passion, and sense of sacrifice needed to make a life out of what you truly love, as you discover along the way the person you were meant to be.
Me-and-media update
Mar. 26th, 2026 11:09 amIn the Smoke alarms poll, 80% of respondent have smoke alarms on ceilings/walls, and 16% have some in piles around the place. Ten percent have inadequate coverage. Forty percent of respondents assume it's a battery issue when they go off.
In ticky-boxes, hugs came first with 80%, followed by iridescent bubbles with 62%, and pizza with 48%. Thank you for your votes! ♥
Reading
I've put The Pursuit of... by Courtney Milan aside for now, in favour of Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell. I'm hoping it will help me finish my Yuletide stories, but I'm still in the drafting section, and that's not so much my problem. Still, it has some useful thoughts. Written with pantsers/discovery writers in mind.
In audio, I started The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley, read by Sid Sagar. It's set in ancient Thebes, and Pulley's tendency to exoticise/other her non-white characters is transposed onto othering a god, which, okay, fair enough. I'm enjoying the voice.
Kdramas
Same as last week: Undercover Miss Hong, One Spring Night, and Love Scout (ahhhh!). A delicious three-course meal. (I may have oversold One Spring Night last week when I compared it to Austen. What I meant was it's observational. It doesn't have the kinds of flashbacks you usually get in a Kdrama, showing the POV characters' thought processes and emotional reactions. Instead, it seems equally interested in everyone, in a way. The editing is so slow that it feels like a play: the actors' reactions linger on the screen, rather than the camera flicking away.)
Other TV
Finished Ponies, the spy story set in 1980s Moscow, which was great, sometimes brutal, sometimes funny. Ended on a cliffhanger. Emilia Clarke is awesome!
1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed -- a documentary made up of interviews with mixed-race kids in the Bay Area. Lovely, thought-provoking, reminded me of the movie Uproar in which Minnie Driver plays the solo mum of Māori kids.
More of The Pitt. (The latest episode was super upsetting, and it really stuck with me. It's so good.)
Rooster, a new comedy set on an Ivy League campus, starring Steve Carell and feat. unexpected Jamie Tartt. Quirky and charming (and that's despite my side-eyeing Carell because of his role in The Morning Show and my difficulty with compartmentalising). We've watched the three available episodes.
Started a rewatch of Paper Girls, which contains one of my all-time favourite narrative devices (people meeting their child selves; see also Disney's The Kid and one of Richard Bach's books). It's such a great show. I'm still so sad it was cancelled on a cliffhanger.
The first episode of the Scrubs reboot. (I never watched the original, but this is fun enough.) And some more Cheers.
Regularly scheduled Fringe and Bluey with my sister.
Audio entertainment
The usual suspects, but not much. I'm having a rest week.
Onling life
520 Day sign-ups (part 1) are open for two more days. \o/
Offline life
I stood on a wasp, and wow, that hurt. | We went up the coast to see my parents (lovely sunny day, nice drive, good to get out of town). | Been biking a lot. | Indulging in too many hot cross buns. | My day's to-do list is super daunting; I may have to give myself a 24-hour extension.
Writing/making things
My first rewrite of WIP #1 didn't work out, so I've spent a lot of this week revising again, and I think I've finally cracked it. It's back at beta. Cross your fingers for me!
I have about 9 days to finish WIP #2, but they're busy days (by my standards). Ahhh!
Link dump
America built the greatest cultural machine in history. Then quit. Here's what filled the vacuum. (Rodrigo Brancatelli substack chronicling the rise and fall of US soft power, and what South Korea learned from the US's example).
Good things
Nada Bakery hot cross buns. To-do lists. Awesome betas and co-mods. Figuring out writing stuff. Guardian! Dreamwidth! You all!
Do you have a favourite colour?
Ticky-boxes
Ticky-box full of rainbows
18 (69.2%)
Ticky-box full of strong opinions about your blorbos' underwear
4 (15.4%)
Ticky-box full of raccoon chefs folding trays of dumplings
13 (50.0%)
Ticky-box full of being signed up for at least one exchange/fandom event
8 (30.8%)
Ticky-box full of huge hugs
22 (84.6%)
What I'm Doing Wednesday
Mar. 25th, 2026 03:58 pmThe GoFundMe for Ny's burial costs is 88% funded at this writing. Please help get it to 100% if you can spare a few $$.
books
- A Ghastly Catastrophe (Veronica Speedwell #10). 2026. Dracula. Utterly ridiculous. Also: 2 books about evil gays in a row, WTF!? :(((
~ Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong #1) by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Cute, though the ending is so slapdash.
~ The Crow Moon (Crow Investigations #10) by Sarah Painter. 2026. The end of the series.
+ King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson. 2025. The US is so very bad at dealing with Iran.
currently reading: Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East by Amanda H. Podany. 2022.
Iran war
