Guilty Pleasure: “something, such as a movie, television program, or piece of music, that one enjoys despite feeling that it is not generally held in high regard.” – Google Dictionary

I bet if more people were open and honest about their guilty pleasures, they wouldn’t have to be guilty pleasures anymore. One of my guilty pleasures is to read fated mate romance stories on reading apps. Such stories can be found on Dreame, Readict, Radish, iNovel, iReader, Kindle Vella, and dozens of others. I currently have a reader’s account with Dreame and Readict. 

The stories on Dreame are either completely free, charge coins to unlock chapters, or are “wait-for-free.” Where a story lands is up to the author. The cost of a story is based on word count, so the more coins a chapter costs, the longer the chapter is. “Wait-for-free” means one chapter unlocks every 48 hours. Free coins can be earned by checking in and reading for a certain number of minutes.

The stories on Readict are completely free to the reader because there are 30 second ads to watch in order to unlock the next chapter. The reader can use coins to skip the ad.

How I came across these two apps was for research for my debut novel, Bondwitch. The main character is a teenage witch who is new to magic. She meets and befriends vampires and werewolves throughout her journey to grow in her magic. When I was world building for Bondwitch, I very easily figured out what kind of abilities and characteristics I wanted to give witches and vampires; but had no idea what to do for werewolves.

My prior knowledge came from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, and Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. As much as I love them all, they are considered older – though I personally struggle to accept that – and so I needed something recent. This led me to serialized fated mate shifter romances, and I fell in love with them.

The main plot behind a fated mate romance is that there is one mate out there for each “person” that is their perfect fit. A deity chooses the pairs, and reaching adulthood usually sets in motion the ability to find one’s mate. Conflict arises when mates do not want to accept each other, their parents disapprove, crazy exes become jealous, or one half of the pair is human or a different species. I believe these fated mate stories started with werewolves and other shifters (werecats, werebears, etc.), but have since branched out to include vampires, demons, witches, and even angels. 

My two favorite tropes for fated mate stories are: 1. One of the mates is a human, and 2. The pair are of separate paranormal species. 

In stories where one of the mates is a human, the reader gets to be slowly introduced to the paranormal world along with the human character. There are generally several funny moments where the human is completely confused with the paranormal character sniffing them and growling “mine!” like a caveman. The human character is also able to ignore the mate bond longer than the paranormal character, which allows for love to actually develop rather than jumping right into bed because of the “mate bond”. 

When the mates are different paranormal species, we get my favorite: forbidden love. 

As much as I enjoy reading these stories, I decided to take the shifters in Bondwitch in a different direction. So, there won’t be any fated mate plot lines, but there will still be plenty of swooning, sighing, and squealing.