Josephine Skriver, the Victoria's Secret Angel who reads four to five books at a time and can blow through A Court of Thorns and Roses at three times audiobook speed, has a theory about why BookTok keeps defending the genre's most morally bankrupt male leads. The answer, she tells Ponton, is simple: wings.
"All the red flags are there, and they don't work in real life," Skriver says. "But somehow in fantasy, the red flags are a little bit more like if he has wings, it's fine."
It is a clean distillation of the romantasy contract. A human man who kidnaps you, stalks you, or wipes out your village is a criminal. A fae warrior who does the same is marriage material, provided he is obsessed with you and you alone. Skriver draws the line at infidelity. "They will never cheat," she says. "They will do everything. They will murder your parents. They will lock you up, kidnap you. They will torture your whole village. They'll be like a mass murderer. But they will never cheat cuz you are theirs."
Ponton, who started reading romance during COVID with Crave by Tracy Wolff, recognizes the logic immediately. She cannot read dark contemporary romance, the kind with human captors and real-world trauma. But a vampire or a fae? That she can do.
The Wattpad generation is now writing the books
Skriver traces the current boom back to a specific pipeline: Wattpad. She grew up in Denmark reading fanfiction because there were not enough fantasy romance novels to satisfy her. "I was the kind of girl who would read like fan fics," she says. "Like I was on like Wattpad... I swear all those girls are now old enough to write their own books and that's what you're seeing. That is what this explosion is, my theory."
The theory holds. Skriver herself just finished Alchemized, a published novel by the author of Manacled, a Dramione fanfic set in a post-Voldemort dystopia that was dark enough to make her pause the first time she read it. The fanfic has since been adapted into an original fantasy series, scrubbed of Harry Potter references but still recognizably shaped by the same id. Skriver was braced for the darkness this time. She was surprised to find the published version tamer.
Ponton has her own version of the pipeline. She came to romance late, after the school-assigned books, The Giver and its ilk, killed her interest in reading entirely. Then COVID, then Crave, then the realization: "Oh my god, they write shit like this?"
Binding 13 works because Johnny does not wait three books to care
The pair spend the bulk of the episode on Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh, the first in the Boys of Tommen series. It is a high school romance, which both of them note is very young for them now, but the pacing won them over. Shannon is small and breakable. Johnny is the rugby captain. He is kind to her almost immediately, which Skriver flags as unusual.
"That's actually what I really liked about it," she says. "It's not that they're that mean to each other. He's actually kind of awesome to her really early on and sees that she has some like messed up background, and he can't figure out why she seems like someone he must rescue."
Ponton, a self-described action girl who cannot do slow burns, was hooked within 30 pages. The book is 600 or 700 pages. She read it in a day or two. Skriver, who just finished Keeping 13, the sequel, says the second book drags because the drama resolves too early and then keeps going. She will finish the series, but in chunks. She was not ready for Joey and Alfie, the next couple, and she wanted one of the other boys first.
Ponton checks spoilers with her best friend Emma, who reads the truly dark stuff, Hunting Adeline and beyond. Ponton tried one kidnapping romance on a beach in Hawaii and had to close the book and walk away. Skriver draws the same line. "I can't do dark books in real life with real people," she says. A human with red flags is a dealbreaker. A vampire is boyfriend material.
Reading at three times speed and the terror of a text interruption
Skriver listens to audiobooks at three times speed, which she has trained herself to do over years of reading while doing chores after her daughter goes to bed. She can slow down for accents (Binding 13's Irish narration required 1.5x), but for a reread, she cranks it. She just finished all of A Court of Thorns and Roses again, mixing audio and Kindle, which sync if you pay for both. A day or two per book.
Ponton is floored. She listens at 1.5x, maybe, and only while cleaning. Her neighbor has filed noise complaints.
The worst part of audiobooks, Skriver says, is when a text comes through mid-chapter. "All of a sudden it goes, 'Husband is letting you...' And I'm like, 'What is this slowness?' It's like this slow talking to you... it takes five minutes to read this one sentence."
Ponton reads until she falls asleep, mid-sentence, book on her chest. Skriver will put a book down mid-sentence, too, but only because the Kindle syncs perfectly to audio and she can pick up exactly where she left off while folding laundry or driving, assuming the chapter is not so intense that she starts watching a movie in her head and forgets she is in traffic.
The foreshadowing you miss until you reread Throne of Glass
Skriver lobbies hard for Throne of Glass, which she calls one of her favorite series of all time, with the caveat that the first two books are tough, the middle is uneven, and the last two are worth the entire slog. She also drops a spoiler Ponton visibly does not want: Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses may share a universe. Characters visit. There is evidence in both series, but you will not catch it unless you read all the way through.
"Do characters ever cross over?" Ponton asks, alarmed. "You're not going to tell me? Are you serious?"
Skriver grins. She will not say more. But she promises the foreshadowing is everywhere once you know to look for it, and rereading both series makes the characters more believable, not less. Rhysand is flawed. He is possessive. He is fae, so we cannot expect him to act like a human.
Ponton is wary. She has been warned that A Court of Thorns and Roses is too slow for her taste, and she does not want to enter a year-long book slump like her best friend, who could not read for months after finishing a series that consumed her. Skriver counters that the wait between books is worth it if the author takes the time to write them well. She would rather wait than read something an author was forced to rush.
The episode closes on fan casting, which neither of them can agree on because they have been pronouncing the character names wrong in their heads for years. Audiobooks help. Sometimes.