I am so very pissed off at: the Trump Administration, the Netanyahu regime, and the Iranian clerical regime. I've read SO MANY books on Iran and its culture, pre-Revolution. This is not how effective regime change works.
yarning
Missed yarn group yet again, though I was dressed and ready to go. Just couldn't get out the door. Made an ADORABLE tarbasaurus for my cousin's son's third bday. Made 3 catnip-silvervine snakes to restock the shop. Sold the brown and tan kickbunny (finally), which I need to arrange pickup for.
healthcrap
The vertigo is much better, which makes me think it was a viral inner ear thing. My sleep is shattered. I've been sleeping til noon, despite turning the light out at ten. Healthcare renewal appt #2 is tomorrow afternoon.
#resist
Mar 28: No Kings Protest #3
Never start a land war in Asia.
RIP Robert Mueller.
I hope you're all doing well! <333
The Pretty Lethal Ladies Served Quite a Buffet
Mar. 25th, 2026 07:00 pmBless.
The post The Pretty Lethal Ladies Served Quite a Buffet first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
Lisa Kudrow Led the HBO Max Launch Party in London
Mar. 25th, 2026 06:00 pmWith a few others.
The post Lisa Kudrow Led the HBO Max Launch Party in London first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
“Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” Opens at the V&A
Mar. 25th, 2026 05:00 pmGO SEE IT!
The post “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” Opens at the V&A first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
2026 Awards Season Retrospective: Kate Hudson
Mar. 25th, 2026 04:00 pmMore Kate Hudson is required going forward, please.
The post 2026 Awards Season Retrospective: Kate Hudson first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
“The Drama” Has Landed in Paris
Mar. 25th, 2026 03:00 pmZendaya is just really outrageously beautiful, I'm sorry!!
The post “The Drama” Has Landed in Paris first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
The Paradise Cast Gives Us an Excuse to Talk About Paradise
Mar. 25th, 2026 02:00 pmCome on in.
The post The Paradise Cast Gives Us an Excuse to Talk About Paradise first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
Links: Sales, Harlequin Collections, & More
Mar. 25th, 2026 09:00 am
Hello, everyone!
New England was definitely hit with “false spring” last week because there was sleet yesterday. And it’s still so damn windy.
Definitely struggling with lots of competing interests. I think it was LML last week that brought it up. I have video games I want to play and books I want to read. I would just love like a second or third set of eyeballs.
What’s demanding your attention right now?
…
It’s the Steam Spring Sale! If you’re into visual novels or otome games, the reddit community has a big ol’ list of sale prices.
…
Christy sent in this link! A woman in Ontario is looking to sell her collection of 2000 Harlequin romances. What a collection! Anyone interested in buying?
…
The new Bonkers Romance collection is set to launch in about two weeks. The theme this time is Bluebeard. You can get a sneak peek here and sign up to be notified when it the Kickstarter opens.
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Season 5 of Bridgerton is officially underway!
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Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Your Afternoon Chat: What’s Your Current Workout?
Mar. 24th, 2026 07:00 pmPlease share with the class!
The post Your Afternoon Chat: What’s Your Current Workout? first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
Bulgari’s Ambassadors Got Some Bling for the Night
Mar. 24th, 2026 06:00 pmSadly no Zendaya at this one! She'll be back.
The post Bulgari’s Ambassadors Got Some Bling for the Night first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
Miley Cyrus Manifested This Moment
Mar. 24th, 2026 05:00 pmAnd is wearing herself on herself.
The post Miley Cyrus Manifested This Moment first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
Chase Infiniti Is Back on the Grind Already
Mar. 24th, 2026 04:00 pmFor The Testaments.
The post Chase Infiniti Is Back on the Grind Already first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.
Congratulations Amanda and Brian!!
Mar. 24th, 2026 03:18 pmY’all, look at these two married cuties!

Amanda, co-pilot of the SS Smart Bitches, got married today and THE KVELLING that is happening. If you haven’t met Amanda’s partner, please meet Brian (they/them)!
Congratulations, you two!
Want to just expire from cute? Today is also the anniversary of their first date four years ago.

I knew they’d been planning an elopement, but recently they realized that they can just…get married. Right now. So they did!
I mean, why wait for happy times if you can make them happen sooner?
I’m seriously so happy for them both, and wanted to share the celebration with all of you.

Please share your wishes and advice for a happy future! Let’s shower them both with love and support.
Thanks for sharing your marvelous day, Amanda and Brian – congratulations!
2026 Awards Season Retrospective: Amy Madigan
Mar. 24th, 2026 03:00 pmOne of the most interesting press pushes in recent years.
The post 2026 Awards Season Retrospective: Amy Madigan first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.

